Archive of Our Own

It starts with Tonks asking, "Who wants to play two truths and a lie with me?"

Sirius has spent the last three and a half months praying for a reprieve, any reprieve, from his terrible, mind-numbing, all-consuming boredom, so he says, "Sure."

He's not the only one. Soon enough, Harry, Remus, Ron, and Hermione are crowding around the dining table. Even Moody, after an inordinate amount of bribery and Harry pulling out his absolute finest, I'm an orphan and you want to make me happy, don't you? puppy dog eyes, acquiesces and takes a seat, though he doesn't stop grumbling as he does it.

"Alright," Tonks says, clasping her hands together and looking at the rest of them imperiously, "who wants to go first?"

There are no takers.

"Great!" Tonks says. "Thanks for volunteering, Harry."

"Glad to be the sacrificial lamb," Harry says. He frowns. "Alright...my eyes are green, I ate toast for breakfast, and once, I killed a basilisk."

"Well, I'll give it to you, Harry, you've got the general idea down," Sirius says. "But it's got to be just a tiny bit harder than that. The lie is obviously that you killed--"

"Sirius," Remus says.

Sirius turns to face him. "What?"

"Sirius, he ate eggs for breakfast."

"Oh," Sirius says. Then, the full gravity of what he just heard catches up to him. " Oh ."

He turns back to Harry. Clasps his hands together. Lays it on the table. "Hey, Harry, is there any chance that you misunderstood the rules? Or the title? Is there any chance whatsoever, any at all, even in a parallel universe, that you thought we were playing two lies and a truth?"

"He didn't mess up," Hermione says, rather defensively, as if Sirius is somehow at fault for not immediately rushing to believe that his godson killed a basilisk. "He did kill one, back when we were in second year."

" Why ?" Sirius says. His voice cracks hideously. Everyone does him a general courtesy and ignores it.

"Because he's too much of a main character to just sit there and feel terrified for his life while Muggleborns kept getting Petrified, even though everyone else was doing it," Ron says. "And it was rather hard to ask it politely to stop without, you know, nearly dying first."

"I mean, I always feel like I could have tried," Harry says. "Maybe he didn't know trying to kill humans was a bad idea. Maybe he was just misunderstood."

Hermione rolls her eyes. "Yes, I could sense it absolutely drowning in regret when I was stuck in a bed for three months --"

"You didn't even feel it, Hermione!" Harry says. "And I'm sure that if the basilisk knew the consequences of his actions, he wouldn't have done it!"

"Oh, really!" Hermione exclaims. "If that's the case, then there really was no reason to go after it, was there? Why didn't you just leave it? Then you could have the time of your life running after it, pleading for it to see sense while it murdered anything that could walk, talk, or scream!"

"You went after it ?" Sirius echoes. "Why, Harry? Why did billions of years of evolution fail to provide you with even a modicum of self preservation?"

"I didn't go alone!" Harry responds savagely. "Ron went with me! He's just as complicit in this! Blame him for a bit while I build up my ego again!"

Ron raises his hands in a clear show of innocence. "Hey, I didn't go to the basilisk . I stayed right outside the Chamber, safely . Are you familiar with the word?"

"Clearly not," Sirius says.

"You were with Lockhart!" Harry acuses. "You were putting your sanity into more danger than I was putting my body!"

Ron opens his mouth, as though to retort, then deflates. "You may have a point there."

Sirius bangs his hand on the table. "You're still not giving me a reasonable explanation as to why you would ever, being of even slightly sound mind, think that going after a giant snake whose only purpose is to kill, alone, was a good idea?"

"I wasn't alone!" Harry says defensively. "Well, not the whole time. Fawkes came eventually. With the Sorting Hat. So someone , at least, was watching out for me."

"Oh, yes," Sirius says. "A bird who can cry and a hat that's been around since Adam met Eve and has given lice to generations upon generations of Hogwarts students. That's exactly who I would entrust you to too. I can finally sleep at night, knowing you're in such safe hands." He sighs. "So what did the hat do, give you some advice it stole from a fortune cookie? You must try, or hate yourself for not trying ? Did that offer a world of enlightenment for you?"

"It didn't actually say anything," Harry says. "I was sort of disappointed by that too. I love reading fortune cookies. It gave me the Sword of Gryffindor, though!"

"And...you used that to, presumably, kill the basilisk?"

"Yeah. By sticking it into its mouth. Like a toothpick."

"A toothpick."

"Yes. A toothpick."

"In the basilisk's mouth ."

"That's what I said."

"The mouth , Harry? Where the teeth go?"

"Why are you making such a big deal about this?" Harry asks, sounding disgruntled. "Shouldn't you be proud? I summoned the Sword of Gryffindor! As a twelve-year-old! What are you? Fifty? Have you ever done that? No, you haven't."

"I'll be proud later!" Sirius yells. "And I am not fifty, I'm thirty-six, a conclusion which you could have arrived at with the most basic of mathematical computations." He grits his teeth. "How the fuck did you not get poisoned?"

"I did, actually," Harry says.

Sirius stares.

"Well, not for long ," Harry says. "Clearly, it didn't last."

Sirius makes a distressed noise. "What's next? Was Voldemort there too? Watching with popcorn?"

Harry brightens slightly, and Sirius already regrets asking. "He was, actually! Not with popcorn, obviously, but he was there. He was sort of incompetent, though, to be perfectly honest. He could have just picked up one of many pieces of rock just lying there and thrown it at my head, but no, that's too lowly for high-and-mighty Tom Riddle, he just sort of screamed at the basilisk to do better and then acted surprised when he died."

Sirius sucks in a deep breath. Part of him wants to lock Harry in a room and not let him leave until Voldemort is safely six feet under the ground, but another part of him is falling victim to a rapid stream of morbid curiosity. 

He hesitates. "...What did fifteen-year-old Voldemort look like?"

"Really hot."

Sirius blinks. " Really ?"

"Oh, yeah," Ron says. "Harry drew a picture for me. He could have been a model if he hadn't decided to kill people instead."

"Meh," Hermione says, looking unimpressed. "He's not my type."

"But Lockhart is?" Ron asks.

"I have absolutely no clue as to what you're referring to."

"Alright," Sirius sighs, looking around, "who knew that Harry did all this?"

"Me," Remus says.

"So did I," Tonks says.

Moody gives a little grunt of acknowledgement.

" How? "

Remus looks apologetic. "It was sort of all over the newspapers, Sirius."

Sirius groans. At that moment, he would love nothing more than to tie Harry to a chair and interrogate him about why he would ever think that running off to have a one-on-one meeting with a basilisk and a teenage, hormonal Voldemort would ever be anywhere near anyone's list of good ideas, but before he can, Dumbledore storms in, robes billowing around him.

"Emergency Order meeting," he says. " Now ." He billows back out.

Harry sticks up his middle finger at Dumbledore's rapidly receding back. 

Sirius will never figure out what the emergency meeting was actually about, because he sulks the whole time and doesn't listen to a word being said. By the time Dumbledore finally ends his lecturing and dismisses them, Snape looks ready to wrap his spindly fingers around Sirius and choke him.

Sirius doesn't give him the chance. He's the first one out the door, off to track down Harry. 

He finds him in the kitchen, discreetly munching on the chocolate chip cookies Molly left out to cool. 

Harry looks up as Sirius enters and narrows his eyes. "I know that you want to keep talking about the basilisk," he starts, "and I politely request that we do literally anything else. Killing the basilisk wasn't easy on me, you know."

"Well, gee, I wonder why," Sirius says, leaning against a kitchen counter. "It's not like that's the kind of shit that gets you traumatized for life or anything."

Harry frowns. "No, it's not that. I just really wish I hadn't needed to kill him. I have a big soft spot for snakes."

Sirius side eyes him. "For snakes?"

"Well, yeah. Because I can talk to them." Sensing Sirius's blank stare, he asks, "You didn't know I can talk to snakes?"

"Well, no, it was not an immediate assumption I made upon meeting you."

"It was in Rita Skeeter's article, though."

"To be perfectly honest," Sirius says, "I thought she was lying. You're a Parselmouth, Harry? Why didn't you tell me? Directly? We could have had so much fun with that."

"I already do have fun with that," Harry says. "The snake infestation in the Slytherin's dorms didn't happen on its own, you know. Or the one in the Slytherin quidditch locker rooms. Or the one in Umbridge's office."

"Alright, alright," Sirius says. "You're forgiven."

 "Thank you, oh generous one," Harry says. Then he sighs, gazing, crestfallen, down at his half-eaten cookie, as though it has failed him in a deeply personal way. "It's just...my best friend when I was a kid was a snake. It's not easy to kill another snake after a bond like that, no matter how big and gross and murderous and bad-smelling it is."

Sirius blinks at him. "Your best friend as a kid was a snake ?"

"Yeah," Harry replies, a note of challenge dancing on his tongue. "Do you have a problem with that?"

"Many, strangely enough," Sirius says. "Did you have no friends that happened to be of the same species as you? Was everyone fine with you carrying a snake around from place to place on the playground and hissing at it in regular intervals? How did this work?"

"I didn't have any friends of the same species as me, actually," Harry says. "I didn't like any of my classmates and none of my classmates liked me. We made it work."

"Oh," Sirius says. "I'm...sorry?"

"You should be." Harry sniffs. "And besides, I did not carry a snake around . I'm not an idiot. We didn't even meet anywhere near a playground. We met at a zoo."

"A zoo." 

"Yeah." Harry sighs happily. "We really saw each other, you know? He talked to me about how badly he wanted to be in Brazil. I talked to him about how badly I wanted to be anywhere but Privet Drive. We were perfect for each other. I hope he managed to cross the Atlantic Ocean and get to Brazil, somehow."

"Uh-huh," Sirius says. "And this bonded you for a lifetime?"

"Yep," Harry says. "I even broke him out of the zoo. Made the glass disappear and let him slither off. My cousin Dudley fell into the exhibit, he thought he was going to die." Harry smiles. "It was great."

Sirius is getting wildly concerned. "Should I just ignore the fact that that makes you sound like a sociopath?"

"It wouldn't if you knew the type of person Dudley is," Harry says. "Besides, I saved his soul from the Dementors last summer, didn't I? He should be groveling at my feet in thanks. I'm an absolute angel."

"Okay," Sirius says cautiously. "What else happened with the snake?"

Harry shrugs. "Like I said, it roamed off into places unknown. It winked at me before it left, if that counts for something."

"Snakes don't have eyelids, though."

Harry looks faintly surprised. "Don't they?"

"No, I'm positive that they don't." Sirius looks at him searchingly. "Harry. Did you use accidental magic to give a snake eyelids just so it would wink at you?"

"So what if I did?" Harry snaps."Eleven-year-old me was a weird kid! He might have just wanted someone to wink at him, what's so evil about that?"

"Nothing!" Sirius holds his hands up. "Nothing."

"Sorry." Harry slumps, looking utterly miserable. "I just don't like thinking about him. What if he's dead? What if he's hungry? What if--" Harry drops the cookie onto the counter and puts his head in his hands. "Oh, God, what if he got run over by a car on the highway outside of the zoo? He wanted to go to Brazil, and he couldn't even make it more than a hundred feet." He makes a sound suspiciously like a sob.

Sirius has never felt more at a loss for words. He really doesn't like to compare anything with James's death, but Harry looks so distressed that Sirius sort of suspects that Harry feels as badly about this snake thing as Sirius does about James.

"There, there," Sirius, the absolute pinnacle of originality, settles on. He shuffles closer to Harry and wraps an arm around his shoulder. "I'm sure he's just fine. He probably thinks about you everyday."

Harry nestles his face in Sirius's shoulder. "I hope so," he says, his voice muffled and wavering.

Sirius pats him on the shoulder. 

"And then he cried about some snake he knew for fifteen minutes for half an hour, Remus," Sirius says. " Half an hour ."

"So what?" Remus says. "It's been a very, very hard year for him. He's allowed to feel emotional."

"It's not that," Sirius says despairingly. "It's just--the complete and utter weirdness of this kid's life is baffling. And I have an honestly terrible feeling that I've only scratched the surface by now."

"It's alright," Remus says, patting Sirius's shoulder. "You get used to it, you really do. You've just got to learn how to take everything in stride and not ask too many questions."

Sirius looks at him suspiciously. "You sound like you speak from personal experience."

"Oh, I do," Remus says. "When I first got my job to teach defense against the dark arts, I had to sign a contract promising that I wouldn't press charges if Harry James Potter ever murdered me or Ronald Weasley ever tampered with my memory. So."

Sirius stares. Puts his head in his hands. Just as quickly brings his head back up again. "Harry murdered one of his teachers?"

"Apparently," Remus says. "I tried to press Dumbledore for more information, but he was characteristically vague. Said something about his first year professor, Quirrell, and not letting myself fall victim to the temptations of the dark arts." He shrugs, looking defeated. "Well, I signed, and Harry seemed nice enough our first class and not at all like he was going to kill me if I gave him a bad grade, so I tried to stop thinking about it."

"You tried to stop thinking about the fact," Sirius repeats slowly, "that Harry killed a teacher ."

"Yes," Remus says.

Sirius sighs, already knowing it's a lost battle. "Quirrell, Quirrell..." he mutters, wracking his memory. In the time since he last spoke to Harry yesterday and before he could get Remus alone so he could unleash all his inner demons on him, he had done his absolute best to dive into the Daily Prophet records (that Kreacher has still been collecting even though no one's been reading them for more than a decade, apparently) and find the highlights of each year that he's been in prison. "He was the one trying to steal the...Sorcerer's Stone, wasn't he? To bring back Voldemort?"

"Yep."

"I'm absolutely, 100% sure that I would not have missed a single mention in that article of Harry having murdered someone. What did Dumbledore do to keep it all under wraps? Bribe someone?"

"I think so, actually," Remus says. "No one wants it to get out that an eleven-year-old killed his teacher. It would be terrible for staffing. And Hogwarts might actually have to get a health and safety check."

"I see," Sirius says. "So you have absolutely no idea how Harry ended up killing Quirrell? The Prophet was terribly vague about that, too. Not very good reporting."

"Like I said, Dumbledore didn't tell me shit," Remus says. "Go ask Harry if you want to know so bad."

Sirius sighs, already expecting a headache in the next ten to fifteen minutes. "I guess."

Sirius barges into Harry and Ron's room. "So I hear that you killed someone."

Harry groans, throwing his arm over his eyes. "God, Sirius, it's the crack of dawn. Have a bit of humanity."

"It's," Sirius checks his watch, "2 PM."

"Yeah? And?" Harry raises his covers above his face. "I didn't get a lot of rest last night, okay?"

"You can catch up on your beauty sleep later," Sirius says, walking to Harry and pulling the covers away. Harry groans again. "First, how about filling me in on how you apparently committed homicide?"

"It was in self-defense," Harry mutters. "Don't start going around and making me the villain."

"I'm not trying to make you the villain ," Sirius says. "I'm just trying to understand how you got to the point where murder was apparently the only way to defend yourself. So." He claps. "Story time."

Harry gives a long-suffering sigh. "Fine." He pulls himself up to a sitting position and gropes around for his glasses, which Sirius hands to him. He pushes them onto his face and blinks rapidly, his hair sticking up in every direction imaginable. 

"So," Harry says, "it all started with the Sorcerer's Stone. You know about that, right? Right. Anyway, I knew that Voldemort was going to be after it one night, but no one believed me, because eleven-year-olds are never right about anything, y'know? So Ron, Hermione, and I went after it on our own. After we went through a bunch of long and honestly very stupid traps, I got to this room with Quirrell in it, and guess what was on the back of his head? Voldemort."

"Voldemort," repeats Sirius, thrown, "was on the back of his head ?"

"Yeah," Harry says. "A consequence of possession, I guess. I'm not going to lie, after seeing that dream of Mr. Weasley being bitten by Voldemort's snake, I was pretty afraid a little Voldemort face was going to erupt on the back of my head, too. Well, Voldemort started blabbing on and on about how I was the only one who could get the Sorcerer's Stone, so Quirrell kept yelling at me to find it for him, because obviously I was going to if he just raised his voice at me a little. I actually did end up getting the Stone by looking in the Mirror of Erised, so kudos to Voldemort for having fact-checked before going on a big monologue about taking over the world.

"Anyway, Quirrell lunged at me to try to take the Stone from me, but as soon as he touched by skin his hands started burning and he started fucking screeching . Not pretty. So I just grabbed onto his face and refused to let go and pretty much burned him to death." Harry shrugs. "Though I would argue that I didn't do the actual killing. Voldemort left Quirrell's body as soon as he sensed that shit was getting heated and left him to die. So."

"Oh," Sirius says faintly. "I see."

Harry makes a noncommittal sound.

Sirius presses his lips together. "Harry, were you...okay after that?"

Harry gives him a strange look. "Sure. As okay as I am physically capable of being. I wasn't dead, was I?"

"You weren't feeling...guilty or anything, were you?" Sirius presses. "Because killing Quirrell was not your fault--"

"Uh-huh--"

"--You were put in a terribly difficult situation, an honestly inhumane one for an eleven-year-old to be in--"

"Thanks, I guess?"

'--and you really had no choice but to kill Quirrell--"

"I processed all of this, like, three years ago, why are you bring it all up again--"

"--and I am very proud of you for making the decision you did--"

"Sirius!" Harry interrupts. "I don't feel bad about killing Quirrell, honestly! The days after I killed him were some of the most peaceful of my life, actually. Killing him was pretty cathartic. I think it would be great for my mental health if I could fight another Death Eater, but alas, these days it's always no, you need to keep hidden, Harry or for the love of God, keep it on the downlow, Harry ." He sighs.

"Alright," Sirius says slowly, not sure if he should feel relieved or not. It's not like he's never wanted to murder Death Eaters before--doing so was the highlight of his twenties, actually--but listening to a teenager crave it is a bit disturbing. "So...I shouldn't be rushing you off to therapy right now?"

"I mean, you probably should," Harry says, "but not for reasons related to the Quirrell fiasco." 

It takes Sirius a few moments to conceive another intelligible thought. "Were Ron and Hermione with you when you fought Quirrell?" Just because Harry seems to be thirsting over the thought of killing Quirrell doesn't mean any other sane child could walk out of something like that without any lasting mental scars.

"No," Harry replies. "Remember those traps that I told you about, the ones that were guarding the Stone? Ron got beat up by a giant chess piece. And only one person could take the potion that would let you get past the flame guarding where Quirrel and Voldemort were, so Hermione took the L and stood around trying to get Ron to wake up for fifteen minutes."

"Are you sure they're perfectly alright?" Sirius asks. "I was talking to Remus and he happened to mention--completely offhandedly, because we definitely weren't gossiping about you--that he had to sign a contract saying he wouldn't sue if Ron tampered with his memory. Now, I'm guessing they didn't just include that specific clause there for shits and giggles."

Harry laughs, and the suddenness of it catches Sirius off guard. With a start, he realizes that he hasn't actually heard Harry laugh for a very long time. "Oh, that. There was this famous guy a few years back, Lockhart, and he made a killing off of interrogating people about their various accomplishments, wiping their memories, and then publishing very poorly-written books saying that he had done it. He was our DADA teacher that year and he must have been the most annoying person I ever met. He would keep chasing after me and trying to get me to do photo shoots with him and I was always like, Why are you so obsessed with me ? Anyway, Ron and I figured it out and then confronted him about it, and he tried to wipe our memories too. Except he used Ron's wand, which had been malfunctioning on and off all year, and so he, to Ron and I's great sorrow and regret, ended up wiping his own memory." He shrugs. "All's well that ends well, though. He's having the time of his life flirting with all the St. Mungo's nurses. Good for him, honestly. He was a shit teacher. If anything, we've done him a favor."

"That does seem relaxing," Sirius agrees. "I kind of wish that was me." He rubs his eyes. "At the risk of losing what little sanity remains in this poor, disheveled husk of a man, I do feel the need to ask you, though--how the hell did Ron's wand get that beaten up?"

"We crashed a car," Harry says.

Sirius raises an eyebrow. "Practicing for your drivers license a little early, weren't you?"

"We weren't driving ," Harry says, affronted. "We were flying it. It was a flying car. No traffic or anything. Our sense of responsibility should be commended."

"A flying car."

"That's what I said."

"Where the fuck did you get a flying car?"

"We may or may not have stolen it," Harry says. "Though it was Ron's dad's, and Ron was there with me, so I would say it's more of an early inheritance than a strict robbery . Once again, our sense of responsibility is admirable. And, you have to admit, it's funny."

"It really isn't," Sirius tells him. A beat. "Okay, maybe a little bit. But, pray tell, since I'm assuming you were the only two flying around in a car that day, how did you crash ? Did you run into a plane?"

"We had some trouble landing," Harry admits. "We hadn't had any experience in that particular field of expertise before. And they say Hogwarts is useful for our education. Whatever. We sort of crashed into the Whomping Willow."

Sirius looks at him for a few moments, then bursts out laughing.

Harry sticks out his bottom lip in a pout. "We tried really hard to stick that landing, Sirius. And the Whomping Willow was so mean . Do you know how traumatizing it was for it, watching the car we had formed such a deep emotional attachment to in five whole hours just get absolutely pummeled ?"

Sirius wipes a few tears away. "Right. So traumatizing. Of course. I mourn your loss deeply."

Harry scowls at him. "Alright. Go on and laugh. I see how it is. Ron and I had the last laugh, though, when that Ford Anglia was our getaway car from a hoard of Acromantulas trying to make us their next meal."

"A hoard of what?"

"No." Harry lies back down with a humph , rolling over so that his back is to Sirius and crossing his arms. "I'm done talking with you. Go and find someone else to bully. I'm going back to sleep."

Sensing defeat, Sirius retreats from the room, then immediately starts laughing again once the door clicks shut.

Harry finally deigns to grace the residents of Grimmauld Place with his presence around dinner time, slowly making his way downstairs and then slouching down next to Sirius at the table. Sirius offers him the salad bowl, out of which Harry takes exactly four pieces of lettuce.

"Sure feeling hungry today, aren't you?" Sirius asks.

Harry grunts. "Maybe I would have more of an appetite if my sleep hadn't gotten so ruined because someone couldn't help their nosiness."

Sirius rolls his eyes. "It was 2 PM, Harry."

"Exactly. Crack of dawn. An absolutely disgraceful hour to be up. I'm not a health guru."

"Whatever," Sirius says. "Care to tell me more about the Acromantulas that are apparently taking residence at Hogwarts, or are you just fine leaving me with a cliffhanger?"

"They're not in Hogwarts, precisely," Harry tells him. "They're in the Forbidden Forest."

Sirius frowns. "I spent a lot of time in the Forbidden Forest when I was in Hogwarts. I never stumbled into a lair of giant spiders."

"They do keep themselves pretty well hidden," Harry admits, "and Hagrid has weekly seminars where he lectures them all about the consequences of eating humans. Actually, I think they're biweekly now. He had to up the frequency after they almost ate me and Ron."

Sirius blinks. "You and Ron were almost killed, not by Voldemort or any Death Eaters, but...by talking spiders."

"I'd say they were more on the tarantula side, actually," Harry says. "But yes, that's more or less what happened. But, like I said, the Ford Anglia saved us. I should name my child after it."

"How about you don't," Sirius says. "But isn't Ron afraid of spiders? He practically leaves the country whenever we find one hiding in a desk."

"Oh, yeah, that was not a fun time for him," Harry says. "Remember when you offered me therapy? You should offer it to Ron, in my opinion."

"I'm honestly very tempted," Sirius says. He sighs. "Please tell me that was the last of your exploits in the Forbidden Forest. Please tell me you didn't discover ten other highly dangerous and illegal species roaming around."

Harry smirks. "Why? Jealous you never noticed any after running around in it for five years straight?" 

"No, surprisingly, I'm not jealous of almost dying because something with too many legs thought I smelled good."

"Sure." Harry shrugs. "I went in once in first year, but honestly, it was pretty underwhelming compared to the Acromantula debacle. I saw some centaurs, but everybody knows they're there. One looked at the sky a lot and gave me very cryptic messages that did not at all help me figure out the Voldemort plot but did definitely increase my anxiety. Oh, and I saw Quirrell--the one I killed, remember?"

"No, I forgot."

"Well. He was sucking the blood out of a dead unicorn."

"A unicorn?"

"A dead one, yes."

"Like fucking Dracula."

"Pretty much. He even had all the silver blood dripping down his chin. He should have brought a napkin."

Sirius feels a shudder go through him. "How are you still normal--and I use this term very loosely--after this, Harry? How am I having this conversation with you? How have you not been traumatized for life by all this shit?"

"Compartmentalization," Harry says brightly. "On any given day, half of my brain cells are hard at work ensuring that I never have to think about any of that. It gets easier once you have a genocidal maniac after you. Really puts things into perspective. None of that seems very bad when I look back on it."

"I really beg to differ."

"Agree to disagree." Harry turns back to his plate and begins picking at his 4 (four) pieces of lettuce.

Sirius pokes him in the side. "Eat."

"I am eating."

"Oh, right, that's why your plate looks the exact same as it did fifteen minutes ago."

Harry gives him a withering glare. With exaggerated movements, he stabs his fork into a piece of lettuce, opens his mouth wide, and puts it in his mouth, chewing much longer than is really necessary. "Happy now?" he asks when he's done.

Sirius looks at him. "You ate one piece of lettuce, Harry."

"It wasn't just lettuce," Harry defends. "There was sauce on there too."

"Oh, well, in that case, I'm so proud," Sirius says. He grabs the salad bowl again and pours practically half of it onto Harry's plate. "So all of this won't be any chore, huh?"

Harry opens his mouth to protest, but it only takes three seconds of a rather fierce staring contest for him to realize resistance is futile. Sighing as if Sirius has placed the weight of the world on his shoulders, he picks his fork back up and moodily spears it into a cherry tomato. 

Sirius pats him on the back. "There, you're doing it. Great job."

"Hm," is Harry's eloquent response.

Sirius smiles. He can't erase all the frankly terrifying things Harry's gone through, stuff which Harry either has not gotten anywhere close to processing or has processed extremely well, can barely even begin processing those things himself, but he can do this--make sure Harry's eating, try to be a semblance of what he could have been if not for Pettigrew and Voldemort looking at something beautiful and choosing to tear it all up like it was nothing.

Harry does end up getting through all of his salad. Holding back the urge to break into a congratulatory round of applause, Sirius asks, "What were you even doing in the Forbidden Forest? You don't have a werewolf friend, do you? Because otherwise, I don't think anyone in the history of Hogwarts has considered it a nice, fun, relaxing after school hangout spot."

"I wasn't there by choice ," Harry says, as if that's a completely unreasonable conclusion to arrive at when discussing possibly the most danger-driven child to be put upon this earth. "It was for detention."

Sirius raises an eyebrow incredulously. "For detention ?"

Harry nods.

"Jesus," Sirius says. "When I was your age, our detentions were just sorting through files--you know, alphabetically, then by date, and then back to alphabetically. The worst we had to do was listen to Filch going off about the good old days while we scrubbed all of the awards in the trophy room. What the hell did you do to deserve that ?"

"Why, the greatest sin in this worldly realm, of course," Harry says. "Some even say that it was what actually got Eve kicked down to earth. We were out past curfew."

Sirius stares at him. "So...as a punishment for missing your bedtime , a rule that gets broken by everyone at least twice a year...you had to go into a highly dangerous forest where you could be killed approximately f ifty different ways . And you were eleven . And this was seen as an appropriate punishment." 

"Got it in one," Harry says. "And we were doing all that in the middle of the night, too, way past anyone's curfew. The hypocrisy continues to astound me to this day."

"Not to be a narc or anything," Sirius says, "but, honestly, how has Hogwarts never had or failed a health and safety check. Seriously. Something's not adding up."

"I think we did have one, actually," Harry says, furrowing his brow, "right after the Chamber of Secrets fiasco. I walked in on Dumbledore giving the Ministry official a whole bag of galleons, so I guess the Daily Prophet wasn't the only thing he was bribing. Dumbledore swore me to secrecy immediately after."

"You sure it wasn't an Unbreakable Vow?" Sirius asks. "You're not going to die next to your lettuce right now because you told me, are you?" His tone is light but his heart can't help but speed up a bit.

"Nah, it wasn't an Unbreakable Vow," Harry says, "though Dumbledore did try to get me to do one. But I thought it might make a funny story later and also I have trust issues so I said no."

"Oh. Okay. Great for you."

"You know, Sirius," Harry says, "I feel like you're getting carried away with all of this. My experiences with magical creatures weren't all bad."

"You say that, but I feel like whatever you're going to tell me about is something that literally only you, Ron, and Hermione consider part of a normal school year."

"Okay, you might be right about that," Harry admits, "but that doesn't mean it wasn't a good experience. Alright, well, technically it wasn't good either. It was very stressful. I honestly thought I was going to get my first strand of white hair. But. In retrospect , I forged a very meaningful relationship. I'm sure it'll come in handy one day."

Sirius sighs. "Stop making my anxiety worse and just explain it to me already."

"If you insist. So, there was this dragon."

Sirius looks at him for a moment, then shakes his head. "You know what? I can't even bring myself to be surprised anymore. Yes. There was a dragon. You ate breakfast, you almost got eaten by your pet dragon who I guess you kept in the dungeons, you went to classes, then you went to lunch. What a crucial part of any child's life. I'm glad you were living your best life, Harry."

"In my defense, it wasn't an adult dragon," Harry says stubbornly. "It was a baby. Well. It was a baby for two weeks. And then it started growing exponentially and took up half of Hagrid's hut and suddenly it didn't seem so cute and precious anymore, even though Hagrid did insist on resewing his teddy bear everytime Norbert--that was the dragon's name--ripped his head off while reanimating the French Revolution."

"Wait, Hagrid was in on this?"

"Well, yeah." Harry looks at Sirius like he thinks that he's a bit slow. "He's the one who got the egg. Where were we supposed to get it?"

"You know what, you're right," Sirius says. "That is very in character for him. I shouldn't be surprised."

"You really shouldn't," Harry agrees. "We solved the whole dilemma eventually, though. After Norbert almost bit Ron's hand off and nearly burned down Hagrid's hut every other hour, Hagrid finally agreed to let him go. So we basically trafficked a dragon out of Hogwarts."

"Uh-huh," Sirius says, for lack of a better response. Aren't most parents concerned about their child getting involved in drugs, not dragons? "And how, exactly, did you traffick a dragon out of a highly protected and dare I say impenetrable--at least until all the Death Eaters began breaking in left and right, anyway--school?"

"Ron's brother helped us. We wrote him a letter telling him we had a dragon on our hands. He told us he would send some of his friends to pick him up. The rest is history." Harry smiles slightly. "That's why we were out after curfew, by the way. We had to drop Norbert off."

"And Ron's brother just accepted this?" Sirius asks disbelievingly. "He got a letter from his eleven-year-old brother saying that he had somehow acquired a dragon and now needed it shipped out of the country and was perfectly fine with it? Didn't see anything worth looking closer into?"

"I guess not," Harry says, shrugging. "He's not a snitch. And I guess he got into even crazier shit while he was at Hogwarts."

"I guess," Sirius echoes. "Well. Um. I, personally, am glad that you somehow made it out of all of this alive and with at least half of your sanity intact. Don't know how many other people could have managed all of the ups and downs and downs."

Harry smiles. "Aw, Sirius, that was sweet."

Albus walks into his office and immediately tenses. There's someone here. Something's wrong. 

Sirius spins around in Albus's chair so that they face each other. 

"Hi, Dumbledore," he says, barring his teeth in something that might, in a parallel universe, be considered a smile. "I want to have a very, very long talk with you about all the frankly insane circumstances Harry's found himself in these past few years."