The seven of them stumbled into each other, wands drawn and ready for the fight of their life against that three-headed monstrosity...
Only to find themselves in the Trophy Room.
"Oh thank Merlin!" Ron gasped as he fell the rest of the way to the floor, half in relief, half because he'd crashed headlong into a suit of armor and his head was ringing.
"Wouldn't keep my hopes up we're out of danger yet mate," Harry grimly reminded as he stowed his wand away but offered up a hand. "We've still got the end of my year too."
"Right ray of sunshine you are," Ron groused as he took it. He got up and brushed himself off, watching Hermione nostalgically and going over to help her find the book. "As if you need the book to remember our first trip here."
"Hardly," she agreed. "I was trying to stop you two from being an idiot and you and Neville almost got us caught while Harry shouted about being quiet."
"Summed it up nicely," he chuckled.
Draco was the last to stow his wand away as he glared at every shadowed nook and cranny. "Getting a good look of the place, considering you welched our first trip here," Harry scoffed.
"If you wanted that duel Potter, all you had to do was ask," he said quietly and with all the promise of a coming hex.
Sirius grasped his shoulder and shook his head, trying to turn him away from the fight, even before Remus loudly cleared his throat and walked between the two teenagers and called, "oh look, Tonks has found the book," with a very pointed look at Harry.
He scowled and bit his tongue to stop himself blurting out what a right pig's ear these two were. What was his old teacher going to do, put him in detention? Where did Sirius have room to talk, that surely hadn't been the first or last time he'd started a fight with Snape.
Harry watched though as Malfoy took in Harry's whole group and slouched off to the nearest door, pulling on it and still unable to leave. Harry turned away, only to see a reflection of himself in a polished trophy marked Services to the School. He clenched his hand around his wand and fought back the urge to blast it away, why had Dumebldore kept that here! After he'd suspected, and now had proof of what Voldemort had done!
His eyes flashed bizarrely in the candlelight of the golden, highly polished surface, and for a horrible moment he thought they flashed red...but then looked sort of hazel. He swallowed and looked back towards Draco as he admitted to himself he'd been no better than his dad just then, instigating Malfoy out of frustration for this situation they were trapped in.
He caught Sirius's reflection as well, and saw him finally grinning like a madman. At least he was doing it for the understandable reason of hearing how good his godson was doing on his first ride of a broom! "You're a natural," Sirius cheered at him catching Neville's remembrall. "James would be so proud!"
Harry finally turned and smiled back just for Sirius's enthusiasm, though he wasn't so sure he wanted to be like his dad anymore. He watched patiently as his godfather caught Lupin and Tonks up in a whirlwind of a conversation that sounded like nostalgia and strategy, all of which kept getting jumbled in as Tonks kept trying to read and their excitement only grew when his dads two old friends found out that's how he'd even made the team, by impressing McGonagall.
He hadn't realized Neville had come over to him until he quietly murmured, "my dad never played Quidditch. I'm grateful, or my Gran would never shut up about me not making the team first year too."
Harry swallowed and didn't quite know what to say. It was the first time Neville had acknowledged his past to him, his parents in particular.
"Never given her something to brag about though, maybe I still should have tried," he finished mulishly as he watched someone he'd thought of as a psychopath a whole hour ago rhapsodize with full hand movements about some old Quaffle throw.
"Not all it's cracked up to be," Harry tried to protest, still attempting to banish the faint red in his cheeks, he'd never been praised so much in his life as Sirius switched to how well Harry had been flying in gale force winds the few matches he'd seen him playing in. "I'm starting to feel like I'll never live up to what he wants me to be."
Neville's face was mostly in shadows, flickering in the dim candlelight and the dying sun of the high windows casted them all in darkness, but he ducked down farther and picked up a trophy on the most deadly venomous tentacula plant. "My mom played though," he whispered just for Harry. "I'd like to see her smile, maybe."
Harry had nothing to say to that, as he looked at Sirius and recalled his long years of wishing the Dursley's had ever once even smiled at him, and now his own Godfather and even Lupin kept grinning at him. They were laughing because he hadn't joined in, jumped in the middle and braggingly declared what his best move was. They were smiling because he was so unlike James.
They were happy Harry was just getting this chance to chat with his friends and have any semblance of normalcy in this vacant castle...until Tonks got to the arising problems. Even with the warning, all three of them exchanged very troubled looks for those four kids just stumbling into that three-headed dog like that, and they had a very nasty feeling from their uneasy looks this had not been a one-off event.
"Is there any point in my asking you to tell me you didn't go back there?" Sirius asked, the happiness draining right back out of him as surely as if a dementor were back in range.
"No," Harry admitted. "I can't control what I did in the past."
Sirius sighed as Tonks warned the chapter was coming to a close and began to wonder if he wouldn't have been better off staying as Padfoot, at least he was less likely to have a heart attack as a dog.
YOU ARE READING
What's at Heart
Fanfiction"You'll be godfather," James told him with that smile he felt like he'd known all his life... Sirius's duty as caretaker of Harry is put to the test of a lifetime as he embarks on a quest with him through the entire wizarding world of Harry's past...
