Chapter Text
When he first wandered into the Muggle neighbourhood of Lily's sister, he told himself he'd stay a few days. See his godson, maybe play with him as Padfoot, lick his face for the last time and then find the rat.
That was the plan but plans never worked well with Sirius.
The first time, his godson was outside. Sirius watched him sleeping under a hedge and barked a laugh before going into some other street to steal food from the rubbish.
Then there was the second time and the third and his godson was still outside, still in the garden, working on— on red flowers and yellow flowers and a bunch of other flowers and tulips.
And it was summer. A very hot summer and it took him almost three days to realise that he was drinking from a hosepipe. That day he decided to approach his godson.
At the end of the week, he was kidnapping him.
***
The kid— his godson— Harry was crying.
Sirius wasn’t used to this. Not to the crying itself but this— this silent thing. This thing with the little fists clenched in his fur and the breath that caught a hiccup every two or three.
Reg did plenty of whining and sobbing and tearing and then that old hag of their mother would hug him and kiss him and yell at Sirius as he did kill his owl instead of just stealing his toy and then there were other hugs and other kisses and Sirius was a dog! He didn’t have hands to hug!
What was he supposed to do with this?
In the end, he did nothing and Harry stopped crying after what seemed hours. Sirius just sat there letting him clean the snot from his face.
He tried to get up but Sirius didn’t let him.
“I can’t stay here,” Harry said. The first thing he said to him since he started to hang out around Privet Drive. “I’m hungry.”
Sirius barked and took him to the rubbish bin of a closed rotisserie.
He didn’t know what he was going to do. He didn’t know why Harry stayed either. But they were sleeping together in a park in a neighbourhood both poorer and less likely to ask questions than Privet Drive.
It wasn’t going to last anyway.
A man approached them. Approached Harry. He had a funny hat and his black robes said ‘Police’. He remembered Lily saying something about the Police being the Aurors of the muggle world.
Harry seemed to know that too because he started to run.
They ran into another neighbourhood, this one even worse than the prior. Sirius looked at Harry who looked back at him with big scared eyes. The kid usually didn’t talk to him except for that ‘I’m hungry’ and the eventual ‘good boy’ when Sirius took him to a good rubbish bin. He didn’t need to. Sirius could read the words right on his face.
And they were at a crossroads, just not a physical one.
A decision.
***
After they sought refuge in the woods, another decision came: if and how to tell Harry that he was not a dog but a man.
In the end, it wasn't a decision at all. He woke up and screamed with very human lungs after a familiar nightmare.
Harry was fast to react, just as he was fast running away from that policeman. Sirius chased him begging him to stop and then turned into Padfoot.
Harry almost stumbled and he held against a tree.
Sirius turned back. "It's me, see? It's just me."
Harry didn't reply and Sirius sat down. As a dog, he liked when people became smaller to talk with him, maybe it was the same for kids.
Harry just squeezed himself harder against the tree.
"I'm— I'm a wizard, Harry." He tried a smile, which Harry didn't return. "Me and the dog, we're the same, it's called— it's called magic. Just magic. Well, it's— I'm an Animagus."
Harry looked at him, still silent, still wary. When he opened his mouth, his words were quieter than a whisper.
"Who's Harry?"
Sirius laughed but it was the wrong thing to do because Harry flinched. The laugh died on his lips. "It's you. You are Harry."
Harry shook his head. "Boy."
"What?"
"Boy."
For a very long moment, Sirius was at a loss. Harry shifted uneasily on his feet and he had to— he had to say something.
"No."
And then he coughed and swallowed and he didn't remember his throat was this dry before and he tried again.
"No. No, you're not 'boy', your name is Harry. I already knew you, I knew your parents. They gave you this name and I was there, I was there and I know."
Harry didn't run away and he took it as a good sign.
"They were wizards as well, your mum and dad. Just like me," he said and shifted a little when the cold crept into the fabrics of his rags and bit his flesh. "And you."
"Me."
Sirius nodded then the cold reached his bones. He'd almost forgotten—
"H-Harry."
He looked down at him.
"It's cold, isn't it?"
The nod came after a second.
"Yeah, it is, it is," he repeated and crawled a little towards his godson, still on all fours, still not a dog. "Come with me, we need to— we need to find a nice place, a warm and nice place."
"It's summer."
"I know, I know but see? It's cold. It's very very cold. Come with me. Please."
In the end, he couldn't wait anymore and turned into Padfoot. It was just his fortune that Harry trusted the dog enough to follow him without words.
They got deeper into the woods, in a place that not even the moon could reach and where the cold wasn't the deadly cold but a wet and muddy one.
He changed back and Harry retreated a bit.
"No, no, it's me again, don't worry. I won't hurt you," Sirius said and then, carefully, sat down. "Do you want— do you want to come here? You don't have to, you can just— just stay there, yeah."
That's what Harry did. Staying there, eyes fixed on him and stance ready to run.
Sirius smiled. "You look thoughtful, what happens?"
Harry didn't move his stance or his look. "I'm Harry," he said. "I'm Harry, you're a dog but you're a man, it's summer but it's cold. Am I dreaming?"
"You're not." Sirius's smile got wider. "My name is Sirius but you can call me Uncle, Uncle Sirius. And— and when I'm a dog I usually go by Padfoot. But Uncle is good, Uncle is nice. You can call me Uncle."
Harry looked at him dubious. "Uncle?"
"Yeah."
There was another moment of silence. Another long, wary silence. Then Harry even more slowly than Sirius sat down.
Sirius did remember something about eye contact and wild animals. Harry, with a mess instead of hair and his dirty and ripped shirt, seemed indeed a wild animal. So he looked away and cleared his throat.
"Tomorrow. Tomorrow we're going to travel a bit. I'll take you to a forest, a very nice forest. Do you know— do you know what camping means?" He glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. "It's when you go into the woods and— and then we can do picnics and sleep under the stars and—"
"Forests or woods?"
Sirius almost bit his tongue. "What?"
"Camping is when you go into forests or woods?"
Sirius smiled and looked at his godson again, this time for longer. "Both. I think it's both."
He was still looking at him when Harry nodded. "Camping," he said and then, for the first time, felt safe enough to blink.
And then to sleep.
***
With hindsight, they said, with hindsight a lot of things would be different.
Sirius wasn't so sure. His sight as a dog was never so good and he had yet to learn how to stop punching his head until his thoughts no longer recognized each other.
They started a manhunt.
He was able to find some magical newspapers even in the muggle world but even the muggle world found what they were able to about him.
Mass murderer kidnaps a child, wrote The Surrey Press. Britain's biggest manhunt: wanted of the century, said the Prophet.
Even the Gringotts — the neutral, undiscussed goblin domain — closed all his vaults.
(He should have taken some gold before. He should have never stolen Harry from his house. They should have never called him boy.)
But he was never one for sight and he failed Divination two times.
***
"U-uncle?"
"Yeah, pup?"
Sirius stopped cleaning the rabbit and turned to Harry, who was standing just next to a mess of mud.
"This is you, this is the mo-tor-bike you had and this is me." His eyes jumped from him to his work a pair of times. "I'd like to see it one day, the motorbike."
Sirius laughed. He learned that it was okay to laugh if it wasn't too high.
"Of course, pup, you'll see it. No, you'll ride it. I can already tell you'll be a talent on a motorbike just as on a broom." He leaned toward him like he was telling him a secret that no one — not even the trees — could listen. "You know, your dad was incredible on a broom."
Sometimes when he looked at Harry — stinky, little Harry playing with mud and sticks, his clothes brownish, the last river passed two weeks ago — Sirius wondered what he was doing, if it was the right thing.
Sometimes he wondered if Harry would hate him.
For all summer they wandered in the woods running away from frozen fingers, finding shelter under the sky or, at the occasional rain, among stones and foliage.
It was nice but nice never lasted with Sirius.
August was not even over when the September wind reached them. From there it only got worse.
He had to go into muggle towns to steal supplies and warm clothes. He attracted the attention of other police. They spent long, cold nights curled up in each other. When the storms came there was no shelter. The branches snapped, and the plastic they used to cover the soil and themselves was swept away by violent gusts leaving them exposed.
For months he couldn't tell if the cold was of the right or wrong kind, but the worst thing was that it didn't matter. Both could've killed them.
Then the winter ended and spring found them weak and sick.
Their bones didn't seem to shed the cold even when the cold passed, even when the days grew longer and food became easier to hunt. Harry was always tired and Sirius always feverish. But spring was spring and therefore it changed. It mellowed, the weather became milder and the sun hotter. They spent whole days lying in the sun on the beds of countryside and prairies.
It was nice again.
"I like being a wizard."
"Really?"
"Yes, I can travel and see birds and play with flowers." Harry's voice was soft and sleepy. "I like being a wizard."
Sirius hadn't the heart to tell him that this wasn't being a wizard but a tramp.
They were both in a patch of sunshine in the undergrowth, eyes closed, hands almost touching each other. He didn't feel too terrible in these moments.
“Are you sad, Uncle?”
"What?" Sirius opened his eyes and turned to him. "No. No, I’m not.”
Harry's brow was furrowed. "Okay."
Sirius cleared his throat. “Are you sad, Harry? I mean, do you like staying with me or do I make you sad?"
There was a pause, then—
"I like the forests. I don't like when you leave me."
Sirius' heart constricted. "I'll take you to the town next time, I promise you. First I need something very very important."
"What is it?"
"You're a curious pup, are you?" Sirius laughed but his heart was still trying to choke his throat for oxygen so it got crippled. "I need a wand."
***
Finding a wand was harder than he thought.
He couldn't just buy one from Ollivander, could he now? He was not even in that part of London anymore, he was probably somewhere in Cornwall.
It took them two months to find the most suitable place to rob.
Sirius usually was cautious around magical towns and preferred to avoid them; a lot of things could have gone bad in a place where everyone had wands except him. Also, dementors frequented the wizarding world more than its muggle counterpart and it was never a good choice to purposely put themselves at risk.
But the wand did become a necessity. They couldn't go any further without one and that winter demonstrated it.
The town they chose was rather small and had an old ragged store that sold robes, dragon skin purses and broken wands. It displayed the latter in a little cart outside and one day, just after a few minutes since the opening, Sirius as Padfoot jumped on the cart, crashed it to the ground and stole a bunch of them taking advantage of the screams and the confusion.
He ran back into the woods as flying spells scattered in the bush behind him.
Only when he got into a deep clearing in the forest, after deceiving his traces a pair of times, he changed back.
"Do you have them?", asked a high-pitched voice from some bushes.
Sirius nodded. "Yeah, pup, you can come out."
There was a rustle of leaves then his godson appeared. These days, he looked more like some forest creature than a child, his hair always full of leaves and his face dirt-smeared. He eyed curiously at the wands as Sirius tossed them to the ground.
"Do you need five?"
"No. If everything goes well I'll just need one."
"What are you going to do with the others?"
Sirius shrugged and threw away the one that was split in half. He didn't know if it was already like this or if he broke it in his mouth during the hasty escape, but ifs were futile in this moment. He wasn't very eager to repeat the whole 'rob and run' experience.
Harry was braver than him though and didn't hesitate to take a wand— and then another and another.
"You're probably too young for one yet," said Sirius.
Harry puffed out his cheeks and Sirius had to hold back a smile; he was happy that his godson had finally started warming up around him.
"But I'm not a child anymore. I jumped on that tree yesterday!"
"It's very big indeed. You'll let me see after this, alright?"
Harry deflated. "Alright."
The first two wands didn't work but the third and the fourth did. The darker one seemed better suited for bursts of magic but it didn't listen to him a lot, while the light brown seemed pretty ok with everything except that it was slow and less reactive, as he had a stick of sorts in his hand instead of a wand. None of both was a perfect match but Sirius couldn't allow himself to be prickly. In the end, he took both and put them in his pocket, while conserving the two useless ones in his bag.
"You're taking all of them?" Harry asked.
"Yes. Just these work for me but I'm keeping the others for you too," he said patting Harry on his shoulder. He didn't even flinch this time. "Maybe one day they will work, who knows."
Harry's face settled in resolution. "They will."
"I've no doubt," Sirius laughed and then he slung the bag over his shoulder. "But now we need to run, are you ready?"
"Yes!"
With the wands, everything changed.
Their hunts were easier, their dinners weren't nearly as raw or burned as before, creating shelters was almost a game and Harry enjoyed decorating them with flowers and funny-shaped leaves. Charms like the warming ones, Reparo and Scourgify became some of their everyday must. For the first time in months, they rediscovered the true colours of their clothes under layers and layers of dirt and, while using Scourgify on themselves too many times made their skin prickly and itchy, it certainly helped them when they went weeks without any river.
The wands were also everything Harry could talk about. He tried them almost every day, hoping for a little spark or whatever, but they were always still in his hands.
"You're too young, Harry," Sirius repeated almost daily now. "There's a reason all magical children pick their wands at eleven."
"Or maybe none of them is a match for me." Harry jumped and hung on a tree branch. "Maybe we need to steal more!"
Sirius shivered and waved his wand to chase away any flying leaves from their dinner. "It's too dangerous."
Harry cursed something he must have learned from him and Sirius smiled.
"You know, having a stolen wand is not the same as having one perfect for yourself. It's— it's different."
"Yeah, yeah, it's the wand who chooses the wizard and blah blah blah." There was another ruffle in the leaves as Harry jumped down, sat cross-legged next to Sirius, and gave him the most unimpressed look a seven-year-old could manage.
Sirius laughed and handed him the rabbit soup. "One day you'll see."
"Yeah, as if, I just need to pickpocket a hundred wizards before," snorted his godson.
Sirius' smile softened. "You'll see, I promise you. It's a very magical moment when you find your wand, I won't let you miss it for any reason at all."
"You had one before," said Harry and it wasn't a question but Sirius nodded anyway. His godson looked down at his soup. "How was it?"
"It was— it was made of spruce. It was a bit crooked here, see, in the end. My brother used to tell me that he was going to steal my dragon heartstring core." He smiled softly at the memory. "I told him I'd steal his unicorn hair."
Harry frowned more at his soup. "Mine will be a dragon heartstring too," he said with conviction.
And sometimes he felt avid for not wanting this away.