The Musendrophilus

“In 1975 the famous naturalist David Attenborough reported on BBC Radio 3 about a group of islands in the Pacific known as the Sheba Islands. He played sound recordings of the island's fauna, including a recording of an alleged night-singing tree mouse called the Musendrophilus.”

October ninth, 1989 dawned clear, crisp, and cool, the liquid gold of the newborn sun gilding a small hillside cottage in Cornwall, which was surrounded by a small wood on one side with an open view of the ocean on the other. Ruby and amber leaves shook free of their trees and drifted in piles against the house, rustling and hissing as the breeze shuffled them closer to the wall. Birds chirped in the trees on the edge of the wood, and a timid doe grazed cautiously in the back garden.

A Comanche yell broke the golden morning, and Sirius Black was rudely woken up by an excited nine year old boy jumping on his bed.

“SiriusSiriusSirius! Happybirthdayhappybirthday—!”

Sleep fuzzed and extremely annoyed, Sirius reached blindly for his godson and yanked him down against his side. “Shuddup, Harry. 'S, like, six. Go back t' sleep,” he groused sleepily into Harry's hair.

The boy wiggled free, staring with irritation at Sirius, “Paaaaaadfoot! Come on,” he tugged at Sirius's shoulder as he knelt on the bed, “I want go to Diagon!”

Sirius blearily looked up at Harry, “'S my birthday, and I wanna sleep!” Sirius nestled down further into his nest of blankets and yawned, “We'll go later, when Mooney get here.” Harry didn't protest, so Sirius closed his eyes and drifted back to sleep.

Staring at his godfather, Harry pursed his lips in Remus's I'm-going-to-get-you-and-you-will-not-like-it expression before slipping off the bed and out of the room.

-

A few hours later, feeling much more human, Sirius made his way into the kitchen, where Harry sat. Harry usually had at least a grin of the “I've hid all your socks” order on his face, but this morning he looked suspiciously innocent.

“All right, what did you do?” Sirius asked, folding his arms and stopping in the middle of the sunlit kitchen. He stared at Harry expectantly, tapping his foot on the tile.

The boy looked at him, “Can't a lad sit and eat his cereal without unfounded accusations being thrown at him?” Harry asked, scooping up a spoonful of his cheerios.

“I haven't accused you of anything. Yet,” Sirius amended, “But you, my boy, are looking entirely too innocent this morning. Therefore, you did something. Spill it.”

“Did not,” Harry protested around a mouth of cereal. Milk dribbled down his chin.

“That's uncouth, Harry,” Sirius looked disgusted. “Swallow and then deny all involvement!” he grabbed a dish towel off the nearest counter and held it out.

The boy accepted the cloth and obliged, “Sorry,” he said.

Sirius patted his head and moved to make tea and toast while Harry gloated over wriggling out of answering his godfather. As Sirius was fixing his tea the way he liked it (sweet as sin with just a little milk), his toast popped out of the Magi-Toaster 1500, looking like it had gotten in the way of an annoyed dragon.

The slices of black toast made crispy, scraping noises as they dropped back in the bread slots. Sirius shot a look at Harry, who was currently occupied with chasing the few remaining bits of cereal around in his bowl of milk. He scooped a few Os out of the milk,“Oh no, help me, Harry! Help me!” Harry made them beg, but instead of returning the pleading cereal to the bowl, he gleefully ate them.

Sirius stared at Harry. “I have no idea why you did that,” he gestured at Harry's breakfast, “but I know you're somehow involved with the burning of my toast!”

Harry sniffed at him, “Am not. Did you check the setting?”

“Of course I did!” Sirius replied, surreptitiously eying the dial knob. Hmm, right where he left it yesterday morning, when he had had perfect toast.

“Then it was the toaster,” Harry replied primly.

Sirius glowered at him. The boy was somehow involved with this, he knew it! He spent the rest of the morning fiddling with the knob and went through a full loaf of bread. Each piece was either completely charred or was only faintly warm, no matter what position the dial was in.

He was still in his pajamas, swearing and trying again with the faintly warm slices when Remus came in around eleven. Harry was in the sitting room, lounging on the couch as he read the comics section of the Daily Prophet, occasionally flicking his gaze up to smirk at his godfather when the man snarled at the contraption.

Remus paused in the sitting room, staring at his frustrated friend as he threw down and stomped on several slices of toast, screaming at them in French.

“Is there a reason he's...?” Remus asked, gesturing at Sirius as he pulled out his wand and hexed the hapless bread.

“I imagine,” Harry said casually, folding the newspaper in half. “Did you read today's Mage Valorous? It's pretty good.”

“No,” Remus replied, distracted again by Sirius chasing a piece of four-legged toast under the table. “I haven't yet. But I will, once we get the toast situation sorted out.”

When Sirius bellowed like a stung bull and reached for a kitchen knife, Remus hurried to intervene.

-

The three of them didn't make it to Diagon Alley until well into the afternoon, but once the trip had settled down and Harry was behaving himself, Sirius relaxed enough to properly enjoy the day he turned (“OhmygodI'mold!”) thirty.

His godson was also uncommonly solicitous about his happiness, as if the child was sorry for letting the Toast Incident get out of hand. Sirius still had no idea what Harry had done to his toaster or even how. After a three-year old Harry had charmed Sirius's hair electric blue, Sirius had always gone out of his way to hide his wand out of Harry's reach, so that wasn't it...

Hmmm, something to ponder when not eating chocolate gelato with his godson and best friend, while bird watching.

After finishing up at Fortescue's, Sirius made a stop at the magical equivalent of an appliance store, intending to buy another toaster.

“You won't need a new toaster, Sirius,” Harry said, tugging on his sleeve as he looked at the different models. “I fixed it when you were in the shower.”

Sirius looked down at the boy, who shifted uncomfortably. He'd have to train Harry out of that before Hogwarts, he decided. “Thank you,” he nodded.

Harry smiled as they made their way out of the shop.

The rest of October passed quietly, the two Marauders and the Marauderling pausing to remember Harry's parents before properly enjoying Halloween. November slipped past them with a flurry of snowball fights, icy wakeup calls, and Harry's resulting annual cold.

December sauntered through Kennel Cottage and Sirius woke up on Christmas day feeling quite nice. He yawned and stretched, enjoying the pull of muscle and tendon, smiling at the ceiling and sat up, and promptly yanked his foot off the floor when it touched something cold and wet. He looked at the floor with horror. There was an entire army of stick-armed snowmen sitting on his bedroom floor, packed in so closely that there was no way he'd be able to pick his way through them. And his wand was across the room on top of his wardrobe!

Swearing, Sirius leaped off his bed toward the wardrobe and yelped when he landed in cold snow. He jumped again, determined to touch as little of the stuff as possible and when Sirius reached for his wand on top of the wardrobe...he felt several small somethings graze the back of his ankle. He howled and shifted to his animagus form, snarling at the approaching snowmen. They scuttled away from his snapping teeth and melted, leaving only a bonfire's worth of kindling behind on the floor.

Remus and Harry smirked at him when he walked into the kitchen before returning to their treacle.

Of course, Sirius got them back. He transferred various singing charms to door hinges, Remus's coat pocket flap, the toilet, and, as Harry discovered the next morning, the lid of his favorite cereal box. Each song was progressively more annoying, starting with “Wald the What's-it” and moving down the to the murderous-rage inducing muggle Christmas song “Frosty the Snowman.” A glaring Harry threatened to wring Sirius's neck if “Frosty” ever made it into his cereal again.

Remus's birthday was March tenth, and Sirius and Harry set out to make his thirtieth birthday memorable. Remus had found work in as a clerk in a Grunnings warehouse in Surrey, where he answered phones, filed paperwork, and did all the mind numbing tasks a clerk does. While Remus was out on lunch—some of the other clerks were treating him as it was his birthday—Harry and Sirius invaded the office.

They couldn't use magic, as Remus worked with Muggles, but there were still a host of options. Harry fished through the paper bin and took out useless, usually blank, forms and papers. After he had a stack of them, he mixed them in with the pile of folders on Remus's desk, and added an entire folder of the blanks into the stack.

Sirius had been very carefully saving all of the disgusting Bertie Bots from his stash for months and placed a small jar of them, mixed with a new bag of jelly beans, on Remus's desk. Under the container was a note,

Happy birthday!                 See you at Tantamount tonight at seven!

Sirius and Harry

Snickering, the two put a few final pranks in place and slipped away.

-

Remus arrived at the restaurant that night, looking both amused and annoyed.

“You know,” he said as he slid into the booth next to Harry, “my coworkers now think I like freakishly flavored jelly beans. Fern—”

“That bird you fancy?” asked Harry as he played tic-tac-toe with Sirius on his paper child's menu.

Remus gave Harry an annoyed look, “Yes, her. She got a rhubarb one, and then they all crowded around my desk and stole the jar. Issac got a sardine bean, and Gemma got raspberry, and then Fern tried again and ended up with a booger one.”

“Poor girl,” Sirius commented absently as he lost to Harry—again. “Those are awful salty.”

Remus rolled his eyes. “And who's idea was the paper thing? Really, my boss gave me such a look for handing him a folder full of blank forms.”

Harry gave him a toothy grin.

April Fool's was traditionally a quiet day simply because the Marauders were contrary, making it the only day in the year guaranteed to be prank-free. The worst that happened was Remus would stick a few simple paper fish around Kennel Cottage. When questioned about them, Remus would simply smirk at the questioner and murmur something about April's Fish. Every year, Sirius asked who was this April girl was and what did she have to do with fish?

Remus never answered.

Summer rolled around, and Sirius and Harry often ate dinner in the yard and watched the stars as Sirius told Harry the stories associated with the constellations and pointed them out.

“Is that where your mum picked you name from?” Harry asked Sirius after he explained the stories of the Big Dipper and the North star.

“Sort of. It's traditional for Blacks to have that kind of name, but also it pulled from family tradition. Technically, I am Sirius Orion Black the Third,” Sirius drawled swottily.

Harry laughed, “You drop 'the third,' right?”

“Of course! I'd much prefer not to remember my family, much less that I'm the third Sirius Orion!”

Harry nodded with a smile before going on, “I know your parents died, but are any other of your relatives still around?”

Sirius sighed. The boy would find out eventually anyway. “Yes, though not many. I'm the last male Black, but I have female cousins, two of whom have children. Remember Andromeda and Dora?”

“Yeah,” Harry nodded again.

“Well, there's them, and then Narcissa, her sister, who has one son...Draco or Deacon is his name, I forget which. Deacon Malfoy?...Draco Malfoy?” Sirius tried again, trying to remember what sounded right. “...Draco, I think. I'll have to check. Anyway, he's my second cousin, technically. And the Weasleys...you remember them, right?”

Harry had only met them once and that was many years ago. “The red-heads? Ron, and the twins, and everybody else?”

“Yeah, that's them. They're more distantly related but I like them, so I'll claim them. And that's everybody who's not in prison. Does that answer your question?”

“Yeah...you don't like talking about them, do you?”

“No, not especially, except for Andromeda and Arthur of course.”

Harry nodded, “Thank you.”

“You're welcome,” Sirius smiled and pulled his godson into a one-armed hug.

Harry's birthday was always a big event, with a surprising number of people showing up—Andromeda and her family, and several of the remaining Order members and their families, and of course, Remus. There was cake, and pranks, and presents, and the most horrible, off-key rendition of “Happy Birthday” that Sirius and Remus could manage. Harry had managed pried off the stupid birthday hat Sirius or Remus had spelled onto his head by then, and he usually threw it at the two men with a laugh. Except for the years the hat was a beanie and a pair of rabbit's ears, he missed unless they stood close enough; paper hat do not fly very far.

The year Harry turned ten, Minerva McGonagall was invited. Sirius fully expected that Harry would be a Gryffindor and he thought it wise for her to meet him before school started. She showed up right as the party started and Sirius dragged Harry over to meet her.

“Harry, you'll be seeing this lady at Hogwarts, when you go, and I think you'll like her,” Sirius said quietly as he lead his godson towards where McGonagall stood.

Minerva assumed that Sirius was admonishing Harry to behave as he lead the James lookalike towards her. She had never been able to pry the story of how the boy had ended up in Sirius's care out of the Headmaster, but she was sure it was quite a tale.

Sirius flashed her a smile as he stopped in front of her, “Harry, this is Professor Minerva McGonagall. She'll be teaching you transfiguration when you go to Hogwarts. Professor, this is Harry.”

“Pleased to meet you,” Harry smiled at her, offering his hand for a handshake.

She smiled at him and took his hand, “Pleased to meet you, too, Mr. Potter.”

Sirius disappeared with a smile as Harry proceeded to wrap McGonagall around his little finger with winsome smiles and adorable jokes. He laid it on thick, and McGonagall, the old softie, ate it all up. Sirius chuckled. He had done well.

Present time rolled around sometime later and Harry could barely suppress his glee. What was there not to like about presents?

He received a pile of them—a broom from Sirius, a couple books from Remus, a sneakoscope from Moody, about about a dozen other things.

The best present, though, was a little grey mouse that was as long as his index finger. He opened the cage and it looked up at him from its soft nest of down with large eyes, and issued a soft, musical trill. Harry gasped.

McGonagall chuckled, “That's a musendrophilus. He's a singing tree mouse, and as long as you treat him nicely, he'll stay with you. Make sure he doesn't get outside until you have him trained, though, otherwise you'll never get him back.”

Harry nodded, still staring at his new pet. “Thank you, Professor,” he said after a moment, meeting her eyes and grinning at her. “I think I shall call him Nimh.”

A/N: Prank ideas are welcome! I hope Harry's not too off for his age group.

Lyrics to Wald the What's-it:

Wald the What's-it had a very fine beard,It made him most feared,Made him renown,One he had found,That it ate people,And let him swing from a steeple.Tentacles it would grow,And it would issue a deathblow,To anyone who stood too close,Woe betide Wald the What's-it's foes!