Harry could quite frankly say that over the previous week or so he had had just about as much excitement as he could take. Yes, Sirius was not only alive, but officially innocent as well, and that was more than Harry had ever dreamed would be possible, but now all he wanted to do was go and hide somewhere quiet for a while until term began. The morning edition of the Prophet had been full of nothing but the fact that Sirius was innocent. It seemed that Auror Claypole, as Harry had learned from reading the man's name in the paper, had done exactly as he had promised, leaving Fudge with no recourse but to follow his lead. Harry did not think that the Auror was very happy with the Minister if the way the wizard kept glaring at Fudge in the publicity photo was anything to go by.

The possible scandal was career ending stuff according to Hermione who had also pronounced over breakfast earlier that day that the Ministry were going to owe Sirius huge amounts of compensation for his unlawful detention, and Hermione was rarely wrong. Harry really didn't care about that, though, he was just hoping Sirius would wake up soon.

His godfather had now been asleep for over twenty four hours and Harry could not help worrying. Remus said he got it from his mother and that worrying was in his genes, but not to let it go too far, which was of course easy for a person with Zen-like calm to say. Harry had to fight the urge to Hex his serene friend. One day Remus was going to start twinkling and turn into Dumbledore, and then they were all going to be in trouble.

The screens were gone from around the other occupied bed on the ward since it didn't matter if anyone wandered in and saw Sirius, and Harry found that his eyes continually made their way back to his godfather no matter what he started out doing. Reading the very old book on Shadow Dwellers Dumbledore had produced when he visited was almost a lost cause, even if it was very interesting.

How Facis and Ignulus would affect the fight against Voldemort, Harry had no idea. It seemed that someone under threat from a Dark Lord had never been cited as an example of those in contact with the elusive race Harry and Sirius were now intimately familiar with. He was pretty sure that Ignulus would not take kindly to someone trying to kill him, but he was also certain that it could not possibly be as simple as asking the Shadow Dweller to kill Voldemort for him. That would just be far too easy, and the Slytherin in him point blank refused to believe anything so straightforward.

The book hinted about all sorts of possibilities, but it did not actually come out and say anything, at least not that Harry could understand, especially in his distracted state. There was talk of bargains and mystical rites and all sorts of practices that Harry was pretty sure had fallen out of use generations ago. He and Sirius had not needed rituals and spells, and he did wonder if what the book talked about was a fashion of the time, mumbo-jumbo to keep away experimenters, or dumb luck on his and his godfather's parts. If he ever figured out how to contact Ignulus without being in mortal peril he decided to ask. For now, he was happy to know that he was safe and so were his godfather and all his friends, but he would be even happier if Sirius would wake up.

There were so many paths open now, paths he had thought closed when Sirius fell through The Veil. His life was not simple, it probably never would be, but he could say for now that he was content. Thinking too far ahead made his headache and right about then playing chess with Sirius and lasting more than ten minutes seemed like a good goal in life.

The End

Thank you so much for reading to the end - I very much hope you enjoyed the story. Thank you in advance for any comments/votes etc.

If you would like to read more of my stories I have sorted them into reading lists for ease of finding them, just click into my profile and check out these:
💖Tasha's Harry Potter Fanfiction
💖Tasha's Other Fanfiction
💖Tasha's Original Fiction (lots of vampires and magic in here 😈)

I also have lots of books on Amazon and Smashwords (some of them free to download and read), so check out the links in my profile if you would like to see some of my professionally published work.