1995

The neighborhood playground in Little Whinging wasn’t a very lively place on a hot afternoon in July. On an old wooden park bench, sat a visibly disgruntled couple with an uncomfortable looking teenage boy between them.

The tawny skinned woman with a mass of spiral curls on her head looked ready to breathe fire. No one would have wanted to mess with Marlene right then, despite the fact she wasn’t exactly the traditional definition of intimidating. Even as a grown witch of 32, her freckles and sunny smile in combination with her diminutive stature meant that she was still referred to as “cute”. Marlene was, however, quite confident that she’d attained more gravitas about her since the first time she’d visited Little Whinging, nearly 13 years prior.

On the other side of the bench was a tall and striking man with high contrast coloring and a posture that suggested he found his surroundings to be unsanitary. Sirius disliked this place as much as his wife Marlene.

Their disdain for the muggle aspirational middle-class neighborhood had everything to do with the Lanky black haired boy who sat between them. Harry had been forced to live in this horrid place with even more contemptible people for 3 whole years of his early childhood.

Dumbledore was a little bit like royalty in wizarding Britain. Wizards never really went all in with the royalty thing, but regardless of that fact, Dumbledore reigned supreme. He was allowed to make decisions, sometimes despite lacking any sort of relevant official authority.

Sirius Black had been named as Harry Potter’s godfather. There was a signed magical document that said so. Though Marlene hadn’t been able to make her position official before the Potters were murdered, they’d asked her to be Harry’s godmum. But Sirius’s claim alone should have been enough for the couple to take guardianship of the boy when he was orphaned.

Yet Dumbledore wouldn’t allow it.

When the Blacks finally did bring Harry to live with him the word “kidnapping” was thrown around in the papers. Dumbledore certainly didn’t contest it. He did, upon viewing a pensieve memory incriminating Harry’s muggle relatives, agree to give the Blacks custody of their godson.

That had been just over 10 years ago. There had been conditions to Dumbledore’s agreement to let them have their godson and overlook the “kidnapping”. One such condition was why they were all there today.

Harry had to stay with his mother’s muggle sister and her family for for several weeks while Dumbledore investigated… something. Despite the fact they hated him and he them. Despite the fact he had a loving home and family. He was required to undergo this torture, even when not a month ago he’d seen a schoolmate murdered. He’d survived an encounter with the newly resurrected Lord Voldemort. Dumbledore said it was for his safety and gave some vague explanation about blood magic. The Blacks didn’t like it.

They didn’t want to leave him. The family of three had all seen more than their share of death, but it had been a constant source of comfort that they didn’t have to bear it alone. Harry shouldn’t be left to his own thoughts with people who were cruel to him so soon after experiencing such a blow.

“Well it looks like everyone up and moved. Perhaps we should go on home.” Sirius drawled.

He had to stop and remind himself that muggles didn’t have the benefit of personal cooling spells. Thus, were probably compensating with some sort of indoor cooling what’s-it. Did muggles all gather in one place when it got very hot out? It seemed like they might, because they certainly weren’t out in the neighborhood today.

The family of three were the park’s only occupants as far as they could tell. Someone could have been hiding. Marlene wouldn’t have put it past that slimy reporter Rita Skeeter. The fact that woman’s animagus was a bug and she’d not yet been squashed with an old boot was baffling to most people who’d spent any amount of time with the writer for the Daily Prophet.

“I’ll be fine!”

Harry’s tone was about what his godparents had come to expect from the 15 year old. He’d had a hard time sleeping since the ill fated third task of the Triwizard Tournament. Horrific trauma, it turned out, did nothing to improve upon the usual surliness of late adolescence.

“I know but you’re my little boy and I can’t stand leaving you. You’re sure you don’t want me to stay on as a duck?”

“It’ll never work, Marlene. Vernon is terribly duck-phobic, for one.”

A hint of a smile showed in Harry’s bright green eyes as he addressed his godmother.

“I’m not sure I’ll ever be alright with all this ‘Marlene’ business. But I’m glad I made an impression that time.”

Her attack upon Vernon Dursleys’s ankles was one of Marlene’s top 5 duck related memories. But she missed the days when the boy she’d raised and loved as her own called her “Duckie”. He’d decided he was a grown wizard now and had started calling both godparents by their given names.

“I’ll be a foot taller than you by the end of the year, Marlene.”

“Be nice to your godmother Harry. She’s quite vicious as a duck, you know.”

“But it’s true. I will be a foot taller.”

“You’ll be our little boy even if you get a foot taller than me. But please don’t get that tall. You’d have to go to Hagrid’s tailor.”

“You’re really not as funny as you think you are, you know that?”

“I said the same thing to your dad a time or two.”

“He was probably very funny.”

“He was” Marlene chimed in.

James and Lily Potter were a constant presence in their lives despite their deaths when Harry was just over a year old. Sirius kept their memories alive and made a promise to himself a long time ago that he would never try to replace James.

James had been everything to him once. He’d been his first real friend. The first person who was genuinely kind to him. James changed Sirius’s life in a way that he never stopped being thankful for.

But James was gone and Harry was here. Sirius had been caring from him since he was knee high to a bowtruckle.

Marlene’s career mattered. She cared about training new animagi and it was already a huge part of her by the age of 21, when they first brought Harry home. Sirius still made a few maps here and there for people who’d commissioned him to do so. They were good works of magic and he was proud of them, but Magical Cartography wasn’t who he was. It was an easy choice that Sirius would be the one to take on the role of primary caregiver to the little boy. He’d taught him how to read and do arithmetic. He’d taught him all the things he figured a kid ought to know and a few things he was rather iffy about. He had a hard time with the exact definition of age appropriate language, for instance. But every day he spent caring for his departed friends’ son he felt more like a father.

Marlene refused to consider pregnancy until the war was really and truly over and she felt safe. So, Harry was their only experience with child rearing. But Sirius felt pretty sure that he loved Harry as much as he might love a son of his own blood.

He stayed committed to keeping James and Lily’s memory alive, but often times felt uncomfortably jealous of his long dead best friend.

“If you can’t stand these muggles any longer you’ve got the mirror, right?”

“Yes Sirius… I have the mirror. Honestly… you realize I’ve faced down the most dangerous wizard of the age and lived to tell about it more times than… I dunno… nearly anyone. You think I can’t take a week of Vernon Dursley?”

“Harry… you haven’t been targeted by the Dark Lord because we thought it was acceptable. We would have been there in your place every time. Merlin, we’d have gone in after you if we’d been alerted.”

“I guess you’re about as clueless as I am.”

He didn’t say it to be harsh. Everything just came out harsh these days. He really did feel clueless about his own life. His godparents weren’t any better informed, if he were going to take them at their word. He wanted to be able to take them at their word. He hoped he had someone who he could trust to be honest with him. It was too bad that the only people who he was sure had more information had a vested interest in keeping him in the Dark about his own destiny.

Fucking Destiny. Once in a while I’d just like for destiny to leave me alone.

“If you just want to talk, we’ll have our mirror at hand. We love you.”

Sirius enveloped his godson into a hug. At first he flinched back from it as teenage boys are wont to do with their parents, but then the comfort of the history they shared kicked in. Playing chase with Pads and Duckie in their animagus forms, Duckie would always eventually get caught and he could hear her laughing through her quacks. His godparents were there waiting, when he made his way out of The Chamber of Secrets. They didn’t get mad that he had gone about it all wrong, but told him how very proud of their boy they were, for how brave he’d been. He felt so helpless to destiny but Marlene and Sirius had always been there no matter what disaster Destiny doled out.

“All right all right. Love you too, Pads.”