@blvnk-art, this work of art has been living rent-free in my head for the past week, so this ficlet practically wrote itself ❤️
Sirius paused in the doorway to the drawing room, which—thanks to his and Molly’s combined efforts—hardly resembled the gloomy, miserable dump it had been just days earlier. Cobwebs had been swept off the chandeliers, replaced with garlands of holly and glittering tinsel, and the fraying holes in the rug were well-hidden by piles of snow, expertly charmed by Remus and Tonks to stay cold.
Ginny and Hermione giggled as they hung baubles and strings of paper chains on the tree Dung had dragged over to the house yesterday (neither Sirius nor Remus had dared to ask where he’d acquired it), while Harry and Ron were engrossed in a game of chess by the fireplace. The twins, Sirius saw, were conspicuously absent; he made a note to look in on them before dinner, to see if they’d made any progress on the charmwork for those spell-checking quills they’d been agonizing over all morning.
“RON!” Molly’s voice rumbled up suddenly from the basement kitchen.
“WHAT?” Ron hollered back, not taking his eyes off the chessboard in front of him.
“Come down here a moment, will you? I need some help with these mince pies!”
“What—why me? I’m in the middle of—!”
Ron got up from his armchair, brushing past Sirius as he headed for the staircase, grumbling all the while. Sirius slipped into the drawing room, making his way to the armchair Ron had vacated. As he took a seat, Harry glanced up from the chessboard he’d been frowning at. His face brightened.
“Game not going well, then?” Sirius said lightly, scrutinizing the chessboard. The pile of discarded black pieces from Harry’s side was markedly bigger.
“Hardly ever does—Ron’s brilliant.”
“Hmm. If it makes you feel better, your dad was rubbish at chess. A genius with Quidditch strategy, though, as he often felt the urge to remind me during chess games.”
“To begin,” Sirius suggested, “you may want to move your rook a bit closer to your queen.”
“Precisely what I’ve been telling him for the past half-hour!” clamored a black knight from the pile at the side of the board, sounding very aggrieved.
Rolling his eyes, Harry flicked the knight over so it lay face-down on the table, its indignant protests now muffled by the wood surface.
“He kept shouting at me, ‘The rook, you ponce!’” Harry muttered to Sirius. “How the hell am I meant to know what that’s about?”
Sirius snorted with laughter.
Harry scratched his jaw thoughtfully, moving his rook farther down the board, before he glanced up again, looking absently around the room. As Sirius watched his godson’s gaze land on where Ginny stood on her tiptoes by the Christmas tree, looping a glittering red paper chain along the topmost branches, he had to cover his mouth to hide his smile.
He’d seen this often, with Harry—even in the summer, Sirius had not missed the way his eyes sought Ginny out in a crowded room, almost unconsciously, or the way Harry would look to her after someone made a particularly stupid comment, the smirks and eye-rolls that only they were privy to. It reminded Sirius intensely of Lily, back in their sixth year—of the way her gaze had lingered on James, long after their conversations ended, of the inside jokes and the teasing banter, less vitriolic and more playful.
There were many things about Harry that reminded Sirius strikingly of Lily. The bits of James had been easier to spot, but the more Sirius watched his godson, the more he saw Lily. In the cutting remarks. The withering looks. Even the way he wrote, the witty asides in his letters, the dark humor he injected into his prose. Sirius, more than anyone, had always appreciated Lily’s grim sense of humor.
The gramophone in the corner of the room began sputtering out another old Muggle ballad, a record Remus had dug out earlier that day from his mother’s old collection. The words, rich and warm, sparked something in Sirius’s memory—he remembered Lily singing them, a million years ago, in the cozy sitting room of the cottage in Godric’s Hollow…Mrs. Potter playing the piano…James watching Lily, enraptured as always…
"Where the tree tops glisten…And children listen…To hear sleigh bells in the snow…”
“Your mother used to sing in the school choir,” Sirius said abruptly.
Harry tore his eyes away from Ginny, startled. “What?”
Sirius cleared his throat. “Your mother…she used to sing in the school choir.” A beat or two passed in silence, before he added curiously, “Do you sing?”
Harry blinked, looking surprised; then, he averted his gaze. “No…”
Sirius quirked an eyebrow, studying him for a long moment. “That’s what everyone who sings in secret says.”
A pink tinge emerged on Harry’s cheekbones as his face melted into a reluctant grin—and every detail of his expression in that moment was so utterly Lily that Sirius’s heart ached unbearably at the sight. How proud she would have been, how delighted to know him. How James would have doted on him, would have marveled at his sharp tongue, his quiet intensity. “Exactly like her, isn’t he?” James would have remarked with glee. “Thank God.”
“Oh, excellent, you gave him some tips. He needed it.”
Sirius jumped, dragging himself out of his own head; Ron was standing over the center table, beaming down at the chessboard.
He forced his lips into a smile as he rose from the armchair. “I’ll let you carry on,” he told Ron.
“Wait,” Harry interjected. Sirius looked at him. “Er—thanks. For…the tips.”
He walked slowly up the staircase to his room, wondering vaguely if any of the old letters Lily had written to him had made their way to Grimmauld Place from his old flat in Camden, after the Ministry had ransacked it. Sirius had assumed his mother would have thrown out anything of his that showed up on her doorstep, but perhaps a thing or two had survived her rage.
He would need to remember to have a look—Harry had so much from his father, it would be nice for him to have something of his mother’s, too. To experience even a fraction of the awe Sirius felt, every day, at watching this boy—every bit his parents’ son.
