Only five months ago, Sirius Black received word through a small column on the second page of the Daily Prophet that a memorial service would be held for the heir to the Ancient and Most Noble House of Black, one Regulus Arcturus. There hadn’t even been a body to bury, according to the Prophet’s sources. It had taken ages for Sirius to recover. Now, tonight, the air was similarly punched out of Sirius Black’s lungs as he gazed into the mark that he knew had graced Reggie’s arm from above the ruins of Godric’s Hollow.
Four young men gathered together as Marauders for the last time.
“Poetic, isn’t it? Strapping lads in the thick of the fight against a bunch of Slytherins,” said James with a suggestion of his signature smile, laugh lines too prominent for him being just twenty-one years of age. Sirius would later remember the beginnings of creases between his friend’s brows, as even now they were furrowed in ill-disguised worry. “Feels a bit like everything we’ve been through together has kind of come to a head, and all.”
Sirius squashed himself closer to Remus from where they were sat on James and Lily’s sitting room sofa. Instinctively, he clutched onto the werewolf’s arm, their newly budded relationship having barely changed the level of physical closeness that had developed over years of occupying the same dormitory (though there were, of course, a few notable changes.) Sirius thumbed at Remus’s fraying jumper, catching on one of the several unravelling threads. He avoided eye contact with his oldest friend, as he knew that James would be able to recognize his hesitancy in a heartbeat.
Remus grimaced.
“Maybe leave the foreboding speeches out of our little reunion tonight, yes?”
Privately, Sirius thought it wasn’t possible to make the tension and stress of the night any worse, but he agreed that they could do without the jinx-inviting words. So, doing his best to crack a dashing smile, he contributed, voice hoarse: “‘Course, Wormtail’s the best there is at keeping secrets. You three are in the best of hands, isn’t that right, Petey boy?”
The man in question shifted imperceptibly from his spot on the old armchair that had once belonged to Fleamont Potter, though his face split into a grateful grin. “Cheers, mate.”
Silence draped over them like an oppressive blanket. A few, tense moments passed. “James, Lily,” the shorter man began softly, sincerely, “this is… a lot. I’m not sure I’m– are you sure that you want to entrust me with this? What with my work at the ministry, and Dumbledore is a better candidate, surely—”
“Dumbledore can kiss my arse, frankly,”
James shot him a look. “Padfoot.”
A hiss to his right grabbed Sirius’s attention. Remus was wincing in protest of his grip unexpectedly turning vice-like. Sirius relaxed quickly, not quite aware of himself having tensed up, smoothing over with his hands what he knew to be freshly scarred skin. He imagined himself to be the picture of concern and apology, exuding nothing but comfort and poise. The other man, though, tilted his head pointedly in Lily’s direction, who was glaring at the two of them. Sirius pouted at her, being fully aware that this display of his devastating charm had never swayed her.
“Well, he can!”
Remus elbowed him in the side sharply. Sirius whipped around with a ready glare, finding his way to Remus’s eyes, which, while normally a fetching gold, had turned a rather dark brown in this lighting, flashing at him in a warning.
“Moony, you can’t honestly expect me to believe that the old codger’s got any more room left in that fucking skull of his for something as important as–”
“Sirius!” Lily’s voice cut through to the both of them, and they noticed that she had covered Harry’s small ears as though he was in any way capable of understanding the finer points of their conversation. Sirius deflated.
He was too on edge these days, too prone to snapping.
Removing her hands from the happily gurgling child on her lap, Lily rubbed at her temple for a few moments before picking Harry up and handing him over to Peter, who happily took hold of him. She then took her leave to the kitchen, presumably to consume something for her headache.
“Apologies, sprog,” Sirius muttered repentantly. “You too, Red!”
A grunt came from the kitchen in reply.
Sirius couldn’t help but fidget, eventually settling on resting his forehead on Remus’s shoulder and tucking his feet underneath his thigh. It was a position more bereft of a child closer to Harry’s age than a man in his twenties, but the disgraced relative of the very people aiming to kill those he held most dear couldn’t quite bring himself to be too fussed over it. He was allowedto act petulantly, he reasoned.
For the ten minutes or so that Lily was bustling around the kitchen, the four friends looked at anything but each other, silent except for Peter, who was smiling as he entertained the cooing child in his arms, assisting as Harry bounced up and down on his little legs.
When Lily walked back in and gratefully retrieved Harry, Remus broke the silence first.
“It’s not going to get easier, will it?”
The ash was still cooling on the surrounding ground when he desperately barged through the front door. In his frantic mind, the first thing Sirius thought to look for was Fleamont’s armchair.
Peter wouldn’t have– surely not. A mistake, or torture. Merlin, was Pete dead?
James. Jamie? He couldn’t tell which rooms in the house he was running through. Ah, wait, the coffee pot is on the floor, there. Kitchen, then.
His face felt wet. Blood?
Only a day and a night ago had he hugged Lily in parting. He told James he loved him and would protect him. It would be the ultimate deception to the other side, switching out secret keepers. Remus had hugged them then, too. Remus… Remus knew about the switch with Peter too. Oh fuck, where was Remus now?
At home, he had seen him when he left for patrol. Bellatrix had been spotted within a mile of the Potter residence so Sirius had been sent to lure her out.
Something was burning. Was it him?
Upstairs. He kicked a still-smoldering beam out of his way.
The nursery was upstairs, oh gods where was Harry?
Nursery.
Where was James? He wasn’t downstairs.
Nursery.
Nursery.
He felt a hand touch his face. It was his own, he felt tears. He heard wailing, he must be crying, then. But, that wasn’t right, either.
The wailing was coming from the next room over.
The nursery.
“Coming, Sprog!”
When the three Marauders left Godric’s Hollow that night, it had been snowing. Remus and Sirius’s fingers were threaded together. It had only been a few months since they had decided to make their relationship official to the public, and it was nice not needing to dance around each other in front of their friends. Their friends were smart though, and had only looked at them knowingly when the news broke.
“Careful mate, it’s tricky business, loving someone in the middle of a war,” James had told him privately, later, when their small group had disbanded for the night, “you’ll worry for them every moment they walk out the door.”
Sirius had wrapped his arm around his dearest friend’s shoulders and grinned.
“Prongsie, I’ve been watching our Moony walk out of doors since I was fourteen. The only difference between then and now is that I get to kiss him full on the mouth when he comes back through them.”
They had laughed, then.
He was happy. Scared shitless, sure, but it was a happy night, that night.
A day and a night before Halloween, 1981, should have been a happy night, too. They had a plan with the best chance of success. The Fidelius charm was virtually unbreakable. Nothing could break it, no sooner than they could break apart the bond they’d shared.
As the nursery door banged open, a few things registered.
First was Harry’s crying face. He jerked towards him, ready to lift him from his crib, but then there was Lily. Lily’s hair was splayed out on the floor, scorch marks around her. She looked like she could be sleeping.
James wasn’t in the nursery, but Harry was still there, and now there were others there, too. Lights were flashing, suddenly and some bloke with an auror’s badge was yelling at him. James was an auror, too, he’d just passed the exam. Maybe the two worked together.
His face was stinging where it was being ground into the floor, and manacles were being placed around his wrists, biting into his skin because they were being pulled against him as they were whooshing and shoving and apparating away, and then Godric’s Hollow was gone.
“Sirius,” Remus had said on the night of Halloween, 1981, as he stood at the doorframe of their flat, Sirius tripping to get his shoes on, “Be careful. Don’t let Bellatrix lure you away, it’s what she wants. Just check on James, make sure the perimeter is safe, and come back.” He huffed out a breath,
“I’ll be waiting.”
The Ministry cell he was currently being held in was very, very bright. Every three meters were floating, shining orbs, bumping into each other as they floated around the room. It was quite disorienting.
No one had spoken to him since shoving him in here, manacles still tight around his wrists and clothing still covered in ash and soot.
He needed to know how the Potters were. Harry was still alive, he knew that. He had seen him crying, and few dead people are known to cry post-mortem.
Lily had seemed dead. He couldn’t be sure, though, and everything in his brain felt blank and detached. He couldn’t remember if he had checked to see if she was breathing.
He never did see James. He might’ve been in the bedroom, or maybe he had missed him as he had searched the small sitting room. He hoped that James was still alive. He needed James to be alive.
Had anyone told Remus where he was? Probably not, seeing as the bloody ministry barely tolerated Remus’s name being on the list of people able to access the Black Family vaults and estate. The goblins didn’t mind so much, and the ministry didn’t get much of a say when it came to the goings-on at Gringotts.
He was hungry.
He must’ve been here for a day, already. He was in a holding cell, not bloody Azkaban, they could deign to feed him at least once.
Clacking came from the door as the magical locks keeping it closed moved away to allow access to the figures entering.
Alastor Moody, face scarred and familiar, was twisted into a dark scowl. While not terribly unusual, what was new was the way his hostile body language was directed at Sirius. He was accompanied by someone he’d never seen before. The new person was a thin, reedy man who looked about one sneeze from being bowled over. His nose was scrunched up as he looked Sirius up and down, distaste clear. He wasn’t entirely sure what he’d done to deserve it. Wasn’t he here to give a statement?
“What have you done, Black?” growled Moody, hand grasping at air as though the man was itching to grab his wand. Sirius baulked.
“What have I done?” Sirius snarled, “More like what in Merlin’s name have you tossers been doing with your time? Is my best friend alive or not? Answer me honestly, and answer me quickly Alastor, because depending on your answer I might do something foolish enough to actually warrant me being here!”
Moody’s eyes twitched before narrowing. “Funny, I thought you’d have been the first to know, seeing as you’re the one to put them in that state in the first place. Then again, you’ve always been a funny one, haven’t you Black?”
It took a week for Dumbledore to finally show up. A week of non-stop interrogations, a week for them to be granted access to the stores of veritaserum to finally be convinced of what Sirius had been telling them all along– he hadn’t been the secret keeper at the time of the attack at the Potter home. It had been Peter Pettigrew, now conveniently missing.
Over the past week, Sirius had gathered some information during Moody’s interrogations, and also from the unwitting ferrety man who accompanied him, who he now knew to be named Gelbert Putrice. He gleaned that on the night of the attack, Bellatrix Lestrange-formerly-Black had been spotted roaming the area, cackling to herself and altogether incomprehensible and that she had been arrested later that evening. It’s presumed that she was one of the attackers at Godric’s Hollow, accompanied by Voldemort himself. What hadn’t been clear to the assigned aurors was how the Death Eaters had been able to access the Potter home, until they discovered that Sirius Black had been the secret keeper to their Fidelius charm.
Remus, as always, had set things to right. He was the one who had updated Dumbledore on the situation and had asked the man to vouch for his partner. He would’ve gone himself, he’d pleaded, but the words of an unregistered werewolf wouldn’t have quite the same weight. The old wizard, to his credit, had gone to the ministry without a preamble.
It was then, a week after the attack on Godric’s Hollow, as it would thenceforth be known, that Sirius Black learned that James and Harry Potter survived the attack by Voldemort and that Harry Potter was now temporarily a ward of the wizarding state. It took everything within himself to not explode in a shower of rage.
“I’m so sorry, what fucking right does the bloody state have to raise James’s son for him? Fat load of fucking good they did, turning their damn noses up at every turn when the evidence for corruption was right there, you cowards–!”
And it was then, a week after the attack on Godric’s Hollow, that Sirius learned that James Potter was in no state to raise a child, anymore.
Bellatrix had indeed been to Godric’s Hollow that night and had taken savage pleasure in exacting the same treatment on James Potter, her dear little cousin’s favourite companion, as she had on the Longbottoms only a few months prior. Witnesses – local muggles – claimed that she had been calling for someone named “Sirius” to come out of hiding before entering the home. It was the investigating aurors (and undercover members of the Order) who determined that Voldemort himself had also been at the scene, and had left Bellatrix to her own devices to eliminate Harry Potter. Using spells to uncover residual magic, it was clear that he had failed, the Dark Lord’s magic rebounding after casting the killing curse on the boy, now known as the only known survivor of said curse. Dumbledore would, many years later, share his theory on love and blood magic.
Peter’s flat downtown had been ransacked. It was empty, save for a bronze two-way mirror left on a bare mattress. Its pair had been found at the Lestrange Manor.
Sirius Black was a free man, after a week in ministry custody.
True to his word, Remus was waiting for him upon his return.