Drowsy Dialogues
by Morgan D.

Harry Potter woke up that morning to the sound of his cousin dragging his feet on the corridor floor, and he sighed sadly. Dudley was already up, lazily making his way to the stairs. That meant Aunt Petunia and Uncle Vernon were up too, downstairs in the kitchen, and Harry hadn't heard them pass by his door. That was so sad.

Because for the last three weeks Harry had certainly grown very fond of waking up to the sounds of his uncle and aunt walking past his bedroom and not banging on his door, not yelling at him and not ordering him to get up and make breakfast. He wished he had woken up sooner, so he could have not heard any of it that morning too.

After all, Harry's present situation was so bizarre as to feel positively dreamlike, and he found himself looking for confirmations that he was really there, awake, and that the Dursleys were not making his being there and awake a living hell.

From the kitchen, he heard the clatter of pots and pans as his aunt prepared some poorly nourishing meal for her husband and son, his uncle's muffled groans about abnormal freaks that would indolently stay in bed while decent people were earning the food on their table, and his cousin's annoyed moans about breakfast not being ready yet. Harry let the familiar noises drift to the back of his mind as he looked around his room under the daring light of the sunbeams shining through the blinds.

It was still the space that was once called 'Dudley's second bedroom'. But any remaining sign of the blond boy's presence in the room seemed to have been scraped away with steel wool. All the broken toys were gone — some back to Dudley's closet, most straight to the dump — and all the old, battered furniture had been replaced. A new wardrobe covered the wall beside the doorframe completely, side to side, floor to ceiling. The left side was crowded with Muggle-style clothes: shirts, tee shirts, jeans, trousers, shorts, coats, overcoats, belts, scarves, gloves, dozens of socks, numerous kinds of shoes, all perfectly fitting, all new and clean and comfortable. The racks in the right side displayed the robes and garments he would wear amidst the wizarding community — school uniforms, dress-robes, daily robes, cloaks, hats, his Quidditch gear, the jumpers made by Mrs Weasley —, plus his pyjamas and underwear. Harry hadn't yet had occasion to wear half of the stuff inside the wardrobe, and the winter attire would have to wait months until they could be useful, but he felt a pleasant warmth inside him knowing they were there if he needed them.

Along the opposing wall was Harry's new bed: not as large as the one he used at Hogwarts — since the bedroom was relatively small —, but beautifully sculpted in oak and curtained with soft creamy velvet. Near the unbarred window was Hedwig's cedar-carved perch, plus her food tray and water basin, the glossy white porcelain fitting both her elegance and noble stance.

Harry's school trunk, where his precious Firebolt slept cushioned by the Invisibility Cloak, was stationed beside a writing desk with playful drawers that would trade places whenever they thought Harry wasn't looking, and giggle as he would open them one by one until he could find whatever he was looking for. The chair that accompanied the desk was dangerously comfortable, as it would often tempt him into taking a nap when he should be doing his homework.

The bookshelves contained the only reminder of the room's dark past: the several books Dudley had been presented but had never opened in his whole life. They lay peacefully beside Harry's magical counterparts, which would every now and then produce some garbled noises or cause the shelves to quiver, but for the most part were a lot less vivacious than the desk drawers. Poor Monster Book of Monsters was the big exception, as Harry still had to keep it tightly tied up with a leather cord so it wouldn't bite the other books.

Hovering over the desk was a reproduction of the twelfth-century painting Günther der Gewalttätige ist der Gewinner showing a match of Stichstock, one of the ancestors of Quidditch. In the ceiling, twenty-six stickers from the World's Best Quidditch Collection played tirelessly — and rather violently since, even after gaining seven pounds just on Gwen Sirenn's Marzipan Bonbons, Harry hadn't yet found a sticker of Cyprian Youdle, the only referee included in the collection. On the floor, a rather fluffy green carpet that smelled vaguely of dew-moistened grass covered the loose floorboard where he now kept the only thing he still feared to be seen by his family: his dabbling, impulsive, juvenile attempts at poetry.

All in all, it wasn't paradise. If Harry were honest with himself, it wasn't even as homelike as Hogwarts, even if it was cosier than the Gryffindor room he shared with his classmates. But it was a serious improvement, no doubt about it; it was a tremendous improvement from last summer and all the summers before that.

The boy stretched, got out of bed and drew the blinds open. The morning sunlight burst in enthusiastically, making him blink, and causing the carpet to sigh with contentment. A couple of neighbours were already tending to their gardens, and the barrister that lived down in Magnolia Crescent was jogging beside his Alsatian dog.

Harry's stomach roared and he smiled, knowing he wouldn't need to fight to have breakfast this morning. Well, he would have to put some effort into getting the password that would give him free access to the kitchen and permission to use whatever he found there to prepare whatever he wanted to eat. But that was not an unpleasant task. Usually, it was quite amusing, as a matter of fact.

His smile growing broader, he put on his slippers and went out the bedroom, not bothering to change from his pyjamas or to be silent as he opened the door and walked up the corridor. The sounds from the kitchen fell mute for a moment as Harry's door screeched open, returning to their usual volume soon afterwards.

The boy paid no attention to that, nor did he make any movement toward the stairs, toward his uncle's muttering, his aunt's pot-clattering and his cousin's whinging. Instead, he made his way to the spare bedroom. And as he got to the door, Harry bit his lip hard and covered it with his left hand, to keep him from laughing out loud at the comical sight that surely awaited him inside.

Harry had lived at number four, Privet Drive, since he was fifteen months old. Nonetheless, he couldn't remember being inside that room more than five or six times before this summer. Few people other than Marjory Dursley — the boy refused to call her 'Aunt Marge' now — had made any use of it, but still the Dursleys had meant to keep that space as an aberration-free sanctuary for any potential normal visitors to the family. In other words, Harry Potter was not to come remotely close to it.

He had learned the lesson the hard way, of course. As a four-year-old, without any toys to play with, he had found something to distract him in a line of hurried ants he followed around the house and that, unfortunately, led him inside the spare bedroom. Uncle Vernon caught him, blamed him both for being there and for the presence of the insects, and locked him inside the cupboard for two days. After that, Harry had fervently avoided the place and only entered with express permission from his guardians — either to haul Marge's luggage inside or to clean up some particularly nasty filth that had won over Aunt Petunia's patience and strongest stain remover.

It was so ironic, Harry thought, that nowadays he was gladly welcome inside that room, while the Dursleys did anything they could to stay away from it.

He turned the doorknob slowly, making his way in as quietly as he could. Unsurprisingly, the blinds hadn't been fully closed the night before, and the morning light offered him a clear view of the inner setting. Unsurprisingly, a ridiculously large ball of thick, woolly blankets lay on the centre of the double bed, partially illuminated by the sunbeams. Unsurprisingly, that ball was snoring.

And just like every morning now, Harry's determination not to laugh succumbed as he heard the strange, roaring noise of the giant woollen ball's muffled snores — it made the boy think of a troll grunting and whistling inside an empty barrel, or maybe a wounded boar whining under water. The ball swelled and shrank with the slow breathing pace, looking remarkably like some headless, limbless, obese, loud mammal that had for some reason landed on the bed where Marge Dursley used to sleep.

On second thought, it looked a lot like Marge Dursley herself when Harry had accidentally inflated her during his summer holidays when he was twelve years old...

But unlike Vernon's horrible sister, there was nothing unpleasant about the ball currently on the bed. Good evidence of this was that Harry didn't hesitate before approaching the mattress and sitting close to the wheezing form, looking for the jet black tassel that surely would be coming out from it somewhere... ah! There it was. A thick mop of dark matted tresses, roughly one foot long, escaping from a fold in the fleecy surface.

Very carefully, Harry pulled at the fold, enlarging the hole around the dishevelled mane, and exclaimed cheerfully into it, "Good morning, sleepyhead!"

The giant ball flinched, groaned, and the tresses slipped half their length inside, but that was all the reaction Harry got.

"The sun is high," he insisted. "Nothing but a few white clouds in the sky, a refreshing breeze, perfect time for Quidditch!"

The woolly surface shuddered, but other than that remained unresponsive.

"And you know what is the best part?" Harry went on. "I can say 'Quidditch'. Quidditch, Quidditch, Quidditch! Q-U-I-D-D-I-T-C-H, Quidditch! I can even yell it!"

"Don't," moaned a sluggish voice from the deep core of the ball.

The young wizard smiled. "But I can yell it. Don't you believe me? Let me show you then..."

"...have mercy..." the ball pleaded.

"I have to yell it. And make it loud enough so my uncle hears it downstairs."

The ball's answer was too muffled to be intelligible, but it sounded pretty grievous and desperate.

Harry was relentless. "I reckon 'Quidditch' is a word to be yelled, don't you? Yelled repeatedly and passionately, from the top of a gigantic mountain!"

"...hope you fall," came the cranky reply.

"No, you don't."

More inarticulate grunting. Harry translated that as a reluctant, ill-humoured admission that the ball did not in fact wish him any harm.

"Come on out," nagged the boy. "It's time for breakfast."

"No."

"Why not?" he asked, knowing the answer all too well.

"It's cold."

"It's probably 22 degrees outside."

"I'm not outside."

"We can fix that," the boy grinned maliciously.

"No."

"Anyway, it's warm here too."

"Not enough."

Harry wasn't likely to give up. At least the grouchy voice was getting clearer, less slumberous. "You know I can't let you waste a beautiful summer day hiding under fifteen layers of blankets and quilts."

"...course you can. If only you tried..."

"Come on out. Now!"

"No."

"Out! Or I'll really start yelling."

"Noooooo..."

"Get up then."

"No, no, no, no, no."

"Make your choice," said Harry, grinning into the hole in the blanket cocoon. "Either get up or listen to me yelling until doomsday."

"Doomsday will come before you get me out in the cold."

"I'm not kidding," the boy warned. "I'll stay here forever, yelling at the top of my lungs, until my eyebrows are as grey as Dumbledore's."

Suddenly, a long mahogany twig protruded from the hole, tapping the point of Harry's nose. "Fuligo incanesco!"

As a brief wave of tickling warmth poured over his forehead, the boy cursed himself for giving ideas to the evil creature inside the ball.

"So... how does it look?" asked said evil creature, with an unmistakable gleeful tone.

There wasn't a mirror Harry could look at — the one beside the door had been covered with a Muggle poster of some rock singer he had never heard of. However, a quick look up proved there was no need of a mirror. In a split second his brows had grown long enough he could actually see them — and they were definitely grey. And to his annoyance, at that length they revealed to be just as unruly as his hair. "Why don't you come out and take a look?" he muttered.

"No."

"Not even to have a laugh at my face?"

"I can have a laugh in here, thank you."

"You won't know what you'll be laughing at."

"I'll use my imagination." And apparently that was exactly what said evil creature was doing, since the reply had been wrapped in poorly restrained snickers.

Harry rolled his eyes. "This is ridiculous. You asked me to wake you up, you know."

At last the ball started to warp as the top of a head stuck out from the hole, revealing the blue, impish eyes of his godfather. "But I never said I'd make things easier for you, did I?"

"I thought the whole purpose of you being here was making things easier for me," Harry feigned aggravation.

"That was just a cover-up," Sirius yawned. "In reality I was infiltrated here by your anti-fan club to make your life as miserable as possible."

"You're doing a great job this morning."

"Thanks. I'm giving it my best, you know. This is my first job after a long time."

"I'll be sure to write you a recommendation when you quit."

"Quit?" Sirius's brows furrowed. "Sorry. Afraid this is a lifelong contract."

Harry smiled, for once feeling like a very lucky kid.

This strange arrangement wasn't remotely perfect, but it was the best compromise they had managed to work out. In his naïveté, Harry had believed that the moment Sirius had his name cleared from the crimes committed by Peter Pettigrew it would be time to say goodbye to the Dursleys' antipathy and move to a new house with his godfather, finally restored as his legal guardian. To his surprise, however, not only Sirius had been denied his godson's custody, but even Albus Dumbledore came forward to speak against it, insisting that only with his blood relatives would Harry be properly shielded from those who wanted to harm him.

Harry tried arguing, coaxing, cajoling, came close to blackmailing, and when everything else failed he begged with glistening eyes and faltering voice. To no avail. To make things worse, his godfather himself gave up trying after Dumbledore's lecture on how taking Harry from Aunt Petunia would mean pettily endangering the life Sirius had vowed to protect. Hearing Sirius' decision broke the boy's heart in a thousand pieces.

The situation somehow progressed to a conflict where there seemed to be no alliances anywhere: Harry, Sirius, Uncle Vernon, Aunt Petunia, Fudge, Dumbledore, Mrs Weasley, even Ron and Hermione... everybody had a strong opinion of their own and no one quite agreed with anybody. Angry words were exchanged between all the parts involved — yep, even the Headmaster snapped at some point, if briefly and only once. Meanwhile the Daily Prophet made a circus of the dispute, and everybody in the wizarding world and their pet owl were discussing to whom the burden of caring for The Boy Who Lived should be trusted. And predictably, Harry's own feelings on the matter appeared to be completely irrelevant...

He had already resigned himself to putting up with his relatives' ill will until death or adulthood — whatever came first — when, after a rather mysterious visit from Remus Lupin to Privet Drive and an even more unlikely visit from Professor Snape to the Grunnings office, this bizarre compromise was announced. The Dursleys would retain their nephew's formal custody, but also agree to rent their spare room to Sirius Black during Harry's summer holidays, under three conditions. One, paying for all his and his godson's expenses (Uncle Vernon's demand). Two, not taking Harry on any trips that would lead him away from the magical protection of his blood relatives (Dumbledore's demand). And three, submitting to sessions with a counsellor at St Mungo's, three days a week (the Ministry's demand).

That was one occasion Harry was glad to let people hide the facts from him. Honestly, he wasn't sure he wanted to know how that settlement had come to be, what forces had converged to make it possible, or what kind of bribes and threats had been at play backstage. Ignorance is bliss, count your blessings, and all that.

The Dursleys remained just as detestable as ever. More acrimonious because of the presence of a second freak in their precious home — and one who did have permission to do magic during the summer —, and less willing to mistreat Harry now that there was always a grown-up to stand up for him; but they were still the same good old Dursleys. On the other hand, Sirius made sure Harry had enough to eat, decent clothes to wear, a clean and comfortable bedroom, and the freedom to do his homework without being disturbed. Moreover, Sirius seemed determined that Harry had fun on his holidays.

Fun and number four, Privet Drive. Two concepts Harry had never dreamed of putting in the same sentence before.

In all likelihood, Sirius was spoiling him almost as badly as Uncle Vernon and Aunt Petunia did Dudley, but in a different way. Sure, he had got an inordinate amount of presents in the first two weeks of his holidays, as Sirius found Harry's accommodations and wardrobe simply unacceptable. Yet...

Yet Dudley could get almost anything from his parents if he pouted and whinged for long enough, but would seldom get them to play with him, spend time with him, take him to places, or even talk to him for real. Uncle Vernon had his drills, Aunt Petunia had her neighbour-snooping, while Sirius never had anything more important to do than being with his godson. He had no real job now — and didn't need one, with a vault in Gringotts that had already been crowded before the addition of the indemnification sum for the years in Azkaban. His social life was close to non-existent, the wizarding community still eyeing the ex-con with wariness and veiled suspicion. He had started an erratic attempt of writing some sort of autobiography, but Harry had sneaked a peek at some of the parchment scattered on Sirius' desk and had to restrain a strong urge to stow them under the loose floorboard in his bedroom, along with his own embarrassing poems.

All in all, Harry had Sirius pretty much to himself. If he wanted to play Gobstones or Exploding Snap, if he wanted help with his homework, if he wanted to hear stories about his parents and their time at Hogwarts, if he wanted to talk to someone who would listen, or if he simply wanted some friendly company to watch TV or listen to the radio, his godfather would oblige him with a million-candle smile as if he were being offered prime seats to every single game of the Quidditch World Cup. It was almost overwhelming, and Harry sometimes wondered if it would ever come to a point when he would feel smothered by all that attention. It didn't escape him the notice that Sirius should have a life of his own. But for the moment, Harry was too content being selfish and spoiled.

Speaking of smothering...

He tried to pull the blankets to uncover Sirius' face, but the man gripped them tight.

"You'll suffocate," Harry grimaced.

"Will not."

Harry dimly wondered if any other kid had a parent who behaved like a pampered brat every morning. "It's a scientific fact. You need oxygen to live. Oxygen must go in through your nose or mouth. And you've got them both gagged."

Blue eyes shone with mirth. "Gagging a nose? Never heard that one before."

"You're not Neville Longbottom's roommate," the boy winked. "When he starts snoring, gagged noses is all you'll dream of."

Sirius chuckled, choking under the blankets and coughing.

"For chrissake, Sirius," Harry cursed, pulling at the woolly fabric again. "You will suffocate like this."

"My nose is cold."

The boy arched an eyebrow. "Thought that only happened when you're a dog."

"Smart-ass. But you're half-right."

"What do you mean?"

"I'm not a dog right now."

"I sort of noticed that already, Sirius. What's your point?"

"That's why my nose is cold."

"Uhn?"

"I miss my fur."

"Oh."

Harry felt stupid. He very well knew that was the whole thing behind the fifteen layers of blankets and quilts. No living soul could possibly feel that much cold in England, not even in the most freezing days of winter. And Sirius' sleeping habits were a far cry from the light, short-sleeved clothes he would wear during the day.

The first morning Harry found his godfather cocooned like that, he heard the rather sheepish confession: 'My counsellor forbade me to sleep in my Animagus form.' For over a decade Sirius had shielded his mind from insanity by turning into a dog; the trick had given him considerable protection from the Dementors while he was in Azkaban, and from his dreadful nightmares after he escaped. And apparently he had become so used to transforming before lying down to sleep that the lifesaving trick turned into an addiction, a compulsion, a neurosis, or whatever was the technical term for it. When he tried to sleep in his human form, he felt unnaturally, impossibly cold, a prisoner of the humid, icy, frigid memories of a rainy island where hell had been erected to obliterate the souls of the wrongdoers.

Harry saw Sirius frowning up at him and quickly erased the signs of worry from his face. "That's something to tell Dr Cirvellus, you know," he said light-heartedly. "'Doctor, I can't get up in the morning because I miss the fur on my snout.'"

"I did that," Sirius shrugged.

"You did?!"

"With those very words, I think."

The boy gaped. "You're kidding."

"Not at all."

"You actually told your counsellor that you miss the fur on your snout?"

"Why so surprised?"

"Well, it's... it's just... hard to imagine."

"You just did."

Yes, but Harry had been joking. So maybe Sirius was just pulling his leg? It wouldn't be the first time... "You didn't tell her that."

Sirius laughed, and this time he pulled his whole head out of the blanket ball to do that. "Afraid I did, puppy."

Harry blushed at the endearment. He was so not used to it...

Seeing the burning cheeks of his godson, Sirius misinterpreted the boy's sudden silence. "Have I finally embarrassed you beyond words?"

"No!" Harry shook his head. "It's just... Oh, I don't know, I never had to talk to a counsellor. I don't know what sort of stuff you're supposed to tell one..."

"I don't know either, so I just keep talking, waiting for the moment she'll stop me and say, 'Mr Black?'" Sirius mimicked a female, velvety, ever-so-courteous voice. "'Please, don't. Too much information.'"

Harry covered his mouth to muffle his laughter, then remembered he didn't have to, and let out a happy chortle. Sirius' impressions of other people were hilarious.

"Anyway, don't know why you were so shocked," Sirius yawned again and pulled one arm out of the cocoon to fold it under his head. "Doesn't that sound like the kind of thing to tell a counsellor? That I was a delinquent child... that I had problems displaying affection to my father... that I often dream I'm playing a lute in a Muggle pub... that I wake up every morning missing my furry snout..."

Harry archived the reference of 'displaying affection to father' in the back of his mind for future inquiry. Sirius never talked much about his father. "What did she say to that?" It was perhaps an indiscreet question, but he was dying to know.

"Nothing."

"Nothing? At all?"

Sirius' brows knitted together as he made an effort to remember the counsellor's exact reaction. "Well... she asked what kind of music I was playing and what the barman in the pub was wearing... Nothing about the fur."

"Curious..."

"Must be some tacit agreement between counsellor and patient. She doesn't frown at my statements and I don't frown at her questions."

Harry scratched his forehead. "I thought..."

"What?"

"Never mind."

"But I do mind," Sirius snorted. "You started. You woke me up. Now you finish."

The boy grinned. "I thought you'd hate having to go to those counselling sessions."

"I hate having to go. But going to them isn't all that awful."

Then perhaps Harry didn't have to feel so guilty that Sirius had to put up with those sessions just to be around him? That was nice to know.

On the other hand, he couldn't really understand why someone would enjoy spilling out their heart's most mortifying secrets to a complete stranger. But his godfather did seem to be taking it all so well... "Is she beautiful?"

Sirius blinked, confused. "Who?"

"Dr Cirvellus."

The man blinked some more. "She's pretty good-looking... for a ninety-five year old." He gazed suspiciously at the boy. "Can't you keep your mind out of the gutter, Potter? I'm not flirting with my counsellor."

"I didn't say you were," Harry said defensively, scratching his forehead again to disguise his renewed blushing. "I'm just a bit surprised, that's all."

"Surprised that not all the things I do for you are distressing sacrifices?"

Ouch. Was he all that easy to read?

Sirius sighed heavily. "Is this still about the rats?"

Harry felt a lump in his throat. "No one should have to live off rats. No one. Certainly not you."

"I shouldn't have told you that," Sirius murmured.

"You shouldn't have to live that way!" the boy protested. And before he could stop them, the words came tumbling out his mouth. "Eight months, Sirius! In a dark cave, starving, risking being caught... and I didn't even think about sending you food until you asked me. In March! You spent the whole winter in that bloody cave, probably freezing to death, and it never occurred to me..."

Sirius reached out with his arm to pet his godson's hair. "Hey, hey... Cut it out, will ya? I was fine. I had fur on my snout then, remember?"

"It was a really cold winter. A foot of snow on the grounds on Christmas day. And what was I doing? Snowball-fighting with Ron and the twins and making a fool of myself at the Yule Ball."

"Precisely what you should have been doing," Sirius assured him. "You were fourteen, and that's the whole point of being fourteen: throwing snowballs and looking stupid in front of the girls."

They had had that discussion before. Always Harry would point out the many reasons why he was a thoughtless brat, and always Sirius would ruffle his hair or squeeze his shoulder and dismiss those months in the cave as if they were nothing but a slightly unpleasant weekend. "And now you're stuck here, with my..." Harry growled. "...family."

"Oh, horror of horrors..." Sirius exclaimed sarcastically. "Here I am, on a cosy bed, in a cosy bedroom, with all the blankets I need, with all the food I want, with clean water to bathe in and clean robes to wear..."

"You're paying for all of it!"

"So what? It's not like I can't afford it."

"You could afford a palace with a hundred bedrooms, a thousand house-elves and a waterfall right in the middle of it... and with no one to call you a lazy freak to your face."

"And no one to wake me up every morning yelling 'Quidditch! Quidditch! Quidditch!' right into my ear? No, thanks. I'd die of boredom." Sirius' fingers still played tenderly with the kid's sable hair. "Honestly, it was your family that got the bad end of this settlement. They're stuck with me and don't even like me. The least I can do is pay for the trouble."

In Harry's opinion, the Dursleys should be turned into slugs and forced to live together in a tiny matchbox. But he wouldn't say it aloud, for Sirius would want him to tell why he felt so strongly against them and there was still stuff Harry didn't feel like telling anyone, not even his godfather. "You deserve better than this," he said simply.

"This..." Sirius made a gesture to indicate their surroundings. "...is temporary. So were the cave and the rat meals. If I'm going to keep dwelling on the bad things, maybe I should have stayed with the Dementors in Azkaban..."

"Don't say that..." the boy shivered.

"Then don't dwell on it yourself! Things are getting better, puppy, not worse."

The endearment again... So alien, so unexpected... so nice. It was ridiculous, embarrassing, a lot worse than 'sweetums', 'popkin', 'neffy poo' or any other of Aunt Petunia's endearments to her 'Dinky Duddydums'. Harry could only hope his godfather would spare him from calling him that in front of Ron and Hermione... and the twins, gosh, the twins would never leave him alone if they heard that... He sometimes thought of asking Sirius... 'please don't call me that in front of other people'... but he feared Sirius would stop calling him that entirely... and... and...

He didn't want that.

Could anything be more embarrassing?

He could feel his cheeks on fire, and again he raised his hand to scratch his forehead. Only this time he realised there was more in the gesture than the need to disguise his blushing. "Sirius, could you please make my brows go back to normal? They're itching."

"But you look good like that!" the other objected. "Mature, respectable, wise... Maybe we could get you to be the new Defence Against Dark Arts teacher!"

"No, thanks. Everyone knows that job is jinxed."

The older wizard grinned and pulled his other arm from the blanket ball, bringing his wand out. "Fuligo consanesco."

Another fleeting wave of prickling warmth brushed his face, and in a second his eyebrows had shrunk to their usual length. "Are they black now?" he asked dubiously.

"What, don't you trust me?"

Harry arched what he sincerely hoped to be a black brow. "I trust you with my life. But that doesn't mean I trust you with a wand. Especially when it comes to changing hair colours."

"I see. Very wise, Harry," Sirius nodded, in a perfect impression of Remus Lupin's professorial tone. He twirled his wand lazily and the rock poster rolled up into a scroll, revealing the mirror's surface. "Take a look then, you paranoid."

The boy had to rise to a crouch on the bed to see himself in the mirror. The face looking back at him was biting his lip bashfully, since his eyebrows were indeed perfectly black and normal. "Sorry, I shouldn't have doubted you."

"Don't apologise. I thought you had studied the Consanesco spell already. If I'd known you hadn't, I'd have turned them green."

"Sirius..." The boy tried to give him a scolding glare, but it came out crooked by a sneaking smile.

"What? I thought they'd bring out the colour of your eyes, dear," Sirius said, now mimicking Molly Weasley's maternal expression.

"Gosh, you're horrible," Harry sniggered. "If Ron sees you do that one..."

"...then I'll tell him to ask Remus to do his famous impression of Sirius Black singing in the shower. Neither of you will ever respect me again."

Harry fell back on the bed, laughing himself silly.

Sirius' impressions were funny because Sirius looked hysterically funny when he did them, contorting his face and waving his hands and copying the voice pitch of his selected victim. But Lupin's... Ah, Lupin wouldn't try mimicking anyone but Sirius. And he did it so perfectly, reproducing every little detail, from the slightest twitch of the lips to the tapping of the heels on the floor when Sirius was nervous or excited... The first time Harry had seen Lupin do it he had thought his godfather had drunk some Polyjuice Potion with one of the former teacher's grey hairs in it.

Sirius singing in the shower... Now Harry just had to ask Lupin to do that one. It should be even better than the one of Sirius fixing the motorbike, or of Sirius in Professor Binns' class...

Of course, his godfather had a point. After seeing Remus' impression of Sirius making pancakes, never again did Harry manage to see Sirius holding a frying pan without bursting out laughing.

Speaking of which... "Uncle Vernon must have left for Grunnings already," he told Sirius. "And Aunt Petunia should be in the garden. So the kitchen is ours."

The older man was yawning lazily once more. "Why don't you go ahead then? I'll be down in a few minutes..." Another yawn. "...or an hour or so..."

Harry rolled his eyes, getting comfortable in the bed. The way things were going they would still be there by lunchtime. "Dudley is there now, watching TV and burying his face in doughnuts," he groaned. "He won't get out until you show up."

"What am I, a scarecrow?"

"To Dudley? Yeah."

"You know, I sometimes think you'd rather everyone still believed I'm your insane, murderous godfather..."

Harry couldn't help smiling, gazing distractedly at the ceiling. "No way, I'm so glad you're free. Besides, you don't need to be insane or murderous to scare my cousin out of his wits. Just whisper 'hocus-pocus' in his ear and he'll jump out the window crying for his mummy..."

Sirius looked very confused. "I thought that was a slang for 'hoc est corpus'... You know, 'this is my body', from the Eucharist."

"Is it?" It was Harry's turn to frown. "I had no idea. Dudley would probably think it's a hex to turn him into a walrus."

"Nope, that would be Cetus Eburoris."

The boy's eyes widened excitedly. "Really?"

"Really. But you're not allowed to do magic during the holidays."

"Oh." Harry sighed, disappointed.

Sirius was chortling with his funny barking-laugh.

"That's a moronic law," Harry grumbled. "We should be able to study what we learned in school... and maybe try an experiment or two... Hey! You've got Cyprian Youdle!"

"Hmm?"

The boy pointed at the ceiling, where Sirius' own collection of World's Best Quidditch stickers were playing a rather sedate match. One of the stickers, displaying a burly, auburn-haired man in his thirties wearing a black robe with white lace frills was now scolding a Seeker — the great Josef Wronski, who had played for the Grodzisk Goblins of Poland —, and ordering a free shot at one of the goalposts.

"Oh. The bloody referee," Sirius groaned. "Yeah, found him in the box I opened last night."

"Cool!"

"You want him? You can take him. He's a real bore, you know."

"You sure? My stickers are killing each other without a referee..."

"Well, mine turned into a bunch of nancies since I put him up there," Sirius countered.

The stickers from Gwen Sirenn's Marzipan Bonbons looked somewhat out of place in this room, the boy suddenly noticed. While Harry's bedroom had been thoroughly redecorated — mostly with articles from wizarding stores —, Sirius had kept the spare room almost exactly the way he had found it. In fact, his godfather didn't seem to have moved a single piece of furniture out of place, limiting himself to covering the walls, mirror and wardrobe doors with countless photos and posters, most of them from before his imprisonment and looking just as old as they were.

This was the guestroom after all. And Sirius was just a guest, although a paying one. A temporary guest.

Harry wished he could be certain that his own staying in Little Whinging was as temporary as his godfather's. But since the first time Sirius had offered him a new home, there had been one disappointment after the other. He seemed to be stuck in Privet Drive as if his feet were buried in that blasted house's foundations, his soul locked forever in the cupboard under the stairs...

"Tell you what," Sirius spoke again, dragging the boy away from his gloomy thoughts. "I'll trade you Youdle for Kevin Broadmoor."

"Why would you want Broadmoor?" Harry snorted. "The guy is a slaughtering machine."

"He's a Beater," the older man said patiently, as if talking to a very stupid child. "That's exactly how he's supposed to be. Besides, I already have his brother Karl, and I want the pair."

"You mean you want blood dripping from your ceiling."

"They're vinyl stickers, Harry," Sirius huffed, sounding suspiciously like Hermione. "They don't bleed. I read that in the label on the bottom of the box. Honestly, Harry, don't you ever read?"

This time the boy laughed so hard his belly was aching. "Will you please get up? I can't laugh this much with an empty stomach."

The longhaired man sighed theatrically and stretched, arching his back inside the cocoon, and the sound of several joints snapping could be easily heard through the many layers of fabric.

"Gosh, you sound like an old couch, Sirius."

In a demonstration of godfatherly love, Sirius hit him with a pillow on the head. "You sound like a sassy puppy."

Harry smiled, grabbing the pillow for a counter-attack. "A hungry, sassy puppy. Now get up!"

"Ouch, okay, okay, hold your horses..." Sirius growled, feigning irritation, and started kicking his blankets off — Harry knew it would take him at least five minutes until he got completely free from the woolly cocoon. "So what would you like to do today?"

"Have breakfast sometime before sunset?"

"And after that?"

"I don't know."

"Still have homework to do?"

"Loads. But I really don't feel like it." Gone were the times when doing his homework was the bright spot of Harry's holidays. "And I still have time."

"If you leave them all for the last minute I'm not going to help you," Sirius warned him.

"I'm not going to leave it for the last minute. Just don't want to do it today."

"All right... so what about getting out of the house a little?"

Harry almost leaped in the air. "Can we? I mean, Dumbledore said..."

Sirius managed to sit on the bed, and waved a dismissive hand as he disentangled his legs from the quilts. "He said I have to keep you safe — and he really didn't have to —, not that I should lock you in a cage. I was thinking of a stroll through London, would you like that? I need to get some money from my vault in Gringotts, and we could check the new broom models at Quidditch Supplies..."

"I don't want a new broom!" Harry exclaimed, scandalised.

"That Firebolt will become a relic at some point, puppy."

"I don't care! She's perfect! I don't need a new one. I'll never need a new one."

Sirius ruffled the boy's hair, a beautiful smile lighting his face. "Can I at least get you a new jar of Fleetwood's Polish? The handle is looking a little grubby."

Harry nodded. The jar Hermione had given him was almost empty.

"And then we could stop at Fortescue's, buy more marzipan bonbons," Sirius went on, kicking the last blanket to the side. "We could fire-call Remus and invite him along, if he's free."

One more wizard to escort The Boy Who Lived, Harry thought grimly. But also a great opportunity to ask Lupin for that singing-in-the-shower impression... "Good idea."

Sirius got on his feet, stretching noisily again — Harry giggled mercilessly —, and put on a pale blue robe he used to wear in the house (and that never failed to make Aunt Petunia flinch in disgust). He risked a glance at the mirror, but turned away from it immediately, and the poster slid back to cover it. After twelve years without any mirrors, he was still not used to the way his thirty-something self looked like. "So... what do you want for breakfast?"

"Hmmm... pancakes?"

"Will you keep laughing at my face?"

"Probably."

Sirius shook his head in dismay. "On second thought, maybe all the things I do for you are distressing sacrifices."

"Oh shut up!" Harry sniggered, pushing the man towards the door. "Let's just see how Dudley looks with a pair of walrus tusks, shall we?"

~ finis ~