We Met In The Shadows.

Small Revelations And Lots of Support

That morning, Harry woke up slowly, still floating on that fuzzy warm feeling from the night before. Rubbing at his eyes before putting on his glasses, he bit at his lip, still stuck on the question of whether he should introduce Ron and Sirius to each other.

On one hand, the more people knew about Sirius, the riskier it would be for him to stay hidden and discrete. On the other hand, Harry really hated keeping any secrets from his best friend. It just didn't feel right.

Acting before he could chicken away, he got up from his own bed and proceeded to jump into Ron’s, landing right on top of the ginger, feeling his knees dig into Ron's side.

“BLOODY HELL!”

At the shriek, the rest of the boys startled awake as well and seeing Harry in splits of laughter, grumbled at the duo before dropping back under the covers.

“Harry,” Ron groaned. “It's Sunday, why are you waking me up so soon?”

“Sooo, I need to tell you something-”

Yelping, Harry rubbed at his forehead which Ron had accidentally smacked against in his haste to sit up, his glasses askew. “Are you in trouble?” He demanded. “Do you need to hide a body?”

A touch horrified but mostly pleased, Harry shook his head. “No no, it's nothing that serious.” Grinning at that unintentional pun, he amended, “Or maybe it is?”

Ron just stared at him, clearly not amused by his attempt at being mysterious.

“Okay, okay, I'll tell you. So, remember summer break when I aged up Marge?”

“Yeah, I do,” Ron said, his brow furrowing, “What does this have to do with what you have to tell me?”

“Shush, let me explain. So while I was sulking, this adorable dog walked up to me. And long story short, I named it Fuhrer and decided to adopt it. He kind of looks like that Grim Trelawney says she saw, now that I think of it.”

“Is that it? Man, I thought it was something serious.”

“It is!” Harry insisted, his grin wider. “Anyway, that's not the end of it. So you know how things are rarely as they seem? Turns out that was the case.”

“Mate, either be out with it or be out of here.” Ron huffed, clearly itching to go back to sleep.

“Jeez, lighten up, I'm coming to it. Yeah, so Fuhrer is actually Sirius Black. He's an Animagus and the big black dog is his animal form. He's actually pretty cool. I wanted to introduce you two, you in?”

Maintaining his composure, Harry sweated a little at the pause that followed.

“You're not serious, are you?” Ron finally said.

With his biggest grin yet, he said, “Nope, sorry! That's my godfather, I'm Harry!”

Another slightly longer pause followed before a deeply exasperated sigh.

“I'm not even going to question it, man. How did you find this out, anyway?” Ron asked, massaging his temples. Whatever sleepiness had remained after Harry's attack had faded away very quickly.

“That's a good question. So apparently, Fred and George have a magic map which shows the location of each and every person in the Castle and the grounds! It also mentions their name, regardless of what form they're in; that's how we found Sirius. He was literally there with us when the twins opened the map.”

Ron, seemingly having lost all words to express himself, remained silent and staring which Harry took as permission to continue speaking.

“Also he's not the actual criminal behind my parents’ death. He swapped his position as Secret Keeper with another friend of theirs, Peter Pettigrew. Y’know, the wizard he allegedly exploded; that was all his doing.” At the reminder, his fist clenched. “Sirius is completely innocent; he confirmed that under a Truth Serum.”