Leo looked at Harry who just raised his eyebrows and smiled again. "I only know what my mother told me. They met outside a rock concert where my mum had been in the crowd. He told her his name was Sirius Black. There had been an incident, a fight of some sort, and this Sirius bloke seemed to want to get my mum away. He was tall, dark, handsome, so Mum said. He talked a lot, asked Mum about every detail of what she saw, she had to admit that all she saw was flashing lights and heard some bangs like fireworks. He seemed to be satisfied with that and offered to take Mum home. He had an old Triumph Bonneville motorcycle which mum just loved; he even had a helmet for her which fitted. Mum still gets excited whenever she talks about that one pillion ride home. When they got to her little flat, she invited him in for coffee. Mum said they talked a lot, mainly about her. All he said about himself was that he worked in law enforcement and he wasn’t allowed to say anything more. He asked Mum for her phone number at work and what times he could call to take her out properly." Leo looked uncomfortable, "Well, things got very friendly after that. My mum was not a tart, that’s just the way things were back then. She was between boyfriends; she was on the pill and they used a condom. They were careful."
Leo was now red in face. "I don’t know why I’m telling you all this. I don’t know you from a bar of soap. For some reason I just can’t keep my mouth shut." Leo looked at his cup of coffee with sudden suspicion.
Harry smiled again; "Don't worry Leo, the coffee is safe, it hasn’t been spiked. So! Two contraception measures and I’m certain that Sirius also used a ‘fail safe’ preventative. It seems that the infinite wanted you to be born and nothing was going to stop that."
Leo stared at Harry; "You know him, you met him. I wanted to believe what my Mum always said that he was some kind of undercover police or secret agent and something bad happened to him. Mum always loved the whole James Bond 'right always wins over evil' thing. I just didn’t know of course. As I grew up, I got more sceptical about it all. So, what was he really like?"
Harry stared back; he wasn’t smiling now. "Your mum was right. Sirius was fighting a secret war. It was war, it was very secret. A lot of people got killed. Both my parents were murdered. This was just over a year after you were born. At the time, my parents were in hiding. It was thought that Sirius was the only person who knew where they were. The authorities assumed that Sirius betrayed my parents. He was imprisoned, never to be released. The real situation was that another man, Peter Pettigrew, was the secret keeper. Pettigrew faked his own death and hid. No one could prove that Sirius was innocent, not until much later."
Harry paused and stared into space for a while. "After he met your mum, Sirius was fighting and hiding all the while. He didn’t want to do this; the enemy was getting more dangerous all the time. I can only guess at what he intended but I think he was afraid that any more contact with your mum would have put her in extreme danger. I’m certain that if he knew about you, he would have looked after you somehow."
Leo was getting uneasy. This was a lot to try deal with. "So, where is he now?"
Harry took a deep breath. "It still hurts me a lot, Sirius escaped from prison but was killed in another battle. Someday you might get to read about it in a history book, but that’s all I want to say about it right now."
Harry gave a half smile. "There’s a lot more you need to know. My parents were well off, they left me quite a fortune." Harry patted the arm rest. "Hence I get to ride in this. Sirius was well off and he didn’t want his own family to get their hands on the money for very good reasons. He was my godfather, he adopted me and made me his heir. So, I’m your brother, by adoption. There is also another matter that has recently come to light."
Harry looked carefully at Leo. "How are you going? Still working through it all, hang in there. The Black family wanted to drop off the legal radar a long time ago. Some ancestors were quite important in 'ye olden times'. The birth of the eldest male of each generation was registered but that was all they would do. They didn’t want to acknowledge that the family had a trust fund which the eldest male Black inherited. At first this fund was small and claiming it was risky as it would certainly reveal the hidden Black family. The lawyers renewed the trust fund under a different trustee name for each generation. If you want to claim it, it will be yours."
The Bentley had slowed and then parked in front of a Georgian terrace house in a posh part of Pimlico. Harry looked at the house then asked. "If you want to find out more about this, I’ve arranged a meeting for you with the estate executors, they’re waiting inside now, shall we go in?"
Leo wasn’t stupid, but this was right off the scale of anything he had experienced before. Leo was always the loser, the nice guy who came second in every race. "Nearly half of me is saying I should run for it right now and never look back. The other half plus a bit is saying grab whatever it is and hang on. For some reason, that I really don’t understand, I’m listening to everything you’ve said, and I want to believe it. Let’s go in."
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