#yes I am taking tennyson's poems that are very much about merlin the old man wizard and making it a gay romance | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

dialux · 5 years

Text

made weak by time and fate, but strong in will

APOLOGIES!! For the late update! Life got in the way, yada yada yada.

Content warnings for this chapter include: child abuse (of the emotional/magical/quasi-physical kind, because Blacks R HERE), redemption arcs Like Whoa, and lots of allusion to the casualties of war. The only POVs are the marauders and Lily and YEESH ARE THEY ANGSTY. I promise that next chapter will have more action tho. This one got long enough on its own!

Poem in the middle comes from Ulysses, of course, by Tennyson. Yes, James is a poetry buff, why are you asking?

Enjoy!

...

Peter is cold. So cold. Straight down to his bones, like all the brightness and warmth in the world has been carved out of him. He shudders and looks above him to the cliffs- the brothers Lestrange and the siblings Carrow are watching him on top, and Alecto Carrow is many things, one of which is sadistic and the second of which is in possession of a tremendously unfair ability to aim accurately and precisely at what she wants.

Right now that means Peter, if he doesn’t move fast enough.

The cliffs are sheer, though, and even a rat would find it difficult to find a hold. All that’s keeping him from breaking his neck is a wavering leviosa.

Slowly, squeaking in the part of him that’s still a rat, that terrified quaking animal that cannot believe he’s actually doing this- Peter lowers himself.

It’s ridiculous, in all truth. He’d betrayed James to the Dark Lord and ever after, he’s needed to plumb deeper depths of courage than ever before. The Dark Lord doesn’t take kindly to people remaining in his presence after he’s dismissed them. Even if he’s just crucioed you to hell and back. Peter would have said it was impossible to stand up after that particular torture, but he’s seen others do it. He’s done it himself. Falling down a cliff, trying to find Rowle- it isn’t nearly the hardest things Peter’s done in just the past week alone.

Finally, finally, wrists aching, Peter thumps onto the hard-packed ground.

He inhales through his teeth, like the opposite of a whistle, at the pain. Then he gets up, muscles protesting. Gives himself a moment’s break to adjust to the new surroundings.

The North Sea is loud here. The waves break just a little farther away- but before Peter can reach the beach there’s a ward. Slowly, Peter palms his wand and approaches it. Risks a look over his shoulder; the others are so far away that they might as well be simple black dots. Takes a deep breath. The ward’s easy to identify- the delineations, the smell like salt and rotting bone- but Peter doesn’t know what it means. Doesn’t know what it’s supposed to keep out.

Or, he thinks sharply, heart jumping in his throat, what it’s supposed to keep in. If the dementors are rioting-

Well, if they are, then Peter’s well and truly dead. The Dark Lord’s displeasure on that point would be- something magnificent. Peter breathes out instead of panicking, shivering and drawing his cloak tighter around him in the vain hope it might keep him warmer.

I did this so I could survive, he reminds himself. Everything.

Everything else, Peter can redeem. Forgiveness- of himself, by himself, forget all others- might be a long road; might be an impossible road; but Peter has it, for so long as he draws breath. The moment that breath is taken from him it will all cease to matter. All the sacrifice. All the death.

(He’s seen the blood in Godric’s Hollow. He’s seen the destruction. Nobody loses that much blood and lives. And without James, Lily wouldn’t get far. But: the blood. Peter can forget Harry and Lily and the pain woven into their once-beautiful home’s walls. He can’t forget the blood. He cannot forget-)

Head cocked, wand in bloodless fingers, Peter paces the length of the ward. His shoes don’t leave marks in the soil. His back throbs with every movement.

Then the ward goes sharply inwards, following the natural path of an estuary bracketing the sea. The water’s not very deep as far as Peter can see, but it is cold, and it is fast. He walks forwards, the ward on one side and the rushing water on the other, towards the beach. Something quails inside of him. Something that’s stood before a Dark Lord, tortured and exhausted and unbroken- something that almost withers away now, for some eerie reason.

The first thing that Peter sees when he tops the bluff is Rowle’s body.

Oh, Merlin, thinks Peter, horrified.

Rowle’d been a wild man, prone to a madness that Peter’d only ever seen mirrored in the Blacks. He’d never been a good man but-

But the man in front of him is cleaved in half. The ward had caught him around the middle. The blood is soaked into the sand at his feet; his legs are on the far side, his blank eyes facing up to the sky. Peter stumbles forwards, coming to a halt at the point where Rowle’s corpse lies. The blood-

James, James, James-

The hair on Peter’s arm bristles. He looks up and sees something white; something getting closer. The sea churns louder, higher, and Peter scrambles for his wand. Points it at the ball of light. Swallows and doesn’t breathe, even as the light falls and lands, gracefully, at the beach where Peter cannot go because of the ward.

The light fades a little to reveal a slim, dark-haired man. He holds something too large to be a wand in one hand. Otherwise, he wears robes in the cut of aurors, but black instead of their red. He turns, sweeping over the beach for a brief moment, before he lifts the object in his hand to the heavens.

It’s all the warning Peter has before the world explodes.

He’s aware of something screaming- he becomes aware, slowly, that it’s him- and then Peter realizes that his wand’s still in his hand. He looks up. He’s fallen to his knees; the sand is gritty under his knees. The lightning is too bright for him. For a brief moment, Peter feels blind.

But then the light darkens for a brief moment. Even half-blind, Peter would have known that angled face. The withered thing inside of him shrivels further in on itself. All his sins come to roost- all his grief-

Because there, face illuminated from within, brighter than even the sun, stands James Potter.

...

Light streaks the stone near his hands. Pain lashes down his spine. Someone screams, far in the distance, and he is aware of a woman with thick red hair fighting desperately to get to him. But there is a man between them, and he is busy minding the woman’s spells. He’s already ignored the shell that’s slumped against the wall.

Pain, thinks Sirius, and for the first time in weeks feels something catch in his chest. Something hot, like an ember on the verge of breaking into flames. Oh, mate, this is your fucking mistake.

The red-haired woman is being driven backwards. She’s not quite so good at dueling as the man in front of her. But that doesn’t matter; because all it takes is one heartbeat of inattention, and Sirius has it-

He leaps.

Mid-air, his skin turns to fur. His face elongates. His jaw becomes stronger. His ears become better. The cold lessens.

And between breaths, Sirius tears out Theodore Nott’s throat.

...

A calling card to all the Death Eaters in the area.

James drops the lightning; it takes more energy than it’s worth, even if he’d been careful to only call it from the already ever-present storms above the North Sea. A flick of his wrist makes the axe disappear. Another, and his wand’s in his hand.

There’s a shuffling sound behind him, and James snaps his wand around. He’s an auror, at the end of the day, and that training’s embedded into his muscles. The roll of his body out of the way, the punishing angle of his wrist as he aims it blindly at the spot- it’s the work of a moment, all instinct.

But then he sees.

Fuck, thinks James, swallowing hard. Peter’s at the other end of his wand, and he looks like he’s shitting himself. Like he’s scared. Like he’s scared of James. Fuck, fuck, fuck-

“Peter,” he says, because he can’t think of anything else to do.

“This’s impossible,” whispers Peter. He’s gone deathly white. “Ghosts don’t- you can’t- he killed you!”

“Who?” asks James, dangerously soft. Something’s thrumming in him, thinking about Lily, about dementors, about a Patronus that no longer brands her as his. “Your master, Pete?”

Peter flinches, whole-bodied. “Don’t- don’t call me that.”

“Would you prefer Wormtail?”

“You’re a ghost,” says Peter, tilting his chin up. There’s something there- some courage- that he hadn’t had before. James wants to snarl at it. “You can’t hurt me-”

James slashes his hand down and, in a flash of something hot and bright, Rowle’s body disappears. Peter quails at it. The cold, vicious hole in James’ belly gnaws a little further. A little deeper.

“I’m dead, am I?” he asks, hissing. “I can’t hurt you? Oh, I’m so sorry, Peter, to disappoint you.”

Peter presses himself further into the sand. James advances on him, the sand under his feet turned to glass, crunching under his boots.

“You betrayed us,” he whispers, and there are sparks haloing his vision. Not from his wand; from lightning, summoned, held in check by his will alone. “You betrayed Lily. You gave Harry up to Voldemort.”

“I know,” says Peter. “I’m so sorry, James, I had-”

“Sirius paid for your crimes, you fucking bastard!” James shouts, and he is shaking, nearly vibrating. “Do you know what we’ve lost, because of you- because-”

“I didn’t mean-”

“You did! Don’t lie to me! Don’t you dare! You stood in front of him and you fucking told him, and you probably laughed when you did it!”

“If you’re going to kill me,” says Peter abruptly, “I’d want you to do it quickly.”

He doesn’t move this time, but Peter’s eyes meet James’ and hold. That chin lift, that blank face- those are all things that came after he joined the Death Eaters. Those are all parts of him that James doesn’t know. But the way Peter looks at James now, it’s how he’d looked when his father died, their fourth year.

Fifteen years old and bearing his mother’s weight on his shoulders as she wept over the grave. James doesn’t know why he remembers it, but he does, so well: the misting rain, the sobs, the look in his eyes, like all the despair and loss in the world couldn’t turn him colder than he already was. It’d been the first and only time Peter ever allowed any of them near his blood family. And Mrs. Pettigrew hadn’t ever really recovered, but Peter hadn’t let on, not really. He’d just- continued grinding away, quiet, unnoticed, burdened and colorless until he wasn’t any longer. Those eyes, watery, bulging, ugly.

Level. Everything else about him is quivering; but his eyes remain unflinching.

The other Death Eaters are coming; James can see them descending the cliffs. Surely this is enough time for Lily to escape- even burdened with Sirius. Even as he thinks it, there’s a shift in the wards- something breaking. The anti-apparition ward is still up, James realizes, but the anti-disapparition ward was just taken down. Lily must have just escaped. And by the time the others manage to break through the general ward, his trail will have gone cold.

But still he lingers.

James makes a choice.

“I’m not going to kill you,” says James savagely, free hand closing into a fist and opening compulsively. “You’re my brother.” And whatever else I am, I’m not a kinslayer.

“I killed you,” says Peter, looking aghast. “I killed you, James-”

“I know what you did.”

“Then-”

Whatever else you have done, you are my brother. Whatever else we are, we are family. And that means that I cannot give up on you.

“If you want to make it up to me,” says James, “you’ll go to your flat.”

“My... flat?”

“Your birthday. It’s next week.”

“I know that.”

“Yeah, well, I had a plan for it.” At Peter’s continuing look of confusion, James drags a hand down his face. “Gifts, Peter, Merlin. So. Get there. Pick ‘em up. Promise me.”

“You’re absolutely mad,” breathes Peter.

James grins, and feels the lightning around him fade, his heart pick up. “Birth defect, Wormtail. You know how it is, I’m sure.”

“James,” says Peter, quietly. “I don’t-”

“Promise me,” says James.

Peter flinches. His hands are shaking. James exhales sharply. The others- Lestrange, he thinks, and another that he doesn’t know- are coming too close for comfort.

Time’s up.

“That’s your price, Pete,” says James, before twisting on his heel, darkness swallowing him whole. “Remember that.”

...

Lily hadn’t known how afraid she was, not until James stumbles into their little cave, swearing under his breath and viciously yanking the little dried burrs from his robes. She surges to her feet as soon as he enters; sees the flicker of lightning around his wild hair and lunges, grabbing his shoulders and dragging him into an embrace.

“I was-” so afraid, are the words that come to her mind, but she cannot say them. Not say them and keep her composure, and Lily’s holding onto that with everything she has. “-well. You took a long time.”

“I got held up.” James eyes flick away for the briefest moment before returning to her. “I met Peter,” he says quietly, and doesn’t move an inch when Lily stiffens in his arms. “He looked- bad.”

“Good,” says Lily venomously.

“You don’t mean that.”

“Good,” she repeats. “I hope he chokes on what he’s done- I hope they kill him slowly, those fucking bastard Death Eaters-”

Slowly, she realizes that James hasn’t moved. Her heart thumps against its ribcage.

“James. James, tell me you didn’t-”

He lets go of her and steps back. “Didn’t what?”

“Let him go!”

“Lils,” he says, and it sounds tired. “What did you think I’d do? Kill him?”

“It’s what I would’ve done,” replies Lily. James shudders, and her fragile hold on her temper breaks. “You know what he’s done!”

“I do,” says James. He runs his hand through his hair and makes it stand straight up. “But-”

“No buts,” exclaims Lily. She is shaking; she cannot look James in the eye. How dare he! thinks Lily, and she is crying as well, now, helpless little jerks that burst out of her chest in gasps. How dare you! “What he would have done to our son, our son, you would forgive that? You would forgive what he did to Sirius?”

“He’s my brother,” says James quietly. “When you chose to forgive Petunia, I didn’t do anything.”

Her wand is in her hand, and it takes all of her control not to raise it. Not to hex James until he’s bleeding from every single orifice, and a few more besides. “Petunia’s never tried to kill me!”

“D’you know what she’d have done if asked to choose between you and her family?” asks James. “Because I don’t.”

“I can’t do this right now,” says Lily, stepping back. All she can see is the deadened look on James’ face; the way he stands, the fact that just a few moments previous, he let a man who would’ve killed their son get away. “I can’t- we can’t do this now.

“You’re right.” James pulls away, face closing off even further. “Where is he?”

“Inside.”

The sunlight had hurt Sirius’ eyes when Lily apparated them away from Azkaban, so Lily’d guided him inside and called up wards to keep the cave dark. Seeing one more person like this- shattered from within- just reminds Lily of the cost of this war. Of the mindless cruelty. Of all the loss.

Lily’s certain she won’t ever forget the trembling and half-swallowed whimpers from his throat.

“He needs help.”

Something flashes in James’ eyes, brighter than Lily’s seen since that dementor nearly Kissed him, there and gone in a heartbeat. But he only jerks his head in a nod. Says, “I’ll manage,” with a voice as uneven as the rocks around them, and heads inside.

This world isn’t safe, she thinks, and grips her wand even tighter. We must make it safe, and it is difficult at times; it is terrible at times.

But- oh- that does not mean we shrink from it.

...

Peter, hunched over half of Rowle’s corpse, does not move, not even when Lestrange swears loud enough to make a flock of birds take flight nearby. He does not move.

They apparate to their lord, and kneel, and the others tell him tales of lightning sprung from Azkaban, howls and other eldritch sounds from that island- and Peter does not speak, does not move, not until the Dark Lord takes his chin in his hand and wrenches it up to meet his red gaze.

“And you, Peter,” he says. “What did you see?”

He’s been afraid for so long. Peter twitches, full-bodied, and then he thinks about Rowle, about light swallowing him whole. About the blood. James. His lord’s red eyes. The red, red, red-

“Death,” he quavers, and the Dark Lord growls in frustration before releasing him.

Peter lands on the floor, knees bruised. He presses his head to the cool marble stone and doesn’t dare to move until all four of them are dismissed. His world is a haze of red, blood and guts and the taunting scarlet of Gryffindor, until he apparates away to his flat.

One breath. Two. It isn’t his flat any longer, not for two weeks now, but Peter had bought it in a muggle part of London and it takes nothing more than a simple alohomora to break in. A slash of his wand, a magiea revelio, and a heavy package thuds to the floor.

His heart aches. There had been a chance that he’d hallucinated that entire conversation on the beach. But now... hands trembling, Peter opens it.

It’s three books. One’s a joke manual, hand-written by Remus. Another’s a textbook on the Black Plague, with helpful annotations in the margins by Sirius; Peter flips the pages slowly, something bitter spreading through his chest. Look into this, Sirius has written, underlining it thrice: rats. Maybe we can kill some Death Eaters, yeah, Wormtail?

A helpless laugh tears out of him.

Finally, Peter puts it down. Reaches for the last book: a leather-bound journal, his name carved into the front. It’s slimmer than Sirius’ but thicker than Remus’ and blank, all of the pages, except for the very first.

“’Come, my friends, it is not too late to seek a newer world. Though much is taken, much abides; and though We are not now that strength which in old days Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are; One equal temper of heroic hearts, Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.’ - To my quietest friend and dearest brother. I do not know what will come, Wormtail, but I know that I’ve asked more of you than anyone should ever ask anyone else. I know that this war is difficult on all of us. I know that the worst is yet to come, but I know that we’ll get through this, together. Here’s to ten years spent together and a lifetime more! Wishing you the best birthday anyone can ever have, Prongs”

“Though much is taken, much abides,” whispers Peter, tracing the letters written in James’ scrawling script. “That which we are, we are. Oh, damn you, James Potter. Damn you.”

He cannot act against the Dark Lord. The mark on his arm alone precludes that action. But so long as he does not know anything, and only suspects, then there is a chance. A chance to hide it all, the entirety of the failure of the Dark Lord’s plans. The dizzying magnitude of that failure.

Because if James is alive, then Lily is alive. And if Lily is alive, then there is every chance that Harry is alive as well. And if that is true...

It turns this entire war on its head.

But only if.

A nebulous possibility, all told, but Peter’s a survivor. And if the winds of war are shifting to help them- then, then, Peter’s going to live. No matter what it takes.

Not to yield, thinks Peter, and rises to his feet.

One act, then, for James’ mercy. Nothing much. Nothing ever changed because of an owl. Nothing ever changed because of an unsigned, four-word message. This war won’t hinge on it. But what Peter has torn asunder, he can mend; and that, maybe, hopefully, will be enough.

...

A brown-feathered owl wings over to a camp ringed with silver. It is small, light and excitable; it still barely makes through the sheer number of protections layered on the camp. It alights on man’s shoulder and pecks at his ear. He opens the envelope the owl offers him. Reads what’s written on the page, in large, blocky letters:

THEY’RE ALIVE. COME BACK.

The sun sets that night on a gibbous moon, and a loud crack splits the silence apart.

The werewolf camp never sees Remus Lupin again.

...

Fuck. Swimming up from the aches, Sirius realizes two things: one, he feels like absolute shit and two, he’s safe. James is the person next to him, James-the-deer-the-man-the-brother, and something heals like sunlight falling on Hogwarts’ turrets: irrevocable, deep and true as his oldest convictions. Then memory returns, and the warm feeling stops like someone’s just stamped on a candle wick. Fuck, fuck, fuck.

“Pads?” he hears, from a man that sounds too much like James for him to let lie. “You awake yet?”

Sirius breathes, shallow and measured. Catalogs his pains. He doesn’t know how long he’s been in a fugue state; but he remembers Godric’s Hollow very well. He remembers Azkaban, too, and either Sirius has gone entirely mad or this is reality.

Can’t help it if I’ve gone mad, he thinks. So reality it is, then.

Someone’s rescued him. Someone who looks scarily like Lily, but Sirius doesn’t trust his vision entirely. Red hair and a high voice don’t Lily make. Plus, everyone’s certain that she’s dead. That ruin of Godric’s Hollow... nobody lives through a magical explosion that large. So someone’s rescued him, and they sound like people he trusts, but he’s pretty sure they’re not said people, which makes them untrustworthy by definition.

Slow breaths. Even. The barest opening of one eye, to see rough stone all around him. Thank Merlin he’s in his dog form; it has better night vision. It also means that the person who’d just spoken- who’d just sounded like James- is human, and at a distinct disadvantage in the dark. It’s too hot; stifled. Wards. A mental snarl. He slits open the other eye, lazy, slow, not shifting one other muscle. Sees the shadow of the man slumped against the opposite wall. Breathes. There, there, there, a wand dangling loosely from the impostor's fingers. One more breath, then two.

Checks his magical reserves.

He’s got enough. More than enough, considering his starved state. Not enough for a pitched battle, so Sirius can’t stay and fight. He needs to think. The war’s still on. He needs to keep a cool head. To think-

No.

He needs to escape.

Sirius is a Black and a Gryffindor. He does not lie down, and he does not surrender, and it is the space of nothing, absolutely nothing, to shift, to seize the wand, to dig the point straight under the man’s chin.

“You’re going to take down these wards,” he whispers hoarsely. The red-haired woman’s going to be around; it’s vital that this escape remains quiet. “Quickly, now.” The man inhales as if to speak, and Sirius flicks a mild stinging hex at his shoulder. “No, I don’t want you using your head. Just take these wards- down-”

Sirius doesn’t need him in the end. It’s simple- almost muscle memory, more than knowledge. The ward falls with his first diagnostic charm.

“Silencio,” he mutters, and steps back, stumbles.

Inhales the air- tastes salt. Brine.

Too similar to Azkaban.

The man waves his arms wildly. There’s something familiar to the curve of his shoulders, to the flash of light off his specs, but Sirius knows better than to be caught unawares by something so simple. He only adjusts his grip on the wand. Inhales, deep as his lungs can go, and apparates away.

Lands in a clearing in a forest in the middle of nowhere. Grits his teeth; rolls his shoulders; gets to work.

He’s got a lot to figure out in the next few hours.

A lot to figure out, and not a lot of time.

...

Remus swears under his breath as he jimmies the lock to his apartment. The keys work, but it tends to get stuck if left unused for long periods of time. And Remus hasn’t come home in- Merlin, months. Peter hadn’t looked too good after his mum broke her leg, so Remus had gone to stay with him for a couple weeks. Then Dumbledore had asked him to go to the werewolf camps to either get their allegiance or- if that was impossible- act as a spy.

He’d known when Lily and James died, of course. Greyback had made sure of that. But he’d also known that stupid little bird, fluttering about his head like a stray wind might blow it away. He hadn’t known the writing, but the Marauders have always been good at hiding their tracks.

The key finally just breaks off inside of the lock; Remus growls and snaps the handle before slamming into the house.

It’s musty inside. He kicks the door closed behind him and drops his bag on the creaky shelf that serves as his dining table. Remus opens the windows, grimaces at the smoke that enters- he’s close to the full moon, and his nose is far more sensitive than he’d like for this part of the city- but the smoke carries with it fresh air and the flat itself is too full of dust for him to live with. Two flicks of his wand and the furniture’s dust-free. Another, and the kitchen looks practically spotless.

Slowly, Remus gets through the motions of settling back into the house.

It’s a few hours later that his stomach protests the lack of food. Remus sighs; he has some food packed from the camp, but he doesn’t particularly want some more bloody meat, barely cooked. There’s a good takeout place just a few blocks away that’s not too expensive- the issue is that Remus doesn’t have much money to start with, and he’s not sure how long it needs to last.

Fuck it. He’s just spent hours hop-scotching from one end of Europe to another. I deserve a hot meal tonight.

It’s not too far, though not all that close either. By the time he returns with the covers crinkling in his fingers, there’s sweat darkening his shirt and making him uncomfortably damp in the cold winter. He’s cursing mentally and juggling the stupid cartons and trying not to make enough of a racket to let his landlord know that he’s back- a month’s missing rent tends to have that effect- and it’s why he’s halfway up the stairs by the time he realizes that there’s someone in his home.

Remus freezes.

He stacks the takeout on the landing and takes three quick, quiet steps up the stairs to drag in a breath. Smoke, dust, piss, and underneath it: a scent he knows all too well.

This time, the door doesn’t survive his strength.

Sirius, stretched out languorously on his couch, jerks upright. Remus disarms him before pointing his wand directly between his eyes.

“Don’t move,” he says softly.

Sirius swallows. He ignores Remus- he usually does- did, did, goddamn, not does anymore- but only moves enough to sit up properly. “Moony,” he says.

“Give me one reason not to kill you,” says Remus.

“If you want to do it, then do it.” Sirius tilts his head back to meet the light from the streetlight. A faint smile makes his eyes look even darker. “I won’t stop you.”

There’s a catch.

There usually is, with Sirius.

“But?” asks Remus slowly.

“But I didn’t do it. If you want revenge, you should probably aim for any rats you see, not me.”

“You didn’t do it?” demands Remus. “You were the secret-keeper. Who else could have-” he breaks off; tries to breathe. Tries to focus on Sirius, who’s spread out on Remus’ couch like it’s just another day. Like they haven’t lost what they’ve lost. Like Sirius isn’t the reason they’ve fucking lost it. “Don’t you dare lie to me, Black.”

He flinches. “We switched.”

It takes a moment for Remus to make the mental jump.

“You expect me to believe that?”

“Lily watched Dumbledore set it up with me as the keeper. Then she put up another herself, with Peter. You know how good she was with wards.” Sirius’ eyes, those lovely eyes, those eyes like black fire, haven’t dimmed at all. “I insisted. I thought- who’d suspect Peter? Everyone’d think it’d be me. Never thought it’d end like this.”

“You never thought anything would end,” Remus accuses sharply. “You were always too cocky. I told you-”

“Give me veritaserum, then, and be done with it,” says Sirius, slumping in his position. “But there’s a war on, Moony, and I can’t spend as much time mourning as I’d like. If you won’t trust me, then trust in how much I loved James. I’ll walk into Azkaban the morning we win if you’ll help me now, I swear it. I swear it.”

Looking closer at him, Remus realizes: Sirius looks like absolute shit.

He’s very pale, but his entire throat looks shadowed with the start of bruises. His jaw’s even sharper than usual and he’s lost more weight than he can afford. Sirius has always been broad and powerfully built, but now he’s sort of- crumpled in on himself. His robes are in tatters and he’s unshaven and he looks like he hasn’t slept in at least half a month.

“Where were you?” he asks. “I thought- someone mentioned-” meaning Greyback, though of course Sirius wouldn’t know that, “-Azkaban, but you wouldn’t be here if that were true.”

“It was true.”

Remus stares.

Sirius elaborates: “Someone did it for me. I escaped ‘em, though, not Azkaban. Nicked that wand off the guy.” He nods to the wand clutched in Remus’ white-knuckled grip. “Spent the day apparating around to throw off their scent, then came back here.” He shrugs, a carefree lift of one shoulder that shouldn’t leave Remus’ mouth as dry as it does. “Thought I could rest for a few hours. A safehouse, as it were.”

“Someone?” Remus asks carefully.

“Me,” says a voice behind them.

It’s instinct.

Remus whirls around, the world going white around the edges with panic. He doesn’t realize that he’s tossed Sirius his wand until he sees the shield go up around them, right on the heels of his blasting spell. There’s a shower of plaster and wood as the door Remus just broke down spins into the intruder. A second later and Sirius is standing beside him, body a line of warmth at his right.

“Breathe,” Sirius mutters, nudging him. “This’s still muggle London. They won’t try anything big.”

“Apparition wards?”

“None.”

“Can you smell who-”

“I don’t trust it,” Sirius says grimly. “I keep thinking-”

“That I’m alive?” A voice that Remus knows too well, a voice that shouldn’t exist any longer, speaks up. Remus’ hand is trembling; Sirius’ breath is harsh and uneven in his ear. Then someone picks themselves up out of the debris, and Remus knows that lean line of shoulder and neck. That careless angle of his wand. That fucking hair. “I thought you’d have more faith in me, both of you.”

James Potter grins at them, glasses dusted white and mostly blind but also-

Alive, thinks Remus numbly. Alive. Alive. Alive-

“I’m a fucking marauder, you morons,” he says, taking off the specs and trying to wipe the dust off. “It takes more than a dark lord to kill me.”

There’s breathless silence for all of a heartbeat, and then Sirius gives a wordless, inchoate scream of something that might have been anger or relief or pain or some Black malady of too much emotion and lunges straight at James. He punches James straight in the jaw, and after that both of them are shouting and grunting and rolling incomprehensibly over each other.

It’s ugly. Sirius tends to be stronger than James, but James keeps his head about him even in the worst situations. There’s a lot of clawing and kneeing and yanked hair strewn about the opening of his flat.

It gets even worse when Lily enters.

Remus chokes on his spit when she does; she looks- like the rest of them- exhausted, but also alive, which means it’s an exponentially better situation than Remus had thought just a few minutes previous. But it’s bad because she brings with her Remus’ landlord, and he looks pissed to high heavens- his expression goes darker when he sees James and Sirius banging about as they are.

“Goodtoseeyouweshouldgetoutofhererightnow,” Lily says quickly, eyes flicking between the two white-covered lumps still making loud, intermittent noises that could have been charitably called grunts and Remus’ shabby flat. Then, a little slower, with a meaningful look at the landlord: “I think there’s people around.”

That’s the breaking point for Remus’ landlord. His face goes puce. He bellows, loud enough to make Remus’ ears throb and- more importantly- to get Sirius and James to pause, “Out! Out! If yer not out in a minute I’ll call the coppers and have ‘em twist yer ears ‘til they bleed!”

He’s not sure when they bundle themselves down the stairs, nor when his entire life’s belongings return to his mildly-charmed knapsack, nor when James apparates them to a seaside cliff. It all goes a little bit numb there; Remus breathes when his chest hurts and moves when prodded and otherwise just panics very, very quietly in the privacy of his mind.

Panics.

Because if Sirius switched, then Peter was the traitor. Because if Peter was the traitor- is the traitor- then Remus’ entire task to the werewolves has been in vain. Because there’s only one way Remus could have swayed any of the werewolves to the Order’s side, and that’s by sneaking it under the alpha’s notice. If Greyback hadn’t known, then it should have worked. But if Peter had told Voldemort and if Voldemort had told Greyback...

Not panic, then. Not truly.

Rage.

Remus holds onto the fraying strands of his control.

Years lost to a fruitless task. A big bonus, too, to Voldemort’s side: Remus is a good dueler, almost on par with Sirius even if neither of them are quite as good as James. With him tied up in dealing with Greyback, it means one less wand attacking the Death Eaters.

Years.

All that sacrifice- kneeling, that very first moon, to Greyback; Remus tends to forget most of his time as a wolf but not that, not that painful humiliation- eating raw meat- watching werewolves turn helpless children, marking them-

“Remus? Rem- Moony? Moony-”

Remus flattens his hands on the soil.

“Get back,” he growls. There’s someone touching him on his shoulder, but his irritation flares; that person yelps and backs away.

He hasn’t had an incident like this since he was very young; years before Hogwarts. But he can feel it- the way the magic rises to match his fury- and Remus knows better than to try to suppress it. Not now, so close to the full moon, and especially not after he’s nearly drained himself with the travel across Europe. He doesn’t have the control to do much more than direct the magic. Hopefully it’ll be enough. Remus inhales, and on the exhale, pushes his magic into the earth.

It goes. Deeper and deeper and deeper. Down to the roots of the trees clinging to life on wind-battered cliffs.

So few people know who Remus is. His father’s story is well-known: a muggleborn speaking out against Greyback, whose son was brutally attacked. A muggleborn who married a pureblood McKinnon, against all the people trying to convince her otherwise. Remus is a Lupin because that is his father’s name. But his mother’s blood flows through him as well and he has always, always, had an affinity to the earth.

It had always been a sore point between him and Sirius- what Remus could possibly have to talk to with Marlene. All those long hours in the greenhouses ought to have meant something, though it would never have occurred to Sirius that they’d passed the time simply talking about family. Family that Marlene loved, and Remus’ mother loved as well.

Syllables spurt from his tongue, ancient, guttural. Remus closes his eyes and bends forward, presses his forehead to the earth.

What we have come from, we shall return to. That which is given can be taken. The earth can take this rage within me, for it is stronger than those I love can bear.

Tiny fissures in the earth form. Coalesce. Deepen. Remus digs his fingers into the soil, claws at it, feels his nails start to tear, and the cracks deepen.

He thinks about Peter, smiling tearfully in his family home, yellow curtains blowing in the wind. He thinks about burying Marlene and Martin and nearly fifty McKinnons, saying an eulogy and a prayer and a blessing for them all, because there’s nobody else to do it. He thinks about Caradoc Dearborn, who’d offered Remus a job in his law firm just hours before he was chopped into pieces by Death Eaters.

He thinks about Greyback.

The wind howls, and the trees shake, and slowly, inexorably, the cliff is sheared away from the land. It stops at the point where his forehead touches the earth, as the ritual is meant to do, and when Remus rises, he sees that the sea’s churning angrily like a large mass of earth has just been dropped into it.

“Remus?” asks Lily, uncertain and more than a little taken aback. The others look the same, so he supposes it must have been an unnerving display.

Remus turns. “I was angry,” he says hoarsely. Swallows. “It- I couldn’t bottle it up, either, because my magic was so drained. I lost control. And earth magic’s my... forte. So I made sure it didn’t hurt anyone.”

“It’s a good thing we’d packed it up, then, or everything’d be drowned,” says James, lips quirking.

He blinks. “You were staying in a cave?”

“It was a good cave,” says Lily dryly.

“Lily-”

“We have to leave anyways,” she continues, speaking over him. “The magic- if the Ministry figures it out...”

Sirius jams his hands in his pockets. He looks the most weary of all of them, like a stiff wind might just carry him over. Remus looks away from them. He’s so fucking exhausted himself; all that rage has died down to a small kernel in his gut, and now he’s just cold.

“Yeah,” he says and stands. “Got any ideas?”

Remus manages one step, then two, before the dizziness hits. He staggers. Darkness flashes at the corners of his eyes as he tries to get his balance back. A moment later, Sirius’ face, white and strained, enters his field of view.

“Magical exhaustion,” Remus grits out as reassuringly as he can manage. “Just- need-”

Rest, he thinks, but words swim away from him before he can voice it.

The blackness swallows him up. Remus, almost gratefully, surrenders to it.

...

“Most people get exhausted from just five apparitions.”

Sirius glances up at James. Remus’ head is resting in his lap, and though he’s got more scars and too-ragged hair, he looks good. Warm. When Sirius saw that blood in Godric’s Hollow, he’d never even dreamed this might happen again.

“It takes at least ten to make it from Albania,” Sirius agrees. “I don’t know how he managed.”

“Yes, well.” James grimaces. “He’s always got such control over it, you know. I never could manage it even a little.”

“Takes breaking a cliff to make him faint. Not exactly easy.”

“Earth magic?”

“Mm. He always did like those ‘Puffs.”

“Marlene was a Gryffindor.”

Sirius narrows his eyes. “Bastard never told me.”

“You know Remus, though,” James points out.

Which is fair. Remus doesn’t tell people things. He holds onto his secrets like they’re going to kill him if he lets go even a little. If you confronted him, he’d admit to only just enough to get you off his back. Asking him about his werewolf thing had been like pulling teeth; asking him about why he’d given up being prefect in their sixth year had been even worse; he’d just flat out refused to tell by the time they’d graduated.

It’d been half the reason why Sirius suspected him, by the end.

Not the end, he reminds himself.

Through some miraculous lifeline, it isn’t the end.

“Any clues on when we’re leaving?” he asks.

It’s not a subtle change of topic, but both of them are tired. Better to talk about necessities than life-changing secrets. Better yet to not talk, Sirius thinks to himself. He’ll run his mouth as much as shout in this state, and with Remus unconscious and Lily nervy herself, it won’t end well. Remus had the experience enough to ground his magic into his element; Sirius is fairly certain that if either he or Lily do it- both of them strong, and violent, and even worse, flashy- they’ll blow a hole in the land that’d rival the size of Manchester.

James- bless his heart- seems to realize that. He glances back at Lily, who’s pacing the edge of the cliff, muttering to herself. She doesn’t look too good.

“Where, not when,” he corrects. “If we had a clue... well, we’d be gone by now. But we need wards and, preferably, a library. We have clues on how to go forward, but no information. It’s driving Lils mad.”

Wards. Library. Something sifts through Sirius’ mind. Funerals and articles and pitying looks in the middle of Diagon.

This is a bad idea.

“’s it about dark magic?”

James frowns. “Yeah. Think so.”

Oh, this is a bad idea.

“I’ve got a place, then.”

...

Breaking into Grimmauld Place is... not difficult.

Sirius winces as they enter- it’s moldy and dusty, but the worse part is the Dark magic, humming in the very air like an army of locusts. But both the homenum revelios that he and James cast return nothing; his mother’s left the house, it seems, and even Kreacher isn’t there.

More importantly, the number of wards cast over the house ensure it’s practically unassailable. And the library is one of the finest in all of Europe.

That first night, Sirius puts James and Lily in Regulus’ rooms, because if there’s one room that his mother wouldn’t have spelled with traps it would be that one. He levitates Remus into his own rooms. A few cursory waves of his wand ensure that there aren’t any unpleasant surprises on the bed. And after that, he doesn’t get much beyond spelling his shoes off before he falls asleep, stretched out loosely next to Remus.

...

Lily hates it.

Grimmauld Place is unfriendly, from the house elf straight down to the very walls. James and Sirius don’t see it; they’re purebloods, and all those little pinpricks of magic and spells that remind her that she wasn’t born into this world don’t even seem to register. That’s not entirely a surprise, of course. Lily’d expected that when she began dating James and had accepted it quietly when she wed him. But she’s also always had friends to complain with- Mary, and Colleen, and Jenna, who was in Ravenclaw but liked Lily enough to invite her into their common room when she wanted the company- and Remus, as well, to a certain extent.

Remus is too frail to even think about any of that now, though.

Three days passed, and he spends most of his time sleeping. It’s getting better, of a sorts, in that Remus wakes for longer intervals; but that’s only from what Sirius reports to them. Apart from eating and ensuring that Kreacher can’t spill their secrets to others, Sirius stays shut in his old room with Remus, and nothing Lily or James do can coax him out.

It’s even worse now, because she and James are fighting. It isn’t a proper fight, exactly, not like some of the raging rows they’d had in the middle of the Gryffindor common room.

Maybe we’ve grown up, thinks Lily wryly. Maybe we’ve moved past shouting at each other.

Because this isn’t a battle to be won with harsh words or screams. There’s too much hurt on both sides- hurt pride, hurt love, and outrage as well, because Lily knows that James thinks he’s as right in his actions as Lily’s certain he’s wrong- and if it isn’t a loud fight, it’s something like milk left on the stove and forgotten. It boils over. It stinks up the entire house. It’s a pain to clean up.

So Lily doesn’t bother. She’s already wasted two days trying to get the Black wards to untangle for her before leaving it for a lost cause. Azkaban’s wards had been far more complicated, but these knots can only be loosened with Black blood, and Lily doesn’t have any of that in her veins. Instead, she settles into the library and lets herself research, properly research, like she hasn’t been able to do in years.

...

It is- a week, or perhaps more, when Sirius is kidnapped.

Not kidnapped, not exactly, but he wakes in a different place than where he went to bed. He remembers sleeping beside Remus. He remembers the moonlight shafting through the window, the curtain stirring in the chill wind. He remembers...

Silver fingers and the call of a wind so harsh it bruises-

Black robes cut flawlessly-

A voice of contempt and thunder-

His wand leaps to his fingers and slashes a line of fire at the figure standing behind the desk. Sirius growls, low in his throat, as it dissipates before ever reaching the man’s face and rolls out of the chair he’d been sitting on to come up just in front of the fireplace.

Arcturus Black, Sirius’ grandfather and Head of House, doesn’t even flinch. “Sit down, boy,” he says levelly.

“Let me go,” whispers Sirius.

Distantly, he realizes that his wand is trembling.

“I think not. Sit down.”

“I will not,” Sirius retorts. His wand might tremble; but his voice doesn’t. “I am not yours any longer. You’ve no power to compel me, not since I turned sixteen. Five years have passed, Grandfather.”

“I’d known you to be a Gryffindor, not a fool.”

“And I’m alive when your precious son and son’s favored son are both dead,” Sirius says, letting his voice turn ugly. “Let me go.”

“Sit down,” snarls Arcturus, suddenly sharp, and Sirius flinches. He finds himself obeying, too, with an alacrity that makes old rage sing in him like a honed sword. The anger in Arcturus’ face fades, though, replaced with thoughtfulness. Sirius rather dislikes the latter more than the former. “And so it is shown at last,” he says. “I could not have commanded your cousin so easily, had I a mind to try.”

Slytherins. Sirius can feel his breath rasping in his chest. Can feel the ache in his lower back, from sitting so stiffly. He lets his own eyes narrow and inspect Arcturus closely. Always saying one thing, meaning another.

“You think Andromeda would have let you?”

Sometimes the only answer is to force the truth out of them.

“When you are disowned, there is nothing that can be done,” says Arcturus. “That is the ritual that you demanded your parents perform in place of the Heredis Familias, is it not?”

Sirius bows his head. He hates thinking about that night. His father wanted to name him the heir to the Heir of the House of Black, or more properly- the heir to the Heredis of the House of Black, which is a role of itself with different responsibilities and powers than that of the Head. But while magic protects the Heredis from manipulation and magical cruelty at the hands of both Head and other family, the heir to the Heredis is given none of those. Sirius knows, knows, down deep in his bones, that his father would have bound him with such familial magics as to leave him a shell, barely able to do what he’s ordered.

“Yes,” he replies, and looks up to meet Arcturus’ gaze. If his grandfather hadn’t wanted him disowned, then he should have interfered earlier. “Now, let me go.”

“And yet I can command you. With great strain, but it is possible. You could walk into the London home, when the wards ought to have drowned you alive.” Arcturus doesn’t even seem to register his words. “Can you imagine why?”

“No,” snaps Sirius.

“Because Orion and Walburga never disowned you.”

Sirius jerks a hand up. “Impossible.”

“Oh, they did it legally. But magically? Orion was never a fool.” Cold satisfaction gleams in Arcturus’ eyes. “He was waiting for his second son to prove himself worthy. A pity they both died before that could be finished.”

A pity? A pity!

“Your only son and his only son are dead, and you don’t even care?” Sirius’ lip curls. “I’m glad I fled when I did, rather than remain in a home like this.”

“You wish to leave?” asks Arcturus.

“I think I’ve made that pretty fucking clear!”

“You enter one of my homes,” muses Arcturus, leaning back in his chair and lacing his fingers together. “You bring a werewolf with you. You have the absolute gall to desecrate the homes of your ancestors by ruining those portraits. And when I call you here to question you, you think yourself in the right?"

“Who’re you to question me?”

“The owner,” says Arcturus silkily, “of the home you’re currently staying in.”

Sirius jerks his head away. Thinks, furiously. Finally, he says, more sulky than he likes, “I needed a safe place. I thought- we needed a place with wards. And better we die quick with the Black wards than slowly outside.”

“Death, Grandson? I would’ve thought you too Gryffindor to give up so easily.”

“War teaches you things.” Sirius shrugs.

Slowly, Arcturus inclines his head. “Indeed. In light of that- an equal bargain, then?”

Sirius stares at him.

Equal bargain? Sirius flexes his fingers over his wand, as much for reassurance as to ensure he’s ready for anything else Arcturus throws at him. What the hell’s he playing at?

An equal bargain, after all, can only be done between equals. That is how the magic works, it only ensures the truth’s spoken when it’s equals. It can’t be used by a teacher to find out if a student’s cheating; it can’t be used by a general to make deals with spies; it can’t be used by a Head to bring an errant family member to heel.

I’m not a Hufflepuff to trust you blindly. I’m a Gryffindor, and that means I’ll drag you out of the shadows.

“Why?” Sirius asks, tilting his head to stare at Arcturus. Arcturus lifts an eyebrow, deliberately obtuse, and Sirius snarls internally. “The ritual’s meant for merchants. Won’t take hold if we’re not equals. If we don’t think of each other as such.”

“There are many books in the Black libraries,” says Arcturus. Holds up a hand at Sirius’ snort. “Let me finish,” he says, and it’s so dangerous that Sirius finds his mouth snapping shut of its own volition. “Many books, and many tales. A ritual for merchants, you say, and it’s used this way today- but once upon a time, it wasn’t. Once, it was used between generals. Between the left hand of Lady Genevieve and the first Minister of Magic, more than seven hundred years ago.” Sirius swallows, hard. Arcturus is staring at him so intently. “It was that agreement that allowed us to leave the muggles behind. Four hundred years we’d been separated before even the Statute of Secrecy. A monumental moment. ‘Tis fitting that this be another such meeting.”

“It won’t work if we don’t think of each other as equals,” Sirius retorts. “The history’s fine and all, but I’m not sure how you think that holds true for us.”

Arcturus smiles, slow, thin-lipped. “Was this not your oldest grievance against us all, Grandson? That we did not treat you as you ought to have been, with the rights that were yours by virtue of birth?” He nods. “Accept, now, and clasp my hand- and see if that has changed.”

The oldest wrong.

Because Sirius hadn’t been the faultless son, and his father had retaliated by removing him from those privileges that an heir ought to have had. Because Sirius has learned right and wrong and a hundred other things in the years away- seven in Hogwarts, and five past it- but before that, always, has been his pride and his love and his rage, simmering underneath as a flame too low to see until the pot’s a burnt mess.

Not a Head to his family. Sirius breathes in, and it shakes. One general to another. Hope sings in him like a fresh dawn. If this is true-

He reaches out one palm. Feels Arcturus’ grip it. Stares into his grandfather’s eyes.

“Information,” he agrees, carefully, “for information.”

The magic slots into place above them like swords made of blue light. Sirius rips his hand from Arcturus to pace on the carpet, restless energy in his veins, before he turns back to grip the back of the chair he’d been sitting on.

“You’re starting,” he tells Arcturus.

Something shadows Arcturus’ face. “My heir is gone, and my heir’s heir." His voice is perfectly inflectionless. “I know their murderer. I know that House Black has call to declare a blood feud with a Dark Lord, and the only reason we have not done so is because we are not powerful enough for it.”

“You think Volde-”

“-do not use that name!”

“-You-Know-Who, then,” Sirius says impatiently, “you think he killed my- father? And Regulus?”

“Enough to declare a blood feud.”

Strong evidence, then.

Blood feuds are bad business. Rivers have literally run red with the blood of feuding houses. For Arcturus to even think about declaring one...

Well.

They have an ally, now, and though Sirius will have to watch for betrayal- it is still better than the previous morning, when it would have been the four of them against all of the world.

“There is a prophecy,” he says casually, watching Arcturus’ face for the effect of the revelation. “Regarding his defeat.”

“Do you know it?”

“Yes.” Sirius pauses just long enough to ensure it’s clear that he won’t elaborate. “Tell me why I’m here.”

“Because I need an heir,” says Arcturus simply. “As it stands, the heir shall be a Malfoy, through Narcissa, and I’ve no wish to see that occur.”

My turn.

Do I trust him? Oh, Sirius doesn’t, and he’s certain that he shouldn’t. But information for information is a time-honored truce. And Sirius recognizes that vicious desire for vengeance, singing rich in Arcturus’ blood. That same blood that runs in Sirius, twice over from both mother and father. Carefully, then.

“The one with the power to vanquish the Dark Lord approaches,” he recites, not looking away from Arcturus. “Born to those who have thrice defied him, born as the seventh month dies, and the Dark Lord will mark him as his equal, but he will have power the Dark Lord knows not. And either must die at the hand of the other for neither can live while the other survives.”

For just a heartbeat, so quick that Sirius would have missed it had he not been looking so closely, triumph flashes across Arcturus’ eyes like sunlight off frozen stone. But it fades, and is replaced by his calm mask once more.

“The Dark Lord thinks it speaks of the Potter boy?”

“Or Neville Longbottom,” says Sirius slowly.

Arcturus closes his eyes and tilts his head back. Light fractures off his face, like something seen through a kaleidoscope. Sirius sees something that he hadn’t ever seen before: relief, and hope, burning bright as dawn’s first rays. He can’t help but think that he’s missing something.

“Another trade, I think,” says Arcturus. Sirius jerks and stares. That voice- it’s rich, deep, forceful. Arcturus hasn’t sounded like that in Sirius’ entire lifetime. “Not truth for truth, but rather a gift for another.”

“I’ve nothing to offer,” says Sirius.

A razor smile, thin, bladed. “You have not a name or allies,” he agrees. “But your word? For all that your parents doubted of you, your honor was never one of them.”

Irritation flickers in Sirius’ mind. “Just because I wasn’t as cold as they wanted-”

“Become the Heredis, and all shall be forgiven.”

“I’ve done nothing to forgive!”

“Accept my offer,” says Arcturus, unmoved. “If not for yourself, then for those who depend upon you- that werewolf, for instance, who yet seeks shelter in my home.”

The fireplace behind him roars into being so loudly that it deafens Sirius for a moment. He hisses, fingers digging so hard into the chair’s arm that the wood crumples inwards. Sirius feels the fury in his chest at Arcturus’ implicit threat, takes that fury, caresses it into something as sweet and palatable as wine.

“You think I’d give up freedom for the use of one house?” he asks, and then smiles at the brief hesitance in his grandfather’s eyes. Yes. I am not tame, no matter how much you wish otherwise. “I am a Gryffindor, yes, and that should’ve warned you, Grandfather: if you touch Remus, if you even try, I’ll not stop until I’ve ripped you limb from limb and then shredded every piece of the Black legacy into dust.”

“Two gifts then,” says Arcturus after a pause. His lips are pressed so tightly together that they look bloodless. “One, to use Black properties as you wish. Second, access to the gold of all the Black vaults of Gringotts. And in return, you’ll allow yourself to be named the Heredis of House Black at the end of this war.”

Sirius exhales slowly. “One gift cannot match two.”

A spark, buried deep in Arcturus’ eyes, flares and dies. It looks like approval. Because Sirius remembers the traditions? Because he’s spent years trying to forget, and all it’s taken is a room of dark mahogany and cold words to roll all those years back?

“No,” says Arcturus softly. “It cannot. The second shall be a vow, to defeat the Dark Lord or die trying.”

I am already trying to do that. Why would you waste another gift?

He is definitely missing something. But Sirius knows that he won’t be able to find out; if nothing else, Arcturus will deny it to his last breath. All he can do is hope that he won’t be caught blind by his vow.

All he can be is brave.

“Very well,” says Sirius instead. “I accept.”

The magic above them dissolves in a shower of dust. The cool edge to the room that had come from the ritual fades as well, until all that’s left is the study and its smoking fireplace.

“Then it is done.” Arcturus bows his head and rises, heading to the fireplace. He opens an ivory box and reveals the green Floo powder in it. Sirius rises, hand almost brushing the powder, when Arcturus pulls it away, just enough for Sirius to look up at him. “But there is a chance for more, is there not, Grandson?”

“More what?” Sirius asks warily.

“One last bargain. A challenge, let us say, to see who you are: the puling brat of your mother’s words, or the man who survived Azkaban with both mind and body intact to a surprising degree.”

“And if I don’t accept?”

“Then you may go. But I have information that might be... interesting to you. On the Dark Lord.”

Sirius’ hand clenches. “You want him defeated just as much as I do.”

“That need not mean I spoon-feed you answers,” says Arcturus airily. “Tell me, now, whether you accept the challenge or wish to flee it.”

If I don’t take it, he’ll think me a coward. If I do take it, he’ll think me reckless. There’s no way I can win.

Not unless I do this for myself, and ignore what he thinks.

And Sirius would give much to know what his grandfather knows. He’s certain that he won’t die in this challenge; that would negate this entire conversation, the effort that Arcturus has gone to ensure this occurs. Even more, pain is something Sirius can handle.

“Tell me, then,” Sirius says abruptly.

This time, it’s unmistakable in Arcturus’ eyes: approval, bright and cold as the stars around them.

“Follow me.”

Arcturus walks out of the study, not looking behind if Sirius follows. After a brief hesitation, Sirius does, inspecting the rest of the house curiously. The study’s the only room that he remembers of Nox Aeterna, the ancient home of the Head of House Black, and the rest of the house is fascinating in it’s own way. Not so dark and gloomy as Grimmauld Place, but rather airy, with large windows and curtains that shine in shades of blue and silver.

They stop at a balcony, overlooking a choppy sea far beneath.

Arcturus leans forwards and grips the balustrade, knuckles bleaching of color.

“Trust is in little supply and great demand,” he says quietly. Sirius can barely hear him over the roar of the ocean. “And the only truth that is of import now is that of magic.” His gaze swings back to meet Sirius’. “We do this the old way, that which has been forgotten for long years: prove yourself, if you are to be named Heir.”

Sirius lifts his wand and takes one step forwards. Arcturus matches that move. He, too, reaches up; but only to grip Sirius’ chin, bruising in its strength.

Then he twists and in a flash, Sirius is braced over the railing. He yelps in shock, straining for his magic. But Arcturus is older and more prepared- he presses, so that Sirius is nearly bent in half backwards, head pushed so far that he sees the endless grey of the ocean instead of Arcturus’ cruel face.

“You called flame when threatened,” Sirius hears him say, as if from a long distance. “But you are a Black and our home has never been that. It has always been that water from which we first emerged, dripping, to conquer the earth. Call the water beneath you, if you do not wish to be swallowed by it!”

...

Arcturus observes his grandson passionlessly.

He’s shaking, the boy; he’s an undisciplined mess, and an idiot, and a blood-traitor to boot. But he’s clever. Even now, his magic surges around him like an uncontrollable tempest. Even now, terrified and half-broken from Azkaban, Sirius is powerful.

The waves so far beneath them rise, slowly, in response to Sirius’ call.

The ancient call of the Blacks.

Arcturus watches the glittering rainbow strands of water spiraling up to the balcony. He hadn’t done this for Orion or Regulus, too afraid that the ritual would damage them beyond all recognition. He regrets that now. There’s much he regrets, but most of all the ruin of the House of Black in less than five years.

It all began with Sirius’ flight from London in the dead of night. It will end today, with Sirius’ return.

Do you know what you will become? Arcturus shoves forwards, grim and harsh, and feels satisfaction like silk on his spine at the way the water almost touches Sirius’ palms. Do you know what you represent?

For too long has there been two sides in war: Dumbledore and the Dark Lord, with the nebulous Ministry a coin tossed and used by both. But now Sirius is in a Black home of his own volition, and hope lives in Arcturus once more. A boy born at the end of the seventh month, to parents who’ve defied the Dark Lord thrice over? Oh, there has always been more to the magic of prophecy than anyone can put into words, and Arcturus will not let the flame of hope gutter out because of other’s plots.

Between Dumbledore and the Dark Lord, Arcturus knows whom he shall side with. Between the Dark Lord and another side, one where the Blacks can stand tall and proud...

I am a Black. And for too long, the world has forgotten what that means. It is time for us to step out now.

The world shall change, immeasurably, and Arcturus will be there to see it happen.

He’ll be there to make it happen.

No matter what it takes.

...

James is in the kitchen, curled over a mug of tea, when Sirius floos into it. He stumbles in and sits down, hard, on a chair.

“I didn’t know you’d gone out,” says James slowly.

Sirius makes a face back at him. “Wasn’t by choice. M’grandfather kind of... kidnapped me.”

“Arcturus?” asks James, startled. Half-rises out of his chair. “Do we have to leave?”

“No.” Sirius shakes his head. “It was- weird. He was- weird.”

James looks at him closer. But that answers fewer questions than it raises; Sirius is white, bone-white, and shaking, and his hair is-

“Did you go swimming?”

“I wish,” snorts Sirius, leaning back in the chair and pressing a wrist against his eyes. “The bastard shoved me off a fucking balcony, ‘cause it’d prove something to him. Guess he was angry I hit him with incendio."

“Incendio?” asks James, morbidly fascinated. He’s never fully understood the Blacks and their family; how they’re so cruel to each other all the time, for no reason other than that they can. “Did he need healing?”

“Like he’d have let it touch him.”

And it’s anger that James sees now, crystallized and frozen. His hand drops and reveals Sirius’ eyes, shining like slate-stone: unyielding. He’s not shaking from fear or adrenaline. It’s just rage, pure as diamond crystals. And though he’s soaked through from his hair down to his clothes, he also looks far better than he’s done for the past week while they’ve hidden and scrounged around the house.

Rest isn’t something that either of them are good at.

“He treated me like a respected opponent,” says Sirius flatly. “Information for information, gift for gift, and finally: assurance for assurance. He spoke to me- one leader to another. Offered me the Black money and properties if I took the name.” He looks at James. “I took it.”

“Sirius-”

“I told him the prophecy, too.”

James inhales sharply. “That was a good idea?”

“I don’t fucking know, do I?” Sirius waves his wand and grabs the firewhiskey bottle that breaks out of the cellar before it can shatter against the table. Another flick, and the bottle’s opened, and he takes a deep swig of it. “But I did it.”

And now we have to live with it.

“Why’d he push you off a balcony?” James asks softly.

Sirius tips his head back. “Because he wanted to give me something and couldn’t think of a way of doing it without being a horrible fucking human being.”

“Sirius,” says James.

“A book. That’s what he gave. For proving myself worthy of his fucking House, I got a book.” From under Sirius’ robes, he reveals an old tome. Slams it onto the table. “You-Know-Who asked for it. That’s how my dad died, apparently, getting this back into the Black library. The curses You-Know-Who put up around it shriveled his heart into ash, but he got away. Got back home. Here. And that’s how he died, the stupid son of a bitch.”

James steps forwards and presses his hand against Sirius’ shoulder. He can feel the tremors through it- aborted as soon as Sirius can manage, but not truly hidden. Not to James, who knows Sirius almost better than he knows himself.

“I’m going to take that to Lily,” he says quietly. “And then I’m coming back here with Remus, and we’re gonna forget everything else. One night, Sirius. I think we’re owed that.”

No, thinks James, tightening his grip on Sirius’ shoulder, sadness a gulf beneath him that can swallow him if he allows it. We’re owed far more. But this is what we have. And we’ll live with that. Like we have, for so long that we forget how to ask for more.

But there are things that cannot be forgotten, no matter how long they take to return. And James is alive, and his friends are alive, and that is all that matters. So long as they live, they can do more. So long as they live, they can hope.

They can dream.

...

Remus watches James watch Sirius.

Sirius is good at hiding his emotions from everyone who’s not James, and James is notoriously bad at keeping his feelings off his face. Add alcohol to the mix and it’s like taking candy from a child. Remus feels a vague sort of guilt for taking such shameless advantage, but it’s James who’d invited him to a party consisting of hard alcohol while Remus is incapable of consuming it with all the healing potions running through his system.

“One day,” says James, words all slurring together, “we’re gonna get away to a nice place. Have a vacation. The four o’ us. Somewhere warm, where it isn’t raining. No Lily, no kids. I just want-”

“Three,” says Remus quietly.

James looks back at him, eyes blinking. For less than a heartbeat, his eyes look like the firewhiskey in his hand, gold and glittering and inhuman. “Wha’?”

“Three of us, James. Not four.”

“You’re backing out?” he demands, with all the fervor of a person who’s properly sloshed. “Well, fuck you too, Lupin. Making our schedules line up’s hard enough without you being such a bore.”

“I’m not talking about our schedules,” says Remus, with considerably more patience than he’d ever thought he had. “And I’d be happy to come. But Peter’s... not around anymore.”

“I’ll pound that bastard’s face in,” mumbles Sirius from the other side of the table, head pressed against the wood. “Next time I see ‘im. Straight in. No magic. I want to see it happen.”

“Yes, well.” Remus turns back to James, whose glaring intently at Sirius. “Jam- Prongs, look-”

“That’s not nice,” says James, rolling his shoulders. “I’ve seen him, you know, and he looks like absolute shit. Doesn’t deserve what’s happening to him, I don’t think, the poor bastard.”

Remus stills. Across from him, Sirius slowly lifts his head.

“When?” asks Remus, deathly quiet.

“Right before we got Sirius out. Lily was doing that- I was the decoy.” James’ jaw juts forward priggishly, but all that means is that he’s being stubborn. “He was there. I spoke to him.”

“You spoke to him?”

James nods.

“Oh, how fucking magnanimous of you,” hisses Remus, hands clenching and unclenching on his wand. “Speaking to the man who gave you up for You-Know-Who! What, did you debate values with him? Tell him that he shouldn’t have, it made your life a little fucking difficult? You absolutely sanctimonious arse of a pureblood, do you even know what he’s done to the rest of us!”

“Wormtail,” says James, soft as a thread of spider silk. “Our friend. That’s who you’re talking about like this.”

“Damn right!” snarls Remus. “The man who betrayed you, who would’ve stood by and killed your son, you, your wife- you ever wonder why you met him there? Because you were rescuing Sirius. Why were you rescuing Sirius? Because Peter put him there!”

“We get to be afraid,” says James quietly. “You can’t demand people not to feel.”

“He chose to be a part of this war!”

“Did he? Truly, down deep, after all of us had made our choices- did he get one?”

“Yes,” says Sirius, so abrupt that both of them startle and turn to him. Sirius’ eyes are red and he looks like he’s been through a whirlwind right before being dumped into the chair, but there’s sobriety in his eyes that hadn’t been there just moments before. “Yeah, Prongs, he did get one. Just ‘cause he was too afraid to take it then doesn’t mean he gets to take this one now.”

“Then that’s your decision,” says James.

“You’re right.”

Remus spins around so fast that his back cracks, to see Lily standing in the doorway. Her hair’s thick and loose down her back; her face is as steady as a statue carved of stone.

“We won’t ask you to kill him,” says Lily calmly. “We won’t ask you to hate him. But you won’t ask the opposite of us, either. It is your choice to forgive him; it is ours to not do so.”

“Lils-”

“I found something,” she continues, without missing a beat. James’ mouth clicks shut. “The book that Sirius brought back- I’ve found out what that damned ring is. I thought you lot might want to come to see it.”

“I’d love to, but-”

“But?” asks Lily, dangerously sweet, stone face cracking to show something seething and hot beneath.

That’s when Remus realizes that though she hasn’t demonstrated too much of her anger, that doesn’t mean that she isn’t feeling it. The Lily in front of him right now is frayed over at the seams, held together with sheer determination alone. She’s not in the frame of mind to understand why James wanted a day’s relaxation; Remus rather suspects that Lily’d been even angrier when James told her his plan.

She’s pushing herself too hard, he thinks wearily. And when it becomes too much- and it will, sooner rather than later- she’ll collapse.

Remus cannot stop her.

But he can hold her together through it, whenever that happens. And that means that he needs to recover quickly- even quicker than he has been- because Merlin knows that Sirius and James aren’t capable of recognizing an impending breakdown until it’s actually happening in front of them.

“But,” he says now, before James can say something unfortunately stupid, “both of these berks are drunk. Anything you say’s gonna fly straight over their heads.”

“Like it doesn’t normally,” says Lily, caustic as acid, but Remus sees her face relax fractionally, and breathes out in a silent whoosh of relief. “There’s sobering potion in that cupboard-” she nods to the third one over and waves her wand, but the lock doesn’t break under her instruction, though the bottles do soar out with the simple expedience of shattering the glass case. “-oh, god, I’ll clean that tomorrow.” She directs them to James and Sirius before fixing James with a beady eye. “You’ll make sure they take it?”

Remus winces. “Yes.”

“Then I’ll see you in the library.”

Lily turns on her heel and leaves. Remus lifts his brows back at James and Sirius, both of whom are eyeing the potion with distaste.

“Well, get on with it, then,” he says, forcibly cheerful. “Bottom’s up!”

...

Lily would feel more pity for the others if she hadn’t been working so damn hard herself. She knows she’s being unfair. Intellectually, that knowledge is present. What isn’t is her patience. They can rest once this war is over, and wanting to live during it-

We survive, she thinks, tapping her nails against the book-cover impatiently. We survive, and only once we’ve managed that, we live.

The memory of James comparing Peter to her sister still blazes, like a hot coal set against her breast. Petunia is nasty and low and mean but she’s not evil. And Peter- what he’s done is evil. Letting Voldemort come after them, betraying them like that... it’s evil, like taking the heart out of an innocent and crushing it to dust.

When Lily closes her eyes, she can hear Harry’s terrified screams; she can smell James’ blood. She’s slept, yes, but only in short stretches, and mostly subsists on Dreamless Sleep once every four days, which is just long enough not to build up either resistance or dependence. She’s furious and exhausted and surviving in a home that she loathes with every inch of her body, and it is all Peter’s fault.

I hate him, thinks Lily, and bows her head, draws that hate into herself like poison sucking out of the wound. This will not hurt me; this won’t be my downfall. But there will come a time when Peter is not on guard, and then I will strike.

A lioness does not hesitate to bring a fawn. And if backed into a corner, a den of loved ones behind her, a lioness is even more dangerous.

She’d joined this war because it was the right thing to do. She’d stayed because she was a muggleborn and a mudblood and in as much danger with her head down as with her head held high, and she’s got enough pride to want her life to mean something.

It’s never been truly personal.

Not until now.

Voldemort will regret doing that. So will Peter. By the end of this, there will be justice done for all those that she loves.

Distantly, Lily hears something crack in the kitchens. She tilts her head to the side and listens; she can hear the beginnings of some loud argument, and all it takes is one twitch of her fingers for her wand to roll across the table and straight into her palm.

I swear it, she thinks, before getting up to return to the kitchens.

James didn’t know how he looked. Remus hasn’t been in England in nearly a year. Sirius is the likeliest to understand her need for justice, but he’s easily distracted.

It’s fine.

Her friends are dead, and her parents are buried in muggle graves that she can’t even visit for fear of leaving wards, and her sister hates her but cares for Lily’s only son because there’s no other option.

Lily will make sure they- the Death Eaters, Voldemort, all those pureblooded lords who dare to think she’ll die easy- will pay for it. For every last ounce of it.

This isn’t her first time cleaning up messes. This won’t be her last.

She refuses to feel regret for any of it.

...

By the time she makes it down to the kitchens again, there’s a full-blown argument happening.

It’s only Sirius shouting, though; Remus and James have both retreated to the door and are just watching him wearily. It’s almost like Hogwarts, where Sirius’ duels- both verbal and magical- with his family had become legendary by the time he graduated. It only took James and Remus and Peter until third year to stop holding Sirius back, too.

“Remus?” says Lily.

James cuts her a sharp, slightly hurt, look, but doesn’t say anything. Remus sighs.

“A house-elf,” he says. “Apparently his grandfather decided that allowing Sirius access to each of the properties means keeping the properties manageable.”

“Livable,” interjects James.

Remus shrugs. “And managing means... a house-elf. Though it seems to find the broken glass a little objectionable.”

“So why’s Sirius the one acting like a maniac?” Lily asks helplessly.

“When doesn’t Sirius act like a maniac?”

“James,” whispers Lily, a surge of irritation taking her aback with the depth of the emotion, “will you, please, for the love of god, just shut up?”

“Lily?”

She averts her face when she sees the naked surprise on Remus’ face. Lily can feel the ache in her muscles; she hasn’t moved in days, only from her room to the library to the kitchen and back to the library. Disuse hurts just as much as use.

I hate this.

“Sirius,” she says instead, and steps into the kitchen, wand up.

Sirius turns to face her. His long hair’s disheveled and his eyes are red. Behind him is a shriveled excuse for a house elf- bulging eyes, furious, twisted mouth, skin the color of copper scale.

“What are you doing?” Lily asks.

“I don’t want him here,” spits Sirius. Whatever calm came from the hours he’d spent with James and Remus have vanished into thin air; his hands are trembling, and there’s a vicious gleam in his eyes that leaves Lily uneasy. “He’s a spy, a great big spy for my grandfather, and I’m sick to death of this, I am, I cannot- I cannot bear this stupid family again- once was enough, goddammit!”

“Yes,” says Remus softly, slowly making his way into the kitchen. He doesn’t look away from Sirius. “It was. It is.”

Sirius slumps right where he’s standing, like his muscles have just turned to water. The desperate relief in his face, the way something taut and strained softens, leaves an aching pit in Lily’s own stomach.

But that’s when she hears the house-elf’s mutters, which turn abruptly audible: “Mudbloods... desecrating the House... blood-traitors breaking cupboards... Kreacher doesn’t know what Master was thinking, no sir... what would Master Regulus say, Kreacher wonders, oh, yes...”

“Shut up,” snaps Sirius, and though Kreacher’s mouth continues to move, no sound comes out of it. Tiredly, he turns to Lily. “Please tell me you’re going to say that we can leave this bloody place.”

“Soon,” says Lily, lowering her wand and then herself into one of the chairs. It might even make sense to have the conversation here- she’s worn enough not to want to drag herself back to the library tonight, anyways. A glance up confirms that Remus and James are inside as well, Remus with one hand white-knuckled on Sirius’ shoulder and James flanking Sirius’ left. Fine, then. Here it is. “That ring we found? It’s a horcrux."

It’d been far more complex than that, but that’s what her research boils down to. General diagnostic charms revealed nothing but Dark magic; Dark diagnostic charms revealed, in general, nothing. But one had given faint traces of soul magic, and Lily’d jumped onto that trail with zeal. The issue had been that soul magic diagnostics had revealed the ring to have not a soul nor no soul; rather somehow, a mix of the two.

What is neither a soul nor not a soul?

The answer, in the end, being a part of a soul.

From there it’d taken little time to find what kind of magic could accomplish that. She loathes the knowledge that’s sitting in her head now, all the byproducts of her research, but the end is present. Is there. That’s what matters.

“What’s a horcrux?” asks Sirius.

“An object that houses a piece of someone’s soul.” Lily watches Remus’ grip slide down from Sirius’ shoulder to his elbow and dig in. She closes her eyes for a brief moment. “There’s no way of knowing, of course, because it’s destroyed- but I think it’s fair to say that it’s You-Know-Who’s.”

“He split his soul?” asks James, looking sick.

“To give himself immortality.”

“Ah,” says Remus. “And do we know if there are any other such... horcruxes?”

“According to the book-” Lily shakes her head, “-no. Because only a fool would want to do it even once, and multiple times? The soul is what binds our magic to the physical plane. Take that away and the magic we wield becomes fractured. More powerful, maybe, but less controlled.”

Remus sways, before levering himself into a chair slowly, not letting up on his death-grip on Sirius’ elbow. “Mad,” he says. “That’s what he was, isn’t it?”

“Master Regulus would turn in his grave, yes he would,” mutters Kreacher from behind Sirius, just hidden from Lily’s sight by James and Remus’ chair. “Tries to destroy it... but a mud-”

“Right, that’s it,” snarls Sirius, waving his wand so wildly it looks like it might take Remus’ eye out. “Impugno!”

Lily flicks a shield up quicker than thought, so the yellow birds he conjures erupt out of existence against it. “Stop,” she says into the ensuing silence, eyes narrowed on Kreacher.

“Destroy what, Kreacher?”

His eyes dip away. “The mudblood is speaking to Krea-”

“Don’t address her like that!” James says loudly, but Lily waves him away to step closer to the elf.

“Destroy what, Kreacher?” Lily asks again.

House-elves aren’t stupid. Purebloods forget that, over and over again; they treat them like particularly faithful dogs, and don’t keep in mind that secrets said in the presence of people who won’t betray you doesn’t mean that there won’t ever come a time in which those people won’t betray you. And there’s intelligence in Kreacher’s eyes, sharp as a blade, for all that there’s hatred as well.

He’s heard what she’s said, and he’s broken through Sirius’ order to reply.

“Answer her!” says Sirius.

Kreacher says, slowly, grounding it out, “Master Regulus’ locket.”

“My brother couldn’t have made a horcrux if his life depended-”

His eyes are glowing when they meet Lily’s. They’re so large; looking closer, Lily realizes that his skin is less the color of copper scale and more that of sea foam, fathomless in its depths. Love, thinks Lily, breathless, certain as nothing else. This is love. In all its terrible, cruel, enigmatic glory. Then Kreacher says, “The locket Master Regulus stole from the Dark Lord,” and Lily’s heart stops.

...

The whole ugly story spills out of Kreacher. The green glow of the cave. The bodies. The potion, like fire down his throat. The high laugh of the Dark Lord, and Regulus’ rage when he left Kreacher to die in the cave. The grief of having no body to bury, and no one to tell the story to, and solely a locket of death and soul magic to remember Regulus by.

He’s quivering by the end of it, trying to repress his urge to both tell the story and punish himself for giving up his master’s secrets.

Sirius takes the locket from him. The metal of the chain is warm in his fingers. Slowly, he lets it drop onto the wooden table and breathes, lungs aching. He cannot cry. He will not cry. All that he has left behind, all this hatred, and his brother-

Their last words had been said in an argument. It hadn’t been in Hogwarts, but that was because it was Easter and Regulus was home for the break. They’d seen each other in Diagon by accident, and Regulus had come over to speak to him, and Sirius cannot- for the life of him- remember why he’d come over or what they’d gotten into an argument about; all he knows is Regulus, young, color flaring high in his cheeks, eyes blazing like the stars he’s named for. Sirius himself, three years older and disgusted, viscerally repulsed with the tender way his brother curled over his left hand.

The only thing you love is yourself, he’d spat, and Regulus had stood there, wand aloft, mouth pulled tight. What would you know of love, you fucking soulless bastard? Only reason you’ll do anything is ‘cause you want to make our parents happy!

Yes, Regulus had said. Because after all the grief they had with you, I think they deserve better!

No. Because you’re afraid. Sirius remembers that last sentence with shame, vast as his hatred for his family. The hitch to Regulus’ breathing, and the satisfaction that purred up Sirius’ spine in response. And that’s all anyone’s ever going to know about you, Reggie. Regulus had stilled at that name, and Sirius hadn’t known to call it hurt then. He isn’t certain even now, but he hopes. Oh, how he hopes. Your fucking fear.

Sirius had apparated away, then. Hadn’t spoken to Regulus after. Hadn’t known he was dead until he read the Prophet, and hadn’t cared about that until now. He thinks he should have. He thinks, now that he does, that this grief is-

Unending.

...

“Sirius,” says Remus quietly.

Sirius turns, just enough to see him. His head aches. He hasn’t been sleeping well even before this, and now- he’s not managed even one moment of sleep the full night. His body rebels at staying awake, yes, but when he closes his eyes all Sirius sees is Regulus.

How afraid he must have been, he thinks, and grief curdles in him like a cramped muscle. My little brother.

“I’m tired,” he says hoarsely, throat aching.

“You should sleep.” Remus enters, and sits gingerly on the side of the bed. His hand hovers over Sirius’ knee before coming to rest right next to it. “You look like you could use it.”

“No, I’m more tired of this,” says Sirius, fingers digging into the coverlet, both angry and exhausted at once. “Of this stupid home. This- this way they act, always, like it doesn’t matter if we survive if the family continues. As if the family isn’t made of people.”

And instead of fixing things, they just want us back. They don’t know how to treat people like they’re people, but they know that they’re doing something wrong. And it’s us who pay the price. Merlin, I hate them. I hate them all.

He doesn’t dare look at Remus. Only tilts his head back, flat on the pillow, so all he can see is the red-charmed ceiling. “He wanted me to stay,” Sirius says soundlessly.

Remus inhales sharply.

It should be meaningless, and it would be to anyone else- including James, Sirius thinks- but Remus has always known what Sirius means, almost before Sirius knows it himself.

“It wasn’t my fucking responsibility,” says Sirius, and where he might have shouted it at any other moment, right now he feels like a thread so thin it’s transparent; it exists, yes, but might well not in a heartbeat.

“Padfoot,” says Remus, voice thick. “It wasn’t. Of course it wasn’t. Isn’t. Whatever. You staying with your family might not have changed anything.”

Something cracks in Sirius’ chest, hot, bleeding. Ruinous.

“Might,” he says faintly.

Remus’ hand closes on his ankle. His bones grate together and Sirius gasps from the sudden, sharp pain.

“Don’t act like an idiot,” says Remus loudly. “You know what I mean. But this isn’t your fault, Sirius. No, look at me.” His other hand reaches and grips Sirius’ chin and forces him to look at Remus’ eyes, blue as- as- as flowers, and gems, and the sky, and still, none of that is as alive as Remus himself. The miserable stone in his belly lightens, just a little. “Who knows what might’ve happened in a different world? If you’d been in Slytherin, or Regulus’d been in Gryffindor, or- or- I don’t know. But that didn’t happen. You didn’t stay. They’d have killed you, or as good as, and I won’t fucking let you feel bad for surviving that. Surviving them.”

“Oh, Merlin,” says Sirius, horrified at himself, at the hot tears rising in his eyes.

He can’t even move, can only stare at Remus, who’s not letting him up, not even a little bit. Who’s only staring at him so fiercely that it makes the crack in his chest deepen, looking as patiently immovable as any mountain.

“Regulus died a hero,” Remus tells him. “That’s what matters. That’s what you should remember him as: the man who faced Vold- You-Know-Who himself, and decided he wanted no part of it. Who decided to do something, instead of just running.”

“Remus- fucking- let go-”

“No,” says Remus. “Fuck you, I’ll stay like this if I want to.”

Laughter punches through the sobs caught in his chest, like a knife through paper. Sirius hears the horrible sound erupt from his chest and inhales, gasping, razor-edged. Remus immediately lets go of his chin; but just when Sirius starts to curl in on himself, he feels arms come up, swallow him whole in an embrace that shouldn’t be possible when Remus is two inches shorter and nowhere near as broad.

“I hate this,” Sirius whispers, weary, what feels like hours later.

“I know,” says Remus, and he is warm and soft and stroking one hand down Sirius’ scalp. “I know, Padfoot.”

He sleeps, then, and though the world is made of cold, cruel things, Sirius feels none of it that night. Not as he is, safe in Remus’ arms.

...

Lily closes her eyes for just a moment before summoning her courage. The rap of her knuckles on the door shouldn’t feel as momentous as it does. But still she hesitates, even after she hears the muffled “Come in!” from within.

Then, breathing deep, she enters.

It’s James, sitting at the desk in the corner of the room. He’s leaning back so there’s only two feet on the floor, wand spinning in his hand and spitting up sparks.

“We should talk,” she says.

James wand still in his hands. His chair thuds onto the ground. Then he nods.

Lily clambers onto the bed and folds her legs under her. “Why?” she asks, sharper than she’d meant but still aching.

“Because he’s Peter,” says James quietly. The sparks from his wand light up the bottom of his face- the chin, the juts of his cheekbones. “I’ve known him since he was eleven, Lily. I can’t just- forget that.”

“He tried to kill us,” says Lily. “If you’ve forgotten.”

“Only reason you can think of for me not being a vengeful bastard?”

“He held Harry and swore to protect us and then he gave us up.” Lily runs a hand through her hair, tries to still the tremors. “I don’t know how you can just forget that he gave us up!”

“I didn’t. I can’t forget that. But he loved Harry, Lils. He loved you, and me, and not all of it was a lie.” James looks so earnest. Eyes shining. Face glowing. “I believe that. It’s Peter, for Merlin’s sake! That’s what you, all of you, keep forgetting! He’s pants at lying and shit at acting and if we live in a world where Peter fooled us into believing he loved us for years without us doubting him for a minute- then I don’t know if I can believe anything at all, Lily. Not anything.”

Lily folds her fingers together. She hasn’t forgotten. Hadn’t forgotten. That’s true enough. But Lily thinks that she’d chosen not to dwell on it; because she hadn’t been able to, not in those first horrible days when she hadn’t known if James would survive and all she’d had was Harry and a wand and fear like a steady wolf at her heels.

She thinks: Peter, in Hogwarts, hair a flaxen gold and a laugh softer but far, far more often than all of theirs. He hadn’t liked her much in the beginning, because Lily hadn’t been very nice to James that seventh year before they started going out. But they’d been the only Gryffindors in NEWT Charms and in between tutoring and desperate cramming, both of them had become something like friends. Then had come their training in charm-work, in Brussels for Lily and Antwerp for Peter. And after- the war, the silence, the warmth of his hand over hers as they both waited in the kitchen for James and Sirius to come home.

“Then why’d he do this, Jimmy?” Lily lifts her eyes to James, and doesn’t look away. She can be courageous. Now, with a world balanced on her shoulders and the flames of her rage faded to ash, she can be courageous. “How, if he did not hate us?”

“I think,” says James quietly. “I- I think he was afraid. Always. And Pete was the quietest of us, and we started thinking that if he didn’t say anything that meant he was fine with it.” He stands and makes his way closer to Lily, though he doesn’t touch her. The window behind him limns his body, throws his features into shadow but makes his outline shine. “I miss him, Lils. And I’m furious at what he’s done. Of course I am. But- he’s Peter.”

Oh, but James has never moved past people as Lily has done; he has never had his heart broken like she has. He moves through life as if certain that he won’t be killed by it.

“What if he’s killed people?”

“I have too,” says James, a little wryly. “But. No. He hasn’t. When I saw him- it’s not the look of a man who’s planned it. He hasn’t.”

Lily reaches up and grips his wrist. She can feel his heart there, in those slender muscles and delicate bones. “If it comes down to you and him, if it’s down to you two-”

“I don’t know,” says James.

Lily cannot look away. She is caught, is speared, by the old, resigned light in James’ eyes.

Not as if he won’t be killed, thinks Lily, heart rending in her chest. No. As if he would rather die, than survive in a world like that.

“Jimmy.”

“I don’t know. It depends. But- if it’s just me, Lily, if it’s down to just me and just him, I don’t know if I can kill him.” He leans down, and presses his lips to the very tips of her fingers. “I do not know, and that is the entire truth.”

“I believe you.” Lily twists and grabs James, hauls him closer to her, embraces him so tightly that she cannot breathe. “I believe you, and I hate this, and if you aren’t next to me when this war is over, I’ll kill you myself, you stupid, stupid, stupid man.”

“Ah, Lils,” he says, “I think you’ll have to queue up for the privilege. Merlin knows I’ve pissed enough Death Eaters off to have ‘em ahead of you.”

She burrows closer to him, until James finally gives in and topples onto the bed, half on her, half on the mattress. “I hate you,” she mumbles into his shirt. Then, before he can answer: “If you let a Death Eater kill you, I’ll make sure to have a child just so I can name it Elvendork and imagine your anger from beyond the grave.”

“Now that,” says James, voice like a rich song rising around them, “is definitely a reason to stay alive.”

#jily #james potter #lily evans #james x lily #harry potter #my writing #hp fic #the marauders are back!! and everything is Not Fine!!#STORY OF THEIR LIVES #anyways this has been a long time in the making i hope y'all enjoy!

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