The Hidden House

Banging broke through the quiet Potter residence at seven in the morning. As she hurried to the door, Lily forced herself to remain calm. She cast a quick spell to identify the person on the other side of her wards and sighed in relief as she realized that it was Sirius Black. She quickly removed the wards and opened the door, finding herself greeted with a bright smile. It was a pleasant change from the state he had left their home in several days earlier. 

Sirius quickly entered the home and started shouting for James as Lily once again placed wards on the door. His excitement was radiating through him, and he picked James up in a bear hug the moment he emerged from the kitchen. He didn’t even notice the oatmeal that James had been covered in, that was now smeared all over him. Harry had been having a great deal of fun with his breakfast and had not done a great deal of eating. 

“Sirius, mate, it's good to see you so happy, but what the hell is going on?” James ignored the look that Lily shot him for cursing in front of their son. Sirius ignored him for a moment, hurrying to the kitchen to find his godson. 

“Pads!” Harry squealed in delight as Sirius picked him up and carried him into the living room. He couldn’t say Sirius yet, but James’s nickname for him had been Harry’s fifth word. It only took half a second for the one-year-old to put one of his necklaces into his mouth with one hand and grab a fistful of hair with the other. Sirius didn’t mind, though, and simply adjusted Harry’s grip so that he could keep his head upright without pain. 

“Alright, now that the whole gang is here, I will fill you in. I found a way to keep you safe.” He smiled at the shock on his friend’s faces and took advantage of the moment to pause for effect. “Victoria Weasley stumbled across some incredibly valuable information. Information she shared with me three days ago.”

“Weasley? Is she the one who has been out on missions with the Prewett twins?” Lily asked. She had known of the girl from their time at Hogwarts, but she had been the year below them, so they had not been very close. She was bright, though, and she had been part of the “slug club” with Lily. Her transfiguration and charms skills had been incredible, so Lily had not been surprised to see her join the order the year after she had. 

“The very one!” Sirius said with a smile before filling the Potters in on the meeting she had witnessed and its implications. After an hour of explaining his conversation with Victoria and answering questions, he finally fell silent. He understood why the Potters were so concerned with the validity of the information, and he was more than happy to put their fears to rest.

“Oh, I could kiss that girl,” Lily said finally, the realization that she could protect her family sinking in as she pondered which spells to use. 

“Get in line,” Sirius said with a wink. “I can see you thinking, so I am going to preempt you.” He handed over the charmed parchment that had all of his ideas about how they could tie James and Harry’s lives to Lily’s. James quickly grabbed it and started reading, amazed at the detail that Sirius had gone to. Everything from apparition points, secret keepers, instructions on how to complete the spells, and where they would be getting their groceries had been covered. 

James read in silence, mapping out the timeline that they would need to follow to get the preparations in place as quickly as possible. Lily, growing impatient, started reading over his shoulder, equally impressed with Sirius’s planning but completely unsurprised. She had known Sirius long enough to know that James and Harry were the two most important people in the world for him, and she and Remus were next in line. There was nothing her friend wouldn’t do to protect them.

“How long do you think it will take before we have this all set up?” James asked quietly, still struggling to believe it was all real.

“It will be two weeks before I will have complete ownership of the house, so we will need to wait until then before Lily can cast the Fidelius Charm, but there is no need to wait before tying you and Harry to Lily. I hope it never comes to that, but we need to be careful.” Sirius still had a smile stretching across his face. They were not out of the woods yet, but there was hope. 

“So you will be moving into the house in two weeks then?” Lily asked him. Still a little shocked that he was willing to go into hiding to protect them. Sirius Black was not a man who enjoyed being stuck in one place.

“Yes, Lily, I will be the secret keeper, and I will stay put. That way, you have a place to escape to if the worst were to happen.” Lily shook her head at his words.

“Sirius, mate, you can’t believe that we would be betrayed here.” James was still having difficulty believing in the threat that Sirius saw, especially now that they had a fail-safe.

“I don’t want to believe it, James, but we have a rat among us. I am not taking any chances when it comes to you three. Victoria showing up at my flat was enough to make me realize that we needed a safe house that the Order wasn’t aware of. I was lucky it was a friend, not an enemy. And if nothing happens, you can use my house for date nights. I know you both need a break.” James laughed at that, looking down at his clothes that were still covered in oatmeal. 

Harry laughed in his godfather’s arms at the sound of his dad laughing, wanting to be included in the joke. The rest of the morning was spent with Sirius playing with Harry, James cleaning up the kitchen, and Lily triple-checking Sirius’s work as she prepared to tie her son and husband’s lives to her own. 

By the time Sirius left to go back to his flat, Lily was ready to cast the spell that she hoped would save them all. And even if it didn’t, she thought, she would happily move into the next life with the only family she had left. There is nothing she would not sacrifice for the man she pledged her life to and the boy they had brought into the world. 

She was grateful for the research that Sirius had done, as she was unfamiliar with blood magic. It was considered dark magic and was not included in her studies at Hogwarts, and unlike her dear husband, she was not the type to break the rules. She had never broken into the restricted section to continue her research, as tempting as it had been from time to time. 

Lily took a deep breath before pulling out the small paring knife from her pocket and making a small cut on the pad of her thumb. Her healing skills aside, she did not want to experience more pain from this spell than absolutely necessary. She had never understood why the heroes in her books always cut where the most nerve endings were. It seemed stupid to her. 

She then grabbed James’s hand and made a matching incision. She hesitated as she moved to her son. She did not want to hurt him, but she knew that she had to if she was going to save his life. Seeing her wobble of fear, James held her hand and smiled at her encouragingly. They could do this together. She steeled herself and made another tiny prick on her son’s thumb, just enough to get a drop of blood. 

With a tissue, she dabbed the blood from each of their hands and muttered a quick spell to heal the cuts. Not even a scar would remain as proof of the spell she was chanting. She felt a slight tug in her navel as she finished, almost like she had touched a portkey by mistake. She looked at James, who had a broad smile on his face. 

“You are brilliant, Lily. You did it. I can feel it.” Lily felt a matching smile grow across her face at his words. She quickly incinerated the tissue she had used for the spell, the blood had disappeared when they had been bound together, but she felt that she should err on the side of caution. She had just protected her family and was unwilling to let anything risk that safety. 

***

Sirius returned to his small flat in the muggle town with a skip in his step. All he had to do now was find Remus. He knew Dumbledore would not waste the manpower it would take to find him, as he had already written him off as a traitor. Sirius only had two weeks before he had to go into hiding to protect the Potters, and he was determined to make the most of it. He pulled out the map he had stolen at the last order meeting that detailed the movements of known werewolf packs. 

He knew that Dumbledore would never send Remus anywhere Fenrir Greyback, the werewolf who had turned him, which left four other potential packs. It had been a week now since he had missed his checkpoint and four weeks since he had left for this mission. He had disappeared one week after the full moon, which means he must have survived the full moon with the pack. Something must have happened after.

Sirius had his suspicions about what may have happened. Dumbledore had warned them all that Voldemort had brought werewolves and giants into his army. He had sought out every group that had been othered by the wizarding government and used it against them. Pretending that he would bring change when the reality was, all he was bringing was extermination. It was most likely that death eaters had been sent to whichever pack Remus had infiltrated, and that was why Remus had not returned. 

He wasn’t sure which of the packs would be the highest priority for the order. He had not been included in that information since his exile to this village. Dumbledore and those like Victoria who had been in Gryffindor with him at school trusted him, but many of the older members of the order saw his last name and wrote him off. He understood why his little brother had been a death eater when he died the previous year, but he would never join the death eaters. Still, he figured it was better to be part of the order and not be trusted than to be kept in the dark, unable to fight at all. 

Now he kicked himself for not fighting harder to gain their trust. If he had, he might have more information about where his friend had disappeared and why. He almost considered reaching out to Victoria, but he knew better. He did not want to draw suspicion by going through the wrong channels. Going to Dumbledore for information would not be any better. If he asked any questions, Dumbledore would figure out exactly why he was asking. If he knew what Sirius was up to, he would stop him.

The options in front of him now were to go to each pack alone, one by one, until he found his friend or to trust that the order would go looking for him. He decided that he would leave in the morning. Start with the pack nearest as it was within apparating distance. He could apparate nearby, then approach as Padfoot and begin his hunt for his friend. If everything went his way, he would not be the only person hiding in the little townhouse when Lily cast the Fidelius Charm.

***

The cold mountain air stood in sharp contrast to the heat of the spells that were whistling by as Sirius ran for his life. He had been searching for Remus for over a week now and was on the third of the four potential packs. The first two had been simple enough. He was still a week away from the full moon, so in his animagus form, he had gone unnoticed. There had been no sign of his friend after two days at each camp, and he had returned home each night fighting off the discouragement attempting to creep in. 

It was when he had arrived at the third camp that all hell had broken loose. He had gotten careless and approached the pack too quickly. It had only taken a few moments before he had seen the Death Eaters. Under normal circumstances, that would have caused him to increase his caution, but then he had seen what they were doing. Remus was between two death eaters he had never seen before, and he was screaming. 

He did not waste a moment once he realized that his friend, his brother, was being tortured in front of his eyes. He simply charged. He had caught the first death eater by surprise and had knocked the wand out of his hand, but the second death eater was quicker to react and had started casting spells immediately. Sirius, in his current form, could not send any spells back. He simply grabbed the fallen wand and the back of Remus’s jacket and ran. 

Spells hurtled over his head as he dodged trees, silently apologizing to his friend, who was being dragged through the snow. He was sure it was not a very comfortable ride. Still, it was being dragged through the snow by an abnormally large dog or tortured and eventually killed by death eaters. Remus was still unconscious from that last crucio, but he was pretty confident he knew what he would choose. 

After what felt like hours but was more likely two minutes, Sirius was finally far enough away from the pack to slow down and check on Remus. He did not want to waste time, so he dropped him quickly and shifted back to his wizard form. After a moment’s hesitation, he decided it was better to risk apparating with an injured Remus than risk the death eaters showing up and killing them while he tended to his injuries. 

They were too far away to apparate directly to the small flat, but Sirius had been prepared for that. He knew the risks for each of his attempted rescue missions, and he had a safe middle ground prepared. It was a small camp in the middle of the woods that he knew he could stay at for at least a few hours before risking discovery. They arrived at the camp with a loud crack. He usually took care to apparate silently, but with an unconscious werewolf in tow, he was just lucky that they hadn’t been splinched. 

After casting a few wards to prevent muggles from stumbling across them, he turned to his friend, who was now groaning on the ground. Sirius noticed his hands shaking as he slowly removed Remus’s overcoat to look for wounds. As he went to work, he pushed his fears to the back of his mind, healing the more minor cuts and bruises that spread across Remus’s chest, face, and back. He knew those would heal with dittany and time, but he was unsure what state his friend’s mind would be in. 

It had been two weeks at the hands of the death eaters, and Remus had been tortured more than once from the look of the wounds. Most likely, it was an attempt to gather information, only further solidifying Sirius’s knowledge that Remus would never betray them. He would not have still been undergoing torture when Sirius had arrived if he had given up the information the death eaters were looking for. 

The only question now was where to bring his friend. He wanted to take him directly to St. Mungo’s, but he knew that werewolves were not allowed to seek treatment there since Fenrir had broken in with a group of death eaters two years prior and blown up an entire ward. It was horrible discrimination, but there was nothing Sirius could do about it now. 

Bringing Remus to the order was another option. They had healers that would be willing to heal him, but only if they trusted what Sirius had seen. It would be Sirius’s word against Dumbledore’s. Once more, Sirius was kicking himself for not taking more time to earn the trust of the rest of the order. Peter would help him, but Peter did not know any more about healing than he did. Victoria was still on a mission with the Prewetts, and Arthur was working in the ministry gathering information. He couldn’t risk him by asking for help. 

The realization that he was on his own slowly started to sink in. He couldn’t even bring Remus to Lily. He wasn’t the secret keeper to the cottage in Godric’s Hollow. Even if he apparated Remus directly to the door, he wouldn’t be able to bring him inside. If he wanted to keep his friend away from Azkaban or interrogation at the hands of the order, he had to bring him back to his flat. The severity of the situation had not hit him during his preparations. His entire focus had been on finding Remus, and while he hoped that Remus would stay in the hidden house with him, he had not thought about what he would do if Remus were injured like this. 

Once he had stopped the bleeding and closed Remus’s more severe wounds, Sirius started packing up the camp. A few minutes later, he again picked up his friend, trying not to think about how frail he was, and disapparated, this time directly to his flat. He silenced his wards and set Remus down on his bed before setting up his wards again and transfiguring his couch into a bed for himself. It would only be three more days before they could move into the hidden house and six days before the next full moon.