the_debt_of_time

to Hogwarts, Sirius heard about him all the way across the North Sea. Aurors, Healers, and
guards were terrible gossips.
"Harry Potter! Can you believe it!" one guard exclaimed. "My boy's a year ahead of him at
Hogwarts. From what I hear he looks just like his father."
Except the eyes, Sirius thought. Harry had had Lily's eyes.
"Well, of course, Harry Potter would end up in Gryffindor," a Healer mentioned to her friend in
passing one day. "Weren't both of his parents in that House? He would have been a boon to Ravenclaw if
you ask me."
Gryffindor. Sirius had grinned at the news like a proud father would have. Like James would
have.
"Saw it with my own eyes when I was visiting my daughter. She's a Chaser for Slytherin. He's
not the best flyer, mind—broom was thrashing about—but there, in the end, Harry Potter caught the
Snitch with his mouth!" An Auror laughed with his partner in the corner of the hall next to Sirius's cell.
"Youngest Seeker in a century, they say."
Sirius had not dared to ask questions or even let on that he listened in on their conversations, too
afraid that they would stop talking around him, and he needed to know anything and everything about
Harry—the one good thing he felt he had left in this world. A world that had taken everything else away
from him. News about Harry Potter was life-sustaining.
"Living with Muggles," a Ministry assigned Curse-Breaker had said as he passed through one
day, evaluating the security wards. "Can you believe it? Harry Potter living with Muggles all these years."
"What?" Sirius had actually muttered out loud, though no one seemed to hear him.
"Well, wasn't his mum a Mudblood?"
"Yeah, they're her kin, I imagine."
Sirius had rushed to the bars in a rage. "What?!"
That incident had been over a year ago, and Sirius had to be stunned in order for a
Healer to force a special prison-brewed Calming Draught down his throat. He woke up
two days later bruised and broken but still just as pissed off about finding out that Harry—
for some fucking reason—had been raised by Petunia and Vernon Dursley.
What the fuck had Dumbledore been thinking?
He had known about the fates of the Longbottoms. Unlike the rest of the prison
population, who all constantly denied the crimes they had committed, Bellatrix and the
Lestrange brothers were all too pleased with themselves when they had been brought in