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Harry is upstairs putting James to bed when he hears it, the unmistakable crack of Apparition. His heart jams in his throat, and though they’re ten years out from the war, those old instincts never truly left him. He has his wand in his hand and he’s creeping down the stairs before he even thinks about it, placing his feet carefully to muffle the sound, avoiding the steps he knows will creak.
No one can Apparate inside Grimmauld Place. No one who the house doesn’t belong to, that is, and that’s been Harry for the past twelve years.
There’s someone in the library. Harry hears a muffled curse, and something hits the floor with a thud. Whoever is in there, they aren’t concerned about being overheard. Harry raises his wand, reaches for the handle--
The door bangs open, and Sirius Black comes barreling out.
They both freeze. Harry can only gape, knowing in the back of his mind that if this had been a true attack, if this had been a Death Eater, he would be dead right now. Mad-Eye Moody, Merlin rest his soul, would have flayed Harry alive if he’d witnessed Harry hesitate like this when facing an opponent.
“Sirius.” Harry’s voice comes out strained and cracked and wrong. This can’t be Sirius, Sirius has been dead and gone for twelve years, for far longer than Harry had known him.
Sirius has his wand pointed at Harry’s heart; Harry’s doing the same to him. Neither of them move. Harry’s not even sure that they’re breathing.
“You’re dead.” Sirius’s voice is flat and hollow, and it sends a chill down Harry’s spine.
“So are you.”
“I watched you die.”
“I watched you die.” This is ridiculous. “What’s your Animagus form?”
“A black dog, What’s your Patronus?”
“A stag. What did you make me swear never to tell Moony that summer when the Order was here at Grimmauld?”
Sirius’s lips twitch, though his wand never wavers. “That I let you share a cigarette and a glass of firewhiskey with me one night after everyone else had gone to bed.”
Harry lowers his wand. After a beat, Sirius does the same. Harry doesn’t know what to do, what to think.
“How did you Apparate in here?”
“This is my house.”
“No, it’s not,” Harry says. “You gave it to me. Twelve years ago.”
“You died twelve years ago.”
“I’m calling Hermione,” Harry says.
“She’s dead, too,” Sirius mutters, but he follows Harry to the nearest fireplace.
Soon, not only is Hermione in his house, but so are Kingsley Shacklebolt and a squad of Aurors. Hermione had sent Ron to fetch Ginny from their parents’ house, and the two of them come tumbling through the fireplace as the Aurors perform a series of tests on Sirius. Ginny goes immediately to Harry and grips his hand, and he leans into her, grateful for her quiet strength.
Someone has lit all the sconces on the wall, and the proper light allows Harry to take in Sirius for the first time. He’s a good deal older than the last time Harry saw him, with liberal streaks of grey in his long dark hair and permanent lines on his face. His grey eyes are piercing--well, eye, as Harry notices with a jolt that his left eye is clouded over and sightless.
“It’s him,” Shacklebolt tells Harry grimly. “As far as we can tell, at least. There’s no Glamour, and it’s not Polyjuice. Where did you say he came from?”
So Harry directs them to the library, which they spend half an hour prowling before one of them finds the rift. It’s a small, glowing thing, hanging in the air near a dark and cold fireplace. It’s ragged, like a crack in the wall, but it pulses like a living thing. More tests are performed. Words are tossed around, like interdimensional and continuum and irreparable damage, and it’s up to Hermione to distill the information for them.
“This isn’t your Sirius, Harry,” Hermione tells him finally. “At least, not entirely. We think he came from somewhere else. From another world, one that’s like ours but different in some ways. Sirius, you said--you said that Harry’s dead. When did that happen?”
“June eighteenth,” Sirius says, like it haunts him the way it does Harry. Probably it does. “Twelve years ago.”
“The Department of Mysteries,” Hermione says softly. “I think our worlds were the same until that night. Here, Sirius was the one who fell through the Veil. But in his world…”
“It was me,” Harry says quietly. “I was the one who fell. Right?”
Sirius nods, a haunted look on his face. “Bellatrix hit you with a stunner. It knocked you back…”
He breaks off, unable to continue. Harry knows what he’s imagining. He sees it in his own dreams, more often than not. Even after all these years, he still dreams of the death of the father he almost had.
“What happened after that?” Hermione asks him. “Is--is Voldemort…”
“Our world fell to him,” Sirius says darkly. “Death Eaters have control of the Ministry, of Hogwarts...it’s the same with magical communities all over the world. Those of us who are left--and there aren’t many--spend most of our time in hiding or on the run. You lot, all of you, are dead. Remus and I are the only ones left from the Order.”
“It’s an accident that he ended up here,” Shacklebolt says. “But others could follow, if they discover the rift.”
And suddenly, Harry knows where this is going. If others follow Sirius through the rift, the war in his world could spill over to theirs. Voldemort could gain control of two different dimensions. They might be ten years out from the war, but Harry’s world wouldn’t survive another one.
“He has to go back,” Shacklebolt says, because of course he does. And isn’t that the story of Harry’s life? Being given something for a brief moment, something he’s wanted all his life, only for it to be snatched away. “The only way to repair the rift is to return what doesn’t belong here. If he doesn’t return, the rift never heals. It might even grow. If that happens…”
“The war they’re fighting will spill over into our world,” Harry says bitterly. “Right.”
Shacklebolt’s face softens. “I’m sorry, Harry.”
“How long?”
Shacklebolt considers him for a moment.
“I’ll send a team over in the morning to make sure the rift has sealed, and to take care of it if it hasn’t. Make sure he’s gone back over sometime before then. Fair?”
No, no, there is nothing about this that is fair, but it’s the most Harry is ever going to get. “Fair. Thank you, Minister.”
Everyone clears out, until Harry is left alone with Ginny and this almost-Sirius.
“I think I’ll go back to Mum and Dad’s for the night,” Ginny says, touching Harry’s arm, and--not for the first time--he’s immensely grateful for her. “Get him a shower and some clean clothes and food, yeah? And send him back with whatever supplies he can carry. Anything he needs. You have your mirror?”
Harry nods, abruptly incapable of speech at the mention of the mirror--the device that would have saved Sirius’s life that night, if only he’d thought to use it.
“Good. Call me if you need me.” She kisses Harry on the cheek, then does the same to Sirius, and departs.
And then, for the first time in twelve years, Harry is alone with his godfather.
“I--” he says, and then stops. Emotion clogs his throat. What can he possibly say to Sirius in the next few hours that will encompass everything he feels, everything he’s wanted to say for years and couldn’t? How can a few hours make up for the lifetime they should have had together?
“Harry,” Sirius says, opening his arms, and Harry falls into them with a choked sob. He presses his face into Sirius’s jacket and weeps. Sirius’s arms are tight around him, and his own tears fall into Harry’s hair. “Oh, Harry. It’s so good to see you.”
“I’ve missed you,” Harry manages. He knows that this isn’t really Sirius, that his Sirius is dead and gone, but it feels like Sirius. Smells like him, too, under the sweat and blood and grime.
“There’s not a day that goes by when I don’t think of you, Haz.” Sirius’s grip on him is so tight, it’s almost painful.
“How did you even end up here? Thought you’d never step foot in this house again, if you could help it.”
“You and me both,” Sirius mutters darkly. He’s still holding Harry, rubbing his back like a child, and Harry never wants to move. “I was running from some Death Eaters. They ambushed me--long story--and it’s not safe to Apparate directly to where we’ve been hiding out. We do it in jumps, see, to throw off any pursuers. Grimmauld was one of the Apparition points along the way.”
“Is that what you do?” Harry pulls back finally so he can look at Sirius. He wipes his cheeks with his sleeve. “Run from Death Eaters?”
“Usually we prefer to be the hunters, not the other way around.” Sirius grimaces. “But I was caught off-guard tonight. I’ll get them, though. I always do. It’s not going to make much of a difference in the long run, not when Voldemort’s people control the entire country, but it feels damn good to snap Death Eater necks.”
Harry must wince, because Sirius gives him an apologetic look and says, “Sorry, Harry. I’m sure you’d have preferred not knowing that your long-lost godfather is a murderer, but it’s kill or be killed in our world. That’s my life.”
“I get it,” Harry says, and he does. He’d do the same, in Sirius’s shoes. “I just hate that it has to be that way.”
“Well, on the bright side, my name’s been cleared,” Sirius says with faux cheer. “Granted, it was only cleared because Voldemort no longer wanted me falsely getting credit for betraying your parents, but I’ll take it.”
“Your name was cleared here, too,” Harry says. He adds bitterly, “After you died, of course.”
“Of course,” Sirius says. “Well, look at it this way. If our two universes exist, maybe that means there’s one out there where I got to be free and raise you.”
Sirius squeezes his shoulder, and adds, “There’s a lot I want to tell you, but I think I’ll take up your lovely wife’s offer of a shower and food?”
“Yeah, course,” Harry says. “Bathroom’s - well, you know where the bathroom is. I’ll leave some clothes for you outside the door, and then I’ll go make you something to eat.”
“No house elf for the great Harry Potter?”
Harry rolls his eyes. “ No. Not that I ever wanted one in the first place, but do you honestly think Hermione would even associate with me if I did?”
“I suppose that means Kreacher isn’t still kicking about, is he?”
“Not here,” Harry says, sobering instantly at the mention of the house elf. “I sent him to work in the kitchens at Hogwarts. I couldn’t--I couldn’t have him around. Not after what he did to you.”
Later, after Sirius has showered and changed into clean clothes, they settle on one of the couches in the parlor. Sirius balances a plate of food on his knees, and they both have glasses of firewhiskey.
“So how did you end up in this horrid place?” Sirius asks, spearing a piece of chicken on his fork and waving carelessly at the room around them. “You have access to the Black and the Potter family fortunes. Surely you can do better than this.”
“I could,” Harry admits. “But I--well, this was the only place I’d ever been that felt like home. Even Hogwarts didn’t feel that way. I think it’s because you were here, and during my fifth year I could pretend...well, I could pretend that this was home, and we were a family, and I’d never have to return to the Dursleys again. When you died, I couldn’t give this place up. I couldn’t. So we gutted the whole thing, got rid of everything that wasn’t yours, and we’ve been here ever since.”
“What do you do?”
“I teach,” Harry says. “I’m on leave right now, but yeah, I teach at Hogwarts. Defense.”
Sirius’s expression goes soft. “Oh, Remus will love to hear that.”
“It’s half because of him that I’m doing it. He was the best professor I ever had,” Harry says. “Is--is he there with you? In your world?”
“Yes. We’ve been on the run together since...well, practically since that night,” Sirius says, and his face darkens at the memory. “Grimmauld was compromised, you see, and after--after the Veil, we grabbed what we could from here and ran. We’ve never stopped.”
“How is he?” Harry asks.
“He’s alright. The moons are hard, but he’s old now for a werewolf. We’ve got this shack up north that we’ve been staying in for, oh, I suppose it’s been eight months now. It’s the longest we’ve ever stayed anywhere. It’s almost nice. But then, after Azkaban and that cave, even a shack seems like a luxury.” Sirius chews his lip. “I suppose he’s dead here, isn’t he?”
Harry nods. “He died in the final battle. Right before I defeated Voldemort. His son wasn’t even a month old.”
Sirius’s head jerks up. “Son?”
“Teddy,” Harry says. “After you died, he married your cousin. Nymphadora, I mean. She died in the final battle as well. Andromeda’s raising Teddy, and--Sirius, what are you laughing at?”
Sirius throws back his head and cackles. “Nymphadora ? Well, I suppose if he was going to go for a woman, she’d be his type. She’s a bit wild and unpredictable, our Nymphadora, isn’t she? And a Black, and we all know how he feels about Blacks.”
Harry knows he must be giving Sirius a blank look, because Sirius blinks and says, “Ah. You probably don’t know, do you?”
“Know what?”
“You’re not the only one who got married, Potter.” Sirius holds out his left hand, and Harry sees that he has a band tattooed around his ring finger. “Moony made an honest man out of me, oh, eight years ago now? We were in Bulgaria at the time.”
“I didn’t--” Harry swallows. “I didn’t even know you were together. You and Moony? All this time?”
“After your fourth year, when Dumbledore sent me to activate the Order and lie low with Remus? We rekindled things then,” Sirius says. He pokes at his food. “We were going to tell you. I promise we were. We thought--we thought we’d take you from the Dursleys, the summer after your fifth year. Bring you to stay with us at Grimmauld, just so you’d have a good summer for once. And we’d tell you then. We had it all planned out…” Sirius trails off, and a tear traces its way down his cheek. He scrubs it away.
Harry reaches out and grips his hand. “I’d have loved that. Being able to live with you...it’s all I ever wanted. I’m glad you have him, at least.”
“Don’t know what I’d do without him, to be honest,” Sirius says. “He’s the only reason I’m still here. I’d have followed you into the Veil if he hadn’t held me back.”
It’s a struggle to hold back the tears. “He held me back, too. I was going to do the same.”
“Well, thank Merlin for Moony, then,” Sirius says. “In every universe.”
He finishes off his food and reaches for the whiskey, which he drains in two swallows. Harry hands him the bottle, and he pours out another glass.
“I doubt it’ll make much difference in my world,” Sirius says finally, “but how did you defeat Voldemort?”
It’s not something Harry has recounted in a long time, so his story is long and meandering, but he eventually manages to get all the salient points across. Sirius looks faintly ill as Harry explains about the Horcruxes, and when he comes to Regulus’s role in it all, Sirius buries his head in his hands and lets out a pained moan. He doesn’t look up again until Harry finishes recounting the final battle, and when he does, his eye is red and watery.
“Merlin, Harry, I hate that you went through that,” he whispers, his voice hoarse.
“It’s over now,” Harry says. “It’s over, and I’m alright, and we’re building a better world. And maybe...maybe this information will help you in your world.”
“Yeah.” Sirius squeezes his knee and tries to sound optimistic. “Yeah, maybe it will. So, Shacklebolt’s the Minister now, is he? Remus dated him in our fifth year, you know. Merlin, I was so jealous…”
They talk for hours, filling in not only the past twelve years in their respective universes, but all that came before, too. Harry’s about to tell Sirius about taking on the mountain troll in his first year when a cry rents the air, stunning them both into silence.
“Is that--” Sirius stares at him. “Harry James!”
Harry grins. “Want to meet him?”
“Him?” Sirius looks overwhelmed. “Yes, I bloody want to meet--oh, Harry, you have a son.”
Harry grabs his arm and hauls him out of the library. He summons a bottle of formula with a flick of his wand, already warmed, and presses it into Sirius’s hand. Then they’re up the stairs, and Harry’s opening the door to the nursery, and James is wailing his head off but it’s the most beautiful sound in the world.
“Alright, love,” he murmurs, lifting James from his crib. He settles the baby in the crook of his arm, bouncing him gently. “You’re hungry, aren’t you? Is that right?”
Sirius looks absurd, this hardened soldier standing there against the soft pastels of the nursery walls. But then Harry gestures for him to sit in the rocking chair, and then he puts baby James in Sirius’s arms, and it’s all he can do not to start weeping again. This. This is all he’s ever wanted, for his godfather to meet his son, to hold him in his arms and spoil him and love on him. And Sirius is a natural with the baby, adjusting him so that he’s comfortable, guiding the nipple of the bottle to his mouth.
“He’s beautiful,” Sirius says softly. “What’s his name?”
“James,” Harry says. “James Sirius.”
Sirius’s eye wells over. “Harry.”
“I miss you.” Harry kneels before them, a hand on Sirius’s knee, the other on James’s head. “I miss you so much. I wish you could be here with us always, I wish you could see him grow, I wish--”
“I know.” Sirius’s cheeks are glistening. “Merlin, Harry, I know.”
James continues to eat, unperturbed by the emotional turmoil in the room. He stares up at Sirius, not at all bothered by this stranger holding him. One of his tiny hands curls around a button on Sirius’s jacket, holding on tight, and it’s the most precious thing Harry has ever seen.
“He doesn’t do this,” Harry says softly. “He doesn’t like being held by anyone except for me or Ginny. He cries anytime anyone else tries.”
“Well, we have an understanding, don’t we?” Sirius smiles down at the boy. “Grand-godfather to grand-godson. Oi, that’s a bit of a mouthful, isn’t it?”
Harry laughs. “I like to think you’d have been granddad, actually.”
Sirius gives him a watery smile. “I would have loved that, Harry.”
James finishes the bottle. Sirius burps him, then gets up to pace the nursery with the baby in his arms, lulling him back to sleep. Finally, when James is asleep once more, Sirius settles him back in his crib. He runs the back of a finger down James’s cheek, then leans over to kiss him gently. For a while, the silence that settles over the room is punctuated only by James’s whistling breaths. Eventually, though, Sirius’s hand finds Harry’s in the dark, and he squeezes.
“It’s time,” he murmurs, and Harry nods.
Harry finds a rucksack, and he stuffs it with as many supplies as it can carry. Food, vials of healing potions, bandages and gauze, and clothes. He’d kept all of the clothing Sirius had left behind at Grimmauld, unable to bear getting rid of it, and even wore some of Sirius’s old band t-shirts on occasion. But this Sirius can actually use the clothing, so Harry gives him as much as he can carry. Remus is about Sirius’s size--it won’t be a perfect fit, but he’ll be able to use the clothes as well.
“Here,” Harry says, handing Sirius a small stack of photographs. “Take these with you.”
Sirius glances through the pictures, his eye misty. “Harry, I can’t take your photos.”
“They’re duplicates,” Harry says. “I have the originals. Take them, please.”
The pictures are mostly of baby James, but Harry’s in a few of them as well--holding his son, feeding him, playing with him. And then Sirius comes to the last photograph in the stack, and he huffs. “Is this Remus’s boy?”
“Teddy,” Harry says, as the blue-haired ten-year-old waves at the camera. “That was from his birthday party this year.”
“Thank you, Harry.” Sirius tucks the photographs into his jacket.
“I thought you might want them. As a reminder. Look, I know--I know I’m not your Harry, but I was at one time, yeah? Before our worlds split off. And I know you’ll never be able to see me again, but I want you to know what you’re fighting for. You and Remus. You’ve got to stay alive and you’ve got to fight, because if Voldemort figures out that there’s another world out there and if he finds a way to cross over…” Harry swallows hard. "And I need you to stay alive. I need to know there's at least one universe out there where you're alive, you and Moony both. So you've got to stay safe for me, yeah?"
Sirius drags Harry in for another hug. Harry hugs him back just as fiercely, trying to commit every bit of this moment to memory. The buttons and zippers on Sirius’s jacket digging into him, Sirius’s strong arms, his fingers pressing into Harry’s back.
“I never said this to you after we were reunited,” Sirius chokes out, “but I love you, Haz. I love you like you’re my own. And I’m so goddamn sorry that I couldn’t--that I didn’t protect you. I had one lousy job and I couldn’t even do it right. Watching you fall was the worst moment of my life.”
“It wasn’t your fault,” Harry says. “Sirius, it wasn’t. I’d never blame you. I don’t blame you. It was my own fault. If I’d just stopped for a second to think, if I’d called you using the mirrors--Sirius, I got you killed. At least in your universe--well, I deserved it, didn’t I? But you never should have died here because of my own stupidity.”
Sirius grips him by the shoulders and pulls back so he can look Harry in the eye. “Don’t say that, Harry James. Do you hear me? It wasn’t your fault. You were terrified, you were in pain, and Kreacher tricked you. Tricked us all. You weren’t being stupid, Harry. You were being brave, just like your dad. I’m the one who let you down--in my universe, and apparently in this one as well. I’m so damn sorry.”
Harry closes his eyes, and Sirius gently brushes his tears away with his thumbs. “Sirius, you didn’t do anything wrong, but...I forgive you.”
Sirius makes a noise like he’s been punched. He takes Harry’s face in his hands, and Harry meets his overbright grey eye. “I forgive you, too.”
“And I never said it, either, but I love you.” Harry draws a shuddering breath. “You’re the only dad I’ve ever known.”
“Knowing you was the greatest honor of my life.” Sirius knocks their foreheads gently together. “And I’d stay if I could, Harry, to hell with what the Minister says...but I won’t put you at risk. Not again.”
“And you can’t leave Remus,” Harry says gently.
“I’ve gotten so many things wrong in my life,” Sirius says. “He’s the only thing I’ve ever done right. I can’t let him down, too.”
Harry draws back, squeezes Sirius’s arm. “Then let’s get you home to him, yeah?”
The rift in the library has grown in the hours they’ve been away. It now stretches from the floor almost to the ceiling. Sirius adjusts the strap of the rucksack and draws a deep breath. “Well. Here goes nothing, I suppose.”
He reaches out to Harry, pulls him in for one final hug. “Take care of that beautiful family of yours.”
“I will. You take care of Moony.”
“Always.” They pull apart. Sirius cups the back of Harry’s head and kisses him on the forehead. “Goodbye, Harry.”
Harry’s throat is almost too tight for speech. “Goodbye, Sirius.”
Sirius squares his shoulders, and steps through the rift. For a moment, nothing happens. The crack remains, golden and pulsing, even after Sirius has gone through. Then, as Harry watches, the crack starts to recede, growing smaller and smaller until it vanishes completely.
And then Harry is alone in the darkened library, the phantom touch of Sirius’s hands still lingering on his face. He sinks onto the nearest couch, buries his face in his hands, and cries.