Chapter Text
2 years ago, Grimmauld kitchen.
A fist hit the table so hard it groaned under the force, causing all occupants of the rather big and long kitchen to halt in silence. “We have to find him, this is not up for discussion!”, Remus’ voice boomed with anger and restlessness. Albus Dumbledore sighed wearily, they had been at this topic of conversation for well over an hour and it was not the first evening either. A glance at Sirius Black’s head buried in his hands on top of the table silently sobbing had him realise this was not a battle he would win, not against 2/4th of the marauders and certainly not against a man he almost viewed as a son at this point. “I know Remus” Albus spoke softly over the werewolf’s angry monologue and the participants of the little meeting grew quiet including Remus. Big watery stormy grey eyes looked up from a tousle of black hair at his left and pinned him with such a hopeful look his fight went out of him immediately, “Remus and Sirius is right, we have to find the boy-“ he was cut off by an incredulous snort from his right by Alastor Moody. Albus narrowed his eyes at Alastor in warning and continued “- I know some of you have fears of what this boy is like and what he will bring upon us if we bring him here but that is a risk we will have to take. He is Sirius’ son and right now that is all that matters.” He looked at Remus and again at Sirius whose pain was clearly visible on his face and continued “We have no idea where he is or what he is like after all he is almost a teenager now at the age of 12, however we will try and we will keep on trying until we know for sure what happened to the boy.” The silence grew thick before Sirius let out a choked “Thank you Albus, thank you.” And Albus knew, he could feel it deep in his bones that this search would not end until Sirius had his answers and Albus hoped for their sake and for the little boy upstairs that the wayward baby would be alive. Alive and despite all genes, a good person. A light person.
1 and ½ year ago, Grimmauld second floor, Harry ’s room.
A small pale petite boy with a pixie face, big green eyes and black lightly tousled hair sat on the padded windowstill with a stuffed teddybear in his arms and looked outside with unseeing eyes. Everything was a mess and he didn’t know what to do or what to think anymore, Sirius had hit him. Hit him hard enough to bruise just because in a moment of pure bliss from opening christmas presents he had uttered the words “I love you daddy!”. Small smooth fingers brushed lightly over his right cheek bone where the hand had left the big purple mark and Harry had yet again to blink back tears. ‘Sirius hit me’ the thought kept resonating in his mind over and over like there was an echo and just like a real echo an answer to the statement never came, just the repeated first words.
It had all started last summer, the end of his third year at Hogwarts. The entire year had been hectic and stressful to the point where Harry had almost constantly been in tears of fear from the escaped mass murderer and as coincidence would have it, godfather. But at the end of the year the light at the tunnel had appeared, his godfather was innocent! Not only was he innocent, they managed to capture the real traitor and hand him over to the ministry with Dumbledore’s help which of course lead to Sirius being declared innocent of all charges and given a hefty sum of gold not to press charges for his wrongful imprisonment. Harry had left Hogwarts that last term day happier than he ever had been before in his life, because he was going home. He was going home were he was wanted and loved and not for once in his life, abused. Sirius had spent the last days of term in St. Mungos getting treatment both mentally and physically to right the damages 13 years in Azkaban had caused him, and Sirius had been the most amazing parent ever. Sirius, Remus and Harry had all moved in together at Grimmauld Place and immediately cleaned out the house and made it livable. It may have helped that Dobby had decided he wanted to come be their family elf alongside Kreature so things actually got done around the house, even if Kreature was whining and muttering the entire duration of their Project Home.
No, the real changes had started nearing the end of july when Sirius had gone back to St Mungos to get more treatment from a mind healer, because that was when Sirius’ memories from the war started coming back. First he got more confused as he remembered moments where Death Eaters had shown kindness or even mercy and other memories where Order members had shown their cowardly side, saving their own necks by sacrificing others. Harry had always understood that people are not stereotypes with only one emotion or personality trait, Gryffindors could be scared and Slytherins could be selfless. It all just depended on the person really, but for Sirius this was a massive shock to his system and both Remus and Harry had spent a lot of time and energy soothing him and making him come to terms with this realization.
Then he became withdrawn, that came with memories of his own cruelty and decisions during the war. When Harry woke up one morning and went downstairs to find Sirius huddled in a corner tearing at his own arms with his nails, sobbing hysterically from one of the new memories they realized they would need more help than just Harry and Remus could provide. Ted Tonks, Sirius’ cousin in law was a mind healer and he started coming over for daily sessions with Sirius. It took a lot of time and calming draughts but Sirius managed to get trough that as well with his family’s support. Harry had found out later that the memory Sirius had uncovered when Harry had found him was one of Sirius’ darkest moments. He had been an auror alongside Harry’s dad and they had been working the night shift when a call had been made for the aurors to come help put out a magical fire set on a magical manor. A manor which had been the property and home of a suspected Death Eater named Yaxley. Sirius had talked James into ignoring the call purely out of spite towards “Death eater scum” as he called them and the two of them had spent the night talking about what a cute baby Harry was and playing exploding snap. It was not until the next day when Sirius came to work the late shift that he was sent to the same house by his superior to recover the bodies when he realized his mistake. Yaxley had a squib sister who had married a muggle and they along with their 4 small children had been inside the manor under heavy protection wards when the fire broke out. The entire family including 4 small children had burned to death that night and all the aurors kept choking to themselves while carefully removing the small burnt bodies was ‘Why had no one called them?’, ‘Why had no one thought to raise the alarm?’, ‘There were 2 highly ranked aurors at work last night, if only they had made the call’. Neither Sirius, Remus nor Harry slept peacefully the night that story came to light.
The weeks flew by and things settled so much for Sirius that they all believed the worst was over, even Ted believed Sirius would only need one weekly session from now on. Then Sirius got weird, that was really the only way Harry could explain it because Sirius all of a sudden became very very strange. He became skittish enough to jump from the slightest sound, started muttering to himself almost as if in argument much in the same way Kreature did and he would space completely out in the middle of conversations. Remus had looked at Sirius with a heartbroken expression as Sirius once again spaced out during a conversation and decided they better invite Ted back. What came of the next session was a shock to them all, a shock mingled with pity and pure disgust. Because as it turned out, Sirius had a son. A baby he did not willingly help create, a baby born in Azkaban of all places and a baby whose mother had been Voldemort’s second, a baby who had been sent away by aurors and never seen again the moment it was born. A baby whose mother had been the first witch in over 200 years to be burned at the stake in execution, and the first and last time the wizarding world had ever burned a witch.
Harry and Remus had sat in shocked silence as Sirius stared down at his clasped hands and stated in short words the few facts he knew. Remus seemed to recover faster than Harry but with such an ashen expression that Harry knew it was bad. “It was her wasn’t it? You… with her?” Remus whispered before he cut himself off and continued in a small voice “Sylvanas.” Silent tears had started running down Sirius’ cheeks as he nodded and soon the full story came out. He had gone out drinking and this beautiful girl had hit on him and Sirius just couldn’t refuse her. They had spent the night together at some dingy pub hotel room and in the morning Sirius had woken tied to the bed in a full body bind with a smirking Sylvanas stood by the bed leering at him and thanking him for his seed. Sirius had been so fear stricken and nauseated with the realization that last night’s girl had been Sylvanas that he promptly fainted and woke up some hours later freed and alone. He never spoke of it to anyone, not even James. In fact he had buried the memory so deep he almost forgot about it before he even went to Azkaban, but that changed 3 months after his imprisonment. Sylvanas had been caught unaware by what was left of the entire order and auror department combined 4 days after Voldemort’s demise. She had been apprehended and sent to Azkaban and her trial had been unusually long. She had been Voldemort’s second hand, some would even say she had been his co-ruler. She had tortured and killed so many they had been forced to charge her with genocide and not manslaughter. And unlike her peers such as Bellatrix Lestrange, Sylvanas was of completely sound mind, which made her crimes even more unspeakable. She had been one of the few to discriminate so deeply she had even targeted half blood children, there had been pensieve evidence of her ‘experimentation’ on them. According to the wizengamot and the people, Azkaban was too good for her and so was the Dementors Kiss, no they wanted to burn her. Burn her and make sure not a single little piece of her was left, she was then sent back to Azkaban to await her execution. But what was unknown to the wizarding world was that Sylvanas was already 6 months pregnant at the time and only the most need-to-know people in the ministry including the head auror and the minister was are of that fact. They could not in good conscience kill the unborn child even if they did suspect it was Voldemort’s because in doing so they would commit some of the same crimes the woman had been found guilty in. So they hid her away in Azkaban until she went into labor and delivered the child before they took the child away and sent her to her end. The child, Remus suspected would have been sent away as no one was in the right state or mind to adopt orphans at the time when they were doing their best to take care of what was left of their own families. Sirius told them that when the dementors had escorted Sylvanas past his cell to her execution she had spotted him trough the bars and laughed. She had laughed at him and yet again thanked him for “The moste ancient and moste noble Black blood that now ran trough her son’s veins.” And all Sirius could do was fearfully stare in silence as the dementors grabbed her with their bony hands and dragged her away while she gleefully shouted at him that their son would be the most powerful little demon to walk the earth. Sirius had turned into his animagus form then and stayed that way for almost 13 years consistantly until the memory had faded far into the recess of his brain. The public burning of Sylvanas had taken place in the Scottish highlands, the fire slowly consuming her while she laughed and screamed “Long may he reign!” about Voldemort, although Harry had seen Remus’ look when he told of that occasion and Harry thought Remus might be on a right path there, he didn’t think she was talking about Voldemort.
From that moment on Sirius had become obsessed with finding his son, his ‘little boy’ that he referred to him as. Harry was equally scared and longing for the boy, he was scared he would be like his mother and they would be pursuing trouble but he also longed for his ‘little brother’ as he dubbed him in his mind. Remus, Sirius and Harry fast came to the conclusion they were on a mission. The boy might not know them, he might not be alive, he could be anywhere in the world but damn it all he was pack. He was family, whether he knew it yet or not. They had to find him but they were only 3 people, 2 adults and 1 child and none of them had any noteworthy allies within the ministry. They needed help, or more specifically they needed Dumbledore and the Order of the Pheonix’s help. And so begin the arguments, the shouting matches and fights to convince them to help something which took a lot of time and a lot of tears but yet ended in victory one stormy night in their little kitchen. The next day Harry was informed of their win and the Order set to business right away with trying to gain as much information about where the baby had been sent as possible. Harry’s friends Hermione and Ron did not exactly approve of the mission, nor did the majority of the Order truth be told, but they followed Dumbledore’s lead as always. Though for the rest of that summer they did not find so much as a hint about what had happened to him and so it continued.
Harry carefully stroked his teddy’s fur while curling up even more on the windowsill as he looked outside at the slowly falling snow. It was Christmas day and he was on Christmas break which should have been his first perfect holiday with his loving family. But instead of sitting down in the lounge in front of the fireplace drinking hot chocolate with Remus and Sirius he was upstairs hiding in his room nursing a bruised cheek. Harry knew Sirius had only become more frustrated and disheartened the more months that passed by without any progress and he had noticed the holiday cheer did not really reach Sirius the way it had reached himself and Remus. But to hit him even after what he knew of the Dursleys. Big tears started rolling down his cheeks just as the door to his bedroom creaked as it was opened. Harry huddled more into a ball and hid his face just as he heard Remus give out a big sigh from the door and came over to envelop him in a hug. He tensed the moment Remus’ big arms encircled him and Remus froze for a second before he hugged Harry tightly to his chest and murmured in his ear “I am so sorry cub. I am so sorry. I love you so much and so does Sirius, he’s just..” Remus took a small shuddering breath before continuing “He’s just not with us at the moment. And I swear baby boy I will never ever let him raise his hand to you again.” Harry let out a small whine and threw his arms around Remus and started sobbing and Remus just held him even tighter and started rocking him back and forth whispering fiercely “I will never let him hurt you again, you’re our son Harry, you’ll always be our son and I am so proud and happy to have you as my little cub.” Remus then lifted Harry into his arms and brought them both over to the bed before he sat them down. Harry’s first Christmas day was spent that way, tightly cuddled in the arms of Remus as they just watched the snow falling outside the window and Remus humming comfortably. Just before they went to sleep that night Harry whispered into Remus’ chest “I hope we find him soon, I hope we find him before we loose Sirius too.” Remus just stroked his hair for a long time and just as Harry was about to fall asleep Remus whispered back “So do I cub, So do I.”
Many miles away in Scotland Albus Dumbledore stepped out of his fireplace into the headmaster office after a rather long argument with Robert Hubbard the former British minister of magic. Fawkes gave a thrill in question and for the first time in a long while Albus smiled before replying “Yes your ambush plan worked, we finally have a lead. Let’s hope America is not as big as they like to portray themselves as.” Albus chuckled before sitting heavily down in his chair and reaching for his lemon drops, “But the most important part is that we now finally have a name”. Fawkes thrilled happily and flew from his perch to land on Albus’ arm as his master began stroking his feathers carefully and quickly becoming lost in thought “Raphael Orion Morningstar, let us hope you have picked your own path in life, for all our sakes.”
Too be continued....