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“What am I going to do with you?” Harry wondered aloud, standing on the porch of Grimmauld Place.
He had apparated to the front step, unwilling to apparate inside lest Yaxley had managed to gain entrance during the war and left behind some nasty surprises. Harry hadn’t been back here since he, Ron, and Hermione had been forced to abandon the hideout during the war. He hadn’t intended on returning, truth be told, but he knew he couldn’t continue hanging around Hogwarts like a stray ghost.
It had been one thing when he and the others had stayed behind after the final battle to aid in the repair of the school. But now, a month after the battle, Harry couldn’t justify the kindness of the headmistress any longer. Neither could he simply crash on his friends’ couches forever. Mrs. Weasley had offered him room, but Harry hadn’t wanted to intrude on the Weasley family’s grief.
And so here he was. It all seemed to go back to Grimmauld Place: this house that housed the Order once, that had seen darkness and light, grief and hope. Harry opened the door.
Nothing jumped out at him. The space was dusty, uninhabited.
Even as he walked through the corridor carefully, Harry gave a breath of relief that the Death Eaters hadn’t managed to get through the house’s defenses.
Belatedly, he realized that this meant that maybe he and his friends didn’t have to spend half the war in a tent, but, well.
They’d made it through in the end. Voldemort was gone, even if a lot of good people had gone with him. This was the after -- all Harry had to do was figure out what to do with it.
He started with dusting, since that seemed to be the most important thing that needed to happen. As it was, the air was barely breathable in the house. He remembered the times he would dust at the Dursley’s, anger inside his chest those times, but it was different when it was his own home, where he welcomed himself inside. And he remembered being here with Sirius the summer before his fifth year, all of the organizing they had done.
“All went to waste,” Harry grumbled, looking at the curtains. There was something moving inside them. He would put money on the doxies having returned.
There was something like grief in his chest as he watched the curtain flutter. That was the problem with Grimmauld Place -- it never let you let go of the past. It was steeped in the past like nothing else, never allowing the future to stand on its own.
And always, it reminded Harry of Sirius. Who else?
At least when he had been here during the war, he had been here with his friends. Now, with no distractions, Harry’s mind lingered on his time here with Sirius. On the way they celebrated one Christmas here together, fraught as it was with Mr. Weasley’s injury and the war and the secrets the Order kept from Harry.
Harry touched his hand against the door frame to the living room, then crossed to the tapestry that took up the greater part of the far wall.
It was a beautiful, sprawling family tree -- but for what? In another generation, the Blacks would be forgotten to history. And maybe that was for the best, considering Bellatrix, but so too was there Regulus and Narcissa and Sirius. Sirius, the very best of the lot. Sirius, whose name was gone from the tapestry.
“Reparo,” Harry said, tapping his wand against the fabric.
The threads quivered as though attempting to repair themselves, but instead returned to hang loosely.
“Reparo,” Harry tried again. No luck.
There was a display case next to the tapestry. The items on display were long gone -- either in the trash or in Mundungus’ sticky fingers. Harry didn’t care either way; if Sirius hadn’t wanted the stuff, then neither did Harry.
But the bottom part of the cabinet was opaque, with two small wooden drawers. The top one had a mess of papers, two forks, and one of Fred and George’s prank items. The bottom one had what Harry was searching for -- several spools of thread and a needle.
Harry felt foolish bringing the needle to the tapestry. He was no artist. He knew how to mend socks, having learned under Petunia’s orders if not her instruction, but this was rather more of an effort.
And yet, as he neared the tapestry, it seemed as though the magic of the tapestry would guide his hand. There was nothing Harry needed to do except lean in and allow himself to be guided.
He started with Sirius. He intended to end there too, patching together the fabric until there was no sign that Sirius had ever been blasted off, but there was Andromeda, too. She wouldn’t care, but Harry could hardly leave her off.
He continued from there, filling in each burned out spot. Harry tried not to think to hard about it, lest he linger on the fact that he didn’t know why and how the names came to him as they did. All he knew was that they belonged here.
He added several small branches to the family tree next, all fading out once the Black name was lost. A few squibs here and there. One squib branch ran particularly long, but ended a few decades ago.
The tapestry’s magic was gentle, but firm. It continued to guide Harry’s hand until the tapestry was in proper shape. A complete version of the past, not the one that Walburga Black and others tried to present to the world.
When he was done, Harry took a step back and looked his fill. The strength of the family, the tragedy of it, spanning centuries. It was beautiful, terrible. It was something, and then it was gone.
There was some sherry in the kitchen. Harry wasn’t a fan, but he poured a glass anyway and raised it to the tapestry.
“To the Black family. You were mad, utterly mad. I’d do anything to get you back,” Harry murmured, thinking of just one Black in particular.
He touched his fingers to Sirius’ name.
The magic of the tapestry tingled at his fingers.
Anything? asked the tapestry.
Harry swallowed. There was a lesson, wasn’t there, that he should have learned? About talking objects with opaque ambitions? About not trusting the words of anyone whose brain you couldn’t see? Surely after a year of hunting Tom Riddle’s horcruxes, Harry wouldn’t be so stupid. Surely he had learned something. Surely it wasn’t that all one had to say was Sirius and Harry would be brought low.
Harry bit his bottom lip, hard. The pain didn’t induce any clarity of thought, any decision to be a sane, rational man.
“Anything,” he said, firmly, to the tapestry.
The magic of the tapestry pulsed once, then dissipated into the air, leaving behind only the certainty that the family tree could not end there. That it must expand under Harry’s watchful eye.
There was a sound, then, of moving stone. Harry looked back behind himself, but couldn’t see anything. With one last furtive look at the tapestry, Harry looked around Grimmauld Place for the source of the noise. He found it on the lowest level: a side door to the kitchen, heavy dark wood that led down below into a stone corridor. Helpfully, the torches on the wall lit up when Harry stepped forward.
Truth be told, Harry didn’t even consider not going down into the creepy passage. It wasn’t even an avenue of thought for him. There was a reason or two that the hat shoved him into Gryffindor, and it wasn’t just because he pleaded to avoid Slytherin.
Step by step, the passage led him deeper down. Harry continued walking despite the occasional reservation that came to him in Hermione’s voice. She was often the voice of reason in his thoughts. And, as in reality, Harry didn’t always listen, knowing that she would love him even if he continued to make his own way.
It was cold when he reached the end, opening up into a grand old underground mausoleum. At this, Harry did pause, hand on his wand. It wasn’t quite likely that there would be inferi here, but... well, the Blacks had been the dark magic sort, hadn’t they?
Anything, echoed in his head. It wasn’t in Hermione’s voice.
Harry stepped forward.
He glanced down at the name plates on the coffins as the passed. He recognized each from the tapestry.
He hadn’t actively memorized the names, but the family tree was burned into his mind like nothing else. He could recall the exact relation of each member, the numbers of each generation, the birth dates and death dates. With a stangled sound, Harry wondered if Sirius had needed to do a similar memorization in his childhood. It seemed like something Walburga and Orion would be into.
He could say that, now, having a faint impression of the personalities of each member on that family tree. Walburga was fire and ice -- cold one moment, passionate the next, though only in the privacy of the family. Orion was a proud oak of a man, worse than Walburga in some ways, but less effective, too. They hadn’t been good parents to their children. Not just because of the abuse but -- because they and their cousins raised the last generations of Blacks. Because their children didn’t live and prosper. That was the tapestry talking, Harry realized.
“There’s worse things than prospering, when it comes to a family like this,” Harry said aloud, rolling his eyes. He cared about Sirius, and Regulus wasn’t bad too, but the rest of the family? They could burn.
The tapestry wasn’t sentient enough to scold him, but there was something of a grumble to its magic anyway as it followed him.
Harry searched for one nameplate in particular. He skipped everyone else, from the bad to the ugly to the misguided, until he found him. Sirius Black.
“I’ll make sure the family line continues this time around,” Harry said, closing his eyes. “I swear it.”
He could feel the magic of the tapestry all around him.
Please, Harry thought, and he opened the coffin.
There was no skeleton inside, no dust or ash. Only a man who looked like he was sleeping. He wore the same robes he died in. His hands rested on his chest, intertwined.
Harry exhaled roughly, his own hands shaking.
There was a fairy tale in all of this, wasn’t it? A little more than a vow to the tapestry. An assurance that he was all in, not because of his grief, which would fade as soon as Sirius opened his eyes, but because of his love, which would never do the same. This love had settled into Harry’s chest years ago, solid and permanent. Just like the vow that was now settled next to it.
He left his eyes open as he pressed his lips to Sirius’. He lingered there after the kiss, unwilling to pull away completely. “Sirius.”
And the man inside the coffin opened his eyes. “Harry.”
“Welcome back,” Harry said, and he pulled him out and into his arms.