Harry Potter A New Sirius Black

Sirius lay awake on the couch in Grimmauld Place's drawing room. He had gotten very little sleep last night; he had spent most of it lying awake, thinking over everything his godson had told him. He was glad to see that Harry was now sleeping peacefully. It seemed as though the talk had helped him fight the nightmares, at least for now.

But Sirius couldn't get comfortable. He had transformed back into himself, and simply lain there, listening to the silence that permeated the house. Many memories swarmed back to him of being here for all those childhood years; he had spent many an evening in this room, being lectured about how he should behave better because he was disgracing the pure and noble name of Black. His mother's screams had rang through the entire house, and his father's low, disappointed drawl had struck Sirius like a sword. Regulus had swallowed up everything their parents had said, staring at Sirius with disdain.

Sirius tried to push the memories down. This was no time to be thinking about his own woes when there was so much he needed to do for Harry. He began to go over every little detail the boy had told him. It was plain to see that his Hogwarts years had been full of things no one should ever have to face. It was abominable that the adults in his life hadn't done their jobs and protected him. So much for being competent teachers, he thought furiously.

Even the details Harry had given that Sirius originally thought were just bad luck looked suspicious to him now, after considering everything. He thought back to one incident in particular: the detention in the Forbidden Forest during his first year. Who in Merlin's name would send anyone out to that place for a detention, and at night to boot? When Sirius had been at Hogwarts, Dumbledore had always made it clear at the Welcoming Feast that the place was out of bounds.

Even with a staff member there, who in their right mind thought it a good idea to send students there as punishment? Was almost dying really a good way of getting a student not to break curfew? he thought sarcastically. Sirius couldn't even count the number of times the Marauders had done that during their youth; the number of detentions they had received was astronomical, and absolutely NONE of them had taken place in the Forbidden Forest.

Had Dumbledore suggested that to Hagrid, and had Hagrid just gone along with it? The half-giant was a great man with an enormous heart, but his love for dangerous creatures could blind him, as did his loyalty to Dumbledore. And McGonagall ... was she complicit? Or had she just not thought about it? He remembered her apology in the hospital wing; she honestly had looked remorseful, but at this moment, Sirius wasn't willing to forgive her. He didn't forgive anyone who had put his godson in danger. And that included himself.

He deserved to go to the lowest level of Hell for not being here for Harry all this time. There was so much he had missed, so many birthdays and Christmases and other important milestones he had not seen. Instead, he'd wallowed in his own self-pity in Azkaban. It had only been when he saw that newspaper that he had the drive and motivation to break out. What if he'd never seen that newspaper? Would he have spent the rest of his life slowly wasting away until he took his last breath? The thought was too horrible to contemplate. Would he never have seen Harry again? Would Peter have killed him, destroying any hope whatsoever?

The thoughts made a wall of depression surround him on all sides, but then he took a look at the boy lying beside him and knew he had to fight his way out of it. He'd be no good to Harry if he got lost in these thoughts. Harry was alive, and Sirius was with him. The time to protect him was now, and there was no use getting lost in the what ifs.

But upon thinking about the here and now, his mind kept wandering back to his and Harry's conversation. There was another thing about it that bothered him to no end - the way Harry tried to avoid talking about the Dursleys as much as possible. Sirius knew the boy's childhood must not have been pleasant; after all, he had met Petunia and Vernon Dursley back when Lily and James were still alive, and they were the worst sort of people.

He compared them to his own family, who had been bigoted, prejudiced pureblood supremacists. Petunia and Vernon had been the opposite, hating anyone who was a witch or wizard. They had been awful to Lily on her wedding day; Petunia hadn't been happy for her sister at all. Her face had been contorted in a constant sneer, and Vernon, who looked like a walrus, had lumbered around, an insult for the magical folk always ready on his lips. After Mr. and Mrs. Evans had been murdered by Voldemort, the situation between Lily and Petunia had deteriorated even further; Petunia told Lily never to contact her again.

"You're dead to me, freak," she'd said, her nostrils flaring in fury. Lily had been inconsolable, and Sirius had been so full of blind rage that he'd wanted nothing more than to curse Petunia into oblivion.

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