A/N: Sorry guys forgot to upload, comment review and send power stones.
"Sirius — do you want to see Harry?"
After leaving the Headmaster's office, Hermione said with quiet concern, "He's been restless lately. No one has explained to him properly what happened on the day of the final."
She wanted to tell Harry the truth. Keeping it all bottled up was driving her slightly mad.
But the possibility of a fragment of Voldemort's soul residing in Harry's scar was a thought that never left her entirely, a vigilance she couldn't fully extinguish.
Just as Harry might sometimes glimpse Voldemort's thoughts, there was every possibility that Voldemort might one day glimpse Harry's in return.
She wavered because of this. She wasn't certain how much it was safe to tell Harry, or which particular secrets carried risk.
"He definitely needs an explanation," Sirius muttered, thinking it over. "Where is he now?"
"The common room, I'd imagine," Hermione said. "When I left this morning, he was playing Gobstones with Ron."
"Could you go and find him and bring him to the courtyard? I'll wait for him there," Sirius said.
Hermione felt a wave of relief.
She stood up on her toes and kissed the boy beside her on the cheek, turned around, and headed briskly toward Gryffindor Tower.
Draco watched her go with a quiet smile — and then, through slightly gritted teeth, said, "Sirius Black. Stop sending my girlfriend off on errands."
"You go a bit soft when it comes to her, don't you?" Sirius observed, with evident amusement.
"I'm entirely serious," Draco said, in a tone that suggested he was. "I don't give her orders. What gives you the right?"
"Actually — that was deliberate," Sirius said, cheerfully, watching the tension in Draco's expression with great interest. "I wanted a few words with you alone."
Draco's expression shifted. After a moment, he said, "I see. Go on."
"I want to apologise to you again." Sirius put aside his nonchalant air and said, with unusual directness, "Outside the maze, I briefly doubted the source of your information about the Death Eaters. I briefly doubted whether your intentions were genuine."
He held Draco's slightly surprised gaze. "I shouldn't have judged someone because of their background. I know better than that. In that moment, I became the kind of person I most despise."
"The most despicable kind of person..." Draco repeated the words quietly, his expression shifting again. "You mean—"
"Yes," Sirius said softly. A strange, self-deprecating smile moved across his face. "I've been on the receiving end of the same thing. For years, people questioned me because of my surname. Because of who I was born to. They assumed I was more suited to be a Death Eater."
"So that's why they locked you in Azkaban without a trial," Draco said flatly, distaste in his eyes. "Simply because of your family name."
"I suppose so. Perhaps." Sirius gave a short, humourless laugh and continued down the empty stairs.
"I've always wondered," Draco said, catching up with him. "Was it truly that bad — did even Dumbledore not speak for you?" His voice was dry. "If he could protect Professor Snape, why not you?"
"Dumbledore didn't know," Sirius said quietly. "The change of Secret-Keeper happened between the four of us. We didn't tell a fifth person."
"That's no excuse," Draco said, without softening it. "People who truly trust you don't doubt you that easily. They don't abandon you without giving you the chance to defend yourself."
"It was a time of fear," Sirius said, low. "Betrayal was everywhere. I didn't fully trust my own friends either. I suspected Remus — because he was a werewolf. I thought he might side with Greyback, that he might betray us. None of us told him about the change of Secret-Keeper."
"I dare say Remus wasn't pleased about that," Draco said, walking beside him.
"He wasn't. And for a long time after I was imprisoned, he believed I deserved it." Sirius's smile was bitter. "War has a way of drawing out the worst of us. We both became the kind of people we claimed to despise — the kind who judge others by their origins."
"You're not the only one who hates war," Draco said, something sharp-edged in his voice, "nor the only one who despises certain choices they've made."
Sirius glanced at him. A faint suspicion rose in his eyes.
A fifteen-year-old boy — however intelligent, however precociously serious — should not carry quite that particular weight in his voice. Not unless he had seen things he should not yet have seen.
Draco felt the look. He caught himself, snapped back into the present, and composed his expression.
"And after all of it?" he asked, evenly. "Are you and Remus still friends?"
"Of course we are. After Peter Pettigrew was dealt with, we found a day, had a drink, and talked it through." Sirius shook his head, then smiled, with genuine meaning this time. "What I found, in the end, is that if you want to avoid unnecessary misunderstanding — if you actually want to earn the trust you need — the best approach is to open up. Be honest. Hide less."
"Honesty," Draco said, his expression darkening slightly. "When it's safe to be honest." He looked sidelong at Sirius. "How much are you planning to honestly tell Harry, whose mind isn't safe at all?"
"Leave the Horcrux theory aside and tell him what he needs to know. Dumbledore and I have agreed to play a particular game — so that one day Voldemort—" Sirius broke off at Draco's expression. "Don't glare at me. You can glare as many times as you like and I won't change it."
He met the glare steadily and continued, "So that one day Voldemort can look through Harry's thoughts and see what we've all been working so hard to destroy."
"That's well thought through," Draco said, with some surprise. He had worried about Sirius for nothing — the man was stubborn and difficult, but he wasn't careless. "Though once Harry finds out about the deception, he'll be deeply grateful for his godfather's remarkable trust."
"I don't need the reminder," Sirius muttered, grinding his teeth. "I intend to apologise to him properly once I've got that thing out of his head—"
"With the same solemnity you've shown today?" Draco looked at Sirius's contorted face and found he was struggling not to smile.
"With exactly the same solemnity!" The corners of Sirius's mouth twitched in a way that suggested extreme discomfort.
Draco studied him for a moment. "I accept your apology," he said, at measured length.
Sirius turned to him with an expression that suggested he found the Slytherin drawl extremely irritating.
Then the irritating Slytherin immediately raised the most irritating subject available. "Sirius — do you think the Dark Lord has worked out what he accidentally created? Is he aware, at this moment, of what's sitting in Harry's forehead?"
"I don't think so. Not yet." Sirius's expression sobered. "If he had, he wouldn't be so intent on harming Harry — let alone killing him. If anything, he might try to protect him. To hide him somewhere. Or use him. Or try to work out whether he could occupy Harry's body—"
"If he realises, he might try to activate that part of his soul," Draco said, with a shudder.
The darkest possibility rose in his mind for a moment — the Dark Lord wearing Harry's face, striding through Hogwarts, Death Eaters trailing in his wake —
No. Impossible. In his previous life, Harry had been fine until the very end. The Dark Lord had never managed to possess him, not truly and not for long. Harry had been in the Room of Requirement searching for Ravenclaw's diadem when the battle began. He'd been at Gringotts before that, presumably taking the Hufflepuff cup—
Which meant that by then, Harry had already known about the Horcruxes and was actively destroying them.
Which meant Harry had not been activated.
"No problem," Draco thought, with as much certainty as he could muster. "Probably."
"Yes... we need to get Occlumency underway before any of that becomes relevant," Sirius murmured. "Dumbledore didn't offer much beyond that."
He straightened. "Though — before we get to Harry — Dumbledore made a vow to me. His wand will never be pointed at Harry."
"That's a genuine relief," Draco said, feeling something loosen in his chest that had been tight for some time.
"The remaining problem is the same as it's always been," Sirius said, frowning. "Finding a way to separate that piece of soul from Harry without destroying him in the process."
"Who doesn't want to solve that quickly?" Draco said, with a touch of weary complaint. "Hermione dragged me back through the Restricted Section yesterday looking for a method, and we still came away empty-handed."
He had thought, rather naively, that once they had evidence of the number seven, there might be a brief respite. He should have known better.
"She's a remarkable witch," Sirius said, glancing at Draco, who coloured very slightly. "I begin to understand the fascination. But that brings me to something I need to raise with you." He paused. "Have you talked to her about your parents yet?"
Draco's expression stiffened.
For the past few days, he had been quietly and methodically not thinking about this.
"You need to be clear about what's coming," Sirius said, with the direct kindness of someone who has been through worse. "When the Hogwarts Express reaches London, they're likely to come face to face. Your mother is almost certainly curious about her. You can't let her walk into that unprepared."
"I know," Draco said, flatly.
"To avoid unnecessary misunderstanding — to give her a fair chance — you need to be honest with her. That's part of why I'm sharing what happened between me and Remus today. Do you take my meaning?"
"I take it—" Draco's expression was troubled. "I simply haven't found the right moment."
"Draco." Sirius stopped walking and looked at him with an expression of uncommon seriousness. "There is no perfect moment. There never will be."
He held the boy's gaze.
"If an opportunity exists, you seize it. If it doesn't, you make one. Every second of the present will feel, looking back, like the best possible time you had — and didn't use."
Draco stood very still for a moment.
Is that how timing is supposed to work? he thought. Not a matter of waiting for the right conditions, but of acting before the conditions pass?
"Look around," Sirius said quietly.
They were standing in a corridor at Hogwarts, facing an open courtyard filled with birdsong and the warm light of a summer morning. Older students sprawled along the window seats, reading newspapers with exclamations of surprise or low, delighted laughter. Younger students chased each other along the edges of the courtyard with the unclouded joy of people who had absolutely nothing left to revise for.
"When someone has spent eleven years in a dark, lightless place," Sirius said, closing his eyes and turning his face toward the sun, "and finally walks back out — his life has less room for hesitation. There isn't enough time to be careful about everything. He has to seize what he can." He was quiet for a moment. "Every second is the best opportunity. While the summer sun is still burning — get your heat. Get some of the sweat."
A longing crossed his face, complex and unguarded, vivid in the warm light.
Sirius Black's years in Azkaban had left a mark on him that didn't always show. Draco was usually too quick to see only the surface of him: the restless brilliance, the arrogant charm, the teasing and the provocation. It was easy to overlook how much had been taken from him. Anyone who saw Sirius as he was now — vital, elegant, confident — would find it nearly impossible to connect that image to the emaciated prisoner he had once been.
They had nothing in common, those two versions of him. And yet they were the same man.
Sirius Black hid the cracks in himself very well indeed.
His face had been restored to its former beauty through sheer stubbornness of spirit. Who, looking at him now, would remember the years — who would think to hold someone accountable for the eleven years that had been taken and never returned?
In some ways, Draco thought he might understand Sirius better than most people did.
A heart that has endured tremendous damage and emerged still beating — housed in a young, outwardly vital body — does not first feel the joy of being alive again. It feels numb. Angry. Disconnected from the brightness around it.
That was how Draco had been, in the early weeks of his second life.
He had thought he would remain in that state permanently: a walking shell, full of cold hatred and nowhere to put it, carrying out a careful and loveless existence aimed at nothing beyond denying the Dark Lord his victory.
If not for the girl in the train compartment who had turned toward him with open curiosity, who had introduced herself and meant it, who had asked questions and actually listened — if not for the way she had quietly and persistently drawn him back toward something worth caring about —
Perhaps he would still be drifting in that grey, brittle existence, disconnected from the living world.
The reason Draco Malfoy had come this far — had recovered any warmth, any capacity for happiness — was simply the good fortune of Hermione Granger having turned her head in his direction at precisely the right moment.
But this remarkable Sirius Black had endured eleven years — far longer than Draco's seven — with no one to pull him back. And from the moment he walked out of Azkaban, he had refused to drift. He had engaged with the world, with Harry, with this fight, with all of it, with a vigour that had to be chosen deliberately, every day.
He was even here now, urging Draco to stop wasting time.
"Sirius—" Draco said abruptly. "I wish I'd met you sooner. If you'd said this to me earlier — there might have been fewer regrets."
How many chances had he let pass, in his previous life, through calculation and delay and the constant, exhausting business of weighing outcomes? He didn't let himself count them.
"It's not too late now," Sirius said, in a lighter tone. "Don't spend your youth talking like an old man. Seize the moment, before the list of regrets gets any longer."
He shrugged, and looked at Draco with eyes that weren't quite as cold as the Black family eyes usually were. "And you know — even if things with your parents go badly, even if the worst happens — the doors of Grimmauld Place will always be open. Harry would be glad to have you. Don't worry about expenses."
Draco stared at him.
How could Sirius Black be willing to extend that kind of offer to a Malfoy?
He'd suspected Draco's intentions only days ago. And now this?
"If this is a continuation of your apology," Draco said, stiffening slightly, "I don't require elaborate gestures—"
"It isn't an apology. It isn't charity." Sirius said, with a directness that left no room for argument. "It's the passing on of a kindness."
Draco frowned. "I don't follow."
"When I left home," Sirius said, with an expression that had gone somewhere quieter, "my uncle Alphard Black supported me."
"I've never heard of him."
"He was the second son of Pollux Black and Irma Crabbe," Sirius said, with a particular kind of gentleness. "You wouldn't know him. You can't find his name on the family tapestry anymore. He was burned off when he helped me — same as I was, eventually."
"Should I express regret about that?" Draco said, with a wryness he hoped hid the unease moving through him.
"We don't regret it, particularly," Sirius said, with the particular arrogance of someone who had made peace with an enormous loss. "We're both glad to be off that tapestry." He glanced at the stubborn boy beside him. "I valued that kindness. And as your distant uncle — I'm willing to pass it on, if you ever want it."
"I have no intention of following in your footsteps and becoming another scorched hole in the Black family tapestry, dear uncle," Draco said, with great dignity, affecting a sudden deep interest in a rare jay that had landed on the windowsill.
He would not admit that his eyes had gone slightly warm.
"This is the first time you've called me that!" Sirius said, with disproportionate delight. "Are you moved by my extraordinary generosity? Nephew?"
"Absolutely not," Draco said, with feeling, rolling his eyes. "Sirius Black, do not push your luck. I can manage my own affairs. I don't need anyone's pity or their money—"
But under the momentary warmth, there was something harder.
He realised, with sudden clarity, that he could not picture it — the possibility of breaking with his parents. The possibility of his name becoming a blank space on the tapestry. Sirius was pulling away the fig leaf, presenting the scenario as though it were something that could actually happen.
That was why it unsettled him so profoundly.
He didn't want to picture it.
Sirius looked at him and thought, privately, that the boy looked utterly foolish.
"Slytherins never quite know how to accept kindness gracefully, do they," he said to Draco.
"Gryffindors never quite know how to mind their own business," Draco replied.
The two of them glared at each other in the corridor, entirely matched in stubbornness.
At that moment, a group of girls passed, dissolving into loud, bright laughter.
The sound broke the tension between them. Their expressions softened by a fraction. They both turned, by unspoken agreement, to look out the window at the summer courtyard — indifferent, stubborn, jointly committed to performing the role of very decorative corridor statues — until the girls had passed, still looking back over their shoulders with expressions of disappointment.
Sirius glanced at Draco's set, sullen face and said, more quietly, "You're very Black, you know. Just as arrogant. Just as proud. Just as impossible to reason with."
"You're the same," Draco muttered. "And you won't change that name."
"No," Sirius said, with a faint smile. "I won't. Because I think it's right not to."
Draco looked at him for a moment. His face was open — genuinely, entirely open. No performance. No calculation.
He sensed no ill intent. He sensed only someone doing what he thought was right, saying it plainly and fearlessly, without much concern for whether it would be well received.
He seemed to be a trustworthy person.
Sirius Black was like a star — almost blinding in his brightness, almost insufferable in his pride, almost alarming in his passion. But there was something entirely genuine about him that made it impossible to simply ignore him.
After a moment, Draco spoke carefully.
"Listen. I'm not certain how far things will go with my parents, and I hope it doesn't come to something as drastic as severing ties — I find that possibility genuinely difficult to contemplate. That's partly why I can't easily accept your offer. Accepting it would be... acknowledging that it might actually happen."
"I understand," Sirius said, with something softer in his eyes.
"But I do have a request," Draco continued. "It concerns Remus's Wolfsbane Potion. I'm perfectly willing to continue brewing it during the holidays — but if I find myself unable to communicate with the outside world, for whatever reason..." He paused. "I would want to know that Hermione could also brew it. The difficulty being that complex potions often require magic, and she can't use magic freely at home."
"I can invite her to Grimmauld Place for a while," Sirius said immediately. "We have all the equipment and ingredients she'd need. And Draco — thank Remus yourself. He's your employee, apparently."
"Exactly," Draco said, with some heat.
Sirius chuckled.
"Shouldn't you be thanking Hermione Granger, then?"
"What you're saying is becoming increasingly irrational," Draco said, glancing sideways at him.
"Why not just say so outright?" Sirius asked, with great interest.
"Say what?" Draco said, distantly, eyes on the far end of the corridor.
Sirius's amusement was growing visibly. "You want me to invite Hermione to stay so she can practise magic properly without the constraints of living among Muggles, don't you? The Wolfsbane is beside the point."
"We were discussing Wolfsbane," Draco said, a little stiffly.
"We were not," Sirius said, his laughter deepening. "A proud person like you — someone who refused funding and argued with me until he was nearly pink in the face — wouldn't lower himself to ask for anything unless it truly mattered to him. The fact that you asked at all tells me everything. What you actually care about isn't the potion."
He looked at those pale grey eyes, which were doing their best to remain opaque, and said with quiet certainty, "What you care about is Hermione Granger."
Draco opened his mouth and found nothing to say.
Sirius was right. He was more concerned about Hermione than about the Wolfsbane.
He was worried about her summer. According to the Decree for the Reasonable Restriction of Underage Sorcery, Hermione wouldn't be able to cast spells once she returned to a Muggle household. He had never had cause to think about that particular restriction before — at Hogwarts or at Malfoy Manor, magic was simply always available. The restriction existed to prevent underage wizards from performing obvious magic around Muggles, not to create a genuine hardship for those who had grown up without access to a freely magical environment.
He had only begun to grasp what that actually meant when Hermione had mentioned it, once or twice, in passing. A whole summer without the ability to practise. Without the ability to review spells she'd learned or try new ones. Without the simple freedom of pointing her wand and making something happen.
He couldn't have endured a single day of it.
For Hermione — who loved magic with a thoroughness he had rarely seen even among the most dedicated wizarding students — it must feel like having her wings clipped.
"Why not let her stay at the Weasleys'?" Sirius asked.
"Mrs. Weasley doesn't particularly like me," Draco said briefly. "I'd rather Hermione weren't caught in the middle of that."
He thought, but did not say, that ever since Molly Weasley had witnessed Hermione stand up from a table full of Weasleys and sit down beside him — accepting food from his fork without the slightest self-consciousness — there was probably a coolness in the welcome that hadn't been there before. Hermione might not even notice it immediately. But it would be there.
"You've thought through all of this quite carefully," Sirius said, with a note of surprise. "Rather more carefully than I would have expected. Aren't you being somewhat overprotective?"
"Is it wrong," Draco said stubbornly, "to want her to be as comfortable as possible, while it's still in my power to arrange it?"
"No," Sirius said. "But you can't protect her from everything. This is not your battle alone — it's both of yours. She needs to know what she's fighting."
"Perhaps. But I want her to grow into that knowledge at her own pace," Draco said softly, eyes fixed on the far end of the corridor. "I don't want to push her head down before she's ready."
At that moment, the girl herself appeared at the far end of the corridor, moving at her characteristic brisk pace, her eyes fixed on Draco with the particular focus she reserved for people she was glad to see. Beside her, Harry was saying something, which she was clearly only half-attending to, and he had learnt by now not to take it personally.
Harry stopped talking and broke into a run toward his godfather. The fine lines of tension that had settled around his face since the night of the final — lines that had no business being on a fourteen-year-old's face — smoothed out entirely.
"Sirius! I thought I wouldn't see you until the holidays!"
"I have some things to tell you. Dumbledore thought it better if it came from me," Sirius said warmly, drawing his godson in. "Walk with me? Down by the Black Lake, perhaps."
Draco stopped listening.
His attention had gone entirely to Hermione.
She had been intercepted by a small Gryffindor boy — a younger student who looked quite a lot like a miniature Colin Creevey — who had pressed a newspaper into her hands with anxious eagerness.
She glanced at it. Her lips parted slightly in surprise. Then she looked up at him and smiled — warm, genuine, encouraging — and said something that made the boy nod rapidly, his face lighting up.
Hermione Granger was unfailingly a source of warmth.
There seemed to be nothing in the world she faced without grace, and no one she couldn't treat with kindness.
Could she do the same with his parents? With their arrogance and their narrow, intractable beliefs?
She wasn't afraid of the Dark Lord. She called him "that unfortunate man" and meant it.
Perhaps — Draco felt a faint, tentative thread of something that might have been hope.
But he was still afraid. He didn't want any of this to damage what they had. He didn't want anything to dim that smile.
"Draco," Sirius said, from beside him, "I know you want her protected. But roses that have survived storms grow stronger." He rested a hand briefly on his shoulder. "At the very least — prepare her. While there's still time."
"Yes," Draco said, without meaning to.
"Seize the moment, Draco Malfoy," Sirius said, with the cheerful authority of someone who has learned this lesson at very high cost. "Before misunderstandings take root. While there's still time."
And then, with a lazy and entirely characteristic smile, he stepped into the bright courtyard with his delighted godson, and let the summer sun do what summer sun does.