Chapter Text
One moment later the world disappeared and the next it arranged itself again, only not in the nursery at Potter Cottage, but in the middle of the busy street.
All four of them were quite literally spat out of whatever vortex had swallowed the nursery. One second there had been white-hot magic, Harry screaming, blood on the walls and Severus calling Sirius a bloody idiot, but with such tendernest that did not feel right in the most catastrophic moments. The next there was daylight, noise, hard pavement and the very immediate possibility of being flattened by Muggle machinery.
Sirius was spat out first and he landed badly. His shoulder struck the ground with enough force o jar his teeth. Something sharp scraped along his palm. The back of his head bounced once against the wet asphalt and for a dazed second all he could hear was the long shrill ringing in his ears and the ragged thud of his own pulse. Severus landed half on to of him a heartbeat later, all sharp elbows, that hit Sirius everywhere. The mother fucker was bony as fuck.
"Fuck - bloody - merlin-struck - Black - if this is your fault I will kill you myself and then do something inventive with your corpse." Severus spat-breathed straight into Sirius's shoulder.
Sirius groaned and blinked up at the sky that was too pale, too wide and entirely the wrong place to be seeing above his head. "Nice to see you too, love." then he circled his arms around Severus's back "Please do not move. I think I have broken every bone in my body. Lets just die here together."
To the left James was making noises that sounded dangerously close to hysterical laughter, the kind that came right on the heels of terror. He was sprawled on one knee, one hand braced on the pavement, Harry clutched so tightly to his chest it looked painful. He looked down at his sone, who was looking wide eyed at him, his tiny fist showed into his mouth and stunned into silence. Then the toddler started to giggle, pulling his hand out of his mouth and clapped, "Agan, Papa! Agan"
"Piss off Harry, we are not doing that again. Glad to see you had fun, you little shit." James scoffed as he pushed himself up and wobbled a bit because everything was dizzy and he lost his fucking glasses.
"Shit!" Harry squalled and clapped his hands again.
"Yeah. Shit!" said James and then pampered Harry's face with kisses because they were all alive.
Peter landed farthest of them all. He had collided with the iron fence, bounced off it and was now half in a hedge swearing into the bushes like a drunken sailor prepared to duel the entire world.
"Get stuffed, all of you," Petter hissed at the leaves. "I was having a perfectly dreadful evening already."
A horn blared, harsh and loud. Severus pushed himself up so fast his hair slapped wetly across his face. Sirius rolled onto one elbow and instantly wished he had not. The whole world lurched at once. Noise crashed into him form every direction. Engines. Tyres hissing over wet road. Car doors slamming. Voices. Too many voices. Too many colours too, bright signs and shop windows. Flashes of metal moving too fast. The air also smelled wrong too. Petrol, rain, hot rubber, smoke, wet concrete, faint bitter trace of city grime that was London and not London, familiar and also not.
"Why are we in the middle of the road?" Severus said, turning in a slow circle from his crouch.
They were not merely on the street but in the street. ON black slick asphalt painted with white lines and bordered by pavements crowded with people who were already staring. A women in a red coat had frozen halfway through stepping if the kerb and was now gaping at them. A man father down was shouting something out of the rolled-down window of a small blue car that was bearing down on the far too quickly.
"MOVE!" Peter bellowed, finally untangling himself from the hedge as James screamed "GET THE FUCK OUT OF THE WAY!"
That at least cut through the ringing in Sirius's skull and he scrambled upright, grabbing Severus by the back of his coat and yanking him sideways just as the blue care tore with a scream of brakes and a furious blast of horn. The wind of it caught Sirius's robes and nearly spun him off balance. The driver landed half out of the window and shouted something deeply Muggle and entirely obscene.
"Rude." Sirius put a hand on his chest, then moved it behind his head and rubbed it. It hurt like a bitch there.
"We nearly died." Severus rounded on him at once, hair wild and eyes blazing then seeing as Sirius winced while touching the back of his skull, softened and said "Let me check."
Severus sucked in a breath when Sirius turned around and he saw that his boyfriends head was bleeding from a wide gush there. "You are bleeding." then he started working with his wand, not caring if anybody saw it, stitching and healing Sirius wound.
Peter joined them first and whirled back, waving both arms like a furious scarecrow. "Can we all continue not dying somewhere that is not in front of fast-moving metal?"
James claimed on the pavement with Harry, running his hands frantically over the child's back, his arms, legs and checking for blood or broken bones.
"Are you all right, love?" James asked as if one year old could answer him.
Harry responded by grabbing a fistful of his father's collar and trying to chew it. James squinted blindly at the street and then looked at his son who was now grinning tootles at him, as like this was the greatest adventure he ever been on. Then James's whole face screwed up in outrage
"My glasses," he pointed at his face
"Your what." Peter, still pulling leaves out of his hair, looked at him.
"My glasses. They flew off somewhere between the nursery and near-death by Muggle carriage." James shifted Harry up on his hip and turned useless little half-circles, peering at the road and the kerb. The irritated pedestrians already chose to pretended none of this was their business while they lick their wounds, scoffed as James almost run into them. "Brilliant. I'm concussed, my son has turned into a hell's child under his godfathers influence and now I'm blind."
Harry squalled, patted James's cheek and said something that sounded suspiciously like "shit" again.
Peter made a chocking sound and the barked a laugh as he took Harry into his arms. The toddler was safer in his arms then his fathers, because Peter could actually see. He then lifted Harry and tossed him into the air. The toddler started squiggling in delight as Peter caught him and tossed him again.
"You little shit. Not a Potter in you. You are all Sirius with that mouth." said Peter snickering as he caught Harry again and then dipped him down. The little boy giggled so hard, wrapped his arms around Peter's neck yelling "Agan.Again!"
Sirius scoffed at Peter and dragged the heel of his hand across his mouth as Severus continued to heal his broken head. It was still pounding and ringing. They were in London, that was for sure, but it all looked and felt wrong.
"What the fuck is this?" James muttered, still squinting.
"London." Peter said, adjusting Harry on his hip and the baby shoved his fist into his mouth to chew on it.
"No, I know it's London, Pettigrew. I'm not concussed enough to miss the smell. I mean why dose it look like this?" James turned his head towards the sound of Peters voice.
"How the hell would you know how it looks like? You are blind." Peter said, rising his brow at James, his voice all teasing.
James lips tinned and he rose his hand, flipping Peter off, but laughing.
Severus finished his healing and kissed the back of Sirius head. There was something in the air. Sirius could feel it in his blood. A soft kind of pressure, but not in the whole of the street. In one exact place. Sirius turned his head to look across the road. There was something there between two perfectly ordinary terraced houses. Something of a folded seam in the world, the kind of thing most people would walk straight pass and never noticed it. Sirius's scraped palm started stinging again. His gaze locked on the narrow impossible gap between Number Eleven and Number Thirteen. Twelve was missing. Sirius stepped off the kerb before any of them could say anything.
"Pads?" Peter said
"Love?" Severus snapped behind him.
Sirius did not answer. Sirius barely heard them. The hum under his skin had sharpened now into certainty. They were on Grimmuald street. Family magic and blood wards were calling him. The old vicious kind of call that tasted you before they recognise you and let you in. He knew it as well as he knew his own reflection. He crossed the road with traffic hissing around him and stopped on the opposite pavement. Nothing was there. And yet it was. His hand lifted without permission, fingers flexing slightly, blood still tacky across his skin where the road had scraped him open. He touched the invisible barrier and could feel as the wards took one taste of his blood and woke up. The air between two houses shuddered. He could faintly hear James swearing. Peter stumbled to a halt behind Sirius with Harry giggling and trying to snatch Sirius's hair. Severus hit his shoulder hard enough to nearly spin him as the narrow gap rippled like dark water and Number Twelve Grimmuald Place forced itself into visibility between Eleven and Thirteen with all the subtlety of a slap.
Stone step. Black door. Brass serpent knocker. Soot-dark brick. Tall narrow windows- The old family house rising out concealment like it had merely been waiting for Sirius to come close enough to bleed on it.
"Fuck me." Peter whispered and the baby in his arms like a parrot repeated "fuk me!" Peter shot Harry a grin.
"Pads, why is your house here?" James asked blinking trying to make his eyes focus.
Sirius stopped breathing and just stared. He could not answer any of them. Because it was not just there. It was wrong in all the strangest ways. Or perhaps right, which was somehow worse. The front steps were clean. The brass had been polished. Warm light glowed behind drawn curtains. And the bloody curtains were not the same ones Sirius set on fire so many times in his youth. There were fucking flower boxes beneath the lower windows. Flower.Fucking.Boxes. On Grimmuald place. Sirius always though flowers died in a near proximity of his childhood home. Sirius felt his mouth fall open. From inside the house came the unmistakable sound of running footsteps, then a child's voice shouting, bright and very much alive, "Someone's at the door!"
"Someone fucking pinch me!" Sirius hissed wide eyed "Ow!!"
Severus looked at him, one eyebrow at his hairline, "You said to pinch you."
"No running in the hall, I mean it!" another voice, older and stern came from the house
"I am not running!" another child voice yelled from the inside
Sirius sucked breath through his teeth. Children. There were children in Grimmauld. And that, more then the traffic, his house appearing, Harry's mouth turning into sailors one, or the fact that James was standing blind in the middle of what was very clearly not 1981, was the point at witch Sirius genuinely began to suspect he had finally, terminally lost his mind. His fucking eye started to twitch too.
"O Merlin, he lost it." Peter said with a whistle and the front door yanked open so hard it banged against the wall inside.
A man stood in the doorway, one hand still on the knob, the other already halfway to where a wand must have been tucked somewhere on his body. He was tall and lean, worn tin by years of stress and too little sleep, all long limbs and hard lines under a dark jumper with the sleeves shoved carelessly to his elbows. His hair was black and brushed back from his face, though a few strands had escaped at the temples where silver had began to cut through. He was pale and fine-boned, with the same sharp Black features Sirius knew as well as his own reflection. Even in shock the middle aged man's mouth held that severe line of family arrogance. His grey eyes had gone wide with such a naked disbelief that Sirius's chest tightened at at the sight of it. It was his baby brother, but it wasn't quite his little brother. The older version of Sirius's brother started at them as if the whole street had juts risen form the dead and marched itself onto his front step.
"What the fuck?" he said, his voice gone rough with disbelief as his eyes flicked over Sirius, Severus, Peter, James and finally Harry as his grip tightened on the doorknob and he took one half-step forward onto the threshold.
"Regulus?" came from three different voices in the same time. Peter, Sirius and Severus stared wide-eyed at the man standing in the Grimmuald doorway. James still half blind and squinting like the force of his annoyance might somehow sharpen the world into focus, jerked at the name.
"Reggie?" James started forward at once, because James had always moved first and worried about the consequences after. The bloody idiot would got him self killed soon enough if he continued acting like a headless chicken. Severus was faster and slapped a flat hand into the middle of James's chest gripping his jumper and stopping him dead in his tracks.
"Stay still," Severus hissed without taking his eyes off the man in the doorway.
The man on the step could not have been anybody else. Not with that face. Not with that set of jaw. It was Regulus. It had to be, yet it was not the Regulus Sirius had dragged half sobbing and half furious out of Grimmuald in 1976. Sirius could not breath properly and his brain kept trying to refuse what he was seeing. Sirius opened his mouth but nothing came out. A dozen thoughts crashed trough him, too fast and too loud to separate cleanly. Regulus was alive. He did not know why that came to mind, of course his little brother was alive, he juts saw him three days ago. Sirius looked at Regulus again. Oh well maybe it was more then three days? According to the silver in Regulus's hair and the worry lines on his face, it had to be years. Also what the fuck was he smelling, why was he smelling wax and herbs in Grimmuald. Why the hell were they at Grimmuald? Why was this older staring version of his little brother at Grimmuald? If Sirius did not already have a blasting headache this line of though and all the questions he had would certainly give him one.
Regulus tore his gaze off Sirius for long enough to turn his head into the house and yell, "Remus, come here, sweetheart."
From somewhere deeper inside a voice shouted back, warm and exhausted. "Just a second, love. Caelum is running the hall again."
Regulus's gaze returned to Sirius and he yelled a bit louder now. "Remus, love, come here!"
"In a minute, Regulus. If it's somebody who needs help, let them in." Remus shouted with a suffering sight at the end.
"Remus John Lupin-Black, get your fucking arse here now!" Regulus's grip tightened on the wand.
There was silence at first, then a crash and thundering footsteps approaching fast. The man who came into view behind the variant of Regulus made Sirius's knees threaten treachery. He faintly hear two stets of gasps and with the corner of his eyes saw Severus's grip on James's shirt tighten a fraction. Them man who Regulus called Remus reached the door at speed, one hand still lifted as if he had been prepared to continue whatever argument he'd been having with the unseen child named Caelum. He stooped abruptly in the entrance behind Regulus that his hand caught the frame to steady himself. He too was older, because why would not he be. Regulus was older also. But Sirius brain must have been left in the vortex that spit them out or he had a brain injure because he could not quite understand any of this. The variant of Remus had gone broad through the chest and shoulders that made him look more like a soldier then the boy Sirius had known and seen juts a few days ago. This Remus also had silver through his hair, even more so then Regulus. There were faint lines around his eyes and mouth, the kind of lines one gets by laughing too much and worrying more and sleeping too little. He looked tired. He wore a brown jumper with one sleeve shoved up higher then the other and a tea towel over one shoulder. He looked fucking ordinary and domesticated and Sirius stomach did a weird flip. Remus's eyes landed on Peter and Harry first, then he looked at James who had narrowed his eyes into tiny slits as he squinted at the two man at the front entrance of Grimmual. Remus's gaze moved to Severus who still gripped James's shirt as a lifeline and then his moss-green eyes with a specks of yellow landed on Sirius. Remus's fingers locked so hard on the doorframe his knuckles went white as he sucked a breath through his teeth.
Peter, Sirius and Severus all went, in a very rough voices "Remus?"
James head moved like a ping pong between them. "Will somebody please tell me what the fuck is going on? Severus let the fuck go."
Remus, or the older version of him just stared and then he tilted his head backwards pinched his nose and sighted, "Fucking hell."
Harry, who was still perched on Peter's hip, pointed at Regulus with immediate delight and announced "Fuck!"
"No," four voices said at once making the toddler blink and then stick his tongue and clap his hands.
From somewhere deeper inside Grimmuald a women's voice called, impatient but warm, "Who is it? If that is the bread delivery tell them they are late again and I will knock two knuts from the total."
"If that is the bread delivery, tell me if he is fit." another women's voice drifted, silkier and sharper.
"Cannot be," Remus said. He had gone pale. He let go of the door frame as his gaze returned to the four, plus a baby, standing on his front doorstep. He dragged both hands through his hair and catch at the ends of it, tugging once as thought pain might help. "You came back?"
Harry leaned dangerously far out of Peter's arms, little body all eager trust, making grabby motions with his chubby hands.
"Uncle Momny!" Harry squalled trying to launch himself at the man standing far away, then he turned to face Peter, patted his cheek and pointed at Remus again, "Pete, Momny! Go!"
Peter looked down at the toddler in his arms, then at the older Remus, then back at Harry again with an expression that said, quite clearly, that he had not planed for a one-year-old to start issuing commands in the middle of whatever fresh hell this was.
"Right," Peter said faintly. "Yes. Of course. Let us just hand the baby to the hallucination of our best friend's older self. That seams reasonable."
Harry slapped both palms against Peter's cheeks and squished his face with a full authority of a tiny dictator in the making. "Go!"
"Give me my son." James made a wounded sound and shoved blindly at Severus's hand trying to move forward and take Harry back
"Potter, if you take one more step while unable to see the stairs in front of your own feet, I will bind you to the railing," Severus snapped, still keeping on hand fisted into James's jumper while his eyes darted to Sirius every two seconds. Because Sirius did not move for a while now, he juts stared and grappled as a fish on dry land.
James blinked behind nothing, his face turning towards Severus's voice with pure offended dignity. He reached up and tried to pry Severus's hand off him, but Severus only tightened his grip and planted his feet like an underfed gargoyle with a personal grudge and narrowed his onyx eyes at James.
"You can not bind me to the railing," James said, sounding genuinely insulted by the thereat.
"I can do a great many things when properly motivated." Severus tilted his head, his hair falling into his eyes as he looked James up and down with cold, professional consideration.
"Stop threatening me in front of my child," James scoffed, pointing somewhere near Severus's shoulder and missing by several inches, but he stopped tugging at his jumper and stared at the vague bluer he assumed was Severus's face.
"Your child just said fuck on a public street," Severus's eyes flicked to Harry who was now chewing happily on the edge of Peter's collar with a very innocent expression and then he looked back at James with eyebrow rises so high they nearly vanished into his hair.
"That was Peter's fault," James, managed to jab a finger towards Peter's general direction, gasping offended huff of breath right into Severus's face.
"I beg your pardon. I was traumatised by a vortex of hell and machines of death. I cannot be held responsible for what comes out of my mouth during crisis response." Peter lifted his free hand in outrage and gasped out.
"It is all of your faults! You vanished! All of you!" Regulus yelled so sharply from the door way that all four heads snapped at him.
Sirius laughed and then choked out a sob, because he must had lost his damn mind. He wanted to grab Regulus by the shoulders and shake hm until all the years that had gathered there fell off his face. Regulus took one more step forward and lowered his wand just enough that it no longer pointed directly at anyone's chest. Sirius swallowed. The street noise pressed in from behind him. Cars, voices, rain beginning to spit against the pavement, too much life form a world that had gone on without him as it seems. "
"We were in the nursery," Sirius said, finally finding his voice, moving one hand through his hair to get it out of his eyes, only to wince in pain was he touched a badly healed wound on the back of his head. "He was coming and I had to think fast and I…" a sob escaped him, Severus let go of James. "I only meant to protect us. I used blood magic, old Black one, father tough us when we were little. But I…." another sob came out and Severus laced his fingers through Sirius's hand. Sirius let a sight. "But I must have fucked up something, like I always do…"
"Oh, love." said Severus, cupping Sirius face and pecking his lips, then brushing his thumb along Sirius cheek. "You did fuck up."
Sirius snorted, "I love you too."
"What year is it?" Peter asked because apparently everybody forgot the most circuital question of all.
"Two thousand and one," Regulus jaw worked once as he crossed his arms against his chest
"No. No, it is not." James managed to stay as the whole world tipped around them.
"That is twenty years." said Peter trying to wrangle a wiggling toddler who reached the end of his patience and reached again for Remus as his little mouth started to wobble.
"Momny! Mine!!" and then he went into full blown tantrum and Remus launched himself from the doorway as Harry capacitated himself to the man skittling down the steps.
Peter swore and nearly lost his grip, but Remus's hands came up automatically catching Harry with ease. Harry slammed against his chest, arms going around his neck, face pressing into his jumper as he babbled "Momny Momny Momny…mine mine mine moony."
Remus folded around the toddler and for a moment, Remus did not seem to know what to do with the weight in his arms. That was the terrible part. Not that he held Harry badly, because he did not . His hand knew exactly where to go, one spread wide across the small back, the other curved under Harry's bottom with the old automatic care of someone who had once held this child often enough to remember the shape of him even after twenty years. That was what made it hurt like son of a bitch. His body remembered before the rest of him caught up. His arms closed around Harry as if no time had passed at all. Remus's mouth twisted but no sound came out. Must have been a shell shock that made Lupin dead quiet. His eyes had gone wet, and he was trying to blink away the tears that refused to go the fuck away. Harry, who had no respect of notion of grief, patted at Remus's jumper with both hands and tucked his face into the hollow below Remus's throat like he belonged there, like the universe had not torn a twenty-year hole through the middle of that belonging and then spat Harry back out still smelling of milk and camomile tea. Remus had mourned this child for year, he had mourned all of the men standing now in front of him alive and well and breathing and bleeding. He had split open himself with grief and almost lost Regulus in the process, because Moony refused to believe that his cub was dead and gone. And now the smug bastard was howling inside Remus's mind, chanting "I was right, you stupid boy. Moony knows. Moony always right." And Remus wanted to deck him for being right and for being smug and for giving him a headache with his howling.
Harry lifted his head, his little face flushed form the tantrum, damp around the eyes, curls sticking up in every direction. Harry hair must have also objected to time travel and all this mess. The child stared at Remus from far to close, solemn and curious, then planted one sticky sweat clad hand on Remus's cheek and patted him twice.
"Momny sad," Harry announced looking at Remus.
"No, cub. Moony is happy." Remus let out a laugh that broke in a middle
Harry's little brows pinched together and one finger came and touched Remus's cheek and the tear that slipped from his eyes and shook his little head, "No, Momny sad. Face wet."
"Alright cub, Moony is a little sad." Remus smiled into Harry's hair and inhaled deeply.
Harry backed a bit and looked at Remus's fave, then in all the deep toddler seriousness and considered it, then leaned forward and pressed a spectacularly wet kiss to Remus's cheek.
"Mwa!"
The sound that escaped Remus this time was worse, it devastated right down to the bone. His face had gone soft and happier as Harry hugged him and burred his little face into the crook of his neck. Harry patted him softly on the chest and then having apparently cred twenty years of grief with one slobbery kiss and therefore finding the matter settled, lifted his head and twisted an bit in Remus's arms and peered over Remus's shoulder at the man still frozen on the front step. Harry's whole face lit up when he recognised who was standing there.
"Eggy!" Harry shouted, extending both arms, little hands opening and closing in grabby motions. "Arry hug! Eggy, hug me!"
Regulus was already moving, his face crumbling in a way that surprised Regulus himself. It was awful. Regulus Black did not crumble. Regulus Black cut, sneered, and endured. He also turned pain into something sharp enough to frighten other people with. Also Regulus Black was a lire and a softie because Harry's had both arms reaching for him and Regulus looked as thought someone had reached into his chest and twisted his heart that had been dead for twenty years. A broken sound escaped Regulus's lips and he took two steps down before he was stopped. A women appeared in the doorway behind him and cut clean through the moment.
"That is all very touching," she said, voice brisk and warm, but threaded with impatience, "and I truly do want to know why my husband's dead brother is bleeding on the wards and why my other husband is holding a child who has been gone for twenty years, but as that one —" she pointed straight at Sirius, who blinked at her like a man accused in court, " —is currently feeding the magic of Grimmuald with his blood, can we move this inside before Minister Riddle finds out where the hell we are located?"
"Minister," James said, voice gone flat as he froze so quadruply Severus had to grab the back of his jumper to stop him pitching sideways into the railing. "Minister Riddle?"
The women's eyes flicked to him, quick and assessing. She had wild brown curls shoved back form her face and a wand stuck in it holding the bun. Her jumper was too large at the sleeves, her mouth too stern for someone so young. Husbands? Sirius brows pitched into a frown at that. The girl could not be older then him, so how the hell did she have husbands? Two of them? The old farts that were staining there in front of them who could in all honesty be he dads. That too big of the jumper also looked a bit inflated in the front, as if there was unseen bump there. Severus and Peter exchanged looks, and a smirks tugged in the corners of their mouths.
"Yes," she said. "And I promise this is he part where every single one of you shuts up and gets inside."
The second woman appeared behind her, leaning one shoulder against the doorframe with effortless, elegant irritation. Dark hair, dark eyes, green silk dress and high stilettos on the polished hallway floor and mouth curved in to a smirk. She expected her red clad nails and glanced past the curly haired women.
"She means now. Unless one of you want to explain to a patrol why four dead man and one dead toddler are bleeding on doorstep of a house that should have been burned down years ago." she added.
Everybody exchanged looks and then crumbled inside with Severus shoving James forward and into the house. Remus came up the steps with Harry still clinging to him, the toddler now entirely settled and humming into Remus's jumper. Regulus reached them in the hallway
"Hello, little manace." Regulus touched Harry's curls and ran his hand through it.
Harry beamed. "Eggy! Arry missed you."
The door shut behind them with a heavy, final sound and Peter lifted one finger. "I have several questions."
Warmth rushed around Sirius. Human warmth. Soap, bread, wax, old books, stewed apples, smell of drying fresh laundry. It all hit him at once. Too much sensation, too much noise. Grimmuald's hall glowed with lamplight. Children's drawings covered the walls where family portraits had once leered. A pair of tiny boots sat crookedly beside the umbrella stand that was not the old trolls leg.
"Are they dead ghosts?" above them a child shot - whispered.
"Dead ghosts are just ghosts, stupid." another child scoffed.
Sirius just stared. His home. His horrible, rotting, hateful house, looked fucking homey and loved. It was full of children too. His vision tilted.
Severus's hand tightened on his arm. "Sirius?"
Sirius tried to answer. He truly did. Something clever, preferably. Something dramatic, most certainly. Instead, he looked at the flower-patterned rug beneath his boots, the polished banister and the little paper bats handing from the chandelier.
"Oh," Sirius said faintly. "That is rude."
Then he collapsed and everything went black.