Harry sneezed for the hundredth time.

He was working on a basket of Jobberknoll feathers, taking one at a time and stripping the vane from the shaft with a small knife. The bare shafts he tied up with string into bundles of twelve, while the fluff he stuffed the best he could into a cloth sack. Most of it, though, seemed to be floating in the air around him.

Snape hadn't bothered to supervise their detention. Lupin, Harry suspected, had been put to work on lesson plans for Defense. Sirius was scrubbing the desks in another classroom... or should have been.

He couldn't hear anything resembling the sound of desks being scrubbed. Most likely Sirius was being difficult again, and Snape would make their lives miserable when he came to let them off for the night.

It had been a while since Harry had been by himself, alone with his own thoughts.

His thoughts took off down some odd paths.

There was something wrong with Lupin and Sirius, he decided. He didn't want to allow that to be his conclusion, but once the thought took root in his mind, he couldn't seem to expel it.

It had been one thing to see Sirius acting a fraction of his real age; Harry had accepted Lupin's explanation that the long, solitary years in Azkaban had left Sirius predisposed to regressing to long-outgrown behaviors when suddenly given the opportunity. It had made sense, then.

But now Lupin was showing the same signs. The ability to reason like an adult seemed to come and go with him.

Harry sneezed, wiped his nose on his sleeve, and reached for another feather.

He was tempted to take Sirius' word for it that Lupin was just upset over their magical setback and being forced to get answers wrong in every class when he likely was qualified to teach most of them.

Whatever was going on, he wanted both of them to return to their senses and start acting like the adults they were. It wasn't until he was surrounded by peace and silence that he realized how exhausting their fighting was.

Since he couldn't do much else, Harry resolved to keep a close eye on both of them, and to speak with Lupin when a chance to do so without Sirius presented itself.

It was nearly nine, when all students were to be in their common rooms and the lower years in their dorms, though Harry couldn't recall that part of the rule ever being enforced.

His nose itched fiercely. He knew he had feathers in his hair, and his mouth felt like he had quite a few of them stuck to the roof of it. He was more than ready for Snape to come back, even if Sirius was probably going to get them another detention.

"Come on James, Pa--" Lupin, who had come through a door Harry had assumed was another storage cabinet, stopped short and looked around the room. "Where's Patrick?"

"In there," Harry said, pointing at the door that connected the two classrooms. "Professor Snape told him to scrub desks."

"And he's actually doing it?" Lupin asked, tilting his head to one side with a frown.

"I doubt it. I haven't heard anything."

Lupin marched to the door and flung it open.

"It's about time," Sirius' agitated voice said before Lupin could even open his mouth. "I was about to start cleaning, I was so bored."

"Why are you just sitting there?" Lupin demanded. "You could have been helping James, if you weren't going to do what Professor Snape told you."

Sirius appeared in the doorway, eyes narrowed and flashing. "For your information, the git locked me in here and put up a silencing charm."

Lupin gave Sirius a suspicious look. "This door wasn't locked."

"Not from your side, apparently," Sirius said. His expression was steadily growing more angry. "Are you calling me a liar, Milo?"

Lupin hesitated for an almost imperceptible moment, then shook his head. "Of course not. I'm just glad you didn't get in any more trouble."

"If you will recall," Sirius said, his voice lower and even more dangerous, "you are the one who got us in trouble."

Lupin flushed.

"We're supposed to be back in our room, aren't we?" Harry said quickly. "I'm done here, I think, except all this fluff keeps getting away from me."

Lupin turned his attention to Harry, and soon was helping him clean his messy work area. Sirius watched from the doorway, arms crossed over his chest.

"That will have to do," Lupin said. "Nothing short of a good cleaning spell will get rid of all the small bits. You two go on back to our room. I need to get a headache potion from Professor Snape and then I'll be right with you."

"Don't you want us to wait?" Harry asked. "Or we could walk with you."

"No, thank you," Lupin said. "It's best if you go on. He's in a mood."

He gave Harry a meaningful look, his eyes darting in Sirius' direction to indicate that Snape wasn't the only one, and it was best to keep them from running into each other.

"Oh, all right. Come on, Paddy. I'm falling asleep on my feet."

Actually, he wasn't stretching the truth by much. His back ached from sitting on the hard bench and bending over the feathers, and he couldn't think of many things he'd like better than to take a hot shower and climb into bed.

Well, not many things that were possible, anyway.

As they walked down the dimly lit corridor toward Snape's quarters, Harry sneaked a look at Sirius.

Aside from still looking ruffled, he didn't look any different to Harry.

Maybe he was imagining things.

Sirius had been thrust into a very odd, very challenging situation. They all had been. He had seemed unbalanced and irrational from the moment Harry had laid eyes on him, Snape dragging and shoving him down the dungeon corridor. In fact, that was still true if Harry thought back to the real first time he had laid eyes on Sirius, in the Shrieking Shack in his third year.

Maybe there was nothing to it.

Maybe he was asking too much of Sirius.

Maybe Lupin was right, and the Sirius Harry had got to know in the lull between his escape from Hogwarts and his death at the Ministry had been the true act, and what Harry was seeing now was just the real Sirius, no longer pretending to have himself together for the sake of other people's ease of mind.

"Stop staring at me before you walk into a wall," Sirius groused at him. "I can see Milo and the greasy git managed to convince you I'm out to end all our lives, but --"

"That isn't true," Harry said quickly. "That isn't what I think at all."

Sirius seemed to calm down a bit, after that.

"Don't you still have History to do?" Harry asked, yawning. He was glad it wasn't him. He didn't think he could manage to write even one more word.

"No. Took your notes to detention," Sirius said, taking a badly crumpled wad of parchment out of his pocket. "I'll get the book done in the morning."

Harry accepted the parchment from Sirius. He decided not to say anything, figuring the notes would probably be all right if he piled all his textbooks on top of them for the night.

They agreed that Sirius would shower first.

Harry sat down on his bed, bouncing a little.

His eyes happened to wander over to the panel that hid the secret cupboard, and he remembered how Sirius had emptied his pockets, not letting Harry see what it was he had. Now, with Sirius and Lupin out of the room, was a good chance for Harry to see.

It was, he convinced himself, all part of making sure there was absolutely nothing to his suspicion that something was going wrong, somehow, with Sirius and Lupin.

The first thing he saw when he opened the panel was his own carton of things. It had been pulled to the front, used to hide a number of lumpy packages wrapped in what looked like dinner napkins.

He reached for one and it came unraveled, spilling hardened bread, dinner rolls, and stale biscuits.

He must have sat there, staring, for a very long time, because the door opened and Sirius walked in, hair still damp and already in his nightclothes.

"What are you doing?" Sirius asked suspiciously.

"Nothing -- uh..." Harry's eyes landed on an envelope sticking out of his carton. "I just remembered I never read Hermione's letters."

"Oh," Sirius said. He stared at Harry for a few moments. "Do you want me to leave? I can sit in the front room."

"No. I wasn't going to read them, really. I'm too tired for it tonight."

In fact, he had put it off for so long because he wasn't sure when he would ever have time for such a draining task. Ron's letter had been terribly hard to read, knowing that shortly thereafter Ron and his family would have got the news of Harry's death.

When he looked up, realizing he had been looking at the wall in front of him for an unknown period of time, Sirius was staring at him again.

"Sorry..." Harry began, "I just...."

"Today was hard, wasn't it?" Sirius said quietly. "We saw Ron and Hermione, and a few of your other friends. Was Spinnet at school with you? She looks young enough."

"Quidditch," Harry said, his throat closing suddenly, so that he was only able to get out that one word.

"It must be strange to see her teaching a class."

Harry nodded.

"I admit it's strange to be back," Sirius said, the corners of his mouth twitching downward before he seemed to catch himself. "Not altogether bad, but strange."

Harry nodded again.

"Some things haven't changed at all," Sirius said after a short pause. His brows were furrowed and he was still watching Harry closely. "McGonagall is just the same. One minute around her and I feel like a first year."

In spite of himself, Harry laughed. "She must have the same speech she uses every year. She said the same thing to you that she said to me and Ron our first year."

This was the old Sirius. Harry felt his earlier worries melt away into nothing. Nothing was wrong. The last few days had simply taken their toll and made everyone's tempers quick.

"Oh?"

"We came in late," Harry said. "We were... well, it doesn't matter. She tore into us the moment we walked in."

"She is not to be crossed," Sirius said, nodding. He grimaced. "Especially now that she's Headmistress."

"I know it," Harry said. He didn't feel he was the one who needed to remember to behave. So far, he had managed it. "But I'm glad it's her and not someone else."

"That woman, last year..." Sirius frowned again, looking like he couldn't quite think of something that should have been obvious. "I can't recall her name now."

"Umbridge," Harry supplied, with a grimace of his own. "She was awful. I still have --" He cut himself off abruptly. He wasn't going to get Sirius riled up again, just when they were having a rare rational conversation.

"Yes," Sirius said. "Must be. You must have told me about her."

Harry blinked at Sirius, momentarily thrown. But he couldn't remember just what he had told Sirius about Umbridge, after all. All the more reason not to tell him about the detentions and the scars.

"I must have," he agreed. "She's the one who sent the Dementors after me, too."

Sirius looked blank for a few seconds, before his face paled slightly. "Dementors. I remember."

They were silent for a long time.

Finally, Harry stood up off the cold floor and started to close the cupboard door. He saw the stale bread and biscuits on the floor, and the other lumpy bundles stacked in the corner, and bit his lip.

"Paddy?"

"What?"

"It's just... well, I used to hide food when I lived with the Dursleys." He checked Sirius' reaction, but Sirius didn't react all. "I used to hide things under a loose floorboard."

"Why?"

"Because," Harry said, slightly defensively, "they didn't always feed me at regular times, that's why."

Sirius continued to look at him with only the hint of a frown.

"So," Harry pushed on, "is that why you're hiding food? Does this room remind you of Azkaban?"

"Azkaban," Sirius repeated. He looked around the bedroom slowly, taking in the beds, trunks, walls, bookshelf, and rug before looking at Harry again. "Azkaban was... cold."

"It's chilly here," Harry pointed out. In fact, he was starting to feel a chill of a different sort.

"Yes," Sirius agreed.

"The food's going to spoil," Harry said. "It's stale already. We can't do a spell to keep it fresh."

"Throw it out, then."

"You don't mind?"

Sirius shook his head. He looked past Harry at the still open cupboard. "Are you sure I was the one who put food in there?"

Just like that, Harry's brief respite from worry came to a gut-wrenching end.

"I... I'm pretty sure, but I can ask Milo."

"I'm going to bed, then, unless you want to talk some more."

"No, that's all right. I still need to shower, anyway."

Harry watched as Sirius climbed into bed, reached into a night table drawer, and took out the bottle of Dreamless Sleep.

"Good night, Paddy."

"Night, James."

Harry started backing toward the door, for some reason unable to turn around until he saw Sirius take a swallow of the potion.

A few minutes later, under the hot spray of the shower, Harry's thoughts were whirling madly.

He recalled another time he and Sirius had been able to talk alone. He had mentioned Umbridge and Unforgivables in the same sentence.

Sirius -- quick-thinking, quick-to-anger Sirius -- had instantly demanded the whole story.

Had Sirius really forgotten?

The moment he was dressed again, Harry ran back to the bedroom, threw open his trunk -- the potion meant that Sirius was out for the night, so there was so need to be quiet for his sake -- and found his still unopened Potions kit. He took out two glass vials.

Pouring a few drops from Sirius' bottle of Dreamless Sleep into one vial and some from his own bottle into the other, he ran back to the bathroom to examine them under the brighter lights.

In his haste he hadn't labeled them, so he quickly lost track of which one was which, but one thing was clear.

Whatever Snape had given Sirius, Dreamless Sleep wasn't all that was in that bottle.

"What are you doing?"

Harry whirled around.

Lupin, holding a steaming goblet, was standing in the doorway. Harry, of course, had neglected something as basic as shutting the door.

"Look at this!" Harry held out the two vials to Lupin before realizing Lupin couldn't take them with his hands already occupied.

"What am I looking at? I hope you haven't been brewing anything. Or taking things from Professor's Snape's cabinets."

Harry sputtered, outraged. "It's Dreamless Sleep. Professor Snape gave one bottle to me and one to Paddy, but look! They aren't the same."

Lupin peered at the potions. He didn't look particularly interested. "I don't see anything to get excited about. One's a bit more dilute, I think. Maybe he didn't think you needed the full strength."

Harry felt himself deflating. He hadn't thought of any rational explanations, but now that Lupin presented one, he felt a bit silly for panicking.

"Maybe," he said. "But Paddy is acting so strange...."

Lupin shrugged. "First day. I can't say it was easy for me, either."

Harry eyed the potion Lupin was sipping.

"For my headache," Lupin said, holding up the goblet as if in toast. "Would you care to check for poison, James?"

"I didn't say anything about poison," Harry said, huffing. "I just think both of you are acting very odd."

"Me?" Lupin asked, raising an eyebrow. "I'm acting odd?"

"Yes!"

Lupin stared at him. For a moment, Harry was sure Lupin was going to laugh. But Lupin appeared to be giving it some serious consideration.

"I lost my temper a few times today, over things that didn't much matter in the scheme of things. Is that what you mean?"

"I suppose," Harry admitted grudgingly. "All day it was like watching a pair of first years."

"Hmm," said Lupin. He drank the rest of his potion and set the goblet down next to the sink. "I do apologize if it distressed you."

"It didn't distress me."

"It confused you?"

Harry shrugged.

"Honestly, I'm not sure what got into me at certain moments, but I assure you I'm not slowly losing my mind. If we did act juvenile, I can only think that's a good thing. It will help us blend in."

Harry said nothing.

"I'm not being poisoned, and neither is Patrick."

Harry shrugged again. "You're not what I expected."

Lupin nodded. "People can surprise you by how they act in unusual or stressful situations. I suspect that's all it is."

"I just..." Harry felt a throb of anger, and finally realized why he was upset with Lupin. "I expected you to help with Paddy! And you're making him worse!"

"Hardly," Lupin said. "You can't deny we got through today with barely any incidents. The more he feels at home as a student, the less likely he will be to seek a way out." Lupin softened his tone slightly. "I understand you're concerned, but all's well as long as he isn't trying to leave. Patrick was in trouble day in and day out when we were at Hogwarts, and so were the rest of us by association. That isn't likely to change."

"He can't remember things," Harry persisted. "He didn't remember Umbridge. He wasn't bothered when I mentioned Dementors and Azkaban."

"You don't think that's a good thing?" Lupin asked, raising an eyebrow. "It could be an effect of Dreamless Sleep. Fewer nightmares; fewer reminders to dwell on."

"He didn't remember hoarding food! There's a whole lot of it in the cupboard and I know he put it there."

Lupin frowned. "That's an unfortunate habit that may be hard to break. I'll speak with him."

"You don't get it! He doesn't remember doing it!"

"Perhaps he doesn't remember. Such things can be so ingrained they're done without much thought."

Harry huffed in frustration.

"Look," Lupin said. "Either there's a perfect rational explanation, or there's yours, which is what, exactly? Professor Snape is secretly feeding him some mad concoction designed to turn him into a model Slytherin student?"

"Sadly that is beyond my skill," Snape said dryly from behind Lupin, making both of them nearly leap out of their skins. "Would you mind holding this fascinating discussion somewhere else? I would like to be in bed sometime before midnight."

Lupin reddened to the roots of his hair. "Sorry, Professor."

Harry lowered his eyes to the floor and kept them there until he had shuffled past Snape and was safely in bed.

"Take your potion," Lupin said, sounding irate. "Unless you're now going to convince yourself you are the one being poisoned?"

Harry gulped down a dose of Dreamless Sleep. "I never said anything about poison, Milo."

"Go to sleep."

Harry pulled up the covers nearly over his head.

The potion worked almost instantly.