Chapter 2
Sirius almost collapsed with relief when she heard Remus’ familiar knock and hurried over, wand in hand. She checked the peephole, enchanted to signal the presence of disguise or deception, and glanced back at Harry, who was still asleep. Then she opened the door.
Remus looked as bad as Sirius felt, pale and drawn and smelling strongly of those awful muggle cigarettes she favoured. Her battered backpack was slung over one shoulder, and her lip was bleeding where she’d been chewing it.
“My favourite singer?” Sirius asked out of pure habit.
“Celestina Warbeck, but you tell everyone it’s Alonzo Norris from the Unhappy Giants to save face,” Remus replied instantly. “My favourite album?”
“Surrealistic Pillow by Jefferson Airplane when you’re sober, Rumours by Fleetwood Mac when you’re high because you’re an emotional little shit,” Sirius said, the well-practiced answer coming back to her easily.
“Fuck you, Stevie Nicks makes me feel things,” Remus said, like she said every time. She squeezed past Sirius into the flat and made straight for Harry while Sirius re-secured the door. “Shit. Is he okay?”
“He’s fine – it’s only his forehead that’s hurt and the bleeding stopped pretty fast, he’s not in any danger, I made sure.”
Remus nodded, letting out a long breath. "Okay. In that case." She whipped around and turned her wand on Sirius, who hastily backed up a step with her hands out. "What the ever-living fuck, Sirius?"
"Not so loud, don't wake him," Sirius warned in a low voice, eyes fixed on Remus' wand as if she could anticipate any sudden hexes. "I've told you I can explain and I will, but you have to be quiet. Lily and Prongs are having a lot of sleepless... nights..."
She trailed off and bowed her head as her face crumpled. Remus made a faltering move towards her, lowering her wand slightly, but Sirius waved her off, forcing herself back upright against the tidal wave of grief.
"Were," she corrected herself at last. "Not are. Were."
Remus was blinking rapidly, face tight with that expression she got when she was forcing down all her emotions to focus on the matter at hand. "Everyone's saying you did it," she said. "Everyone. McGonagall told me they cast a fidelius, made you secret keeper." She raised her wand again, aggressive. "How could it have possibly not been you?"
Sirius raised her hands again. "I wasn't the secret keeper. I convinced Lily and James to switch at the last minute, use Peter instead. I thought he'd never be suspected over me - I thought they were going to come after me. I didn't want there to be anything for them to find when they did."
"You're telling me," Remus said slowly. "That Peter willingly betrayed them? That he had the secret, and he gave it up?"
"I'm saying he's been feeding information to the other side for months," Sirius said. "That he was the spy all along."
Remus let out a short, angry laugh. "Merlin's ballsack, you really don't stop, do you? First me, now Pete-"
“No,” Sirius interrupted fiercely. “No. This is different. With you – I wasn’t thinking straight. I was paranoid beyond belief, I was fucking furious with the world, I was so tired of being terrified all the time, and you were just... you were there. It's not an excuse, but it's different. Now? Baldy’s dead. The death-eaters are in retreat. They’re being rounded up as we speak. We’re safer than we’ve been in years. And Pete still hasn’t surfaced.”
“How do I know you didn’t kill him?” Remus countered, moving so she was a barrier between Sirius and Harry, standing tense, ready to spring. “That you didn’t betray James and Lily, then do in Pete to make it look like he’s in the wind?”
Sirius felt like she’d been punched in the gut. “Fuck, Remus-”
“You need to prove me wrong,” Remus told her. “Priori incantatem. Right now.”
“I… yes. Yeah. That’ll work.” Sirius slowly lowered her hands and drew her wand, watching Remus track the movement. She flipped it over and offered it, handle-first. “You do it. That way you know I’m not just conjuring false images.”
Remus nodded, and took the wand. “Get your story straight,” she said. “Tell me what I’ll see.”
Sirius thought hard, casting her mind back. “The last spell I cast… that’d be the disillusionment in Godric’s Hollow? No, wait – the patronus I sent you. The protective spells on the door when I got in. Before that, the disillusionment. Before that, the healing spells I did on Harry. Um. I stunned Hagrid when he tried to take him, that’ll show up.”
“I’m… I’ll ignore that for now. Who will it show if I ask it for the face of the last person you killed?”
“That Dolohov cousin from the skirmish outside Bedford last week,” Sirius said. “I don’t know if McGonagall showed you the report-”
“She did. Okay.”
Remus paused, and then started muttering the necessary words. Greyish wisps of smoke drifted out of the wand, the various symbols denoting different spells, fading away only to be replaced by more. The patronus. The protection spells. The healing spells. The stunning spell. Further and further back – past the Dolohov cousin’s face, past an Avery and two Lestranges from a few days before that, back and back and back into the wand’s history…
“What are you looking for?” Sirius asked.
“The last spell you did that involved Pete,” Remus mumbled, concentrating hard.
Sirius frowned, trying to think what it would have been. It wasn’t until she heard an echo of her own voice, more whispering inside her head than saying the words out loud, that she remembered.
“In bona fides, secretus homini do.”
She'd cast the fidelius on James and Lily's behalf, both of them too busy with Harry, too exhausted and terrified, to be able to focus enough on the complex spellwork at the time. She'd locked the knowledge of their location away from herself in the process, until Peter would share it back to her. If she had been the secret keeper, the wand would only have a record of her officially accepting the role.
Remus paused for a moment, then lowered the wand, staring at the last traces of smoke as they floated away.
"You were the caster."
Sirius nodded.
"Then you couldn't have given it away."
She shook her head.
Remus took a deep breath, and another, and another. She closed her eyes briefly. When she opened them, a lot of the suspicion had left her face. She looked more resigned than anything else.
"Pete was the secret keeper."
“It was the last time I saw him. He was frightened. I thought it was because he was afraid of failing James and Lily. I never – I never thought…”
She broke off, swallowing hard. Remus hesitated, and handed the wand back. Sirius took it and immediately stowed it away.
There was a long pause. Eventually, Sirius cleared her throat. “I really am sorry,” she said. “For accusing you like that. I knew how much it’d hurt you, and I did it anyway.”
Remus didn’t reply. When Sirius chanced a glance at her, it was to see her frowning hard. “I was working on it,” she said at last. “I’d almost forgiven you like, yesterday. I was gonna write or something, but now...”
“But now?”
“Now – I don’t know. It’s a fucking mess again. Nothing’s clear cut. I’m still not – I don't know if I fully believe you yet."
“Then why aren’t you turning me in?”
Remus shrugged. “I figure the only way I know for sure that you’re telling the truth is if I stick around. That and the fact that if it turns out you’re lying after all, I’ll be wanting to kill you myself, and I’ll need to be nearby for that.”
Sirius shivered. Before the war, Remus had always taken care to keep her hard edges hidden under tea and books and jumpers, despite her sharp wit and mildly intimidating level of creativity when it came to profanity. Even now, both of them battle-hardened and cynical, it was sometimes easy to forget how ruthless she could be.
“Okay,” Sirius said quietly. “Okay.”
“Also. This is the only way I can see of keeping Harry safe right now. Obviously he can’t go to the muggles-”
“Glad someone’s seeing sense-”
“I think McGonagall’s got doubts as well, she said she’d talk to Dumbledore.”
Sirius raked a hand through her hair. “Good. We might be able to use that later.”
“Yeah. But for now, I reckon first thing is to get Harry out of here, they’re probably already closing in on us. Also, not being funny but this place is fucking disgusting, like, I don’t know if that stuff on the floor there is marmite or tar or what-”
“Nail varnish, I think. And it’s not like yours was ever much better,” Sirius muttered defensively. “But you’re right. We need to move him, get him out of London. So where do we go?”
Remus stared upwards, thinking. “Any of your relatives got a holiday house standing empty? Rich people do that, yeah? Just like, whole extra houses out in the country or abroad or whatever.”
Sirius shifted uncomfortably, thinking of long childhood summers in the south of France and winters in Switzerland. “None that won’t be neck-deep in wards to keep the likes of us out. A blood traitor and two half-bloods? No chance we’d get over the threshold.”
“Figures. I reckon we start off picking a place at random then, maybe find a hostel for now and sort something more permanent later, once the Order’s calmed their shit.”
“Give them a chance to notice where Pete’s gone and work out what actually happened,” Sirius agreed. “How do we pick?”
“Got a map and a dart?”
“I’ve got…” Sirius started, moving across the room to rummage through her belongings. “A t-shirt from the Eli Imperius UK tour with a map of venues on the back, and… a loose button that’s got a bit sticky.”
Remus considered this for a moment, and nodded. “Yeah, that’ll do.”
“Absolutely downright irresponsible!” Molly Weasley hissed. Her furious presence dominated the makeshift war-room, even while clad in a fluffy pink dressing gown. “You’re saying you’ve not only lost Harry Potter, but that he's currently in the hands of a traitor and a deserter?”
“Sending Hagrid alone was an oversight, I admit,” Dumbledore said. “How is he, by the way?” he added, glancing over at Madam Pomfrey, who was squeezed between Kingsley Shacklebolt and Harriet Vance on the sofa, rubbing her eyes and clutching a mug of heavily stewed tea.
“He’s fine,” she said shortly. “Aside from the fact that he’s passed out on the kitchen floor, that is. Black put a lot of force behind the stunner, probably would have done serious damage on someone smaller, but he’s just unconscious.”
“Still?” Dedalus Diggle asked, confused. “How did he get here if he’s still stunned?”
“We went to the scene when he didn’t appear at Privet Drive,” McGonagall said. “We found him on the ground next to Black’s motorbike and had to apparate away with him before the muggle authorities could arrive and start asking questions.”
“Why hasn’t anyone woken him up? It’s a simple enough spell-”
“If you want to be the one to tell him he failed his mission and deal with the ensuing emotional outburst, be my guest,” Pomfrey snapped. “But I for one am too tired to deal with eleven feet of anxious sobbing and self-deprecation, so you can just-”
“Alright,” McGonagall barked. “Tensions are running high, but there’s no need be jumping down one another’s throats.”
“Quiet down, all of you,” Molly growled. “I can’t stop Arthur offering up my living room as your blasted organisation’s headquarters, but if you wake my children, there’s nothing to stop me sending you right back to your hidey-holes until such a time as you decide to learn a little courtesy.”
“My apologies, Molly,” Dumbledore said smoothly. “I assure you, this is only a temporary measure. Ah – forgive me, but where is your husband, exactly?”
“He’s calming Percy down, George put a slug in his pillowcase and the poor dear’s terrified of things that can move without walking.”
Dumbledore seemed unsure what to do with this information, but he nodded anyway. “Quite.”
“Back to the matter at hand,” McGonagall said, shooting Dumbledore a look. “With regard to Harry’s situation once we track them down-”
“The boy will go to his aunt and uncle, as planned,” Dumbledore said firmly. “He will be safest with family.”
“Albus. That is blatantly untrue,” McGonagall replied. “I’ve been watching those people, I’ve been collecting outside opinions. By all accounts, they are by far the least equipped to care for Harry in the necessary capacity – muggles, and magic-haters on top of that, and that’s even before you consider how they’ll treat Harry based on his ethnicity-”
“The protection he will receive by way of houseroom provided by his last surviving blood relative will surely outweigh any drawbacks,” Dumbledore countered. “My good people, I cannot stress enough to danger Harry Potter is still in. At this point, my primary motive is keeping the child alive.”
“With respect, professor,” Ursula Shacklebolt said from where she was perching on the windowsill next to Caitriona Murray. “You are unaware of the sheer depth and pervasiveness of the bigotry on which muggle society in this country is built. This course of action may keep the child alive, yes. But at what cost? These people will raise him to despise everything he is, everything he came from. You're a smart man, Albus. You must see that sending Harry to his aunt is not an option. You must find another way.”
Dumbledore steepled his fingers and leaned back in his chair with a frown. “All this is immaterial if we cannot find the boy,” he said after a few moments. “Alastor and his team are still searching out the last of the Death Eaters, but they are on the lookout. Is there anything new from Mr Bones’ team?”
“Not since they spoke to Andromeda Tonks,” Eleanor Johnson said, checking her watch. “They were headed back to the city next – their owl is due in around twenty minutes.”
“And Andromeda had no insight into her cousin’s whereabouts?”
“I believe her exact words were… ‘I haven’t seen that silly git since she got plastered and set a niffler loose at my wedding reception, now get off my lawn before I hex you into the next millennium’. Harriet and I are planning on going back once the sun’s up, she might be more amicable when she’s not being woken up in the wee hours by an attempted home invasion.”
“Very good,” Dumbledore nodded. He pulled a wooden box out from his robes and placed it on the table. “I would like the rest of you to start actively searching. In this box are some sneakoscopes I’ve modified to specifically alert the presence of our two fugitives, and some small personal possessions, which I have enchanted with a tracking spell. Divide yourselves into pairs - start with London and then work outwards through the major cities. I’d advise focusing on public areas, places one can take a small child without standing out. Work out who will go where amongst yourselves. Myself and Professor McGonagall will be interviewing possible accomplices, starting with Peter Pettigrew. Oh, and Poppy – I’d appreciate it if you could try and wake Hagrid. We’ll have need of him soon enough.”
Molly raised her eyebrows and put her hands on her hips.
“…Perhaps put a muffling charm over the kitchen first.”