Care of Magical Creatures, with Hagrid as Professor, turned out worse than any of the friends were expecting. The giant-blooded man had the thought that hippogriffs were a good way to break third-years in gently to the idea of respecting magical beasts. If it hadn't been for two small facts, he might even have been right. Fact One: Hippogriffs don't like large cats, such as lions and tigers and the like. Fact Two: Harry and Hermione were large cats, not unlike lions or tigers.
It was a minor disaster. With Slytherin grouped with Gryffindor for the class, it could have been worse, but Draco had been pulled from the school by his parents, and according to the rumours, shipped off to Durmstrang where he was going to become a powerful Dark Wizard...
Even without him, the hippogriffs refused to bow to the kitty couple, who fortunately didn't push the issue. They knew the kind of damage claws could do, even if they weren't venomous. So Hermione and Harry spent most of that lesson reading up on their Arithmancy texts. Harry was pleasantly surprised that he could not only keep up with Hermione here, but that the two of them were finished the text and the practice questions within by the end of the lesson. They were really looking forward to tomorrow's class...
The Great hall was mobbed by a whole parliament of postal owls delivering the Daily Prophet, which boldly declared the trial of one Peter Pettigrew, and the innocence of Sirius Black. With his good name cleared, and his physical and mental well-being vouched for by Madam Pomfrey, the former fugitive stepped out into the limelight, insisting upon full reparations for wrongful imprisonment and a formal apology. The apology was printed a week later, although Fudge strived mightily, with the connivance of Lucius Malfoy, to delay the inevitable payment into the Black coffers. He then ventured to Hogwarts, although most of the wizarding nation had no idea he was actually going back. Upon arrival he immediately sought out his godson.
Finding the kitty couple curled up together on the couch, he grinned. They were taking a quick catnap, recovering from their previous class, Astronomy the night before. As the canine animagus approached, their ears flicked in his direction and they each opened one eye.
"Harry, my boy!" Sirius called happily. "Hermione, Kitten, lovely hairstyles, both of you." He received a glare from each of them for that. Becoming Duati Bast'et had apparently done nothing for the untamable nature of their hair. Any children they had were doomed.
"Hey, Sirius," the catgirl murmured, as the two feline teens sat up a little, although they remained pressed as close as they could, each with their chin on the other's shoulder as they inhaled the scent that made them each so special to the other. "What brings you here? Did Dumbledore offer you a job?"
Eyeing the way the two of them were acting, the Lord of the House of Black paused. "Should I come back later? You two seem rather... cosy."
Harry answered this time. "It wouldn't help. We've figured this out, it's my Mai's heat cycle. Each month there's a swell in our feline sides' emotions that Madam Pomfrey's potions suppress so that we can function normally, but we still have to stay close to each other, or we start trying to climb out of our skins with anxiety."
Sirius sat on a chair near their couch. "Why do I feel like there's a rather oversized 'but' tacked onto that statement?" he asked rhetorically.
Harry grinned at the Marauder, his godfather, as His mate took up the conversation. "There is one," she admitted, "and it's quite the problem. You see, roughly every four months, there's a surge if you will, that even the potions can't suppress completely. Valentine's Day last year was the first inkling we had of it. Then there was the time at my parents' house this summer just gone..."
Harry chimed in. "Thank Merlin for reparo spells, or they'd have needed new doors." Hermione ran her fingers up his spine, causing him to both stop talking and start purring, before she continued.
"From what I've been able to determine, the cycle peaks again on Halloween, give or take a day or two. We don't know how long we can, er, hold out, if you understand..." Her voice trailed off as her tail began to slowly move from side to side, and Harry's feline instincts had him trying to catch it without moving from Hermione's shoulder.
"A serious business," said the scruffy-haired Lord Black, "sorry for any pun that may sound like." He wasn't laughing. "If we can come back to this later, then I'd better get what I'm here about out of the way. Yes, Hermione, the Headmaster has offered me a job. I'm to be teaching a new extra-curricular course preparing witches and wizards from less-privileged homes for our society. Call it a Social Awareness course. But before I go up to his office to accept, I have a bit of House business to discuss with Harry. Do you mind if we take this to the Chamber?"
With the assistance of Dobby and a few other house-elves, the Chamber of Secrets was undergoing redecoration. The first thing they'd done was to remove what was left of the basilisk's carcass. The rendering process, while messy, had been over with quickly, or relatively so. It was sixty-two and a half feet long, after all. Next, the large pool of water in front of Salazar Slytherin's statue was cleaned, a hefty undertaking that had the Dobby and his cohorts overjoyed, as no-one had even thought of cleaning it for the past thousand years. Torches would have been a bad idea down here, so Hermione and Harry put their heads together with Daphne, and came up with some rune-scribed crystals that gave off a decent light until deactivated. Then they'd brought furniture in, nothing fancy, just comfortable. Since each person had a slightly different definition of comfort, this resulted in a distinctly eclectic look to the resulting lair.
As Harry and Sirius sat down, Hermione wandered over to Slytherin's statue, and hissed the phrase that Harry had told her would open the hidden passage behind it. They'd found a library back there, and she was off to catalogue which texts were irredeemably Dark, and which were not. There was also a potions laboratory, as well as a workbench for Runes, which Daphne was using to enchant the light-giving crystals for the house-elves to place around the castle, a steady process that had Mr Filch scratching his head and muttering. Still, he didn't have to change the expired torches anymore, so...
"Harry, pup, no that just seems wrong, and she's the kitten. Oh, well, I'll figure it out later," Sirius said, a little nervously. "Your father asked me to look after you, to care for you as my own, if anything happened to him and your mum." The older animagus was holding back tears, Harry could tell. "I'm sorry I failed you. I thought you'd be safe while I made sure Peter was caught, and then he framed me and I lost you for years. Can you ever forgive my mistakes?"
Harry looked at the wizard before him, feigning a cold and haughty demeanour, such as he'd seen Draco using every day until recently. "It is not possible to forgive you, Lord Black," he declared, watching as Sirius' shoulders slumped downwards. "I don't feel you've done anything that needs it." Now he dropped the act, and hugged his godfather, enjoying the shock and joy that spread across the man's face.
"You... you... Harry James Potter! Did you just prank me?" Sirius demanded. At the catboy's unrepentant grin and nod, he chuckled. "Okay, that's good, shows there is a bit of James in there. Now look, there's a bunch of formal language I could couch this in, but I'm just going to lay it all down for you." He drew a breath, released it, drew another. "Harry, for both our Houses, I would like to formally adopt you."
Harry's reaction brought every Chaotic in the Chamber running, a massive roar of joy and triumph that echoed up into the school, where Pansy Parkinson, Theodore Nott and the eternal minions, Crabbe and Goyle, shivered as though someone walked on their graves. When every one had settled down, Harry calmed enough to ask why.
"You know how Dementors drain happiness from you and feed on it?" Sirius replied. "It's documented as such, and seems to be so, and no, nobody knows why the Patronus, which is joy and happiness in a pure magical form drives them off. Well, if someone is exposed to the things over an extended time, say around five years or more, they start devouring any potential for happiness, as well. Since nothing brings someone as much joy as the day they hold their child, the foul things remove all potential for children. Men become sterile, women barren, over a period of months. While in most cases, it's possible to recover, in greatly extended cases, where the exposure is for more than ten years, give or take a few months, the effects are... permanent. I'm never going to be able to hold my own child, Harry. I'm the last of the House of Black." Sirius was weeping, now, and as Harry and his mate watched, the Grim animagus started to truly grieve for the children unborn that he'd never know, with great, wracking sobs.
Glancing at Hermione, Harry acted on his instincts, which were serving him in better and better stead as he became more used to his feline nature. Hermione and he moved as one to embrace the sobbing man, hugging him tight and purring to soothe him.
It took a long time, thirty minutes or more, for Sirius to calm enough to continue. Smiling apologetically at the felines, he straightened. Harry looked him over, and saw a stronger man than most, to feel such grief and go on anyway. "Sirius," he nearly whispered, his voice was that quiet, "I would be proud to be your son. I have two conditions, though." He paused, and Sirius indicated he was paying attention. "First, you have to be at least neutral to Professor Snape. He was, reluctantly I admit, a great help to us with Occlumency and our early stages of the transformation. I'm not saying you have to suddenly become his best friend, or not call him on his..." A quick glance at Hermione changed what he was about to say. "... pretensions, but at least try to get along with him."
"That's quite the condition, Harry," Sirius admitted, "but I'm willing to do it. What's the rest?"
"That's actually easier," Harry said, looking around at the other Chaotics. They'd formed a circle with Harry and Sirius in the middle, and Professor Lupin was nudged into the centre with them. Harry drew himself up, and spoke in a formal-sounding voice.
"We, the gathered members of the Chaos of the Tigers, are all agreed?" Harry asked, and received nods from everyone. "Then I, Mr Emerald, call upon Miss Amber to stand forth and proclaim."
Hermione extended her hands towards the Marauders. "You are Padfoot," she said, inclining her face towards Sirius. "I charge you with the care of the group, as a father would care for his own. Welcome to the Chaos." Turning to the DADA professor, she continued. "You are Moony. I call upon you to teach us as no other can, to see what we want to be, instead of what others would have us be. Welcome to the Chaos."
"The list we left with Susan to take to her aunt is self-updating, thanks to Hermione's brilliant work. Anyone we admit to the Chaos is automatically signed onto the scroll," Harry told the two shocked adults. "Oh, and by the way, you can't say no. That's the condition."
That night was a full moon, and the werewolf called Moony spent it as he had in the past, with his friend at his side. Truth be told, the canine animagus was laughing his arse off at Moony's predicament. While the wolfhound, the snorkack, the cobra and the phoenix were watching, any violent tendencies the werewolf was prone to were obviated by the other animagi: Two huge tigers, a grizzly bear and a wolverine were more than enough to hold him down whenever he seemed about to hurt himself...