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“Harry? That you?”
In the low light of a winter afternoon three weeks past New Year of the new millennium, Sirius cocks an eyebrow at Remus from across their living room where he’s rebuilding the fire on his knees. They crack when he gets up entirely too quickly. Sirius barely registered the key turning in the front door lock, but Harry’s footsteps he would recognize anywhere. As usual, it takes a second longer for him to hear it too: the hushed voices of another man speaking to Harry, the second set of heavier, steadier footsteps.
“Through here?”
“Yeah. Ah, fucking shite – Padfoot?”
“Right here,” Sirius answers while he’s vaulting himself out of the sofa. Three big strides carry him to the door where his heart does a startled backflip. “Bloody - What the fuck happened to you? Evening, Charlie, d’you need help too?”
“Nah, I’m fine, thanks. Good to see you guys again,” says Charles Weasley covered collar to mid-thigh in something that might be blood, might be something else. Sirius honestly doesn’t want to know. The full weight of Harry, 19 years old – 19 and a half years, his godson is 19 and a half years old and bleeding heavily through his trouser leg – gets transferred into his arms where Remus is with him in a heartbeat. He’s warm and so much calmer than he should be.
“You know, I was just about to set up dinner. What a coincidence that we keep potions in the kitchen; I might just pass by the cabinet on my way to get out the potatoes. What strength do you need your pain killers to be?”
“I don’t,” Harry starts just as his right leg gives out underneath him to tilt into Sirius like a sack of flour. His chest is heaving with the exhaustion of staying upright. “’S not that serious. – Don’t,” he says, wagging a finger at Sirius’ face.
“Wasn’t dreaming of it. Come on, we’re putting you on the sofa. I want to get you level.”
“I’m not ruining the new carpet you were banging on about for the past months.” But he’s hobbling through to the living room pitching more than half his weight into the hold that Sirius has on him anyway.
If he tips his head into Remus’ gentle hand without any shame in front of Charlie, wherever the hell – and why – he came from, there’s too much blood soaking his black trousers to warrant any teasing comments about it.
“Try again, pub. How strong?”
“Ugh. Yours make me high, you know that. But I’m beyond Muggle medicine, I think, my leg’s fucked and I caught something round about here,” he flutters a hand at the general area of his waist, “that I don’t even want to look at. You should see Ron, he’s so much worse off than me. – Fuck, Charlie, you need to go back to get the others. I’ll be around as soon as I can, okay?”
“No you’re not,” counters Charlie in a calm, low voice like a rock in the middle of the ocean that people tougher than Harry could break themselves on. There is eye contact between them, a long, charged second of it that makes Sirius exchange a look with Remus full of questions, before Harry lowers his head, deflating.
“Fucking fine. Thanks for getting me here. Really didn’t want to deal with the papers tomorrow, or half of Mungo’s gawking at idiot Potter getting slashed open again. Tell me when Ron’s okay, yeah?”
The hand that Charlie ruffles through his dusty hair isn’t half as brotherly as Ron sometimes does it to rub in the height difference.
“’Course. I’ll write after I handle Mom. You want me to check in on you tomorrow?”
Harry groans out a laugh that hides the colour high on his cheekbones in stark contrast to how pale he’s getting.
“I feel so dumb when you phrase it like that. But I’m gonna stare mournfully out of a window to wait for you to come back, if Molly lets you, and I’ll have tea ready.”
“You’ll do no such thing,” counters Charlie grinning a lopsided little thing that conceals a quick darting gaze to Harry’s leg propped up on the couch, “and I’ll bring the tea. Special London shit so you get better faster. Deal?”
“Deal. Say hi to your parents from me, and I’m so fucking sorry about Ron. That whole shit’s on me.”
“No matter what you did, I’m pretty sure that’s bull,” Sirius butts in elegantly so Harry starts paying attention to somehow peeling back his trouser leg up to the knee instead. “Thank you for bringing him home, Charlie. You’re welcome for tea and scones tomorrow afternoon, of course.”
Then Remus comes back with the pain killers and a whole heap of bandages from their vast store. Charlie crinkles his blue eyes at him and inclines his head as if he has to refrain from asking them to take care of Harry.
“Thanks, I mean it. Are you alright? D’you need-“
“No, we’re all stocked up for precisely this occasion. Not doing this the first go around.” There’s a strained notion to Remus’ perfectly polite tone that stems from the shock and the protectiveness rolled into a tight little package between his capable hands. “How about you?”
Charlie deflects with gestures first before he shakes his head a bit already backing out the door.
“I’m good, don’t worry about me. Nothing that won’t wash out. See you tomorrow, then.”
Harry has a split-second of exchanging meaningful smiles with him before he’s gone. The front door falls shut, and Remus rounds on him wide-eyed, a bit out of breath with it all even as he goes down next to Sirius to help him cut away the trousers, roll up Harry’s jumper, get him out of his coat that looks and smells like it’s ruined anyway.
“Lie down, stay still. Christ almighty…”
“Not sure he’s gonna be helpful in this at all, Moonshine. Just put the coat into the bathtub, I’ll try my best with it later. So, kid,” Sirius starts for a lack of words adequate enough to the massive what the fuck floating around in the middle of his frantic mind, “do you want to spill before or after the pain killers kick in?”
There is a deep cut slashed straight across Harry’s left shin biting into the meat of his thigh, the edges are already turning red. His side is mottled in purple the likes of which only a couple of stunners grouped together cause.
Harry lets his head fall back to the arm rest as he points in the vague direction of the hallway.
“Listen, he’s stupidly strong, kind, and funny; other than me he has his shit together, and have you seen his tattoos? He’s got more than you! Can you blame me?” The fact that he takes the vial from Remus and knocks it back in one clean go speaks louder than his grimaces as Sirius starts weaving healing spells into his leg with the ease of muscle memory.
“That’s not what Padfoot was asking about, pub, but I’ll keep your massive crush in mind tomorrow at tea.”
“Yeah, I don’t think you’ve got a leg to stand on when it comes to being a bit dumb for muscles and tattoos,” Sirius points out flexing his arm a little when reaching for the gauze as the wound knits itself closed. The huffed bump into the shoulder he gets for it at least draws a smile out of Harry. “Did a mission go wrong? What happened to you and Ron?”
Through the hiss of adrenaline crash taking off the kitten gloves from the claws of getting one’s leg flayed open, Harry touches his damaged side as if he can’t quite believe that it’s this bad.
“Remember the smuggle ring of dragon parts that I told you about? Ron and I found their storage facility at the arse-end of Wales near the dragon reservoir. Traced it back from deliveries confiscated in Dover. It’s so stupid, really, all this time we thought the smugglers, whoever they are – they aren’t even Death Eaters, just a bunch of greedy morons – can’t possibly be so dumb to hide their chopped dragon hearts so close to a dragon farm, right? Weeks of traipsing around Dover, all those stake-outs when we were freezing like dogs, and it was right there near the bloody dragon farm. Fuck, we were so lucky that Charlie was there ‘cause he’s thinking about transferring over from Romania or we would’ve been toast. If we had our fucking brooms, we’d have been fine. There was a cave in the cliffs involved, and you really don’t want to hear the rest.”
Sirius hums through carefully wrapping half his lower shin in bandages, slightly relieved that Remus next to him displays much steadier hands. Their kid bloodied and scratched up never fails to sky-rocket his own pulse while Remus’ anger is quieter, subdued until the doors close behind him.
“Did no-one of yours investigate the reservoir itself sooner than this? You’ve been mentioning this case for weeks now.”
“No, they did, they’re just all blind,” Harry huffs before he props his leg up a bit, pulling a face. “Sorry, that’s not fair. I don’t know what it is, if Ron and I got a handy sixth sense for this kind of thing as a package deal with the massive trauma from our year on the run or I just see things that he thinks of before I do, but it fucking sucks, alright, and I just know all we’re getting for it as soon as we’re both back is drama. It’s going to be all over the papers tomorrow.” The potion is clearly kicking in now as Harry pushes himself up on his elbows, his green eyes shining with something like anger, or grief, perhaps. It’s been a while since Sirius has last seen him so agitated. “D’you know what the worst was about it? The fact that Ron’s in hospital now with several broken bones, a bunch of new scars and another item on the list of nightmare fuel for both of us just because a bunch of poor fuckers fought like hell so they wouldn’t land in Azkaban for stealing the by-products of the reservoir. They weren’t actually killing dragons, you know. Just disappearing stuff across the Channel for money on the black market. And that’s just… it. Is this my life now? Really?”
He's in Remus’ arms before either of them consciously realize by his breaking voice that he’s biting back tears. In all honesty, they have been seeing this coming from a mile ahead, and Sirius is so glad it’s happening now that Harry is still in training as opposed to after exams when it’ll be so much harder to quit a job that only takes 10% of their applicants at all.
“You don’t have to become an Auror if this is not what you want to do, Harry.”
Remus keeps the relief out of his calming voice so much that Sirius almost doesn’t hear it.
“Ron will,” comes back the muffled reply.
“Ron can take care of himself. Would he want you to commit to something that your heart is not behind fully just because of him?”
Harry disentangles himself so he can stretch out his discoloured side long since become too tall for the sofa in their quiet cottage, pale with splotches of pain pressed into the shape of his trembling hands.
“No.” He shakes his head with furrowed brows, and Sirius has to keep himself from bundling him up in blankets to carry him upstairs when Harry looks at him briefly like he’s ashamed. “Thanks for stitching me up, Padfoot. And, uh, sorry. About the blood and… everything.”
“Don’t mention it, kid. If you want to take a week off to rest that leg and think it over, we would always be happy to have you here. Besides,” and he can feel Remus roll his eyes at him, “it’s not like you’ll be getting bored soon, right?”
“I hate you,” Harry grumbles, “so much.” That’s before he leans in for a hug that Sirius exhales into long and hard.
“You need to take care of yourself, that’s all that matters. Play Quidditch professionally, get a degree to teach at Hogwarts, become a healer, tame dragons with Charlie, I don’t care, that’s all fine by me. You just come back to us in one piece, alright?”
Harry wraps his arms tight around Sirius’ chest, just like when he was little, the same squeeze, the same love buried into his shoulder.
“He doesn’t tame dragons, you know,” he murmurs before he comes up for air and stares, presumably, at Remus hovering by the fireplace. “Are you going to come here for the cuddle pile or not, Moony?”
It quirks up Sirius’ lips when Remus, bless him, does indeed put everything he was holding on the coffee table to sit down next to Harry and wrap his long arms all around their brave, voulnerable godson. The winter sun is shining through the windows, makes dust dance in the air and warms them, just the three of them, with all the gentleness of a January afternoon. Sirius inhales deeply the scent of his family: Harry’s hair and sweat, Remus’ coffee scent and the siren song of laundry detergent in his jumper. Comfort, he thinks. It’ll be so fucking hard to let Harry go once he inevitably wants to move out. So he is going to hold on for as long as he is still allowed to, bask in it, help Harry up the stairs to his room and assist him in changing into something more comfortable that isn’t blood-soaked and sweaty. They’ll get him in the shower when he’s not quite as pale anymore; Sirius doesn’t trust his blood pressure to hold up under hot water right now.
“I can speak to dragons,” Harry relays, apropos of nothing, once he’s sitting back in his armchair that he got from Hermoine last year with his leg propped up on a footstool. At Sirius’ momentary stunned silence, he just rubs his face hard, watches the room turn golden in the afternoon light before he settles on the sight of his godfather, gobsmacked. “Fucking hell, I feel like shit. Thanks for… everything, really, this is super fucking embarrassing and I’ll be useless for weeks.”
“No you’re not,” Sirius counters automatically, backtracks, halts his hands mid-air – “Can we get back at the part where you’re talking to dragons? Haz, you know I love you to the moon and back, but you’re a little bit high right now, and I’m not sure I can take another shock to that old heart of mine today, so this better be a joke.”
Harry just rolls his eyes.
“You’re thirty-nine.”
“Exactly. So?”
“Parseltongue, I guess,” he says gesturing to his general person, presently drooping farther into pain killer induced loopiness that renders him softer around the ragged edges. His green eyes are terribly tired. “Never had a chance to try it out. Didn’t think of just… yelling at that bloody Horntail back in fourth year. The stash we found today was hidden in the same cave system as a Welsh Green’s nest; female with three hatchlings; makes for excellent gatekeepers. Bonkers, isn’t it?”
“Entirely,” Sirius agrees, almost impressed. “Suicidal, I’d say, but desperate people…”
Harry sighed.
“Yeah. We only figured it out through a coded delivery order among the confiscated shit in Dover. Almost would’ve missed it on the cliff; there was this narrow path down – God, you would’ve killed me, both of you. Charlie almost did after he got us out.”
And there is another parental nightmare to add to the growing list, Sirius supposes, sitting down hard on Harry’s bed. He was right earlier. This is not something a father wants to hear on a Tuesday afternoon.
“Merlin, kid… Do I want to know if you had a chat with the mother or the hatchlings?”
“Hatchlings,” Harry grins and snorts, “we would have been so dead if their mother saw us. But they were sort of as big as a fucking thestral each, teeth and claws and all-“ Sirius makes a pained noise, so he hurtles on, wide-eyed, apologetic with his hands in the game now, “but only a couple weeks old, so! So, uh. I told them that we’re not there to hurt them. Instinct, really. And it worked, isn’t that wild?”
“Spectacular,” Sirius nods faintly, “splendid, really formidable, Haz. I know what I said earlier about taming dragons, but-“
“I’m sort of made for it.”
He's high, Sirius thinks. His son is definitely high as a kite, or he would have more consideration for Sirius’ poor battered heart. He tries to give his best encouraging smile, because as much as the picture of Harry trying to calm down three confused teenaged dragons is making him want to throw up from fear, he’s fucking proud, is the thing, but no-one ever accused him of being entirely right in the head anyway.
“Sure are. I’m guessing this new revelation has nothing at all to do with Charles, does it?”
“Oh, fuck off,” Harry groans through his pink-cheeked laughter. “I thought he’s furious with me, but he only yelled at me a little and then just – accepted it. Just like that! Well, it’s not like we had the time to sit down and have a chat about it, the fact that I can talk to snakes and dragons and fuck knows what else of that lizardy category. We called for back-up as soon as the smugglers showed up; bad fucking timing, I dismantled all the traps when we got there, I’m not that big of an idiot. Curses started flying, I got hit and went out, Ron took a couple of nasty hits for me…” Lowering his head looks a lot like shame, an awful lot like a confession.
So Sirius does the only thing he knows to do well: he drops to his knees in front of Harry and takes his hands so they’ll stop wringing. The number of times they had a conversation just like this has long since eluded him.
“Not your fault, pub. Ron is your partner. He shields you, you shield him. That’s how Auror teams work; you have each other’s back. I will forever be grateful that Charlie got both of you out, but don’t derive Ron of the privilege to protect you, alright?”
“And if I do call it quits?”
He looks so young like this. Fucking hell, he is only nineteen and just as much a warrior as Sirius and Remus were both formed into by that age. It’s a family trait, that urge to fight. If there’s any way to grow him out of it, to pull him out of the fray and give his self-worth something else to sprout in, Sirius will be damned if he’s not going to tell Kingsley to go suck it personally over the inevitable row in the Ministry.
“Then Ron is going to be the first to tell you that you deserve to be safe, Haz. If there was any chance, any at all, of us not sacrificing our youth to a war, your father would have pushed us to do something different in a heartbeat. Ron will sleep better knowing you’re safe, and I dare say the same goes for Charlie.”
“He’s an adrenaline junkie,” Harry snorts, fondly so. “You sort of have to be to take care of dragons. That’s what he does. He doesn’t tame them. You can’t, with dragons. Impossible. It’d be wrong. Like making teenagers fight them in a bloody arena.”
There is another can of worms to be opened along that line of thought, but Harry is high, tired and injured, so Sirius summons a baby blue blanket from across the room and drapes it over his legs. Shoves the footstool a bit closer to the chair, makes sure Harry is settled.
“Can’t argue with that.” As he drops a kiss on his forehead, he thanks James and Lily and every deity willing to listen for the chance to raise such a loving boy into an outstanding young man who still hugs Sirius when he’s just short of falling asleep reclining in that massive, checkered armchair. “Rest a little, alright? We’ll come get you for dinner.”
Harry yawns, nods, lets his head loll to the right when Sirius gets up to leave the room. The desk under the window, Harry’s bunk bed there for the sole reason that Ron as well as Hermione used to sleep here more often than not during the summer holidays, the dreamcatcher spinning slowly in the middle of the ceiling, painting intricate shadows over the pale yellow tapestry – he hopes Charlie learns to appreciate where Harry comes from, he thinks, looks around his son’s childhood bedroom and mourns his sleeping presence here long before he is gone. They’ve known each other since they were boys, him and Charlie, and even though the latter is eleven years older, Sirius will not breathe a word against it tomorrow if Harry does indeed want to go with him. To Romania, or to Wales. He knows what he'd like to hear more. But it’s better than the Aurors, both of those choices; far, far away from the armed forces, Harry will be something approaching safe more than anywhere else.
“Thanks, Pa’foot,” is the last thing he hears before he softly clicks the door shut.
Dear Merlin, he has to talk to Remus. How the fuck are they going to bear Harry growing up if not together?