"Good soup," Sirius sighed as he polished the bottom of the bowl with the remnants of the bread.

Remus shook his head, tearing his fascinated gaze away from the sight of his reinstated friend devouring every scrap of food on the table before him. "Have you actually eaten anything since you escaped?"

Sirius settled back in the moth eaten armchair with a discreet burp. "You don't want to know what I've been eating."

"How did you stay hidden?"

"Muggles," Sirius said shortly. "You'd be amazed what they throw into their rubbish bins."

Remus grimaced.

"Told you you didn't want to know." Sirius rubbed at his bristly jaw and looked around the dusty room, eyes more alert. "Now what? Did Dumbledore tell you his plan while I was napping?"

"Not a plan exactly, no," Remus admitted.

"But I assume he did believe me," Sirius probed. "Or is at least giving me the benefit of the doubt. Otherwise I would have been waking up back in Azkaban." He grimaced. "If I woke up at all."

"Come on, Sirius," Remus said dryly. "You didn't really think Dumbledore would turn you over to the Dementors if he had a shred of doubt. You must have been counting on that."

Sirius shrugged. "Maybe a little," he admitted. "It's actually quite nice to have a sense of self-preservation again. Believe me, for a long time I didn't care a jot what happened to me."

"Well, believing you is the name of the game, isn't it? And for what it's worth Dumbledore does seem to believe you. He just doesn't think he can convince anyone else to."

Sirius sat up more alertly. "So?"

"So we stay here for now. Or you do anyway."

"Out of sight out of mind?" Sirius said dryly. "I've got news for Dumbledore and it's all bad. I've escaped from one prison, and I didn't do that to exchange it for another."

"No, you did it to help Harry," Remus pointed out sharply. "Didn't you?"

Sirius grimaced. "You know I did," he said sulkily. "But-"

"But nothing," Remus interrupted hardly. "You've asked Dumbledore to trust you, the least you can do is trust him. Or would you prefer to rush out and do something else mad behind his back? After all, that worked so well last time, right?"

Sirius's face froze and he closed his eyes.

Remus felt a flare of guilt but he ruthlessly suppressed it. "Trust him," he said more gently. "He has your best interests at heart."

"So he always tells us," Sirius said huskily, opening his deep rimmed eyes and blinking at Remus. "And after all, he's been pulling all the strings for a while now. Look at this business with Harry. I mean, who would have thought of Snape posing as his father? Only that old wizard."

Remus cleared his throat nervously as Sirius shook his head in wonder.

"I mean, Snape?" he went on incredulously. "As if anyone would believe for a moment that Lily would have anything to do with that greasy Slytherin creep."

"Actually, Sirius," Remus began.

"Not to mention that the boy is the very image of his father," Sirius marveled. "How is it that anyone has bought such a ludicrous tale?"

"I suppose if you've been hanging around Muggles all this time you haven't seen the Prophet, or any other newspapers?"

Sirius frowned at him. "Only newspapers I've seen are the ones I can find to sleep on, and what they have on page three the Daily Prophet wouldn't print in a million years. Why, what's been in the paper?"

"A hearing, actually," Remus said, plunging in. "It was all very formal and official. And it found that Snape... Well, he really is Harry's father, Sirius."

"Well, I'm sure it did," Sirius said patiently. "If that's what Dumbledore wanted it to find."

"Fudge called the hearing, and believe me, the last thing he wanted was for Harry to have a living parent. He wanted to take the boy away and get some more political mileage out of him. Or maybe he has some even more sinister reason, I think even the headmaster is starting to think that way."

"The Ministry wants Harry?" Sirius frowned. "How did Dumbledore fool them?"

"He didn't," Remus said in exasperation. He pushed himself away from the low table and paced across the room. "He didn't have to fool them." Meeting the blank gaze of his oldest friend, Remus tried to inject all the sincerity he had into his next words. "Snape really is Harry's father, Sirius."

Sirius stared into Remus's eyes for long seconds. "No," he said, just as sincerely and deeply. "He isn't."

Remus puffed out a breath.

"I was there when Harry was born, remember? I was in the next room when James walked out with the boy in his arms. When he asked me-"

"To be his godfather, yes, I know," Remus said rapidly. "But you weren't there when James found out he and Lily would never have children together."

Sirius shook his head, opening his mouth.

"Just listen to me for one minute, all right?" Remus said, over-riding him. "Forget what you think you know and listen."

Sirius was still shaking his head, but he met Remus's stubborn gaze and must have seen determination to tell this story there. He set his own jaw, crossed his arms and leaned back in his chair.

"Fine," he said shortly. "You listened to my story. The least I can do is listen to yours."

"It's James's story actually," Remus said quietly. "James and Lily's. And I can only imagine what they must have gone through learning they would never have their own child. What it would have cost them to go to Severus Snape to get what they needed from him."

"Snape," Sirius snorted under his breath. "As if."

"James's cousin. The blood relative he needed to complete the spell."

Sirius tapped his fingers on the arm of his chair, dislodging faded old stuffing onto the dusty floor. "Spell?" he said sardonically. "What spell?"

"Surrogace," Remus said simply. "Snape's seed, given to Lily, through James."

"That is so gross," Sirius said in disgust. "That you could even imagine a scenario with Snape's seed in it, for Merlin's sake."

Remus covered his face with an outspread hand. "Please, Sirius," he said weakly. "Can we get past this bit?"

"Gladly," Sirius said fervently. "It's your story."

"It's not a story!" Remus shouted, then held up a hand and took a deep calming breath. "It's the truth," he said patiently. "Harry looks like James because he does share his blood, although more distantly than father and son. And because he was conceived from their love, James and Lily's. But he is Severus Snape's son as well."

"And James kept this a secret because?" Sirius asked dryly. "I was his best friend, Remus. He would have told me, for Merlin's sake!"

"Would he? Would you?" Remus challenged. "He chose Snape in the first place because he wasn't close to him. He wanted to forget the fact that any part of Harry wasn't his and Lily's."

"I thought he chose Snape because of their blood tie?" Sirius reminded him. "In fact if it comes to that, I'm just as closely tied by blood to James as Snape is, which is to say, not very close. Why wouldn't James have come to me?"

"Because you were so close," Remus said, as if it should have been obvious. "How could he forget it, if you were there all the time reminding him?"

Sirius was still shaking his head, but there was a frown between his brows now, and his eyes slipped away from Remus's gaze and seemed to look beyond him, as if seeing some other time and place. "It's not possible," he said slowly. "Even if I believed that James was not Harry's father, to believe Snape, of all people..." He shook his head again, more emphatically. "No! I won't believe it."

Remus lost patience. "Fine," he said, standing up and putting his hands on his hips. "Don't believe it then. I'm not going to knock myself out trying to convince you."

"Just because you've bought this cock and bull story wholesale!" Sirius said, losing his own temper, pushing himself to his feet. "I was there, Remus, while you were off making your own life without us! James loved that boy!"

"And he couldn't love him unless he was his own?" Remus bellowed.

"He couldn't have loved him if he was Snape's!" Sirius bellowed back.

Remus stared, mouth agape. "He was your friend," he said incredulously. "But you sure don't give him much credit."

"He was my friend," Sirius repeated stubbornly. "I knew him better than you. He could never have given his whole heart to Harry if he was that Slytherin bastard's son."

"You mean you couldn't," Remus said in sudden realisation.

Now it was Sirius's turn to lose his voice for a moment.

Remus went on the attack. "Maybe that's the real reason your friend didn't confide in you?"

Sirius stepped forward, hands clenched and Remus stepped back, automatically reaching for his wand. But after only a step Sirius halted in his tracks, knuckles whitening as he brought himself under control.

"You're wrong," Sirius whispered through white lips. His whole face looked pale and he was swaying a little on unsteady legs, his too thin limbs trembling.

Remus felt a sudden flare of pity as his anger seemed to drain away like bath water.

"Even if I was," he said huskily. "The whole of the Wizengamut and the Magical Council wouldn't be so easy to hoodwink. Not to mention Elder Kendrick, who performed the parentage spell."

Sirius seemed to hardly hear him, he was reaching back with a trembling hand to find the lumpy surface of the old mattress. He groped for it and half sat, half fell backwards onto it. "You must be wrong," he whispered. "Everything I've done these last few months has been to find James's son. To help James's son..."

Remus sighed and sat down next to him, feeling the bed depress beneath his weight and lift Sirius a little. How thin he was, how light!

"He's James's son in every way that counts," he said gently.

"And Snape's too?" Sirius said dully. He turned deep set eyes to Remus. "Snape's son?"

Remus bit his lip, groping for words. "He's the same boy he was when you held him in your arms and tickled his toes." He smiled a little and nodded when Sirius blinked in surprise. "You fascinated Harry with that little tidbit."

"I don't remember telling him that," Sirius confessed.

"But do you remember doing it?" Remus pressed. "Do you remember standing by James's side and promising to be the boy's godfather? To take care of him if James and Lily couldn't? Promises like that meant a lot in those dangerous days."

"The truth meant a lot too," Sirius said lowly. "And I'm not so sure I would have made that promise, if I had known the truth. James knew me well enough to know that. Is it fair that I made that promise without knowing?"

Remus shook his head helplessly. "What can I say, Sirius? You didn't know the truth but James did. He asked you to look after his son because that's what Harry was and always would be to him. If it didn't matter to James - why should it matter to you?"

Sirius closed his eyes, chin sinking onto his chest. "I don't know," he whispered. "It just does."

Remus looked at him slumped in the chair, unkempt, half-starved. Pity welled up from that old place within him where love had once dwelt. Of course it mattered to Sirius Black, last survivor of the Black family. Things like that mattered to people like him, even if he had spent most of his life rejecting his family. It wasn't so easy to change who they'd raised him to be.

Blood mattered. To some wizards it mattered most of all.

"I'm sorry, Sirius," he said. "Sincerely sorry."

"I can't believe James did this," Sirius whispered bitterly, eyes still closed, mouth twisted. "I can't believe he let Lily do this!"

"Let Lily?" Lupin hooted derisively. "Your mind really did go in Azkaban, old friend, if you remember that James let Lily do anything."

Dark rimmed eyes flew open angrily, then Lupin's words seemed to sink in and Sirius was shaking his head, chuckling despite himself.

"Bloody Muggle-born that she was," he muttered, lips quivering. "Yeah, I suppose I can see how it would have gone. She's been leading James around by the balls since they were sixteen."

He shook his head again, eyes softer now, but still dark with memories.

"He must have loved her even more than I thought, to go through with such a hair-brained scheme."

"It got them what they wanted though,' Remus said simply.

Sirius acknowledged this with a shrug, and for long moments there was silence, while the night settled in around them. Stiff February winds shook the creaking old walls and wound its way through the cracks, sending a chill around their ankles. Finally Sirius met Lupin's eyes, his own shining with tears.

"I miss them so much," he whispered.

Lupin's throat tightened with his own unshed tears. "I know."

"I'm not sure I can do this," Sirius continued hoarsely. "I'm not sure I'm strong enough to get beyond this, even for James and Lily."

"Be sure, Sirius," Remus warned. "Or keep away from Harry altogether. If you can't love him, then leaving him in peace is the best way to honour your promise to his parents."

Sirius closed his eyes and again bowed his head.