August 6th, 1993

Lyra Euphemia McKinnon-Black choked on the cornflakes she had been spooning into her mouth, dropping her spoon into the cereal bowl in shock.

Her grey eyes stared down at eyes that, if the Daily Prophet had printed color pictures, would have been identical to her own.

"What the bloody fuck?!" She burst out, left hand flipping the paper open so that she could read the article in its horrific entirety.

Remus Lupin poked his head into the kitchen from the small sitting room, honey brown eyes softening even as he gently reprimanded, "Language, Lyra."

He looked at the newspaper in her hand, milk droplets marring the face of the man who had once been one of his best friends in the entire world. And Lyra's father.

"...Bugger..."

"Language Uncle Moony," Lyra absentmindedly teased, soaking in the words that portrayed her father, the only parent she had had since three years old, as a homicidal psychopath that truly lived up to his unfortunate last name.

BLACK STILL AT LARGE

Sirius Black, possibly the most infamous prisoner to ever be held in Azkaban fortress, is still eluding capture, the Ministry of Magic confirmed today.

"We are doing all we can to recapture Black," said the Minister of Magic, Cornelius Fudge, this morning, "and we beg the magical community to remain calm."

Fudge has been criticised by some members of the International Confederation of Wizards for informing the Muggle Prime Minister of the crisis.

"Well, really, I had to, don't you know," said an irritable Fudge. "Black is mad. He's a danger to anyone who crosses him, magic or Muggle. I have the Prime Minister's assurance that he will not breathe a word of Black's true identity to anyone. And let's face it — who'd believe him if he did?"

While Muggles have been told that Black is carrying a gun (a kind of metal wand that Muggles use to kill each other), the magical community lives in fear of a massacre like that of twelve years ago, when Black murdered thirteen people with a single curse.

Lyra's hand shook from where she held the edges of the parchment in a vice grip, the newspaper corners crinkling and her knuckles bleeding color away until they were white as bone.

    Five words ran through her head, jumping out of the page and burrowing their way into her brain. Her heart pounded in time with each word she mouthed to herself.

    Sirius Black... still eluding capture.

    She may have been a Gryffindor and a little too reckless for her own good, but she wasn't stupid.

    "How long?"

Remus flinched at the raised voice, one that dripped with frustration and - though Lyra would be loath to admit it - hurt.

    "How long has my DAD been on the run without you telling me?!" Lyra exclaimed loudly, slamming her hand on the table and standing up from the chair, the legs screeching as she pushed the chair back.

    "How many days has the constant whispering and the staring been because everyone in bloody magical Britain expects me to be following in his footsteps?"

    Her godfather frowned. He didn't want to respond, but he knew he had to. Lyra was able to hold a nasty grudge if she wanted to.

    "I've been burning the Prophet copies since he escaped," Remus reluctantly admitted, running a hand through his gradually greying hair. In all honesty, he was surprised he lasted this long, especially after the letter he had received from Minerva McGonagall last year within a month of term starting.

    He had no idea where Lyra could have possibly gotten the idea into her head of jumping off of the Astronomy tower just to see if she could stick the landing onto a mattress the Weasley twins were levitating below her.

    Lyra had merely laughed and shrugged in that insufferable, don't-give-a-fuck manner that Sirius had perfected at the mere age of eleven.

    "Dearest Draco really shouldn't have scoffed out the suggestion of 'oh, why don't you just jump off,'" she had casually responded to his frantic queries about why. "Being normal is a right bore. And it's Fred and George. Of course they caught me."

    Lyra rolled her eyes. "That's not exactly an answer."

    Remus sighed. "He escaped from Azkaban July 29th, in the middle of the night. The Aurors have been after him since then."

    "NINE DAYS?!"

    The fifteen year old fumed, pale skin flushing. "You've kept this from me for over a week?"

    "I didn't want to!" The man replied sharply. "It's your father, Lyra, and I didn't know what would happen if-"

    "What, were you going to keep quiet until September first? When Merlin knows what arsehole — probably Pucey or Montague or some other distant cousin — very kindly mentions the fact that my bloody mass murderer of a father is going to be exterminating the bloody Hogwarts population? Give me a fucking break."

    Remus huffed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "No, I was going to inform you before you went over to Hogwarts — and again, language. I just couldn't think of the right time or any way that I could start that conversation! 'Good morning Lyra, your convict father escaped from the prison that up until now was thought to be inescapable, want any pancakes?'"

    He let out a short laugh at the absurdity of the sentence.

    "...They jinxed it," Lyra mumbled to herself. "Like the Titanic."

    Remus Lupin had taken it upon himself to educate his goddaughter on the history of the Muggle world, which included the story of the "Unsinkable" Titanic. The ship was very sinkable, as it turned out.

    "Lyra. It's not funny. This situation is very serious!"

    She snorted. "Seems like it. I mean, his name literally is Sirius. Couldn't get more... serious... than that."

    Remus groaned at the joke. Honestly, he thought he had gotten away from that Merlin forsaken pun.

    Lyra flipped a strand of dark hair over her shoulder as she walked briskly towards the door. She made sure to grab the camera by the door before leaving the house. "I'm heading out. I promise I won't get abducted by any escaped prisoners from Azkaban!"

    "Lyra-!"

    His voice drifted towards her even as she closed the front door with a loud snap. It seemed to echo, pounding in her eardrums even though he hadn't even raised his voice by that much.

    "This is bullshit," she grumbled, kicking out at a rock on the side of the street with the toe of her left trainer. "Sue me for wanting to see my dad for the first time since I was bloody three and a half."

    Lyra meandered down the street, sticking to the side of the road and balancing on the curb. Her wand was kept tucked into the magically hidden pocket of her blue jeans, as she was currently in eyesight of at least fifteen Muggles.

    Her neighborhood was small and cozy, even though her and her uncle Moony were — last she knew — the only magical people in a three-mile radius.

    It got pretty boring at times, but she made the most out of it. Although she had been counting down the days until she turned seventeen where she could use magic outside of school and apparate to the Burrow.

She walked mindlessly through the streets of the suburban London town, arms stuck straight out at her sides as she walked carefully on the curb. Lyra tilted her head up towards the morning sky, up at the azure sky. Bringing her camera up to her face, she looked through the lens of her Polaroid camera.

Unbeknownst to Lyra, a large black dog followed her at a distance, bushes rustling as he trotted to the teenager.

Look where you're going, dammit!

Sirius Black immediately regretted every single thing he had done that had caused Euphemia Potter to gain grey hairs. He could feel the color change on his fur as he watched his daughter balance on the curb of the street without looking at the cement in front of her.

Lyra's foot slipped off of the curb as she clicked the shutter button. The rest happened in slow motion.

Her eyes widened as she felt her body tip to the side, screwing up her nose as she braced for the inevitable fall. Her right arm extended outwards, trying to catch herself.

Sirius — well, he thought, in this form he would be considered Padfoot — covered his eyes with his front paws, burying his head into the dirt.

"Bloody fucking hell!" Lyra yelped as she landed on the pavement, arm bent slightly as to not break it. She bit down on her lower lip, wiggling her limbs and taking stock of herself

She didn't want to see the disappointed look from her uncle about 'not taking better care of herself' — she could probably recite that lecture from memory.

"Nothing broken... okay I've gotten worse from Quidditch and the occasional prank gone wrong," Lyra shrugged, standing up from the ground as if nothing had happened. "And my camera didn't break, either!"

A soft bark from behind her stopped her in her tracks. Lyra knew that bark.

She knew it as if it were a dream within a dream, a childhood memory that she supposed she had tried to forget over the years.

It was impossible to forget the sound your father made in his Animagus form.

Spinning on her heel, Lyra stared at the dog cautiously coming out of the rose bushes.

"You know, Mrs. Smith is scarily overprotective of her prize-winning roses," Lyra said offhandedly, as if talking to a dog was a perfectly normal occurrence. "She'd beat you with a broom if she saw you traipsing through there — and the boring one too."

The dog's tail wagged even as he shook his head. His grey eyes stared into replicas of his own, drinking the sight of his daughter in.

Lyra looked more and more like her father every day, but if you were looking closely you could see Marlene McKinnon in the curve of her nose, the tilt of her head as she thought. And Sirius Orion Black was looking closely.

He approached cautiously, almost as if he was expecting to be turned away.

"...Dad?" Lyra whispered as if it were a prayer, hand shakily covering her mouth in shock. She knelt down, other hand reaching out towards the dog that she knew wasn't an actual dog.

It was her father.

(And an escaped Azkaban prisoner. Lyra wasn't exactly worried about the second part. It wasn't even a thought in her head.)

That was all the acknowledgment Sirius needed. He bounded forwards, body wiggling around in pure joy, unable to stay still for even a second.

Lyra laughed as Padfoot licked her face, head gently butting up against her shoulder.

"Down, boy," she grinned, scratching behind his ears. "...Is this slightly weird to you too or is it just me?"

He merely cocked his head to the side. Lyra assumed that was a yes. She wasn't exactly fluent in dog.

"What are you doing here?" She asked, ignoring the fact that she looked absolutely insane to her neighbors for talking to a dog as if it could respond back.

He pawed at her leg, snuffling her hair as Sirius closed his eyes in bliss. He was reunited with his daughter after eleven years, nine months, one week, and five days.

Yes, he had counted.

There wasn't much to do in Azkaban other than be tortured by dementors, shout absolutely horrific jokes to Bellatrix Lestrange — his unfortunate cousin — just to stretch her temper and piss her off, and count the days that passed.

So he did.

And finally he could stop counting the days for one of his four internal tallies.

He laid down on the ground in front of Lyra, resting his head on her knee and looking up at her with big, mournful silver eyes.

"What are you looking at me like that for?" She asked dryly, running her hand through his fur as dark as his last name. "No reason to bring out the literal puppy dog eyes."

He promptly got up and started to walk on the curb, tail wagging behind him as he began to imitate Lyra in her very ungraceful fall.

"...Not as bad as the Astronomy Tower Incident."

The aforementioned incident was spoken as if denoted in capital letters.

Bloody hell, I really don't want to know.

Padfoot whimpered.

Word Count: 2,078