Six-year-old Harry wasn't quite sure what to make of his life so far. For as long as he could remember, he had lived two lives. When he was awake, he lived with his wonderful Aunt Petunia and Cousin Dudley, and, until a year ago when he died in a carjacking, his Uncle Vernon. Vernon had always been a warm person and loved to teach him and Dudley new things, like how to change a tire or how to play checkers.
This was nothing like the life he lived when he was asleep. For one, time in that Other Life went twice as fast; because of this accelerated timeline, he was much older in that reality and often forgot the current date while awake in this one. For another, his family in that life was mean, cold, and very obviously hated him. Whether it was his cousin and his friends chasing and beating on him, or his aunt making him do all the chores in the house, or the biggest one, sleeping in the cupboard under the stairs, everything they did was to make his life as miserable as possible.
The biggest difference between the two lives was magic. Not that it existed in one world and not the other, but that in his other life, it was a secret known only to a few. In that life, just before his eleventh birthday, he had first learned about magic being real from a letter. Here, magic was a known and accepted part of life—revered even—and talked about in school, even if they didn't live in a designated Magic Zone. That was another major difference: Magic Zones. From what he understood of how it was explained in school, Magic Zones were pockets of land that were saturated in higher concentrations of magic than regular mundane spaces and had been gifted to the mundane governments to let non-magical people live on. Living in places with more magic gave non-magicals a small chance of awakening a rudimentary magic and drastically increased the chances of a baby being a New Blood—a magical with no direct magical ancestry.
Knock! Knock! Knock!
The sound of someone at the door broke Harry from his musings. "I'll get it!" He called, knowing his aunt was in the kitchen making lunch, and got up to answer it for her. Opening the door, he saw a familiar-looking man smiling at him, and it took him a moment to realize where he had seen him before. It was on a wanted poster in that dingy pub in his other life. The name came quickly after: Sirius Black—escaped, mass murderer, and right-hand man to Voldemort. Woosh! Slam!
Sirius's POV
After knocking on the door of number 4 Privet Drive and seeing who was without a doubt his godson for the first time in almost six years, he was not expecting him to launch a blast of magic strong enough to crack his passive barrier and slam the door shut in his face. In hindsight, he probably should have. This whole week since he woke up from his coma had been terrible.
The last thing he remembered before waking up in the hospital bed was walking around in his Animagus form with baby Harry on his back. James and Frank were laughing from where they sat in the corner of the room playing chess. Then he felt a tremble, and before he could make sense of it, a large blast came up from the floor, sending him flying.
When he woke, the doctors informed him that he had, in fact, been in a coma. An hour later, when Mooney arrived, he was informed that all their friends were dead. Apparently, the volatile magic that Lily and Alice had been working on in the basement had been disrupted when Peter dropped a tray of reagents he had been asked to bring down on an unstable array, leading to a catastrophic chain reaction that ended with most of the house destroyed and everyone present except himself and Harry dead. When he asked how they had survived, he was informed that despite not remembering it, he had managed to half-summon a mage shield that took most of the blast, and his passive shield had enveloped Harry, saving his life even as Sirius took the remainder of the blast head-on, resulting in his current state.
Before his thoughts could spiral any further, the door was opened again. This time by whom Sirius recognized as Lily's sister, Petunia. Said woman also recognized him, if the way her face twisted into a sneer was any indication.
"Sirius," she bit out. "What do you want?"
"Lovely to see you again, Petunia. I'm here to take Harry home."
"Well, it's unfortunate that you wasted a trip. This is his home, and you can't have him."
"What do you mean I can't have him? You legally can't keep him. He's my godson and I'm his legal guardian!" he said in outrage.
"Legal guardian, my foot! He's been with me almost six years! You don't get to dump him on my doorstep to raise and then come waltzing in to take him back when it's convenient for you! For God's sake, this is the first I'm seeing of you since he was left here!" She responded, her voice tight with anger at the sheer audacity of this man.
"What's it matter to you? You hate magic! Why would you want to keep a wizard in your home?!"
"He's my nephew before he's a wizard, and I don't hate magic, I hate that my little sister abandoned me for it! Now, where have you been all this time?!"
Sirius was stunned at the reply, having never thought about her side of things. He only ever heard from Lily how Petunia was jealous of not having magic and became spiteful. Getting over it quickly, he responded in a more subdued voice. "I was in a coma; I just woke up a couple of days ago."
Surprised by the revelation, Petunia didn't know how to respond, so she just huffed.
Seeing that she was more calm now, he gingerly asked, "Can I see him?"
Sighing in frustration, she turned around wordlessly and started walking to the kitchen. Taking that as acceptance, he quickly followed, shutting the door behind him.