A/N: Welcome to Lost: Small Boy. Please enjoy.

Lost: Small Boy, Answers to Harry

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A cloud of pigeons scattered upwards, disturbed by the man hurrying through the paved square. Exhaustion was beginning to show on his handsome features, but he was still keeping the other emotions at bay: terror, fury, desperation.

A few people glanced at him curiously, since he was oddly dressed in a dark blue robe that dragged along the ground, dusty and worn around the bottom, stained with something that might or might not have been blood. Underneath the robe he was wearing jet-black jeans, and combined with his dark hair, which was pulled back into a haphazard pony-tail, he had a fearsome look about him.

The small boy he carried on his hip did not seem frighted. He, too, was dark haired ('obviously he is the man's son', thought the onlookers), small, skinny and pale-skinned. He wore glasses that were too big for him, and a hooded jacket belonging to an adult was pulled over pale green frog-pattern pyjamas, a colour that matched his eyes. While the man glanced nervously around every few moments, the boy was serene to the point of blankness. He stared ahead without a trace of emotion on his small face.

A large bus screeched to a halt, the driver raising a fist in anger and horror. The man had walked right out onto the road without even looking, and the bus driver had managed to stop mere feet from the two pedestrians.

"Sorry," said the man vaguely, looking up at the bus and apologising to its front grill. "Sorry, sorry," he hurried on without further discussion, the shouts of the bus driver following him.

He walked down a street lined with shops, still looking around furtively, and stopped outside a wide row of windows topped by the sign BALLENTYNES.

"Department store," he muttered. He watched people walking in and out through the automatic doors, as if trying to figure out how they made the doors open without the wave of a magic wand. Then, his head bent and a tight knot lumped in his throat, Sirius Black entered the store.

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Lily and James are dead.

It ran through his mind over and over again, a gruesome chant bashing him around the head with a frying pan.

Lily and James are dead.

On the back of his eyelids, he could see their faces, their bodies sprawled where they had fallen, eyes wide and blank. He had found James, leaning against the wall at the bottom of the stairs, and for a moment, Sirius had hoped perhaps he had broken into the wine cellar and passed out on his way to bed – but James had not gotten truly drunk since the night of his wedding, many years ago. Sirius had knelt to close his dead friend's eyes, then, tears already pouring down his face, he had called Lily's name. No one answered.

He had staggered up the stairs, calling again and again. At last, a small voice floated back to him, faint and frightened. He had doubled his pace and thrown open the door to the Potter's bedroom.

The window on the far side of the room was shattered, only a few slivers of glass still in the sill. Lily lay curled on the carpet, her eyes wide like her husband's, her red hair strewn around her head like spilled blood. James' face had been expressionless, impassive, but Lily's was terrified: her mouth was open as if still pleading with an unseen aggressor.

"Sirius," the small voice was louder now. He had turned and seen Harry, sitting behind the door with his knees pulled up and his hands to his mouth. His eyes were red and streaming with tears, and small sobs left his mouth. Sirius fell to his knees and gathered his four-year-old godson into his arms, trying to sooth him.

"Hush, Harry, hush," he whispered, but the boy was inconsolable. Sirius drew back, looking for some injury, the mark of a deadly spell – at first, he could see nothing. Then he gently parted Harry's fringe and found it: a shallow cut, jagged but precise, oddly shaped like a lightening bolt. A trickle of blood had welled up and run down onto the bridge of Harry's nose: Sirius wiped it away with his sleeve and Harry cried out in pain. His godfather tried a quick healing spell, thinking how awful a scar the cut would leave, but no spell could heal it.

Then Sirius had heard a faint, distant noise. He turned and saw the broken window, and a few things clicked in his mind. He got to his feet slowly, wand ready at his side, and Harry clung to his hand, begging him not to go.

"I won't leave you," he had promised. "Stay here for a moment."

He approached the window cautiously, ready to leap backwards. They were on the second story, but he was prepared for any sight: a crowd of death eaters, or a flock of vampires, even. At first, he could see nothing: then his eyes adjusted to the darkness in the garden outside, and he saw a figure moving on the ground below. It looked like a huge black slug, then he realised it was a man in a cloak with his back to window, getting slowly to his feet. The man staggered into an upright position. He seemed to be injured, leaning, holding his head as if in pain. Sirius raised his wand, running suitable curses through his mind. Then the man turned and looked back at the window.

Not a man. A pair of blood red eyes, shining in the moonlight, met Sirius' gaze. He couldn't move: couldn't cast the curse that would kill the monster: the creature with the glowing red eyes pointed its wand at Sirius and a sickly yellow jet illuminated the darkness and smashed into Sirius' chest. Then, with a crack, the man vanished.

Sirius stumbled back. He recognised the spell that had hit him, though he didn't feel its effects yet. It was a curse for locking: it prevented him apparating. Dammit! I should have dodged it – should have blocked it – but he hadn't been able to move: those piercing red eyes holding him in place.

It had been him – Voldemort – he had been here, in the house, he had killed the Potters: but not Harry. Why not Harry, who was prophesised as the Dark Lord's downfall? Voldemort, who a month ago had tracked down and slaughtered the Longbottoms and their small son, Neville, and, finding no resistance, come next for Harry and his parents? And why had he fled? Sirius was no match for him – so who had he been frightened of?

Had he been frightened of Harry?

"Sirius?" the godfather had turned. Harry was standing over his mother's body, his sobs quietened.

"Don't look!" forgetting his questions for the moment, Sirius had rushed to turn Harry away from the terrible sight. The bed was still tidily made: he pulled the quilt off the top and laid it over Lily's body. "Harry, it's alright now. I'm going to take you away, okay?"

"Where's dad?" the boy asked.

The horror of James' death wrenched Sirius' heart. He couldn't answer, and Harry, understanding what his silence meant, began to cry again.

His first thought: I have failed them. He, Sirius, had been the Potter's secret keeper for four years now, and they had been safe. But life was getting more dangerous: he feared capture, feared what he might say under torture. He had convinced Lily and James to change secret keepers, to someone that no one would suspect – after all, who would have guessed that the Potters would put their trust in Pettigrew, shy, cowardly Peter?

He had trusted Peter – rat! – trusted the traitor! But Peter had gone to Voldemort, and Sirius had realised his mistake too late, and now James and Lily were dead.

Even as he comforted Harry, Sirius' auror training began to kick in. He had to get out of the house before reinforcement death eaters arrived. But couldn't apparate! Never mind, he would have to get out some other way. Find help – Moody, Shacklebolt, Remus, anyone who could help get Harry to safety – and then get a message to Dumbledore. Dumbledore had to know. Voldemort had been hurt by his encounter with the Potters: now was the time to strike. If there was anyone left to fight…

How many had died at the ministry? When the message had come through, they had called in reinforcements, 'the ministry under attack'… 'all aurors report at once'… and like fools, they had come. But the death eaters had already overtaken the upper levels, and the aurors were caught by surprise, falling in droves. As he heard Moody's call to retreat, Sirius had wondered, where is He? The Dark Lord?

And then he thought of the glint in Peter's eye when Sirius had bid him goodbye, and he ran, apparating straight onto the Potter's front lawn. He knew then that something was very wrong. There was a perimeter around the house that prevented apparating: James had cast the wards himself. Nothing could lift the spells except James, or his death…

The front door hung off its hinges. Sirius stepped over the threshold, terrified of what lay inside the brightly lit house. And then he had seen James leaning against the wall…

Lily and James dead.

It was too much. He rubbed Harry's shoulder, "we have to leave now, Harry," he spoke quickly to his godson, hoping the boy was listening, "because soon more people will come, and we don't want them to see us, do we?"

"Who's coming?" Harry asked, wiping his nose.

"Bad people," Sirius said bluntly.

"Where are we going?"

Sirius didn't know yet, so he said, "Some place safe," but that was a lie. Where could they go that was safe?

James' jacket lay over the back of a chair, and Sirius had draped it over Harry's trembling form, "ready? Up we go," Harry put his arms around Sirius' neck and his godfather lifted him up and hurried out into the hall. He held his wand out behind him, dropping blobs of flame out of the tip. If he burned the house, perhaps they would think Harry was dead…

He saw James' body at the bottom of the stairs and said, "close your eyes," Harry opened his mouth to question this instruction, then obeyed. Sirius bent Harry's head against his shoulder, "we're almost there. Just keep them closed," he went back to dropping flames down the stairs as they went.

The fire in the upper storey was burning fiercely now. If James had been an Auror, if he had been trained to fight, as Sirius had been trained, would he have been able to defend his house? 'Unlikely,' Sirius thought sadly. He spread more flames around James' body, 'better burned than in the hands of death eaters' and then pointed his wand at the hearth and, as it blazed into life, took a pinch of dust from the tattered box atop the mantelpiece and sprinkled it over the fireplace.

'London,' he thought to himself, and muttered their destination, a fireplace in a house Sirius knew would be deserted. As he stepped into the fireplace, Harry lifted his head, saw his father's body, and began to cry again.

Sirius wrapped his arms around the thin and precious boy and held him tight as the floo-powder fire rushed them away.

TBC

A/N: This fic can be a complete story in itself, but it is also Part One of a three-part story, Part Two of which is practically complete and Part Three of which is still in the works. Part One has only been reposted because I had to edit the entire thing after…issues…with fanfiction(dot)net admin. I had another story (the sequel to this one) deleted because I had replied to some of my reviewers in the author's notes. Tragic for me, but hey, it happens, so to prevent the deletion of this story as well, I've taken all offending author's notes out of Lost: Small Boy and reposted it. If you like it, I'll have the sequel up again as soon as possible, and I hope to see you there.