About a year before that fateful Halloween, Sirius met Rose Evans, Lily's muggle cousin. It wasn't supposed to last, and it didn't. Except that he just found a letter in the ashes of the Potter household, and it might change everything ( as soon as he finds out exactly what happened with Wormtail ).
Not intending on continuing it right now, even if Ihope I'll get to it one day, because I already have too many stories started. But the first chapter was written.
Chapter 1: What were the odds?
Sirius just stayed there, amongst the ruins of the Potter cottage.
He stood there, looking at everything, looking at anything, looking at nothing at all.
He stood there, looking without looking.
He was thinking of so many things, too many things, it was as if he thought but couldn't register the thoughts. He couldn't believe James and Lily were dead. He couldn't believe it.
And yet here they were, dead on the floor of this very house that had been their home. James was just here, at his feet, and Lily was up there, in the nursery. They weren't laughing anymore. They weren't moving anymore. They weren't breathing anymore. They were dead. There was no questioning it. They were as dead as one could get.
Voldemort had killed them.
But the bastard hadn't been able to kill Harry.
Sirius wasn't sure of what had happened. All he knew was that Lily had done something, when Voldemort had killed her, and it had saved her son's life. And it had destroyed Voldemort. Sirius wasn't even actually sure it had been a spell, a charm, or just pure magic, such as a wizard's debt. What he knew was that, when Voldemort had finally gone to kill Harry, it had killed the bastard instead.
And it had created blood wards between Lily and her son. As long as the baby would find a home amongst his mother's kin, this home would be protected against all wizards with ill intentions. Because of that, Sirius had agreed to let Hagrid take Harry to Lily's sister when he had arrived at the house. Sirius would go to take the boy back, but only once he'd have eviscerated the traitor. Meanwhile, Harry would be, if not happy, at least safe, with the Dursleys.
The traitor.
Peter.
That rat.
Rage flared in Sirius' mind.
Peter Pettigrew.
He'd kill him with all the viciousness he could muster. He'd kill the traitor. He'd kill the rat.
Sirius tried to calm down. No, he wouldn't kill the rat. He would ask why beforehand. And if it turned out that Peter was indeed the traitor the Order had been searching for for so many months, and if he had actually, not only handed out James', Lily's, and Harry's lives, but done so willingly at that, Sirius would eviscerate the rat. If Peter was a traitor...
Because Sirius knew it was possible that, in fact, Peter had just chickened out after having been found. It could explain why there hadn't been traces of struggle. If it was the case... Sirius would be angry. He would blame Peter. But he wouldn't be completely heartless. He hadn't chosen Peter to be the Secret-Keeper for his bravery. He had chosen him because he was utterly insignificant, and no sane person would have chosen him, hence no one could guess it would be him, the Secret-Keeper.
If Peter had chickened out, or had broken under torture, Sirius wasn't going to kill his friend.
But if Peter had been the traitor...
Sirius looked one last time at his dead best friend, and went upstairs. There, he looked at Lily, and she was as dead as James had been.
A wry sneer escaped Sirius.
Soon, everybody would cheer to their deaths, for they had vanquished He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Some people would cry a bit, but in the end, the good would outdo the bad, and people would be celebrating.
James and Lily wouldn't even get to be tragical.
Their deaths would be no tragedy.
Their deaths had permitted the vanquishing of the Terror of the century.
Such a good thing couldn't be a tragedy.
Sirius looked one last time at the nursery where Harry should have been sleeping, at this hour of the night, but where the boy wasn't anymore. Harry would never get to know his parents. Harry would never get to live as any child should: with their family. Lily would never again take her son in her arms, and James wouldn't look like a fool anymore, as he did each time he came back from work and saw his baby in his wife's arms.
Harry would be a legend. James and Lily would be symbols.
But what about being humans?
Letters scattered on the floor caught Sirius' attention. The young man crouched down.
One was adressed to him, and, oddly, half of the picture that went with it had been torn apart. It was about the toy broom he had gotten for his godson's first birthday. It had never been posted.
Then there were a few letters from Dumbledore, and also one from Alice Longbottom.
Finally, there was one from a woman he had just met a little over a year before. Lily's muggle cousin. Rose Evans. A young woman, two years older than Sirius, who shared her cousin's bright green eyes, but who, apart from that, didn't really look like Lily. Well, she was beautiful too, that was true. But it was all they had in common.
Without really knowing why, Sirius started to read the letter. He wasn't in the mood to be curious, though. But there was something about this woman...
Rose and him had met at a dinner with James and Lily, some time ago. They had surprisingly gotten along very quickly, even if she hadn't known a thing about magic, and so had been kept in the dark. Sirius and her had even ended up spending the night together. Odd, considering he wasn't one to sleep around, even if he flirted from time to time, for the fun, in a way. But with Rose, it had just been.
The morning after that, he was gone, and she had gone on with her life.
If it hadn't been wartime, Sirius might have considered seeing her again. Oddly, he felt it would have worked, with her.
But it had been wartime.
He couldn't grow attached to anyone. And he certainly couldn't grow attached to a muggle. If he had, it would have been as if he had downright invited Death Eaters into her house. They would have punished her for getting close to a wizard, worse, to a pure-blood, and they would have punished him for getting close to a muggle. The punishment being, obviously, death.
Maybe it was because he had felt it could have worked, with Rose Evans, that in the end, despite the situation, despite the dead in the house, despite the facts that everyone in the wizarding wold was probably accusing him of having been the traitor already, Sirius read the letter.
He stared quite a long time at the words.
He had told her, and she had told him, that it was only a one-night thing. That he would leave in the morning, and not come back. That she would forget about him as soon as he'd be out of sight. They had told each other that, as if she had known he couldn't get close to anyone. As if she had seen it, in his gaze, how it couldn't end well if he did.
Rose Evans had been alright with that. He had seen it in her eyes, too.
But apparently, even with all her might, she wouldn't have been able to just dismiss their night together.
Shocked, Sirius eventually reread the words, but out loud.
Lily,
I hope we will see each other again before the end of the year. I still don't know what to do, even if I know what I certainly don't want to do.
You said you could get me in touch with someone whose job is to take care of this kind of things. I hope they will accept to help me, even if I am only a muggle. I wish to keep them, but I have no idea how to help them if they get some magical disease or something. I hope they won't.
But I'm already speaking of that, and I haven't even properly told you, have I?
They're triplets. They were born the 3rd of May. I had never intended to be a mother, and now I get three in a row. It's funny, actually. I tried to name them according to their father's name, he told me it's a family thing, but I couldn't find a third name from a star that sounded good, so... The girl is Hyades, and the boys are Antares and Amalric. I'm pretty sure Antares will look everything like his father. If anything, he got his hair and eyes color, though the hair seems to be a bit wavy, just like mine. Hyades look much like Antares, but she got our green eyes, and her hair is as straight as a ruler. I'm positive the mole under her lip is mine. Amalric's hair is brown, but he has these silver eyes of his father, it's incredible when the two boys look at me at the same time. His nose is mine, though, and I have the feeling his jaw will be just like our fathers' when he grow up.
I spend hours looking for the similarities between them.
Please, promise me you won't change your mind and tell the father. Not yet, at least. He didn't want to be tied to me, and if you tell him too soon, when they are still this young, he might think he absolutely has to be there for them.
Rose.
Sirius almost choked as he read the last lines.
Triplets. Two with silver eyes. Certainly conceived in September 1980. Two of which with stars as first names.
What were the odds that he wasn't the father?
They were non-existant.
He had to see Rose.
Something moved downstairs. Sirius heard a voice.
No.
He had to find Peter. He would go to Rose after he'd have seen Peter. He couldn't go to her before he knew if it was his own fault that his best friend and her cousin were both dead. He wouldn't go to her if it was the case. He couldn't be a father, if it turned out that he had chosen a traitor to fool Voldemort, and so had ended up being the fool himself. He couldn't impose that on Rose and on their children.
He had to find Peter.
Sirius took the letter and put it in his cloak, unwilling to let anyone get their hands on it. He didn't want people to know he possibly had two sons and a daughter, especially when he wasn't even sure he could get himself out of the trap he had created for himself by being a dummy and telling no one about it.
If Peter was a traitor, he certainly woudn't admit it easily. It would be so easy to make it all fall back on Sirius. After all, Sirius was a Black.
If Peter was another victim, it would be alright. Peter could tell them he had been the Secret-Keeper.
Sirius paled.
If Peter was another victim...
He hadn't thought of it.
What if the Death Eaters had found him, tortured him to get the secret... and then killed him? What if they had killed Peter? What if Peter was dead? His friend wouldn't be able to testify for him, but that wasn't even the point. What if Peter was dead? What if they had killed Peter?
Pictures appeared in Sirius' mind, and Sirius paled even more. There were some in which Peter's body had been discarded in a dump. There were some in which the body was unrecognizable, disfigured and bloody. There were some in which Peter just laid there, seemingly sleeping, with no wounds on his body, but with his eyes open and unseeing, killed by an Avada Kedavra.
He hadn't even thought about that.
Maybe they had killed Peter after they had gotten the location. In fact, if Peter wasn't a traitor and had been caught, it was the likely outcome.
A second voice was heard from the ground floor, and Sirius had to get back on track. He couldn't let himself be captured at this point. He had to find Peter. No matter in what state.
He wasn't sure which state he dreaded the most: Peter alive, but a traitor, or Peter loyal, but dead?
He didn't want Peter to be dead, but if his friend was alive, then it was more than likely that he was the traitor. And if Peter was the traitor, then Sirius'd rather see him dead than alive.
Sirius apparated out of the house. The wards had fallen down when Voldemort had gone BOOM!, and he could apparate. What he couldn't do, was to be caught by whoever it was that had entered the house. Especially since there was a high probability it was an Auror that had been ordered to get him into custody. After all, everyone thought he was the traitor.
As he left the ruins in a loud crack, two wizards ran up to the first floor, wands in hand, and fairly certain that it had been Sirius Black up there.