Chapter Text
Prequel—A glimpse
Sirius
Twelve years in Azkaban would drive any of its prisoners deeper into madness. Deeper because madness was already a prerequisite for being sentenced to a life of torment from dementors. But Sirius Black was not mad when the fates brought him here, sentenced for a crime he did not commit, nor had his innocence been enough to override the guilt puncturing his heart. No, he did not murder the Potter’s, but he betrayed them all the same by trusting the wrong person. In those tense years of war, distrust had poisoned his mind, clouding his judgment, allowing for poor thinking to bleed into his decisions. The decision to trust Wormtail over Lupin is his real crime. So while he rots in a bleak lonely cell, it is not murder he repents for, it is his foolishness, his mistake that bleeds on his chest in red letters: Fool.
At the start of his sentence, there is no evil or madness for the dementors to chase away. They taste his guilt laced soul, never sucking for long as if the ghouls of punishment know there isn’t much evil to consume in his essence.
Over the years, he grows hollow not from their attacks, but from the guilt slowly gnawing his humanity away like a grotesque tumor.
His life in Azkaban grinds by uneventfully. His madness manifests out of loneliness, out of cold and boredom, but he passes by the time and hides from the dementors as Padfoot. As a dog, his human mind is muted just enough to make the passage of time more bearable. He shifts back into a human when the guards come by. His encounters with them are his only sense of grounding, or time in the bare stone of his existence. Unlike the screams and demented mutters from adjacent cells down the corridors—Death Eaters, who truely possessed a madness the dementors could torture—Sirius is quiet, sits up with calm, hopeful resignation because he is just that desperate to see another being. It makes the guards uneasy, his resolution to occupy his cell that much more suspicious and dangerous, because his evil must be incredibly cemented if he is not already broken.
Often, he presses himself against the small window in his cell. It’s not even big enough to slip his hand through, but he tries to get the wind and mist to touch his cheeks and tongue. Even the bitter cold in winter is a welcome guest, reminding him there is a world out there, even as it drifts from his mind year by year. He thinks of Remus when the full moon sneaks into his cell. The moonlight grants him a sliver of hope, not that he’ll get out, but that Remus is alive and prosperous.
No, his life is over, nothing new will happen. He is frozen in the errors of his past. He can never stop mourning in this purgatory.
Until one day something new does happen. On a routine inspection, the Minister of Magic Cornelius Fudge drops by his cell, and like the guards, he is rather puzzled to see that Sirius is present, minus a few loose strings. A rather different picture than the one Fudge found on the night James and Lily were killed— Sirius laughing bitterly because he had been betrayed and unable to act rationally enough to explain himself in the aftermath of the explosion, as muggles lay there dead amongst Pettigrew’s abandoned finger. All it may have taken was plain remorse and shock in lue of his manic laughter to prevent his fate from winding up here. In the end, it’s Sirius’s fault he is trapped here, unable to advocate for himself in his grief, shock, and bloodlust to avenge his dearest friends.
On this day though, Fudge stumbles on a more rational version of Sirius than what he found that wretched night, it gives him pause enough for Sirius to ask for his Daily Prophet, just so he can taste the real world again through pictures and words. Perhaps orient himself to the state of things and perhaps stumble upon news of the very famous Boy Who Lived. Harry James Potter. A boy that would be in his guardianship now if he hadn’t had conceded to Dumbledore’s arrangements for Harry to live with Lily’s sister in Little Whinging, if he hadn’t gone looking for revenge on Pettigrew promptly after. More guilt claws through his soul at the reminder of his failure there too. Another way he’d let James and Lily down, not even able to assume his responsibilities as godfather to their dear boy after their demise.
That day he reads the paper changes everything; what he reads compresses twelve long years in prison into a singular blast.
It’s Pettigrew, fucking bloody Peter Pettigrew on the shoulders of a Weasley boy during their family adventure to Egypt. Sirius’s blood boils as he reads that the boy will return to Hogwarts soon. That boy and his pet rat, not a pet at all, but malicious, conniving Pettigrew. And this Ronald Weasley boy is going to the same school as Harry with a Death Eater in his pocket, in the same bloody house as Harry, perhaps in the same dorm room, just feet or inches from Harry’s four poster.
Sirius was not mad when he first came to Azkaban, yet madness erupts from him like a hot flame in his brittle, wilted body. The crumpled paper in his trembling hands combusts. Its embers sting his hollow cheeks—the first hints of warmth he’s felt in years.
No, Sirius did not come to Azkaban mad, but he leaves it as such, a once loyal man’s best friend, reduced to a hellhound: all fire inside, sheer blackness on the outside, a black hole with a bottomless inferno. The newfound rage is worse than the guilt slowly eating him—it reminds him of the world outside, out there.
“He’s in Hogwarts,” Sirius mumbles to himself in his sleep like it’s an incantation.
The more he says it the more his mind dissolves into darkness. Anger tugs at him now, towards the light, towards the small little keyhole of a window in his narrow cell, and ironically Sirius Black doesn’t so much as plot his escape, he becomes the darkness on one moonlit night, morphing into a shadow that slips through the cell when the guards aren’t looking, perhaps their guard down because Sirius never tried before.
Before he knows it, he’s Padfoot, swimming miles off that godforsaken rock to shore, following the moon’s gold brush strokes across frigid water, to the place where it all went wrong, not to redeem himself, because there is no redeeming himself. He runs through the day and night—fresh air and mist sogging his coat, his frost-bitten paws red and raw from every rugged, all the brutal terrain England has to offer, until he hits pavement, narrowing in on humanity once again. Sirius doesn’t stop, fleeing to a place that is more dangerous than anywhere else, because it’s exactly where they will expect him to go. Proof trumps his need for safety—no amount of danger will deter him.
The proof waits for him in Little Whinging, just a glimpse is all he needs.
It’s so easy to find him. Too easy for Sirius’s liking. It’s as if a path opens itself up leading him straight to the boy, like the moon herself builds a gilded path for him to scent. Even older, weaker, Sirius catches the trail instantly—those same elements, same genes, same magic that flowed through James’s blood that lives in his heir. Sirius bolts towards the scent, stumbling and tripping on shaky legs, meeting brambles and rose bushes until he is under a windowsill, perfectly orientated to spy.
Lighting strikes first—he sees lighting in the form of a wicked scar running across his forehead. It’s him, in the flesh, Harry, with orbs of blazing green, unruly black short cropped hair, and a guarded look about him. One look a child should never have with stiff shoulders, flickering eyes scanning for danger, hands tensing at his sides, hovering no doubt near the concealed wand that he can’t even use until he is seventeen. Sirius refrains from whining, from scratching at the glass to get Harry’s attention. This Harry doesn’t know Padfoot and even if he did remember the dutiful beast that liked to hover over his crib or play docile tug-of-war with his toddler’s broomstick, Padfoot is not here. Sirius catches his reflection in the glass and winces; he may as well be the Grimm. He feels like the evil omen too when he discovers Harry’s tense pose is not a result of Voldemort’s evil, but of the Durselys.
By the looks of it, Harry is kept in a cell of its own kind, except Harry’s done nothing to deserve it Sirius is sure. One look at that handsome face confirms it for Sirius—he has James’s face minus the troublesome smirk. No, Harry is not happy, carefree, as James was, as he should be. Harry is slumped, tight in fear, and maneuvers around 4 Privet Drive like one wrong step will set off a bomb, and for good reason. These vile, fat, sloppy muggles treat Harry like a second class citizen, like how purebloods treat mudbloods. Muggles who took Sirius’s place. Muggles that Sirius handed Harry over to.
Just like the night escapes from his cell, this very night, a unique course of events triggers Harry’s escape from his own prison: Aunt Marge balloons up. Sirius is glad for it. He can’t bear to hear Aunt Marge insult Lily and James through the garden where he snoops. James and Lily had died protecting Harry. They were valiant in life and in death, saints that should have never come to be. So he feels no sympathy for the dumpy screeching muggle as she floats across the dull sky of Little Whinging above Privet Drive where Harry retreats, trunk and owl in tow.
He follows Harry to the park, unseen, but Harry must be used to danger following him because he picks up on his presence. The night conceals him, but not well enough, because for a few seconds Harry sees him. Sees the mad beast that swam across a sea, ran across mountains, forests, and fields to catch sight of him.
Those bright meadow green eyes narrow in on him—the most beautiful color Sirius’s seen in twelve empty years. From behind the street bench, still half concealed in the bushes, Sirius can see the pulse in Harry’s neck jump and taste his fear on his tongue. It’s fear that tastes bitter and well-honed, as if Harry’s always smelled like fear. Instinctively, he growls at it, not at Harry, but at the reasons why terror clings to the pores of such a precious boy. Harry tenses across the street, misconstruing Sirius’s anger as a threat. To him, Sirius is the threat.
Seeing just a glimpse of Harry before the Knight Bus comes whirling in opens a chasm. Sirius flees—he can’t be spotted, a glimpse of Harry is all he can risk to afford tonight. The hunt for that rat begins, yet the hunt is only an outlet for the madness that drives him now, because the void that awakes in him imprints itself on Harry.
Harry is his everything now, his only family, not through blood but a promise bonded in his love for James.
I’m here, Sirius growls to himself, fleeing before Harry can catch sight of him again. I’m here now Harry. I’m sorry, my boy. He will be the godfather he should have been from the start. He must clear his name. He must show Harry that he is not alone. That he has one family member left standing that would never lay a hand on him, never neglect him like the Dursleys.
Because one glimpse is not enough, Sirius wants more.