Dumbledore and Harry's Adventures

Serious Healing

It took Sirius three days before he finally believed that he was not imagining things and accepted the reality of the fact that he was now a free man.

Rather, it took him three days before he admitted to believing it was all true. Harry suspected the man had accepted reality within the first thirty minutes of waking up and was simply milking the situation for all it was worth. Not that Harry minded, as Sirius made a point of teaching advanced pranking techniques, which he preceded by always saying "now, your mother would have killed me for teaching you this, but it's OK to teach you because you're not real, so..."

Harry believed Sirius decided to finally stop milking the situation once Remus got fed up enough to stop acting guilty all the time. Which was coincidentally the same morning Sirius woke up to discover that his limited set of new shirts had been transfigured into T-Shirts saying, "I spent 12 years in Azkaban, and all I got was this stupid T-Shirt", "Life is full of trials, except for when I was sent to prison", and "Azkababy Got Back".

On that third day, Sirius sat down at the table wearing his "A dementor is my mentor" T-Shirt. After finishing half of his breakfast and another two large slices of birthday cake, while eyeing Remus's smug smirk, Sirius looked over at Albus and spoke up.

"So, Albus, this is apparently all real."

Albus lowered his upside-down newspaper. "It would appear to be so, but who am I to define another person's reality."

Sirius nodded. "It's answers like that that tell me this is real. My delusions aren't that philosophical."

Albus tilted his head in acknowledgement and lifted his newspaper back up.

"Although..."

Albus lowered his newspaper once again.

"...yes, Sirius?"

"I might have realized this was all real, if you had apologized to me earlier."

Albus narrowed his eyes slightly. "Well, I'm sorry I missed my window. Out of curiosity, what would have been the content of my apology?"

Sirius's eyes hardened. "You let me rot in Azkaban, when I was innocent and hadn't even had the decency of a trial!"

Albus folded his newspaper and placed it on the table. He sighed as he laced his fingers in front of his face.

"Sirius, I do feel awful that you needlessly spent years in that horrid place and am thoroughly dismayed you did not receive a trial. I was under the impression that you had received a trial, nor did anyone give me a reason to doubt that impression. I would have insisted upon a trial if I had known at the time. I was also under the impression that you were found laughing maniacally at the scene of the explosion, surrounded by a dozen deceased individuals. Was that also an incorrect impression?"

Sirius shifted uncomfortably. "That... that was how I was found."

"But you must have at least proclaimed your innocence before your arrest. Right?"

"... I didn't quite do that."

Albus nodded. "Ah... well, I feel horrible that I didn't ask Remus to confirm that you were really the Secret Keeper. He was informed of the truth, correct?"

Sirius's eyes darted over to an overly interested Remus. "Well... we also told him I was the Secret Keeper."

"Ah... so... I believe I can speak for Remus when I say that we are both dreadfully sorry that we believed you, James, and Lily when you lied to us and told us Peter was the Secret Keeper. And, of course, we are sorry we did not see the obvious signs of innocence when you were caught surrounded by corpses and laughing maniacally while never once claiming you were innocent. I just hope that you can someday forgive us."