Chapter 1 - The Scroll

"Hey, Harry."

"Yeah?"

"Why are we here, again?"

"I've told you already. I like history, so why not?"

Sirius was a bit puzzled. And it was understandable, really. His memories of History at Hogwarts had been between boring, dull, annoying, exasperating, and… what is it? Oh, yeah, fucking boooring. Professor Binns' classes hadn't been exactly compelling, to say the least. His drill-like voice made lots of students fall asleep before the ten minute mark. He included.

"I just- I can't understand how you can like history. It was so boring in my time. You have Binns, too, right?" Asked Sirius, a bit puzzled.

Harry stopped for a second. He was looking at a certain object- a cup. Of Roman origin. And what a cup it was. He couldn't resist smiling.

"Yeah, we have Binns." Harry said after a few seconds of silence, continuing to observe the cup.

"Aren't his classes… boring? Like, very, very, boring?"

Harry absentmindedly nodded.

"Yeah, they are. But that doesn't make History less interesting." Harry paused for a second. "Besides, we are in a Muggle museum, so it isn't like I'm here because I've been inspired by Binns'… wonderful classes."

Sirius sighed.

"Yeah, well. When you said you wanted to do something fun 'to escape the dullness of Grimauld Place', I didn't think you were referring to this."

Harry shrugged.

"How disappointed you must be", said Harry in his best Snape voice.

Sirius smiled.

"Well, at least I'm away from Grimmauld Place, which is good, I guess." Sirius shrugged.

"Yep. I can agree to that," said Harry while moving to look to another object.

Sirius meanwhile started to observe the cup Harry had been looking. Ten seconds passed.

"Harry?"

"Yeah?" asked Harry, feigning innocence.

"What the hell is this cup?"

"The Warren Cup."

"These Muggles…" Sirius couldn't help but let out a chuckle.

"Yeah, well, I'm sure there will be something you'll find interesting." Harry said, walking towards the next room.

One and a half hours went by. Some visitors just looked around for just a bit before moving on, while others were slower, and could stay for over an hour just to look at a single room.

"Harry?" asked Sirius.

"Yeah, Sirius?"

They were entering room 61. Egypt.

"Are you still angry with Ron and Hermione?"

Harry's face didn't betray his thoughts.

"A bit, yeah, but it's Professor Dumbledore who's most to blame. I just…" Harry sighed.

"You wish your friends had disregarded Dumbledore's orders?"

"Well…" Harry sighed. "Yeah. I know Professor Dumbledore has his best intentions at heart, but I'm getting tired of constantly being so protected. It's like- I felt caged, you know."

Sirius nodded.

"Yeah, I see your point. I've felt that, too."

Silence fell between the two of them.

"These past 5 days have been great, Sirius," added Harry.

Sirius smiled. "I'm glad."

Egyptian sculpture was interesting in Harry's opinion. A bit flat, sometimes, perhaps, but cool overall. What he liked the most was the wall paintings. They were everywhere, and something about them just attracted Harry. Perhaps it was the mysticism that surrounded all those hieroglyphs.

"Harry? Do you know something about this room?" asked Sirius after some time.

"Hm, well, this is Room 61, so these are wall paintings extracted from, in theory, a wealthy Egyptian official called… Nebaum, if my memory serves me right. They date back approximately to the year 1850 before Merlin."

"Blimey, that's a lot of time," said Sirius, impressed.

"Well, what would you expect? These are from Ancient Egypt, you know," said Harry, raising his eyebrows.

"Yes, well-" Sirius said, trying to finish his sentence without success.

Harry's smile made Sirius want to pull Harry's hair out.

"You won't always win, I assure you," said eventually Sirius.

"I'm sure." Harry smiled. "Not this time, though."

"You cheeky brat! If I catch you-"

But it was too late. Harry was already slipping through the crowd of visitors.

Sirius, as always, made a spectacle of himself running after Harry, which caused an angry click from an elderly madam.

"Young people these days…"

But Sirius was far away.

After ten minutes Sirius managed to catch Harry. He was panting.

They were in a small room. Alone.

"Harry! Here you are! Dear Merlin, I've looked for you everywhere."

But Harry didn't listen to him.

"Harry?" asked Sirius.

"Hm? Oh, Sirius, there you are. Look—"

In front of them was a roll of parchment inside an elevated glass box.

"Yeah, so what?" asked Sirius nonchalantly.

"Look at the little sign over here." Harry said, eagerly. It reads: "Base- Part of the plinth, for a figure of Ptah-Sokar-Osiris, made of wood and painted yellow, blah, blah, blah."

"Hm? So?"

"Don't you get it, Sirius? This is obviously parchment, so why it says another thing in the sign?"

Sirius raised his brows.

"Wait, wait? Parchment? This is a base, as the sign says."

"You don't see the parchment, then?" asked Harry, incredulous.

"What parchment? This is a base. I can see it right there—"

Harry couldn't believe it.

"Sirius, are you joking?" asked Harry seriously.

"No, why would I? What do you see?"

"A rolled parchment."

"What? Really?" this time was Sirius' turn to become incredulous.

"Yeah! So get your wand and check if there's something" demanded Harry, a bit impatient.

"All right, all right. Wait a sec."

Sirius got his wand out of his left sleeve and casted some diagnostic charms. His eyes went big.

"Dearie me, you're right! This has an illusion ward!"

"See?" Harry said with a pleased smile.

"But why would a wizard put an illusion ward here? That makes no sense. And why could you see through it?"

Sirius cast more spells.

"Damn, this box has many protective charms. It will be hard to dismantle all of them.

"Can you do it, then?" Harry asked.

"Of course, I can. I'm a Black. Wards are our specialty, you know," said Sirius in a sly voice. He continued. "I'll need some time, so go over that door and let me know if there are people coming."

Harry nodded.

Luckily, the process went faster than Sirius expected and after five minutes Sirius managed to dismantle all the wards. Thankfully for them, nobody came in.

"Phew- I'm done, Harry. I had to use some family spells, which was unexpected, though. These wards were harder to crack than I thought."

"Great!"

Harry moved towards the parchment.

"So, what now, Harry?"

Harry stopped moving.

"Actually, that's a good point. What now?"

"Do you want to steal it?" excitement went through Sirius eyes. "After all, Muggles won't use the information this parchment has in it."

Harry's face became serious. But in the end, he couldn't help it. A crooked smiled appeared on his face.

"Alright, deal. But I want it to read it first!" Harry's eyes shone in anticipation.

"Aw, come on! It will be thanks to me that we get the parchment."

"Don't care. I said it first," said Harry with finality in his voice.

"All right, all right."

Sirius was about to cast a spell when—

"Wait. Don't do anything yet," Harry said.

"What? Why?" asked Sirius, impatiently.

"Look. See that? Those are surveillance cameras. If we stole this the museum will know how we look."

"So, what do we do?"

"Do you remember how the illusory base was?" asked Harry.

"Yeah, I do. So what?"

"Is your transfiguration good?"

"Yeah, I'm decent, I guess." Sirius shrugged. In fact, his transfiguration skills were way better than most wizards and witches.

"All right, so conjure that illusory base you saw-" Harry moved towards a specific area in the room where the surveillance cameras didn't reach "over here. Then, perform a switching spell to the parchment with the conjured base. Now that there aren't any wards, it should be possible, right?"

"Oh! I see-, yeah, it is. Let's do it!"

It took over six tries to make the base exactly like the one Sirius had seen. Harry meanwhile was crossing his fingers. He didn't want someone getting inside the room before Sirius was done.

"Got it! Got it!" Sirius exclaimed after a minute. In his hands was the rolled parchment.

Harry almost let a little squeal escape his mouth.

"Yes! Open it, open it!"

"Okay, okay. But I think we should do this in Grimmauld Place. Best we get to somewhere safe first."

Harry could see sense to that idea, so he nodded.

"Let's do that. Apparition?"

"Yeah, but let's do that outside the museum. In case someone notices."

------------

It was past 2 o'clock when Harry and Sirius left the museum. The scroll had to be charmed invisible but other than that there were no problems. What's more, what seemed to be a perfectly normal, boring day had become an exciting one.

They appeared in entrance passageway of the multi-storied building that had been Black for generations with a crack.

"Let's go to my study. There we won't be disturbed." Sirius said in a low voice.

"Disturbed? May I know why you don't want to be disturbed?" A gentle baritone voice asked at the end of the corridor.

Sirius smiled. "Remus! How are you faring on this beautiful day? I'm starving, has Molly prepared lunch already?"

Remus raised a brow. "Well, considering it's almost 2 o'clock, of course. We haven't had lunch, though. To be honest, everyone's been going crazy looking for you both. We were about to contact Dumbledore, now."

Sirius couldn't muster an answer as a motherly figure burst onto them.

"SO, THERE YOU ARE! I was so preoccupied for the both of you! Next time you do something like—"

Sirius, however, didn't let Mrs. Weasley finish her sentence. He put one hand on Mrs. Weasley's arm.

"Thank you, Molly. I find it charming that you care about us, really. But I'm so hungry, right now. How about we tell you where Harry and I have been while having lunch?"

Sirius calmed Molly's outrage with his best mellowed voice.

"Oh, well, I guess you're hungry, all right. But I see what you're trying to do. I'm still not old enough. You'll explain what you were doing when we have lunch." Molly warned him, patting him on the cheek twice. She then turned back to the kitchen.

Sirius and Remus laughed at that while Harry smiled.

"She's awesome, isn't she?" remarked Sirius, shaking his head.

"Yeah, she is," agreed Remus.

A pause settled between the three of them.

"Shall we have lunch?" added Remus.

Harry and Sirius looked at each other.

"Well, yes" started Sirius "but there's something Harry and I need to do first. Would you mind eating first? We'll come in no time; I assure you."

Remus fixed his gaze on Sirius and nodded slowly. "Okay. I assume this has to do with your strange disappearance this morning—"

Remus tried to elicit information from them, without success. Silence usually worked.

"All right, all right. I'll tell the others. Try to be quick, though. Specially you, Harry. You know how's Ms. Granger when she's worried."

Harry nodded in agreement. "Yeah, Sirius, let's go."

They hurried up the stairs while trying not to get noticed. When they entered Sirius' study without being stopped, they let out a sigh of relief.

"Ugh, I've never been happier to have put an invisible charm on something."

"Yeah, it could've been far worse…" Harry agreed.

Sirius put the scroll on his desk and cancelled the charm.

"Now. Let's see what's inside this—"

Sirius unrolled the parchment.

"Huh?"

"Wow."

Both Sirius and Harry reacted at the same time.

"Dammit," said Sirius. "It's written in a foreign language."

"What? No, it's written in English." Harry answered, puzzled.

"Huh?"

"It reads— The Way of Water. An Introduction to Parselmagic."

Sirius stared at his godson.

"Oh." Harry said a bit bashfully.

"Yes, 'oh'. Since when are you a fricking parselmouth, Harry?"

"Uhm, since always? Sorry, I haven't told you; I just- I didn't remember. Sorry."

Sirius nodded and smiled reassuringly.

"It's okay. I don't mind, really. It just- It caught me by surprise, you know?" Sirius said.

"Thank you. I- I don't have the best experiences when it comes to this topic, so…"

Sirius didn't let Harry finish the sentence.

"It's okay, really. In any case, it seems this scroll is in Parselscript. That means…" Sirius raised his brows suggestively "only you can read this."

"Wow."

"Yeah, wow."

"Is there a way for me to learn Parselscript?" smirked Sirius.

"I wouldn't know, would I?"

Sirius snorted. Harry was right. Oh, well. He would find a way. Sirius was nothing if not persistent.