Boys of Summer

But I can see you
Your brown skin shinin' in the sun
You got your hair combed back and your sunglasses on, baby
And I can tell you my love for you will still be strong
After the boys of summer have gone
- Don Henley, Boys of Summer

When he was thirty-eight, Sirius Black let his godson, Harry Potter, kill a man. Intellectually, Sirius knew that Voldemort was not Harry's first kill, but that didn't spare him from the sheer violence, the sheer intensity, the sheer bloodiness, the sheer fact of the act. His little godson, who was barely three inches taller from the first time they had met when Harry had been thirteen, had grown up. And Sirius had missed it.

Sirius had a lot of time to think about that fact.

More than he wished really.

Harry's confrontation with Voldemort in February had cost the lives of Snape, Ron, Albus, and Hermione. Their sacrifices had kept the wards intact, and kept the Death Eaters from entering any of the House Common Rooms where the children were huddled by binding the entrances to their blood. Snape had shielded the Slytherins, Hermione the Ravenclaws, Ron the Hufflepuffs, and Dumbledore the Gryffindors. The only person who would be powerful enough - and have permission - to break those wards from the outside was Harry.

Harry, who was outside, on the Quidditch pitch, dueling first with Wormtail and then Voldemort himself. No one saw either battle. It had been Snape's triumphant scream as he lay dying that alerted the tired fighters inside to what was going on outside. Minerva had checked his arm - the Dark Mark was gone.

Sirius had rushed outside to find Wormtail petrified and bound. Voldemort's body was in pieces, and a sword stabbed through his head. It had taken quite a bit of power to get the blade through the snake's skull. A dark red stone lay nearby, and Sirius immediately knew what Harry had done. He had trapped Voldemort's spirit, his essence, the thing that just wouldn't fucking die, into Voldemort's heart.

Sirius spat on the stone, and looked around for Harry.

He had found his godson far away, lying near the edge of the Forbidden Forest, unconscious. He desperately wanted to know how Harry had made it to that close to the Forbidden Forest.

Harry had stayed in a coma for three weeks. Three long weeks in which Sirius had refused to leave his bedside. Poppy had been quite sick of the sight of him. Remus had stood in for him at his own trial. Sirius had been sleeping, late at night, when Harry finally woke up. He had pulled his chair up flush with the hospital bed, and rested his head near Harry's hands. He remembered someone touching his hair, and had jolted awake. "Sirius?" Harry's voice was raspy and quiet, but Sirius believed he'd never heard something so beautiful. Seen anything so beautiful.

It had been that moment that Sirius Black realized he loved Harry Potter.

He knew that he was in love with Harry.

Harry had spent another week in the hospital wing before he smiled, waved goodbye, put his wand in his Gringotts vault and left.

Sirius had been dumbfounded.

Of all things he might have expected of Harry - professor, Auror, Quidditch pro - just leaving had never occurred to him. Not once.

Sirius spent more time thinking: maybe he didn't know Harry as well as he thought.

So, he made a list. Harry was kind, easy going, sharp, powerful, trusting, he hated betrayal and lies, intelligent, somewhat sharp tempered, quiet, shy, he hated attention, and always willing to stand up for others.

Sirius knew how many times Harry had been compared to James. And he sometimes thought that if other people knew his feelings for Harry, they might think it was left over feelings for James. Guilt. Transference.

Sirius knew it was more than that. James had been great, but he'd always been something of a Golden Boy. Rich, popular, and rather arrogant. He adored the attention that was lavished on him. At the time, Sirius had been just like him. But if thirteen years in Azkaban hadn't changed Sirius irrevocably, then the four years he had spent hiding from the Muggle police and the Wizarding Aurors certainly had. But not only was James decidedly heterosexual, Sirius had never had a stray thought about him. He didn't need, or want, some one that was the mirror image of his past self, or what had been his current self. One of him in a relationship had certainly been enough.

And the people who compared Harry to James showed that they didn't know Harry all that well. The comparison simply didn't do Harry justice. Where James had been special, Harry was extraordinary.

And he was most definitely worth going after.

It took nearly a year to find Harry. It was spring, and Sirius remembered thinking that the grass was the color of Harry's eyes. He had been living under the name James Dursley. Sirius knocked on the door to his cottage. Harry had opened the door, dressed in black sweat pants and no shirt. His chest was tanned and his hair wet and slicked back. The smile on his face was enormous. "John, I didn't think you -" Harry paused as he took in who was really standing at his door. The smile dropped almost completely off Harry's face. "Sirius."

"Can I come in?" he had asked.

They had talked long into the night. Sirius slept on Harry's sofa. Sirius stayed through John, Tom, Bill, Sam, David, and William. He stayed through them coming and going.

And he realized that he'd been right: Sirius didn't know Harry as well as he thought.

He made an effort to rectify that mistake. Down to even knowing Harry's favorite way of taking coffee in the morning.

And he still loved this new, this somehow more real Harry.

"Sirius?" Harry asked him one morning. "Why do you stay?"

"Because I want to."

"Why do you want to?"

"Because you deserve it. And more."

"More?"

"I love you, Harry."

"Oh." Harry seemed slightly surprised by the answer. Stumped. "It's odd to hear someone say it."

Sirius had reached over and squeezed his hand, mentally wishing the Dursleys were still alive so that he could give them a piece of his mind. "It's true."

"I love you too, Sirius," Harry had answered, going back to the paper. "I think I'm going out with Adam tonight. Will you be all right alone?"

"Of course. I'm your flatmate, not an invalid," Sirius had smiled to take the bite out of his words. Harry didn't mean it quite in the same fashion, but it was enough.

Sirius could wait for that to change.

Harry was more than worth it.