"I've won the betting pool," Cassius whispers, unholy glee lighting his eyes. "I know I was the only one to bet on you."

Casper doesn't try to sink into the floor. He hasn't done something so undignified since he was a first year. But if one really looked, they might find something in the line of his shoulders that suggests he'd really like to. He stands on perfectly even legs and heads toward the direction Dumbledore gestured toward. He is still deep in shock when the Goblet lights up in a shower of sparks and shoots out Harry Potter's name.

With a sinking sensation, Casper realizes he's been accidentally caught up in the chaos that dogs Potter's existence.

Dear fucking Merlin.

A little while later finds Casper leaning against one of the walls of the room all the participants of the tournament have gathered in. It's the waiting room between the Great Hall and the first floor south corridor, and it had felt bigger when there had been twenty or so firsties crammed into it, Casper thinks as he remembers the last time he'd stepped foot here. He'd been a good deal shorter and weedier, but the levels of apprehension about an uncertain future are about the same. The room feels hardly bigger than a shoebox with everyone who's crammed inside—four champions, three headmasters, three Hogwarts professors, and Ludo Bagman—plus the egos of everyone there. Also intangible yet nearly visible is the aura of anger and confusion. The adults stand to the side and argue loudly about how and why the Goblet spat out four names instead of three. The technically-adults-but-really-not-especially-qualified-adults, plus Potter, who's a fourth year or something, have mostly been left out of their conversation.

Delacour is on her third round of complaints about the situation. Her accent is lovely, but it's grating to hear her go on and on. At each of her short pauses, Krum has agreed with a grunt, but this time he says in a gruff voice, "We will have to deal. We will prove our worth despite the British cheating."

"I wasn't the one who cheated," Casper replies on principle. Not that he is averse to cheating, but now that the shock of actually being chosen is slipping away from him, he wouldn't mind cheating just to get out of this. This is insane. Casper Nott, Triwizard Tournament champion.

Potter scowls at all three of them. "I didn't cheat! I didn't even put my name in the Goblet."

He sounds truthful, but Casper has heard enough underclassmen attempt to lie their way out of whatever shit they've gotten into to know that he can't always tell when someone's lying. But whether Potter had done it himself or some asshole had slipped the boy's name in the Goblet as a joke, "It doesn't matter whether or not he cheated. You heard the judges. He's a part of the tournament now. No use wasting our time arguing about it."

"I— that's true," Potter says, looking conflicted. Probably about agreeing with a Slytherin for once in his life. "But for the record, I didn't, okay?"

It doesn't matter anyway. Casper shrugs. "Okay."

Krum makes a noise of disbelief. "You vished to see if you could beat the enchantment. It is a worthy goal. Me, I joined to test my strength against the best of the best."

"I wanted to prove myself," Delacour explains. There's nothing soft in her smile as she says, "There are some people who think I can't do this."

They turn to him, but Casper isn't as deep of a person. "My best friend bet me ten galleons that I wouldn't." For Cassius, ten galleons is pocket change, but Casper will stretch it for supplies he hadn't been able to buy over the summer and some proper winter boots for Theo. The Goblet was never supposed to choose him.

Potter stares at him wide-eyed behind his glasses while the foreign champions seem to have decided that while the tall seventh year is more of a challenge than the scrawny fourth year, the real competition is between Delacour and Krum. Casper's not much of a betting man—in fact, he's never gambling again—but he thinks they're probably right.

He looks toward Potter, who'd never given his reasons. "If you had placed your name in the Goblet, would would've been your goal?"

Potter gives him a careful look. "If I did," Potter says, not admitting to anything, smart kid, "I would've wanted to have something that doesn't lead back to Voldemort. Something I did, on my own, that's not about him."

Casper nods. It's a nice dream, though as long as the Dark Lord still lingers on this earth, everything leads back to him. Casper isn't so hopeful as to disregard his father's news of the darkening mark on his arm and the attacks at the Quidditch World Cup. The Dark Lord is once again more than just a whisper from one student to another, a way to regretfully boast that they would've joined him if they hadn't been too young during the war.

At this point, the headmasters and other assorted adults decide to save their arguments for another day. They explain the rules of the tournament and their expectations for the champions' conduct. There's not a chance in hell that this tournament is going to be played fairly, but Casper agrees to Dumbledore's directives anyway. Moody delivers the uncomfortable reminder that someone may have placed Potter's name in the Goblet to have him killed. Sucks to be Potter, Casper thinks, and resolves to quickly get out of the line of fire if Moody's theory becomes true. There are enough rumors about Potter's adventures for Casper to know he doesn't want to be caught up in them. He'd like to live through his sixth year, not die from a basilisk bite or a rogue dementor.

They're released back into the castle afterward. The foreign students leave with their respective headmaster and headmistress, Potter heads toward the Gryffindor tower, and Cassius makes his way to the dungeons. The students he passes turn to stare and whisper.

There's a hush in the Slytherin common room when Casper returns. Casper lingers in the doorway for a moment, long enough for his house to find their voices again and begin to clap. The younger ones even cheer. Casper isn't a quidditch player nor the highest points winner, and as a prefect, he's treated with a bit of wariness and irritation when he breaks up people's fun. He's never gotten this kind of response before. It's a hell of a rush, the knowledge that out of everyone who'd placed their name inside the Goblet, it picked him. Him, Casper Nott, thought more skilled than Cedric Diggory or Ana Marshbank. More competent than every single one of his yearmates, because Casper doesn't know anyone over 17 who resisted the allure of fame and fortune and danger.

That doesn't mean that Casper's main emotion isn't pure, unadulterated panic.

What the fuck did he get himself into?

Snape is suspiciously absent as the upperclassmen bust out the alcohol, their head of house's students getting in trouble senses probably tapered by whatever passes for anticipation in the man. Casper's younger brothers are overjoyed. They've probably never been prouder of him in their lives. Casper stays long enough to politely accept everyone's congratulations, then secludes himself in the sixth year boys dormitory.

Cassius is the first to follow him up. He takes out a bottle of firewhiskey from one of his robe pockets, which Casper accepts. As a prefect, he can't indulge himself in front of the underclassmen, but underage drinking in the privacy of his room is another thing.

"I'm still angry with you," Casper says, flopping down onto his bed. He'd risen from it a perfectly normal student and lay down as one of the Hogwarts champions.

Cassius takes Casper's chair. "I'm not taking any blame for this. It was your own choice to relieve me of ten galleons and put your name in the Goblet. How were we supposed to know you're secretly a badass?"

Casper groans and considers smothering himself with a pillow. He never would've put his name in if it wasn't for the stupid bet. But Cassius had put his name in at the same time, and Casper can't quite believe he lives in a universe where he's chosen over Cassius for something. Although really, Casper's an idiot. People have died in this tournament. He'd never forgive himself if he went and died on his younger brothers. "I hate this."

"Sorry," Cassius says, the word sounding like he'd had to pull it out from a very little-used place in his heart.

"You're forgiven," Casper replies. It's not Cassius' fault, not really. "But I still want half your profits from the betting pool." Casper hadn't contributed anything to the pool—he has better things to do with his money—but if he's going to put his neck on the line, he'd better get paid for it.

"How about a quarter?"

"I'm in a competition that might well kill me before the end of the year."

"Fine. I can't believe it though; nearly 250 galleons and I was the only one who bet on you. Although I did put more money on Diggory, I admit."

"I would've bet on Diggory, too." They've been prefects together for two years now, so he's familiar with both Diggory's strength and his strength of character. Diggory would've been a great champion. Casper has no idea why the Goblet chose him instead.

"But now that we have you, you've got to win. Do it for Slytherin." And since they're not in mixed company, he adds, "You've heard rumors of his reemergence, right? Do it for the Dark Lord."

"Right," Casper says. "For the Dark Lord."

He yells into his pillow.

When their other dormmates return, it's Augustus who asks, "What's happening?"

“I did,” Harry agrees. “Some of the others mentioned it during their trials. I assume they all remember it to some extent, though the healers tell me some have blocked out the memories.” After a moment, he adds, “I’m not spying on you. Your mind-healing files are private, as they should be. I’m just...”

“Being the Minister of Magic?” Sirius offers. “You work too hard.”

“Not as much as I used to. I’m nosy, too.” Maybe that’s not the right word for the desperation Harry felt toward the beginning to find out what had happened to Sirius, but it’s close enough. The desperation has faded in the passing months, leaving only a tendency to want to know everything about Sirius, not desperate or nagging but steady and sure.

“You should’ve seen the way Lily would get all up in my business,” Sirius huffs, though he sounds a little wistful. “But you don’t need to save me, Harry. I’m fine.”

Of course Sirius is fine. He’s lived through Azkaban and grief and even death. It’s all on Harry, the way, “I don’t always know when to stop. You can tell me to back off if you feel suffocated. I’ll do it.”

“For a while?”

Harry feels his ears grow hot and hopes Sirius doesn’t notice.

But Sirius doesn’t look angry, and the sunset casts a glow to something soft in his expression. “I appreciate it, even if I shouldn’t, considering it’s me who’s supposed to be looking out for you instead.

“We can look after each other.”

Sirius nods, a small movement compared to the weight to the air between them. He takes Harry up on the offer, saying, “It was peaceful in the Veil. I don’t remember much—time passed differently there, or maybe I just wasn’t able to register it—but I remember how quiet it was. After the chaos of war and the hell that was Azkaban, it was warm and quiet and... It wasn’t a bad place, Harry.”

Harry swallows. “Do you miss it?”

“Not so much that I’d go back,” Sirius promises.

Thank fuck, because Harry wouldn’t let him. Sirius can do whatever he wants with his life; if he wants to move to France and never see Harry again, Harry will deal. Painfully, but he will deal like an adult instead of a tantrum-throwing kid. But Sirius isn’t allowed to give up on life itself. That’s where Harry draws the line.

“I think of it less and less now, but sometimes when it gets to be too much, it has a crazy sort of appeal.”

“If you tell me when you’re feeling that way, I can get you out of wherever we are in two seconds flat. I’m Minister of Magic and Man Who Conquered. People expect me to be a drama queen.”

“I can’t always lean on you,” Sirius argues, but he’s gentle about it. “But if it gets bad... I’ll try.”

Harry takes what he can get and fills in the spaces with observation of Sirius’ habits, tracking the worst of his moods. But there’s nothing to be done during the time Harry spends at work. He won’t give up one duty for another; Sirius wouldn’t appreciate it and wizarding Britain might have a few choice words to say.

St. Mungo’s empties day by day. The trials cut the number of residents in half, veritaserum and linguistics experts making sure that their crimes were heinous enough for them to actually deserve the death penalty or an Azkaban sentence. The rest wouldn’t have been treated as harshly by modern day laws; a few had even been found to be researchers who had accidentally fallen into the Veil. Sirius begins training in Hogsmeade instead of St. Mungo’s, where Geoffrey has used his ministry grant to set up a small swordsmanship school. He doesn’t take Harry’s offer to help him get back into the Auror program, but he agrees to turn the role he’d already taken of acclimatizing the people from the Veil to the modern day into something more legitimate, with a paycheck and a budget and a few assistants. Sirius announces himself as ambassador to the past and rolls with it, finding satisfaction in the job.

It’s not without its dangers or failures. The young girl they’d recovered from the Veil shows up in no records of missing children or historical death sentences, nor has she spoken a word even months after her arrival. Harry momentarily considers a spot of legilimency and then sternly tells himself he’s not going down that path. When the girl runs away from the foster couple who’d taken her in, Sirius leads the search party. Harry helps during the evening and night of the escape and returns to work the next morning exhausted. A part of him worries about the kid, but mostly he just thinks about Sirius.

He often thinks about Sirius.

Harry sighs. His scar may not hurt, but his head does.

“Are you actually sighing over someone?” Belinda asks, raising an eyebrow. “Is that what your sudden desire to work semi-normal hours is all about?”

“I’m sighing over how much work I have left to do today,” Harry says. It’s a dirty lie and both of them know it, but he’s not admitting to anything.

Sirius had been a man on a mission yesterday, driven and serious, and while Harry was concerned about the missing kid, he couldn’t help but appreciate Sirius in all his passion. On the flip side, he’s worried that the longer it takes to find her—if they find her, which Harry refuses to think about at this stage—the more Sirius will take the situation to heart. Sirius is better than he used to be, but Harry knows just how hard he sometimes finds the present day. He’d visited Remus’ grave after catching up with Teddy last week.

Harry has an urge to wrap Sirius in layers of protective magic and never let him out of his sight. He entertains the thought for longer than he should, letting the fantasy end with Sirius and him escaping off into the bedroom together. There’s no chance of Sirius actually allowing any of it to happen, but it’s a nice enough daydream.

Sleep deprivation and lack of attention have Harry staying at the office later than he has in a while. One of his assistants gets relegated to takeout duty and the sun sets in his artificial window. Harry’s knackered by the time he takes the floo home. He takes heart in the fact that the flights are on in his home, which means Sirius has been back at least once to get something to eat and maybe some rest. There’s no sign of Sirius on the first floor. On the second floor, Harry finds himself standing in the doorway of second guest bedroom. It’s Draco’s usual room when he stays over, done up in tasteful greens and browns after he’d taken offense at Harry’s decorating style. Now, there’s just Sirius balancing the missing kid in his arms while he tries to move the blankets without waking her. Harry wordlessly levitates the covers and throws in a dusting charm for good measure. Sirius tucks her under the covers, smoothing down her messy hair before he closes the door behind himself.

Harry gestures him into his bedroom, where there’s a privacy ward that activates by default. “You found her.”

“I found her hiding in the hollow of a tree a few miles away from her foster family’s home,” Sirius says once the door is closed. “She was terrified, dirty, and tried to attack me with a stick before she realized who I was. I brought her home to calm her down privately instead of dragging her back immediately.”

“She cried herself out and fell asleep?” Harry gathers. There’s a warmth in his chest at the way Sirius refers to the house as home.

“More like shivered next to the fire under a pile of blankets while I worked the flames into a fairy tale the way Dorea used to do for James’ young cousins. It got a better reaction than asking why she’d left. She shook her head at everything from them being mean to her to them ignoring her, but nodded to them being pushy.”

“Did you explain that they might be less pushy if she meets them halfway?” Harry asks, collapsing onto his bed and patting the space next to him. He’s not dealing with any of this from an upright position.

“For some reason, it didn’t seem to help.” Sirius pauses, but takes the other side of the bed, lying down on his side next to Harry. “You look like shit. Long day?”

“Long night, long day.” Harry makes a solid effort to not fall asleep while he and Sirius are actually in the same bed. There’s nothing to take advantage of, but still.

“I shouldn’t have dragged you out for the search,” Sirius says, sounding guilty. “I was too worried to realize you wouldn’t be able to just sleep in the next day to make up for the loss of sleep.”

“I took a catnap during lunch,” Harry assures him. It was ten minutes long and more him passing out and waking up bleary and with a giant headache, but same difference. “I’m glad she’s alright. Is she going to fight going back to her placement?”

“I don’t know,” Sirius says. “I promised her that I’d talk to them.” He runs a hand over his face, looking almost as tired as Harry does. “They’ll only tell me that she needs to be pushed in order to heal, which I know. She can’t stay a silent wild child when she can read, most likely write, and understand most of what’s going on around her. I just don’t know what the balance is between pushing enough to help and pushing her away.”

“Incentives, maybe. What does she even like?” Harry asks, managing not to add that she doesn’t seem to like anything at all.

Sirius’ answer is instant. “Swordsmanship—”

“Yeah, I can see her as the type to want to hit people with swords.”

“—it’s good stress relief. Baked goods, fairy tale books, the neighbor’s crup puppies, having her own room, St. Mungo’s gave me a list of her food preferences.”

“You’re good at your job,” Harry says with a tired smile.

“If I were better, I’d have more concrete in formation. There hasn’t been any progress finding who she is, through records or the information we’ve put out. It’s likely that her records were lost during the war. Hermione offered the possibility of her entering the veil even after I did; there aren’t any records of Voldemort experimenting with the Veil, but that doesn’t mean it didn’t happen.”

“For her sake, I hope that’s not what it was,” Harry says tensely. Voldemort’s hires for the Unspeakable department had been Kissed under Kingsley’s administration. Harry hadn’t gotten past the first page of the few records they’d actually left without feeling sick. The whole mess is classified under magical oath. If Hermione allowed Sirius some details, then there’s a non-zero likelihood that the Veil had been activated during his reign. He reaches for Sirius’ hand, threads their fingers together. The touch chases some of the somberness from Sirius’ expression. “You’ll figure it out. If she trusts you enough to fall asleep here, then she’s at least developing connections to people, even if she’s not comfortable with her foster parents yet.” Just to make sure, he asks, “You warded the doors, right?”

“’Course I did. I’m not making my life harder. Elara can deal with staying inside until I wake up.”

“Elara?”

“She hasn’t given me a name and seems to dislike that one the least of all the ones I’ve tried,” Sirius says with a too-casual shrug.

Sirius doesn't say anything else for a long while, his thumb unconsciously rubbing circles onto the sensitive skin of Harry's inner wrist. Harry isn't awake enough to appreciate it. It's a crying shame, but he's not even bothering to keep his eyes open by this point. Eventually, Sirius squeezes Harry’s hand, then gets up from the bed, his hand slowly sliding out of Harry’s. Harry is too tired to think of a way to get him to stay, but he still makes a noise somewhere in his throat.

Sirius speaks quietly when he says, “Are you going to sleep just like that?”

Harry makes an annoyed sort of noise and reaches for his wand, which appears as though it had always been a centimeter away and not deep in one of his pockets. He doesn't raise it, just rotates it toward himself and vanishes all his clothes except his boxers. The Harry of tomorrow morning can figure out where it all got vanished to since the Harry of right now has a one-track mind.

"I— right, good call, you look comfortable. I'll just go now. Check on Elara." Footsteps, the creak of a door, darkness filling the room. "Goodnight, Harry."

"Night," Harry mumbles back.

The door softly closes.

Sirius buys a new set of robes for meeting Narcissa now that the paperwork has gone through to revert the Black Gringotts accounts back to his control. It's half of Harry's personal wealth gone, but he can already live a comfortable life off the smallest of the Potter vaults, so it's no sacrifice. Sirius thanks him anyway. Harry is familiar enough with the Malfoy manor, but he still waits for a house-elf to steer them to the sitting room facing the grounds behind the Malfoy manor. Narcissa and Draco stand to greet them, while Scorpius jumps out of his seat in a run. Lucius isn’t present. Whether it’s because of business or because Narcissa asked him to not interfere, Harry is grateful.

"Harry!" Scorpius yells.

“Brat,” Harry acknowledges, crouching down so that Scorpius can run into his arms instead of his knees. He still can’t get over the thought of his pointy ex having such a cute kid. It’s all a credit to Astoria, obviously. "What is that in your hair?"

As Scorpius expands on the virtues of the newest line of kid's products George is selling, Harry watches Narcissa embrace Sirius. Draco doesn't go that far, but he's civil. Sirius is too, cautiously friendly as he gets back into the swing of small talk and gentle charm directed Narcissa’s way. Harry hopes Narcissa will be good for Sirius. She's not particularly friendly to strangers, but she’s proved how much she loves her family, and no matter how long they've been estranged, Sirius is family.

Sirius is family to Harry, too, but it’s the kind of family that has Harry reminding himself Sirius isn’t interested in reviving some old Black traditions. It strikes Harry that Narcissa and Sirius should look the same age, but they don’t, not at all. Narcissa is beautiful at any age, but time has made its impact on her. Sirius instead looks just as he had when Harry was fifteen.

Eventually, Narcissa smiles and takes Sirius' arm, turning him toward one of the entrances leading to the grounds. To Harry, she gently chides, "You've been keeping my cousin all to yourself."

"He's my godfather," Harry replies, and he means for the words to come out with more humor than they do. He clears his throat when Sirius glances back at him. "We had some catching up to do."

He, Draco, and Scorpius trail after the cousins as the duo heads for the grand area that Narcissa claims is a garden but Harry just calls a maze. He reserves the idea of gardens for Aunt Petunia's little roses and shrubs, not the ten foot high sprawling structures that have endless loops and pathways. It reminds Harry a bit of the maze in his fourth year, but not enough to unnerve him. Flowers bloom year-round in a kaleidoscope of colors and Harry hasn't seen a single sphinx or blast-ended skwet, although he has run into a pair of escaped abraxans in the past. It's a particularly good place for a snog, which he and Draco took advantage of often during parties a decade ago.

"If there's one man I thought I'd never see again," Draco muses after they loose track of Sirius and Narcissa and Scorpius runs off again.

"I reserve that one for Voldemort, personally. I almost expected him to pop out of the veil out of pure spite."

Draco mock-shudders. They've been at peace for too long for Voldemort to be more than a horrible memory; even Harry's scar hasn't ached in fifteen years. "Granger says you've managed to get around the permanent sticking charm between your ass and your office. If I'd known all you needed was a hot godfather to get you out more, I'd have appointed one for you."

"Fuck off," Harry replies, lazily gesturing at Draco then spinning around to make sure Scorpius hadn't been in the vicinity. "I know you don't have feelings other than smugness and Malfoy pride, but I've missed him."

"You didn't even know him."

"I do now," Harry replies. If Sirius vanishes on him now, Harry actually would miss him, miss Sirius himself instead of the concept of home and family that he'd missed before. "Did Hermione get to you?"

Draco gives her up easily, the Slytherin. "She's concerned that you're swapping one obsession for another."

"Hermione has no room to talk."

"No, she doesn't," Draco agrees with a shrug. "I don't care either way, just so you know, but are you doing this out of some misplaced guilt? Da-- parent issues? Pity?"

"It's really not any of that," Harry says. "We just get on well, that's all. He... understands me."

"Ah." Draco's brows furrow and he gives Harry a searching look. "Never mind. It's /that kind of obsession." An air of smugness enters his expression, tempered only by disbelief. "It's been a while since I've seen it on you, that's all."

Pushing Draco into a row of vines that slither like snakes fails, so does Harry's attempts to convince Draco that it's not an obsession. It's a perfectly stand-up bond between a godfather and a godson four years younger than him, that's all. They cross paths with Sirius and Narcissa eventually, separating into different groupings as the conversation flows. Harry speaks with Narcissa about Teddy's new girlfriend, explains who Sirius is to Scorpius--

"He's my godfather, like Blaise and Pansy are yours," Harry says, even though it feels wrong even as he says it. Sirius never got the chance to help raise Harry like Scorpius' own godparents and Harry doesn't look up to him like his own godkids do. Harry knows Sirius too well to properly look up to him. Harry wouldn't trade him for the world, but Sirius isn't some perfect paternal figure. He's made shitty decisions out of anger and prejudice and grief, vanished from Harry's life for six times longer than Harry actually knew him, started gaining muscle mass from a proper diet and swordsmanship lessons.

"Does he take you to the zoo?"

Well, they had gone to a dragon preserve. "Sort of."

"Okay," Scorpius says, apparently deciding Sirius passes the good godparent test.

--and eventually, he reunites with Sirius in a quiet corner of the maze. There's traces of laughter on his face, and he smiles at Harry as the Malfoys' voices fade.

"I can't believe you claimed to not know the Malfoys well," Sirius teases with a shake of his head.

"I'm in denial," Harry quips. Although he still stands by the fact that he doesn't know Narcissa or Lucius well. Draco, Astoria, and Scorpius have somehow wandered into his social circle (probably around the time Harry made the terrible decision of dating Draco and risked death by hair potion fumes) and never left. Astoria came later, catching Draco's attention in a way that caused him to give up his usual ways nearly overnight. They're a cute couple, if too Slytherin and smug.

He tells Sirius the story as they walk, starting out vague but accidentally going into the uncensored version because of how amused Sirius looks. Harry can't get over how easily Sirius laughs now, the casual way that he's started enjoying life despite the past still holding onto him. It catches Harry's attention each time, holding it closer and closer. Harry tells himself he's being a dutiful godson and laughs himself.

If this is duty, then duty is rejoicing in Sirius' successes and standing with him through his failures. Duty is making sure Sirius know he can move out if he wants to and feeling relived when Sirius prefers to stay. Duty is the wizarding world in one hand and Sirius in the other and Harry not willing to let either one suffer a lack of attention. (Duty is falling asleep beside Sirius on the couch on the busiest of days and Sirius taking the quill out of his hand and staying there with him, solid and comforting against Harry's side.) Duty is making sure Sirius doesn't realize how much Harry would like for their lives to intertwine even more than they already have, a comfortable slide into a future where there's no question of Sirius leaving.

Sex is half of the coin, the sex Harry isn't having and the sex he'd like to have, but it's not urgent.

It doesn’t feel urgent. Maybe because Harry isn’t a teenager anymore, maybe because Sirius’ presence is enough in any way he chooses to give it. Harry won’t push. He knows himself well, knows his impulse to barrel over problems by being too obstinate to back down, but that’ll do him no good. Sirius isn’t a fragile figurine, but he’s still healing and Harry is his lifeline in many ways.

And Harry would prefer to have Sirius the way things are instead of pushing him away with feelings Sirius doesn’t need.

Harry tactfully doesn't comment on how Sirius' twenty-one was forty years ago. Sirius isn't even forty himself. This time displacement thing is insane. "Same old, really. Except the twins' shop. You'll love it." As they approach, Harry points out the two aurors on duty. They're patrolling the area, too far away to properly say hello, but Sirius will see them around often enough. "Essa Parkinson and Michael Forley, they're on duty today."

"Parkinson? That's a dark family."

"Her older sister did try to give me up to Voldemort," Harry says, just to properly appreciate his godfather's flabbergasted expression. At fifteen, he'd been too angry and sullen to really prod at people, but he's grown more sure of himself. Harry has overcome too many problems to get pouty about the new ones that inevitably arise.

"And you let her guard your house? How the hell did you survive until your thirties?" Sirius hesitates over Harry's age, but it's barely a blip.

"Luck and hardheadedness," Harry muses. "I personally vetted my protection units. I trust all of them. Her older sister did what she did because the final battle was taking place at Hogwarts and her sister was a first year holding her hand and depending on her to save her life. Pansy didn't give a shit about me, but she'd do anything for her kid sister. Essa's gone through the standard intention-based testing and veritaserum questioning. She doesn't mean any harm to me and she has a hell of a spell repertoire for people who do mean to harm me." After a glance at Sirius' tense expression, Harry adds, "Still don't trust her?"

"I trust /you," Sirius compromises. He runs a hand through his hair. It's shaggy, long, unkempt. Not good for photo ops, Ginny's voice says in his head, a memory of her going after his hair with a purple potions bottle during the campaign. "You talk about the war like it's over and done with and I know that's the way it is. But to me, three days ago I rushed to the ministry to save you from Voldemort's trap. We fought in the middle of the ministry. Fudge was still minister of magic. It's just going to be an adjustment."

"You can take as long as you need. We have the time now."

Harry gives Sirius a tour of the house. It's bigger than it needs to be for a single man. Harry had bought it years ago with the vague idea of maybe one day using the three empty bedrooms someday, but they've only been occupied by guests staying over. He pays for a house elf to clean and cook, so there's no embarrassing messes for Sirius to see. Maybe it might be better if there were; Ron and Hermione sometimes remark that it's too perfect of a house, though Harry is of the belief that having two kids in short succession has skewed their idea of what a clean house looks like.

Sirius lingers at the mantelpiece. The fireplace is properly large enough for three people to step through side by side--a security measure in case of an attack--and Harry had decorated the top with framed photographs. They're not arranged in any particular way. His parents' wedding photo, copied from Hagrid's photo album, sits next to last year's vacation photo, which showcases the Weasley family getting exponentially larger every time Harry turns around.

"I keep missing out on the best years," Sirius says, so quietly that Harry barely hears him.

Harry steps closer to him, their shoulders brushing together. Sirius' words send a pang of sadness through him. His godfather gave up most of his twenties and his early thirties to Azkaban, then spent three years unable to appreciate freedom while on the run from the ministry. He lived in a cave in an animagus form, then moved from place to place, then Grimmauld Place. And now there's just seventeen years gone at the blink of an eye.

"If I'd known, I wouldn't have rested until I got you out of there," Harry promises. He means Azkaban and the veil, Grimmauld Place and the cave. He was too young to save Sirius then and now at thirty two, Sirius tugs at every saving people instinct Harry had buried under policy and politics. "But you're here now. You're not that old--"

Sirius huffs at him.

"You're not, seriously, I'd know. You're what, thirty-six? With a wizard's lifespan, you have a century to do whatever the hell you want. You could kick back and spend the Black fortune--I still have most of it--on strippers and a personal island in the Caribbean." Or remembering Sirius' words, Harry adds, "Or you could set up here and volunteer at the Lupin Foundation or join the aurors or go yell at Dumbledore's portrait every day for two weeks."

"Personal experience?"

"It was very therapeutic," Harry admits, no shame. "So you missed out on my childhood and young adulthood. That's fine, I was a moody little shit anyway. You're here now. That's something to celebrate, not regret. I'm done mourning you, Sirius, you don't need to mourn yourself." It's selfish, but Harry will take Sirius here with him now, safe and secure, than a few more years with Sirius during the war, where he might've died in a different, more permanent way.

"You're a lot more talkative now, you know that?" Sirius asks.

"It's the job."

"The one you chose," Sirius argues, wry with leftover disbelief. "I'll try. I promise you, I'll try. I'll go to St. Mungo's and drink their potions and get some sunlight, but you have to promise me that if all of this gets too much for you, you'll tell me to leave. I'm not going to fuck up your life by being in it. I wasn't in a good place mentally when I left and I'm not in a better one now, much as I try to hide it. It's going to be hard."

"I promise," Harry says. It's a lie, but it's a lie well-told.

If Sirius thinks Harry's going to give him up after a bit of hardship, the veil must've knocked some screws loose.

Sirius chooses the largest of the spare bedrooms. It's situated across the hall from the master bedroom. The first night, Harry spends an hour lying in bed awake, trying to hear any sounds from the other room. Instead of mulling over work issues as per usual, he keeps imagining the miracle that brought Sirius to him just undoing in the middle of the night, leaving nothing at all of his godfather. He wonders if Sirius will have nightmares. He wonders if he's being an idiot. (It's a given.)

When he falls asleep, his slumber is deep and restful, his dreams quiet. In the morning, Sirius hears him wake and eats breakfast with him despite it being horrifically early for someone who isn't obligated to get up before dawn. Harry is used to it, but Sirius doesn't have to be. When he tells him so, Sirius just laughs at him and tells him not to fall asleep on anyone at work.

It's nice, the company. Comfort with the new arrangement creeps up and takes over, leaving Harry at a loss to how easy it was to live with Sirius.

Sirius wasn't an easy person. He'd been right in saying that it would be hard. Some days Harry came home to him in a black mood, other times shaken and grieving. Sometimes Sirius wouldn't come home and Harry would only see him the next morning. He felt like Molly Weasley with all the things he refused to say because Sirius was an adult who could make his own choices, but he always hugged Sirius extra hard those mornings.

But Sirius' humor was infectious when it was there. He could regale Harry with the most ridiculous stories from the past and from his time at St. Mungo's, where he spent time with all the rest of the people the veil gave back. Spit out, Sirius always corrects, because he finds it more amusing that way.

The rest of the time, he just works. Thanks to the wars and Fudge, Magical Britain’s laughably behind the rest of the world in terms of school curriculum, innovation, and just plain politics. Harry can’t drum up a genius of Snape’s caliber (and ten years after the war, Harry has put the man’s life behind him enough to drunkenly bemoan the fact that they no longer have his mind), but he can rebuild the wizarding university that was destroyed during the first war and never rebuilt.

The morning this story begins, he’s got ninety-nine hundred problems.

It’s just that Harry had never expected Sirius Black to become one of them.

At six in the morning, Harry’s just thinking about whether another cup of coffee will cause his personal healer to appear in the room on the back of a lightening bolt. His personal assistant has been talking nonstop for the past five minutes about everything he’s missed in the nine hours he’s been away from the office. Harry’s listening with one ear.

"—and Counselor Brookbird is filing murder charges against Counselor Malfoy for something Malfoy's father did twenty-five years ago, the hit wizards filed an official brief saying that the previous administration specifically ordered them to destroy the files we requested from them two weeks ago, Senior Undersecretary Parkinson is still not back—"

That has Harry’s attention because dammit, he’s half convinced Pansy’s doing it to spite him at this point. They can’t vote on the new university’s budget without her and she knows it. "Still?"

"Sir, magical children rarely arrive on schedule.” Belinda says with a reproachful look. “As I was saying, you're missing two cabinet members, and there's been a dimensional breach in the Department of Mysteries."

Harry sighs. A dimensional breach would’ve alarmed him during his first year in office, but these days he just says, “Tell Finch to get his Unspeakables back in line or I’ll send Hermione after their budget.”

“Noted.”

"Do you think they'll mind if I go help deal with the breach instead?" he asks without any legitimate hope.

"You may help by being the first to evacuate if they call up a level four or above emergency," Belinda replies dryly.

"I can't believe I hired you," Harry moans. "I need someone who's going to enable my bad ideas, not try to curtail them."

"Of course, minister. Would you like me to get you a front seat for that breach? Just out of reach of the possible flames, but still close enough to get sucked in if it becomes one of those breaches."

"I feel maligned," Harry sighs. “Is Ron already in? I need to go over the new training plans he submitted.”

Belinda taps her inkless quill against her parchment a few times. Their office system is still rudimentary, but Harry can’t imagine how his predecessors worked differently. Hermione hadn’t slept for two weeks until she found a spell to act as a word searcher in her documents, and that hadn’t been the first thing they’d borrowed from the muggles. The debates in the Wizengamot about tradition and intellectual property had been brutal.

“His badge has him in his office,” she says.

And that’s the start of Harry’s workday, during which he tries to cram in a week’s worth of tasks into one day. Delegation still sometimes comes hard for him—he likes being active, feeling like he has a hand in everything—but it’s necessary. He puts the problems he can’t deal with personally to the back of his mind. And so he doesn’t spare a thought to the dimensional breach. If it becomes an issue, he’ll either die when it explodes the planet or his team will get him out of its range in time.

When the usually placid Belinda approaches him with a deep frown around 3 o’clock, Harry assumes there’s been an issue with the press. Rita Skeeter retired some years back with her pockets probably full of blackmail money, but there’s no shortage of people ready to skewer him in writing. They’re not always wrong, though they do tend to like to knock Harry from the pedestal they themselves dragged him onto.

“Sir, there’s been an issue in the DoM,” she says. “The dimensional breach has been dealt with, but it knocked loose the magics inside the veil of death.”

Harry’s mind spins a little. The veil of death prior to his own experience with it—experience that still hurts some after all this time, but doesn’t overwhelm him—had been an execution tool. “Do have a few hundred bodies on our hands?” It’ll be a problem to spin the ministry’s past misdeeds in a light that won’t shine on their current administration, and it’ll be a problem to identify and thoughtful bury all the bodies, but those won’t be Harry’s problems. Harry has enough on his plate.

“No, we have a few hundred people,” Belinda replies. “Apparently, the veil of death was something of a misnomer.”

“That’s completely—”

And that’s when Harry realizes what her words mean for him personally.

Well, there go Harry’s plans for the day.

Hermione has been telling him to get out of the office more.

 *

 A few hours later finds Harry in the post-war wing of St. Mungo’s, a place he’d hoped would never need to be used again, however temporarily. It was added to the building in the weeks after Voldemort’s demise. Not only had fighters on both side of the final battle direly needed medical attention, but the months after the war, everyone who hadn’t been able to seek medical help during the war needed somewhere to go. People who’d been injured but hadn’t trusted the healers to not report them to the ministry or purebloods who didn’t want to be seen as week and lose their standing in society. The wing had been open for a year, gradually becoming less used, until it was only used for healer training or when a patient needed more privacy than the main hospital could give. Harry had visited it twice after near-misses with assassination.

Now he’s back, watching the newcomers through a one-way wall with his closest advisers at his side. The rest of his cabinet has popped in and out, but two have stayed the entire time. The only two who Harry trusts to figure out the situation with him. Because frankly, this is a clusterfuck.

Hermione’s hair always looks bigger when she’s stressed. She returns from a consultation with one of the Chief Healer looking like she’s only just barely too professional not to storm in there and get answers from people herself.

“Four hundred thirty eight people,” she says, then casts a privacy ward. Harry’s other cabinet members glare, but she ignores them with the ease of long practice. “One oh two who speak Old English or another no longer used dialect. I can almost guarantee that we don’t have records for a quarter of the total because of either pure ineptitude, the reasoning that we wouldn’t need criminal records of someone who lived five-hundred years ago, or inferno that was made of the records department when our side needed to hide blood status and personal information of everyone in Britain. If we give some of them a retrial, we’ll need to give the rest of them one, and what are we supposed to do with them in the meantime? And the risk of disease, my god, I hope we got them all contained fast enough.”

“But they are from our world?” Harry asks. “The dimensional breach was what brought them here.”

“Spoke to Finch myself,” Ron offers. “Creepy dude. But he confirmed that as much as he can tell, they’re ours alright. Our problem.”

“The more recent—oh, I don’t even know what to call them, death row-ers? executionees? former inmates?—”

“—after-afterlifers?”

“Anyway, they’ve been able to match their memories with our records word for word.”

Harry glances back at the only person on the other side who he personally cares about. Sirius is just right there in a small curtained-off section of the ward. Harry had gotten a few glimpses of him and had laughed when the man tried to sneak out of the hospital. "He looks like Sirius. Talks like him, walks like him. But it's been years—too many years. He died when I was fifteen. That's over half my life ago."

Hermione and Ron share a look, but it’s Ron who says, “I’m not saying it’s likely, but there’s still the possibility that this is a trap.”

“How so?”

"Opposition from the other party, for one, or from your many enemies. It isn't completely impossible to think they'd send someone to hit your weak points."

Harry considers it, but he can’t quite believe it. "Everyone already knows all my weak points. I don't think there's a part of my life that hasn't been in the Prophet at one point or another. Hell, people know what I eat for breakfast. I'm not some big enigma. All the policies I'm trying to get pushed through are through the wizengamot, which is open to reporters and the public, not some shady backroom deals."

“Just be careful, alright?” Hermione says. “Even if this isn’t a trap… you remember how Sirius used to be. I don’t think this is going to help in the mental stability department. Everyone he remembers is now seventeen years older. Remus and others are dead. You are, well, you’re a grown man.”

“Wouldn’t it help? The fact that I don’t need anything from him, that I can help him instead?” Harry remembers being thirteen, fourteen, fifteen, and needing so much from Sirius. He’d been a boy with dreams of home and family and happiness, but he’d been too young to truly realize that Sirius couldn’t provide any of it. Haunted by Azkaban, shadowed by the ministry, Sirius couldn’t give him much, and it had hurt Sirius as much as it had hurt Harry.

“I don’t know,” Hermione says. She bites her lip. “Listen to the healers. Don’t push him.”

With that, Hermione takes out her inkless quill and taps thrice, then writes a quick message. The mediwitch on the other side of the glass looks up and nods at them. She slips into Sirius’ partition and a minute later, she’s escorting him to a private room. Sirius looks around the room, his gray eyes passing Harry, invisible behind the wall. Harry takes one look back at Ron and Hermione, then follows his godfather to the private room.

Harry strides through the door like the most influential main in Britain he is, but no matter what, the sight of Sirius Black in the flesh still makes him feel like a fifteen year old boy. For months after Sirius' death, Harry's dreams were full of the veil spitting Sirius back out or Harry being able to keep Sirius from falling. He would only realize the dreams were nightmares when he awoke, tears in his eyes, to a world that Sirius would never walk again. Wasn't supposed to, anyway.

"Harry," Sirius breathes like a man lost finally finding a map. His hands lift, but he twitches, the motion stopping.

Harry doesn't allow the strangeness of the situation to keep him from the hug he's waited years to get. He takes three long steps and wraps his arms around Sirius tightly, tucking his chin against Sirius' shoulder. "Hey, Sirius."

Sirius' breathing sounds choked, but he continues hugging Harry tightly, and Harry does nothing to change their situations. He'll be here for as long as Sirius needs him. And the fifteen year old boy in him doesn't want to let go anyway--maybe even the thirty-two year old man he is now, too. Sirius is an old wound reopened in a way that Harry thinks could heal properly now, leaving behind a smaller scar than there used to be. Eventually, Sirius loosens his grip and Harry steps out of his embrace, not going far.

"Did they tell you anything?" Harry asks, trying to be gentle, but this isn't a topic he can afford to be gentle on. He won't hide the world from Sirius, good or bad. Sirius may be lost in time and in shock, but he hasn't lost all his faculties.

Sirius gives a small shake of his head, his gaze not leaving Harry for even a moment. He can't seem to look away, taking in Harry's form, lingering on every detail. "Only that it's been seventeen years."

"Only that, huh."

A hollow, nearly hysteric laugh. "All minor changes, really. Good Merlin, Harry, you've grown."

"Thirty-two now," Harry says with a crooked smile. After his words, he does some rapid mental math to make sure that Sirius is still older than him. Only by a few years, but it's enough. Harry can't imagine the added strangeness of accidentally becoming older than his godfather. He'd already had a minor breakdown back when at twenty-one he'd realized he was a month older than his father had ever been able to be.

Godfather—just the word feels odd to Harry. Harry is used to it being in reference to himself. He has four godkids with another on the way.

"Thirty-two," Sirius repeats. "You..." He trails off, then seems to decide he may as well say it. "You don't look as much like James as you used to."

Thank fuck. Harry doesn't know what he would've done had Sirius called him James. Cried in a restroom, maybe. Instead, he blurts out, "Is it the wrinkles?"

Sirius huffs, amusement flicking in his eyes for the first time, though most of it fades quickly. "It's the lack of glasses, I think. You have a few centimeters in height on him, too."

"Mum's side of the family," Harry says. There's a reason Aunt Petunia had loomed so tall in his childhood memories. But that's not the reason they're here, and neither of them have been good at ripping the bandage off slowly.

"Tell me what happened after I fell," Sirius says, the look in his eyes somber and serious. He doesn't say death--to Sirius, seventeen years ago had only been a few hours ago--but it's there on the tip of Harry's tongue. "I don't care about what the healers say I should or shouldn't know. I can't just stand around here, not knowing what happened to you without me."

"I survived," Harry says, swallowing. The look in Sirius' eyes is hard to bear. He hasn't needed a paternal figure in years, hasn't needed that protective look that he just knows means Sirius would give his life for his in an instant. Harry doesn't know what to do with it.

"Always knew you would," Sirius tells him. "C'mon. Tell me how you kicked his ass."

Something uncurls in Harry's chest. Sirius doesn't blame him for his death. Sirius just cares about him, just like that. Like this isn't the weirdest situation Harry's found himself in, in years. It's enough to let the words flow from Harry's lips. Slowly at first as he tells Sirius about the immediate aftermath of the ministry battle. It's a bit of a blur, post-adrenaline crash and stress and anger, but the key parts will always stick out in his memory. Dumbledore telling him the prophecy. That horrible sinking feeling in his chest as he finally realized why his parents were targeted. Sixth year and Dumbledore's death. The seventh year that never was. Remus, Tonks, Teddy. Voldemort.

"I never did properly graduate Hogwarts," Harry admits with a huff. He doesn't know how much time has passed, just that he'd like a glass of water and that he and Sirius have migrated to sit shoulder to shoulder on the hospital bed, their backs to the wall and the pillow thrown to the side. "I sat for my NEWTs, but that was more on Hermione's insistence than anything else."

"Smart girl," Sirius says.

Harry raises an eyebrow.

"I'm not about to be godfather to a layabout," Sirius says with a dramatic shake of his head. But just in case, he adds, "I'm proud of you, Harry. Whatever you do, I'll always be proud of you."

"You sure?" Harry asks, raising his eyebrows.

"Sure as the stone of Gringotts."

Harry continues on. The fifteen years since the war are easier than the two before, filled with exponentially less suffering. Harry fulfilled his debts, saw the world, and let his compass point him back home to the place that has always loved him too much or too little. But there isn't anywhere else that he wants to call home. He tells Sirius about his early years while he figured out his footing, his time as Kingsley's shadow, his work on the campaign of a candidate who dropped out at the last minute. Harry had been too young, too political even for a politician. He'd won anyway. Harry likes to think that at least forty percent of his victory was due to his actions after the war rather than during it.

Sirius doesn’t deny Harry’s words, but there’s disbelief in his voice as he says, "You became minister? Of all the jobs, this one's not one I had pegged for you."

Harry shrugs. "At fifteen, I wouldn't have. Or even at seventeen, eighteen when we were just getting out of the post-war phase. Kingsley stepped in as interim minister and did a hell of a fine job with it. But Kingsley wasn’t a career politician. We were lucky to get five years of him, then he stepped down and we got a charismatic idiot into office.” Yeldridge’s name still makes Harry want to gnash his teeth. “By the time the next election came around, I was eligible for office and the best person to throw in their hat at the last minute.”

“And you wanted it, too,” Sirius prods, a flicker of understanding and intellect.

“No one twisted my arm,” Harry agrees. He doesn’t know if it’s the war or the post-war years that got him to lean into his Slytherin side. These days, he can say with certainty that the sorting hat hadn’t been wrong, but he wouldn’t give up Gryffindor for the world. He needs both, wants them in this post-Voldemort world. “I don’t live in Grimmauld Place.”

“Good,” Sirius tells him. “I wouldn’t have wanted that for you.”

“It’s not bad after the renovations,” Harry argues, though not very hard. That house will never bring up good memories for Sirius. “I signed the place over to Ron and Hermione when they were looking for a place to live.”

Sirius looks delighted. “Mum would’ve loved that.”

“We managed to get her portrait off, but we let her know exactly who’d be living in her precious home,” Harry agrees. “Look, I wasn’t— What I meant was, after the healers look you over, come live with me. For as long or as little as you want. My home’s always open to you.”

“You don’t have a partner that might object?”

“The ministry is my partner,” Harry replies. “Keeps me up all hours of the night.” He searches his brain for a good way to put every signal his heart is giving him into words. Political speeches, he can do, but personal ones? There’s a reason he’s single in his thirties. “It’s been a long time for me and I never got to know you as well as I wanted to, but maybe we could change that now. If you’d like.”

He’s pulled into a hug before he even finishes speaking.

“There’s nothing I want more,” Sirius says, his voice a little hoarse, as though it’s him who’s been talking for more than an hour.

Harry closes his eyes for a moment. Sirius doesn’t disappear in the darkness, his arms warm and solid around Harry. Even now, Harry can barely believe this isn’t a dream. He’s too old for all of this and it’s insane, but already Harry’s considering what he can cross out on his schedule in the next few weeks to work less than his usual workaholic hours. He and Sirius hadn’t been able to be there for each other all those years ago, but they have a second chance now. Harry isn’t going to waste it.