Chapter Text
Morning slipped by far too quickly for Sirius's liking.
The cottage was cold, damp with autumn, and far too quiet for a man whose heart hadn't stopped pounding since last night. He hadn't slept—wouldn't have managed even if he tried. Every time he closed his eyes, he saw green light, heard shattering wood, felt Kagome's body go limp in his arms.
So instead he'd kept himself busy: tightening wards on the windows, making tea he never drank, checking the perimeter, and—every few minutes—glancing back at the sofa where Kagome slept curled beneath an old tartan blanket.
Her breathing was steady. That alone kept him sane.
Harry was babbling at Lily on the hearthrug, clutching a wooden spoon like it was the height of entertainment. Lily looked pale but determined, her wand close to hand; she hadn't let Harry out of her sight once. James had gone to brave the nearest village for supplies and news.
Sirius hated that he wasn't the one doing it. Leaving Kagome felt… impossible. Even now, his eyes drifted to her again. A faint glow still clung to the skin of her arms—her magic finishing what healing salves could not. She'd insisted she'd be fine.
He'd pretended to believe her.
The door burst open around noon.
James stumbled in with the wind—scarf crooked, glasses fogged, hair an absolute catastrophe—and clutching a copy of the Daily Prophet as if it had personally offended him.
"Padfoot," he said, voice tight. "You'll want to see this."
No.
No, he bloody wouldn't.
But Sirius took the paper anyway, because the alternative was sticking his head in the sand. He braced himself, jaw tight, and looked.
The headline was a punch to the ribs.
VOLDEMORT DEFEATED —
WAND FOUND IN GODRIC'S HOLLOW RUINS
SURVIVORS UNKNOWN
A moving photograph dominated the page: smoke rising from the rubble of what should have been James and Lily's tomb. Aurors prowled the wreckage, wands drawn, searching for remains that—thanks to Kagome—would never be found.
His stomach twisted. So this was it—the world as it would have gone on without them. A history they'd smashed to pieces.
"They think we're dead," James said quietly, pulling off his gloves with shaking fingers. "All three of us."
Across the room, Lily clutched Harry tighter. Her eyes were red but steady as she met Sirius's gaze.
"Good," she said, and there was steel in her voice.
Sirius glanced at Lily, surprised by the steel in her voice.
"If they think we survived," she said, stroking Harry's hair in slow, steady passes, "Voldemort's followers will panic. They'll want us gone properly this time."
Sirius nodded stiffly. "Quite right. And they won't mind finishing me off in the process."
Before he could think too long about what that meant, James cleared his throat and tapped the bottom column.
"There's more."
Sirius leaned in—and everything inside him went cold.
INTERVIEW WITH PETER PETTIGREW — 'Sirius Black betrayed them. I saw it happen.'
A sour, metallic taste filled Sirius's mouth. James muttered something foul under his breath, but Sirius barely heard him.
He forced himself to read the moving photograph.
Peter—insipid little Peter—sat on the steps of St. Mungo's wrapped in blankets like some poor, trembling casualty of war. His eyes were wide, red-rimmed, carefully rehearsed.
"I tried to warn them," he sobbed. "I told them Sirius's loyalty was slipping. He and You-Know-Who were meeting. But James trusted him too much. And now they're gone because of him."
Sirius's grip tightened on the paper until the edges curled. Bloody little coward. Bloody traitor.
"The rat didn't waste time, did he?" he said, his voice brittle as cracked glass.
"Padfoot—" James began cautiously.
But Sirius could barely hear him. Because he knew this part. Knew it too well. The headlines. The fury. The way the wizarding world loved a simple villain. His face plastered everywhere. Ministry dogs hunting him like a fox. And then—
Azkaban.
His jaw locked hard enough to ache.
James folded the paper down. "Sirius… they think you sided with Voldemort."
Sirius let out a bark of laughter—sharp, humourless, hollow. "Oh, brilliant. Really consistent work, this timeline. Top marks."
Lily stepped closer, her voice quiet but steady. "We know the truth."
"It doesn't matter," Sirius muttered, dragging a hand over his face. "The Ministry needs someone to blame. Voldemort's 'dead,' the Potters are 'dead,' and I'm… well. I'm a Black. They'll write the rest themselves. Already have."
A soft rustle made him turn.
Kagome sat up, drowning in a jumper James had bought that was nearly the size of a tent. Her hair was rumpled, cheeks still pale from exhaustion, but her eyes—those sharp, uncanny eyes—were alert and already piecing things together.
"What happened?" she asked, voice soft but serious.
Sirius held up the Prophet. He didn't trust his voice.
Her gaze lifted to his, steady and knowing. And Sirius felt it again—his chest tightening with gratitude, fear, the strange sense that out of everyone in the world, she understood the stakes best.
She read it once. Then twice. Her expression didn't change, but her reiki shimmered faintly in agitation.
"I see," Kagome murmured, eyes flicking over the page. "That's it then."
Sirius straightened. "What do you mean—?"
But she was already turning away, padding back toward the bedroom with quiet purpose. A moment later she returned with her travel bag slung over one shoulder and a worn, leather-bound notebook pressed to her chest.
"I started this the day Sirius asked me to come with him," she said, placing it on the table. "Notes. Possibilities. Consequences."
Sirius felt something warm unfurl in his chest. Of course she had. Trust Kagome to prepare for the end of the world with colour-coded diagrams.
James blinked. "You wrote a book?"
"A notebook," she corrected gently. "With references."
She opened it, and the three of them leaned in—Sirius more than the other two, drawn to her handwriting magically shifting from Japanese to English.
The pages were lined with neat script and tight diagrams. Arrows. Margins crammed with theories. Flow charts looping into little spirals. Titles like:
Temporal Points of Retention
Causality Collapse Scenarios
Fixed Canon Events & Elastic Continuity
And then—of course—references he recognised.
Back to the Future. Doctor Who. A Brief History of Time. And—Merlin help him—quotes from Prisoner of Azkaban.
Sirius blinked. "…You've done homework."
"It's more complicated than homework," Kagome murmured, flipping to the chart titled Fixed Canon Events & Elastic Continuity. "I made this because I needed to understand what we were stepping into."
She tapped the Prophet headline.
"Sirius, this proves it. Time isn't freely changeable. Some events will always try to reassert themselves, even if the details shift."
James frowned, rubbing his jaw. "So what—you're saying fate's bloody stubborn?"
"Persistent," Kagome corrected. "Like a river rerouting around stones—but always flowing toward the same sea."
She turned more pages, revealing annotations Sirius recognised from the books—scribbles about 1993, Azkaban, Wormtail, Buckbeak.
"In the original timeline," Kagome explained, tracing a line with her finger, "time travel rules are tied to the Time-Turner paradox. Time-Turners force you into stable loops—closed circles. Whatever happened was always meant to happen. But that system only works because Time-Turners break natural flow. They're artificial, unstable. That's why they were all supposedly destroyed."
Lily hugged Harry closer, brow furrowing. "So by saving us… we didn't break time?"
Kagome shook her head. "No. Not fully. You changed the path—but the major beats still echo. Voldemort's fall still happened. Harry was still struck by the curse. Godric's Hollow is still in ruins. The world still thinks the Potters died."
Sirius swallowed. "And I'm still the Ministry's favourite scapegoat."
Kagome's hand drifted to his, warm and steady. "Because some events—some narrative or magical anchors—are fixed. They'll bend, but not break. The timeline will fight to keep its shape."
Sirius looked down at her notebook—the diagrams looping like fate trying to choke itself back into place—and felt a low, frustrated fury simmering.
"So what you're saying," he muttered, "is that even when we win, time still tries to stick us in the same blasted cages?"
Kagome squeezed his fingers gently. "Not cages. Patterns. But patterns can be broken… if we know where to cut them."
James straightened. "Meaning?"
Kagome sighed softly, closing the notebook. "Meaning we need a plan—for Harry's safety. For Voldemort's proper end. For staying ahead of whatever time is trying to push back into place."
James, Lily, and Sirius exchanged a look—silent, tense, and heavy enough to bend the air—but none of them spoke.
Kagome, however, already had her sleeves rolled up metaphorically.
"Do you have a pen? Or a quill—thank you, Lily."
She opened the notebook to a blank page. "Right. As I said—though the chain of events changed, the results align suspiciously close to the original: the Potters are presumed dead, Sirius takes the blame. The only major deviation is that Harry isn't being hailed as The Boy Who Lived."
She tapped the newspaper, eyes sharp.
"Therefore, we must assume Voldemort's return is still inevitable. It may happen differently… but it will happen. And Harry will still be a target."
James swore quietly under his breath. "He's a baby."
Lily swallowed, blinking rapidly. "He hasn't even had his second birthday."
Sirius felt something ugly tighten in his chest. Anger. Fear. A reckless urge to destroy anything that threatened the little boy gurgling innocently in his mother's arms.
"We changed the biggest tragedy of your timeline," she said. "But some events will still try to unfold, no matter what we do. The difference now…" She reached out, brushing her fingers across his knuckles. "…is that we can control how we get there. And what those events lead to."
The knot in his chest loosened. Only slightly—but enough.
"So," she said, soft but resolute, "we plan."
Lily angled Harry on her hip, brushing his hair back. "Plan what, exactly?"
James answered before Sirius could. "Harry's safety, for one. We can't go back to Godric's Hollow. Not for months. Maybe never."
"And Pettigrew?" Lily asked, voice going cold in that frighteningly quiet way only mothers seemed to manage.
Sirius's hands curled into fists. His voice was low. "I'll kill him."
"Sirius." Kagome's tone made him pause—not admonishing, not disappointed. Understanding. And somehow, that cut deeper.
"We'll deal with Peter," she said, meeting his eyes. "But not like this. Not while everything is still too unstable. We need the Ministry off your backs and a solid plan in place first."
James dragged a hand through his hair. "Alright then… priorities?"
Kagome looked at Harry again, her expression softening just enough to remind Sirius that she had held that child while death itself tried to take him.
"We need to identify which parts of the original timeline are fixed canon events," she said. "And," she added, reaching into her bag with alarming seriousness, "I have the perfect tools."
She pulled out the pocket editions of all seven Harry Potter books.
Sirius watched James take Philosopher's Stone like it might bite him.
James flicked through a few pages—just enough to reach Privet Drive. His expression shifted—soured—darkened. When he snapped it shut, his jaw was clenched.
Lily tried to peek. James blocked her gently but firmly. "Trust me, Lils. You don't want to read this part."
Sirius's stomach twisted. He knew every word on those pages by heart. He wished he didn't.
James set the book down slowly. "I think," he said, voice tight, "we'll need Moony for this."
Sirius nodded grimly. "Yeah. We're going to need Remus."
He didn't say the rest out loud—that Remus, loyal and brilliant and painfully reasonable, was the missing piece. That Remus deserved to know they were alive. That Remus deserved to know Sirius hadn't betrayed them.
But mostly—
That Remus Lupin was the one man Sirius trusted to help rebuild a future already trying its best to collapse.