Chapter 3
Lily waves goodbye as Peter, the last to drunkenly leave, shuffles out the door. James lets it swing shut, and turns to her. Most of his bouncing levity has evaporated, but he gives her a sweet, sweet smile. Oh, she loves his sweetness, the goodness of this man. She stands and realizes how the wine has impacted not only her thoughts but her fine motor skills.
“Dear, let me--” James starts, reaching out, and she leans into his arms.
“I love you, James, but that was not as promised.” She snorts a little. “What a miserable group we were.”
James looks at her in shock. “I thought it went splendidly, for the most part. Until the end, I suppose.”
“No, James, no--look. Look. Everyone around that table wanted to be somewhere else.”
His wounded expression only increases her affection for him as he responds. “Not me, Lily. I’m sorry you felt that way. Sirius and I were having fun, and Frank and Alice, I think.”
“Hm. Well, maybe it’s just me. Miserable bitch.”
“Lily. Please. Let’s...let’s get ready for bed.”
“Okay, handsome,” she grins, aiming a kiss somewhere around his mouth and making that approximate target. He gently guides her up the stairs, and she plops herself on the bed without changing. How lovely, she thinks, to have a bed and a lover to share it with. She tries making eyes at James, but he’s busy changing. She supposes she ought to, too.
“Lily…” he starts. “I need to tell you what Sirius said.”
She groans. Nothing to kill the mood like dragging Sirius into the bedroom. As James turns to face her again, she acquiesces when she sees the concern on his face. Propping up her head in her hand, she tells him, “I have to say I take a pretty dim view of Sirius, from my perspective, or Remus’s perspective, I guess.”
James laughs darkly and lies down next to Lily. “Me too. He thinks…” He squeezes his eyes shut. “He thinks Remus is the spy.”
Lily blinks slowly. Remus’s distress and confusion earlier begins to make sense, Sirius’s behavior explained by his paranoid suspicion. “What a...what an arsehole.” It’s the only thing she can think to say. James looks so pained. She knows that, barring a marauder actually being the spy, one accusing another of it, such dissolution of the brotherhood, is the worst thing James could imagine. This must absolutely wrench him. “I’m sorry,” she says more softly, trying to force herself sober.
He breathes deeply. “Me too. I can’t understand it, other than to chalk it up to...well, you know Sirius isn’t always all there .” And that’s always James excuse, Lily thinks. He has excuses for everyone: Sirius is mad, Remus is troubled by his past, Peter is lonely. She wonders how he excuses her poor behavior.
“Remus is a complete and utter wreck,” she says, trying to imbue it with weight. “I’ve never seen him so bad.” James nods slowly.
“At least Alice and Frank seem well,” he says halfheartedly. It was true, as it always was.
“Not Peter, though.”
“No, not Peter.”
She carefully studies the quilt. “And us?”
James sighs and strokes Lily’s hair, and she leans into the touch. “Us?” he repeats. “What do you think? Are we well?”
Oh, she wants to be, so very badly. She thinks about their sleeping child, about their dinner party, about the two of them falling asleep in each others’ arms. All sound idyllic, but the reality of it is far messier. Finally she shuts her eyes and buries her face in the quilt. “I’m not. Marlene’s not.”
James’s face probably fills with sorrow, but she’s very intentionally not looking. He finally responds. “Lily...I wish I could…”
“I know,” she mumbles. “I know you do, that you would just...fix it all. Change my life.” He would try, if he could, but she would probably never let him. If there were a spell to cast to fix her life, and only James Potter could cast it, she would suffer on.
She shifts so that she’s staring into his eyes, so close to her own. “I love you, James. I’m sorry that this is how it has to be.”
He kisses her gently. “I love you too. Truly.” Maybe tomorrow, Lily thinks, she can change everything. Maybe she’ll find something in this house that months of solitude have kept hidden, something that will open up the world like a gate to a garden.
___________
“So, what do you make of it all?” Alice asks when Frank walks back into the kitchen. He’s just put the still-sleeping Neville to bed, and Alice, gesturing to a hot cup of cocoa, invites him to sit at the table with her.
Frank makes a noncommittal noise and sips on his cocoa. “Delicious, thank you so much. Well, I was quite worried about Remus and Peter. Sirius seemed about as he always is. James seemed alright, but Lily...I was surprised, really, that she seemed so gloomy.”
Alice raises an eyebrow. “It has been four months since she’s been able to regularly leave the house, come and go as she pleases. Sure, she gets out sometimes, but under strict supervision. And she’s been told her infant son has a target on his back.” They exchange glances. “I am not shocked that Lily is depressed. Think about her at school, Frank.”
He shakes his head and smiles. “What a whip she was. Lily and Alice...and Marlene. Running around just inside the line of acceptable behavior, kicking everyone else’s arses in class and always aiming higher.”
“Jesus, I miss her,” Alice whispers. She lets Frank comfort her, because he is the one from whom she can hide nothing. She takes a gulp of cocoa and burns her tongue. “Shit,” she whispers, and Frank tries not to laugh. “I’m also concerned about Peter and Remus, though. Peter drank a lot . And Remus had almost no share in the conversation. I wonder if he was ill.”
“He was anxious as hell, dear. I think if he could have disappeared entirely, he would have. Do you know anything about his missions?” She shakes her head. “Me neither. I wonder about them, though…”
Alice nods thoughtfully. “Tell me more from your side, Frank.” That Remus was ill at ease she had noticed, but Frank gave her new information.
“I think...I think Peter is the one to be most worried about. He’s so changed . His entire energy is different, the way he holds himself. He used to aim to please, and he was endearing, wasn’t he? You at least could tell he saw you in a room. Tonight, he was acting like no one was there but him, even when he was talking to us.”
“Hm.” Alice nods. “I suppose you must be right, but...what do we do? What do we even think it means?”
Frank furrows his brow as he looks straight down. “Well, of course it could just be the war, the way it’s getting to everyone.”
She knows that tone. “Or?”
He sighs and stands, looking out the window at the inky night. “Or. Or, it could be him. He could be… you know.”
Alice knows exactly what he’s implying. “Frank,” she snaps her head around. “Do you think so?” It feels like a suspicion she would have had before Frank would. But perhaps the knowledge he gleaned was simply the right data set to point to such an absurd conclusion.
He runs his hands through his hair. “I don’t know, I don’t know. And I hate that I said it, I hate that I thought it. But there you have it. He has the right information, he was acting like he had something to be ashamed of, and I just have a feeling. It’s not proof, it’s not actionable. We can’t just write to Dumbledore, We had a dinner party and now we know who the spy is. I don’t think we should talk about it, even. But...something to be mindful of. To keep a watch, maybe.”
Alice takes a measured sip. “I never would have thought that between the two of us, you’d be the first one to accuse a friend.” He turns to her, hurt in his face, but sees the mirth in her eyes and softens.
“Merlin, Alice. We can’t be joking about this.”
She stands, approaches him, and wraps her arms around his shoulders. “If you don’t let me joke about things I’m filing for divorce immediately.” He returns her grin. In their house, in their kitchen, in this moment, Alice feels safe and even happy. She can’t change the deaths that are hounding them, she can’t change her friends’ behavior for them, she can’t change Frank’s mind. But some things don’t need changing, perhaps. Some things are fine exactly as they are, and kissing your husband in a kitchen that smells of cocoa is certainly one of them.
________________
Sirius has been silent since they left the Potters’ house. Not just silent, Remus thinks, but subdued. Sirius is capable of making quite a lot of noise even when he’s quiet, noise in Remus’s head, but now he seems...still. Thoughtful.
They walk into the flat and Remus heads to the kitchen to make a cup of tea. The knot that’s been living in his stomach is comfortable here, familiar territory: act like things are okay and worry like hell; ignore that Sirius is ignoring you; ignore him right back; make tea.
This has become routine. Remus prepares himself tea, and Sirius runs up their water bill in the shower or goes to a bar or goes to sleep. But not tonight, apparently, because Sirius has followed him into the kitchen and hopped up to sit on the counter, and Remus wonders if this is it, the inevitable. Masking his fear, he lifts an eyebrow. “Would you like a cup?”
Sirius shrugs. “Sure.” Remus can feel the other man’s eyes on him as he reaches for the mugs, and he feels about fifteen again, warring with himself and pretending not to. He hands Sirius his tea, and the other man immediately sets it down. “Moony,” he says so softly it might as well be a whisper. “I’m sorry.”
Remus doesn’t immediately respond, because he’s not sure how to. He leans back against the wall opposite Sirius and takes a long sip of his tea, staring at the ground. What, exactly, is he sorry about? Should Remus be sorry, too? It’s been so long since Sirius has called him Moony.
Finally, Remus looks up again, and Sirius seems scared, which makes Remus melt a little. Why is this always the case: Sirius apologizes, and Remus ends up being the one who feels guilty? Now doesn’t feel like the time to change an old pattern, though, so Remus gives in and responds, though half of him wants to leave the room without a word. “What are you sorry for?” he asks, giving Sirius an opening.
Sirius takes it. “Everything, this whole summer, everything. Whatever I do next. Tonight. Yesterday.” He breathes in deeply. “I’m sorry for not talking to you. I’m sorry for my mind.”
Remus sets his mug down carefully and steps towards Sirius. Sitting on the counter, his face is just about level with Remus’s, and Remus carefully runs a hand through Sirius’s hair. It’s been too long since he’s felt he could do this and not worry. He’s still worrying, perhaps, but Sirius has cracked something that was forming between them, hopefully before it was too late, and Remus is willing to help. “Padfoot…” He wonders when, if not now, the thing in his gut will sit still, because for a moment aren’t things all as they should be? Isn’t this the right way?
Sirius buries his head in Remus’s neck and takes a shaky breath. “I don’t know what’s going on in my brain. I hate it. I hate it.” Remus hates it, too, sometimes, that brain of Sirius’s, with all its twisting roads that lead right off the edge of the map. With determined conviction, Sirius adds, “I don’t hate you. I don’t . I love you.”
They never stopped saying they loved each other, over the months, but they stopped saying it with any truth. Remus isn’t sure he can reciprocate, right now, but he knows that somewhere he still feels it, so he gently lifts Sirius’s head and kisses him softly.
Sirius responds hesitantly at first, but then wraps his arms around Remus’s waist and brings him closer. Remus lets everything else in his mind fade out in the face of the immediate. At some point he pulls Sirius off the counter, reemphasizing the difference in height between the two, and from somewhere in the back of his throat he tells Sirius, “I miss you.”
Sirius’s fingers carefully descend down Remus’s shirt, exposing his chest button by button, and Remus mirrors the action far more impatiently. They look at each other in a way they haven’t in months. As his eyes drink in Sirius, he feels his stomach twist again. His fingers float towards the other man’s ribs. “Jesus. You’re so thin,” he whispers. How has he not noticed Sirius wasting away? How could he have missed this atrophy?
Sirius, meanwhile, is tracing a network of scabs, not yet scarred over, that cross most of Remus’s stomach. As each absorbs what their silence has let them miss, Remus is flooded with love for Sirius, and so, since the other man cracked the wall, he pushes it down and says, with truth and feeling, “I love you.” Sirius looks up sharply, something hard or scared in his eyes, so Remus repeats himself. “I love you.”
It doesn’t change much, Remus thinks, not really, but maybe it’s enough to have this, now, just for tonight. Their eyes meet for a long moment and each man is still holding something back, hiding in a corner, but they close their eyes and Remus tries to silence his fear in Sirius’s arms.
__________
It’s not enough, it’s never enough, the cigarette burnt out too quickly, the alcohol burning off like it’s on a stove, the streetlights burning a hole in his eyes. Peter doesn’t know where he’s going, this is too hard, it’s too much to ask of a man to eat naan and pudding with his best friends no with his childhood friends no with the people he will destroy.
He will destroy them.
And why? There must be a good reason, he knows there is because he’s had this conversation with himself a hundred times. He will not die, he will not be left behind. He will not be the one to take the blame and nothing else. He will destroy them.
Everything is in motion already, there’s almost nothing left to do, just the last push. Sirius doesn’t trust anyone but James now, Remus jumps at his own shadow. James trusts everyone still, which is how Peter needs it, trust is such a funny thing and no one knows that like Peter.
Peter stops, leans over the embankment, looks at the river like he’s looking at a dream. No one in the world knows he’s in London. No one knows anything .
There are good reasons for everything Peter has ever done. This is the same. Human nature, boy, preservation, that’s just evolution for you. Who said that to him? Too long ago to remember but it must have left an impression. Peter Pettigrew will not be destroyed.
He will destroy them, and it’s not a good thought, but they have already destroyed themselves. So perhaps what comes next won’t be his fault.