Here's chapter 12! Amazing how fast I can get these done when school isn't making me want to die (the American education system). I hope you guys like this one, I know I left you with a cliffhanger last time so I wanted to get it posted as soon as possible! All feedback is welcome :)
THE MINISTRY OF MAGIC
July 1, 1988
"No! NO!" Sirius roared, using every ounce of strength he had to try and fight the two Aurors flanking him. He was battling tooth and nail to try and get out of their vice-like grasp, and he thrashed around so much that a third Auror had to come to the other two's aid.
"Keep that up and it'll be straight to the Dementors with you," growled the one called Abbey, and Sirius spat in his face. They were trying to force him into a Ministry holding cell; Remus had already been tossed in the neighboring one and sat on the cot with his face in his hands, too shaken to even resist, but he looked up when he heard Sirius cry out in pain and saw that one of the Aurors—Remus realized with a jolt that it was one of the pair that had come to Florean's shop to drop off wanted posters—had punched Sirius hard in the gut.
"I—won't—go—back!" Sirius was shouting, twisting his arms all over the place to the point that Remus was worried he might dislocate both his shoulders. He even tried to bite one of the Aurors as she reached across his body to unlock the cell door, and as soon as she got it open, Sirius was thrust hard onto the concrete floor. He scrambled to his feet and charged forward, but Abbey slammed the door just in time and Sirius could only shake the iron bars in fury as the three Aurors stalked down the hall, up a set of stairs, and out of sight.
With a roar of frustration, Sirius began frantically looking for any way out; he even tried picking the lock with his fingernail, but recoiled after he received an actual electrical shock, likely from some protective spell put in place to prevent escape. The cells were, in a word, barbaric; they looked like they'd been plucked right out of the brig of an old pirate ship. All of the walls were simply made up of vertical bars, which gave the occupants absolutely no privacy, but ensured they could always be seen.
"Sirius," Remus said weakly, noticing that Sirius had started repeatedly throwing his weight against the door to no avail, flinching every time he set off the enchantments. "Sirius, stop it, you'll hurt yourself."
"This is your fault," Sirius hissed, suddenly turning on Remus. "'We can trust Mary, Mary's my friend,'" he mimicked Remus's voice. "You should have Obliviated that bitch when you had the chance."
Remus felt sick, both because of what Mary had done, and because Sirius was absolutely right.
"I'm sorry, I…didn't think she would tell," Remus said dumbly, his voice weak and whispery. And she hadn't told, not for weeks after she found out Sirius was hiding out in Remus's flat. He thought she would keep her silence, afraid that if she went to authorities, she'd be arrested as an accomplice when they found out she lent Remus the money to visit Sirius in the first place.
"She works for the Ministry, you idiot!" Sirius spat. He was seething; Remus hadn't seen him this angry since he and James had their biggest row in fifth year.
"And who was it who went along with it all? You were the one who let her see you," Remus tried to argue back, but he knew he was in the wrong.
"I had no choice! You gave me no choice; she was going to curse you if I didn't come out of that room!"
Remus had stood up and paced twice around his tiny cell, then sat back down on the threadbare cot again, rubbing his temples.
"There's got to be some way to get out of this. As soon as it hits the Prophet that they got you—got us—everyone will want a trial, and we, we can explain—" Sirius cut Remus off with manic laughter.
"Everyone wants a trial," he said softly, shaking his head in anger, "no, everyone wants me dead! They've already accepted what they think happened as what actually happened. They'll want me to have already gotten the Kiss by the time they find out, and it'll likely be the same for you!" Sirius seemed to have finally exhausted his anger—or maybe the thought of facing dementors again simply drained him—because he, too, sat down, but on the concrete floor, as his cell didn't even have a mattress.
He looked around morosely; as much as he didn't want to think it, he was almost certain the interior of the cell and the dark, mildew-covered corridor outside it would be the last thing he'd ever see. He simply couldn't think of any way out of it this time; escaping blind dementors as a dog was one feat, but to somehow get out of a highly enforced holding cell and work his way out of the Ministry of Magic without giving away his disguise and without a wand, that was impossible. Furthermore, Remus was now going to have to pay the price for Sirius's crime, which made him all the more miserable. The one blessing of being jailed at the Ministry and not Azkaban was that at least here, there were no dementors posted five feet away.
"If we make it out of here, I'll kill her," Sirius said through gritted teeth.
"She was scared, Sirius," Remus said pleadingly. As livid as he was with Mary, he also had a knack for putting himself in others' shoes, which was a skill Sirius never possessed.
"Oh, sure! It definitely had nothing to do with the reward on my head," Sirius said sarcastically. "Think, Remus, you borrowed two hundred galleons from her and only paid a few back, and the Ministry's offering a thousand just for information about me. She's probably sitting on a very pretty pile right about now; she wanted to turn us in."
Remus hadn't thought about that. Then, the memory of Mary on his doorstep, sobbing out her apologies as the Aurors barged in, made him certain she'd been conflicted over the decision.
"They've got to ask her why, at the trial," Remus said in what he hoped was a hopeful tone of voice.
"There won't be a trial, don't you get it yet?! The Wizengamot made that pretty clear the first time around."
"Then why are we here, and not in Azkaban, or already Kissed? And…and you didn't have me back then; I can testify, and they'll—"
"You're in a cell just like mine, Moony," said Sirius darkly. "Your word's not going to do much."
"Dumbledore could—"
If looks could kill, Remus would have been dead from the icy glare Sirius gave him.
"I never want to hear that man's name again. He could have prevented all of this." With that, he slumped back against the rear wall of his cell, the iron bars digging uncomfortably into his back. Remus stared at Sirius with a mixture of pity and disappointment.
"This isn't like you," he said. "Why aren't you fighting back?"
"I was so close to him," Sirius whispered, which wasn't at all what Remus expected to hear. "Could have reached out and laid a paw on his shoulder." He extended his arm and grasped at thin air, his eyes glassy and unfocused. He couldn't believe that only hours ago, he was staring his godson in the face, naively thinking that maybe soon, they could be a proper family…
Remus got up and sat as close to the shared wall as he could without getting zapped by the protective spells.
"Then don't just sit there and give up. If you want to see Harry again, sitting here just waiting for the Dementor's Kiss is pretty damn counterproductive."
"Even if we did get a trial…he won't want to know me. A disgraced ex-convict for a godfather? I sure as hell wouldn't want that, and I don't expect Harry to."
Remus shook his head; he'd just imagined a teenage Sirius finding out he had a long-lost member of the family who'd had to fight to be cleared after years in prison. That Sirius was beaming, begging his own imaginary convict godfather to tell the story of his escape again.
"Yes, you would've. You would have thought it was the coolest thing in the world to have an ex-prisoner in the family."
"Yeah, well I'm not fifteen anymore, am I? And in case you've forgotten, my family's already got criminals. They're just not innocent." Sirius fell silent and turned away from Remus, who was at a loss for words.
Sirius had done a fairly good job keeping his own guilt at bay during the time he spent with Remus. Having one of his best friends back made it much easier to differentiate between who was to blame—Peter—and who had just made a bad judgment call. Still, sitting in the holding cell was far too reminiscent of the years he spent in Azkaban constantly reliving James and Lily's death, and perpetually blaming himself for the role he played in it.
GODRIC'S HOLLOW
July 23, 1981.
"Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket, never let it fade away," Sirius sang softly as he paced around Harry's nursery. He cradled the little boy against his chest, bouncing him softly in his arms as Harry blinked tiredly and occasionally made half a sleepy effort to point at the tiny plastic owls on his crib mobile. The magical figurines flapped their wings lazily as they flew in a circle, each one representing a different breed.
"Catch a falling star and put it in your pocket, save it for a rainy day," Sirius continued with the lullaby as Harry nestled his head into the hollow between Sirius's neck and collarbone. Sirius smiled and kissed the top of Harry's head gently as Harry blinked slowly one, twice, three times, and then fell fast asleep in his godfather's arms. Still humming the tune, Sirius caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror next to Harry's changing table and saw Lily in the reflection, leaning against the doorframe behind him and smiling softly.
He turned and grinned as Lily crossed the room.
"I don't know how you do it," she whispered as she carefully lifted her son from Sirius's arms and placed him down in the crib. "He'll fuss all day, but the second you get here, he's calm," she shrugged in tired wonder and made sure Harry's stuffed hippogriff was within reach of his tiny hands.
Sirius rested his forearms on the railing of the crib and reached down to try and smooth the mop of black hair atop Harry's head. "Just part of my job," he said quietly so as not to wake Harry from the slumber he'd finally fallen into.
"He loves you."
"He loves you, too, Lil," Sirius assured her. "All babies make a fuss; Harry just…does it a lot."
Lily sighed and leaned her head on Sirius's shoulder and they both chuckled as Harry gurgled in his sleep and drooled a little. Lily wiped the spittle from his chin with her thumb and with a mischievous twinkle in her eye, she wiped it off on Sirius's shirt, much to his dismay. After Sirius kissed his fingers and pressed them on Harry's forehead one last time, the pair quietly descended the stairs and rejoined James in the living room, where he'd nearly fallen asleep on the couch himself. It was exhausting, trying to raise a baby who wasn't even a year old yet when she and James were hardly old enough to call themselves real adults. She didn't know what they would do without Sirius, who seemed to be the only person who could calm Harry down on nights such as this when he just wouldn't stop screaming.
"I think you three have a bargain," Lily joked and cocked her head towards James, who jerked out of his doze with a start. "Harry knows how bad this one here gets cabin fever and makes a ruckus so his dad's best mate just has to come visit."
James grinned sleepily and rubbed his eyes beneath his glasses.
"Thanks again for coming, mate," he told Sirius. Lily came up behind the couch and started massaging her husband's shoulders, and James covered one of her hands with his own. "We love the kid, but Merlin, it's hard to get him to bed. Guess he just likes your voice," James finished, speaking the last words through a tremendous yawn.
"Any time," Sirius replied as he took a seat in one of the armchairs near the fireplace. "Anything else I can do?"
Lily shook her head as she returned from the kitchen with three porcelain cups and a pot of tea. "You'll be doing more than enough for us already."
The three of them exchanged a meaningful glance; they all knew what Lily meant. Although James and Lily had been in hiding for nearly a year, Dumbledore had only recently advised them that now the situation was so dire that their best hope of staying hidden was to use the Fidelius Charm. Of course, James had insisted that Sirius should be their Secret Keeper, to which Dumbledore reluctantly agreed, and they were set to perform the charm the very next day.
"I've been meaning to talk to you about that," Sirius said after a pause. He shook his head no when Lily offered him a sugar cube for his tea. She and James looked at Sirius questioningly, awaiting further explanation. "I don't think I should do it."
James looked ten times more awake than he had a moment ago. "Why not?" he asked. Lily had a mixture of fright and suspicion etched on her face.
"It's obvious."
"No it's not, explain it to us," Lily said shrilly, and Sirius quickly backtracked.
"No, I mean the choice is obvious. Prongs—everyone knows I'm your best mate, we'd always be partners on missions, hell, I've even helped you two fight Voldemort off before. And my cousin Bellatrix is practically his right-hand man, er, woman now; if she hasn't already told him how well I know the both of you, it's only a matter of time before she does."
Sirius paused to let his words sink in, and he could tell they were.
"If you don't want to switch, I'm still as committed as I've ever been and I am fully prepared to die for all three of you if it comes to it," Sirius said, and he glanced towards the stairs leading up to Harry's nursery.
"Don't say that," Lily cut in, sounding tearful.
"I am. Although I have to admit I'm not too keen on the idea," he said more lightheartedly, and that got Lily to smile, although weakly. "I just think that if you really want to fool Voldemort and stay safe, you should use someone he'd never expect. Someone he wouldn't even consider in the first place."
"I don't like it," Lily said after a hefty pause. "The charm is already so tricky; letting more people know we're using it would only make it weaker. Besides, who would do it? Dumbledore's too obvious, I don't trust Frank or Alice," Lily said fervently, and James reached over to squeeze her hand. Sirius shot Lily a sympathetic look; ever since they'd heard that the prophecy concerning Harry could have just as easily been meant for the Longbottoms' son, Lily had been quite cold and loathsome towards them. She knew it was childish, that it wasn't their fault, but the way she felt was also understandable, as a mother who just wanted to protect her family. Lily shook her head again. "Remus could, but—"
"Not Remus," Sirius interrupted sharply, his grip tightening involuntarily around his teacup.
"Stop it," Lily snapped uncharacteristically, and she glared at Sirius from the couch; he and James had had a huge row a couple of months prior over Remus's loyalty, which Lily had found herself right in the middle of. James thought it was insulting and outrageous that Sirius would suspect Remus just because he wasn't around most of the time; Sirius, on the other hand, wouldn't budge and remained convinced that their own best friend wasn't trustworthy anymore. "We already agreed not to let him visit and that's bad enough, just—don't start, Padfoot."
Sirius felt his jaw twitch, but he remained silent. He knew better than to argue with Lily when she used his nickname.
"If we switch," she said slowly a moment later after the tension in the room had simmered down, "and I'm not saying we will…who did you have in mind?"
"Wormtail," said Sirius stonily. Lily dropped her spoon with a clatter.
"You're mad," she said. "I mean—I love him, and I know he's our friend, but do you really think he'd be able to handle it?"
"That's exactly why he can, because people think he can't," Sirius explained somewhat impatiently. "Alright, so he's not a fighter, but he doesn't have to be. We'll bluff it—Voldemort will still assume it's me, that's fine, I can take care of myself. Wormtail just needs to keep his mouth shut and his head down and that's what he does already."
James had kept silent the entire time, with his elbows on his knees and his hands folded under his chin as he stared contemplatively at a frayed spot on the carpet.
"James?" Lily asked weakly, her hand resting on his thigh.
James remained quiet for another moment, mulling over the tumultuous thoughts flying around his brain. Finally, he took a deep breath and spoke, very slowly, as if each word could be a land mine that would blow the entire conversation up in their faces.
"Are you sure about Remus? I mean, are you absolutely positive, Padfoot?"
"Not this again," Lily said. She was exhausted enough already; going into yet another debate over whether Remus was a spy would just about do her in.
Sirius nodded curtly. "You wanted to know where he's been. I know. I think I suspected it all along, but Dumbledore finally confirmed it—Prongs, Dumbledore sent him to parlay with werewolves up north, try and get them to fight for us and not Voldemort. But Greyback's still at large and Remus has been with them for months now. Did it ever occur to you he might still be gone because he's not on our side anymore? Remember the McKinnons and Benjy?"
Lily stifled a sob and James clenched his hand in a fist. During a last-minute Order meeting, Marlene McKinnon and her family, along with Benjy Fenwick, had been assigned an ambush operation. It should have been simple—all they had to do was take a bit of Polyjuice Potion and sneak into one of the pubs in Knockturn Alley, where Death Eaters were known to meet. No one besides the Order knew who was involved, but by the end of the week all of them were dead, and Remus never came to another meeting.
"He's a spy, I know it," said Sirius firmly. "And using Wormtail would send him off-track, too."
He could see Lily glaring at him out of the corner of his eye—she was always close with Remus—but Sirius kept his eyes locked with James's, and after a very tense moment, James nodded. Lily swore under her breath, but when Sirius looked her in the eye, he could see that she understood that Remus simply wasn't worth the risk.
"Have you talked to Wormtail yet?" James asked.
"Before running it by you two?" Sirius said, sounding like he thought the idea was rather funny. "I would never do that. I'll go straight to him when I leave here."
"You wouldn't give him a heads-up, and yet you trust him with our lives. With Harry's life," Lily said sternly.
"Lily," James said quietly, a warning tone in his voice. "Sirius is right."
Sirius nodded his thanks to James. "Think of it this way, now he'll actually have something useful to do, so he'll be eager to commit to it." The three of them shared a laugh at that.
"We'll have to explain everything to him. He can't just know the secret, he's got to know exactly how the charm works, and what's at stake," Lily said, and James and Sirius both nodded.
"And we'll let Dumbledore in on it too, just in case," Sirius added.
"No," said James.
"Sorry?"
"No telling Dumbledore. Lily's right, the Fidelius Charm's complicated. The fewer people that know we're using it, let alone changing things around, the better. We tell Wormtail and no one else."
Lily squeezed James's hand; her heart was beating incredibly fast, and it increased as she thought of Harry asleep in the nursery, blissfully unaware of the severity of the situation at hand. She prayed to every god she could think of that he'd remain ignorant and safe.
"You can still be here when we do the charm with Wormy tomorrow, Sirius," Lily said. "You'd be a secondary Secret-Keeper—"
"Lily, that's risky," Sirius said earnestly.
"No, the way it works, you won't be able to tell anyone where we are even if you wanted to, because only the actual Secret-Keeper can divulge it—but this way you'll still be able to visit," she said with a loving glance at James, who looked like he could cry happy tears upon realizing he wouldn't have to give up seeing his best mate. After all, Merlin only knew how long they'd have to be in hiding.
"Alright, that's settled then," Sirius said. James and Lily nodded and stood up as Sirius rose to leave. They crushed together in a three-way hug through which they comforted both themselves and each other. Sirius sighed and spoke again. "I'll tell Peter tonight and we'll do the charm tomorrow like we planned. I promise, this is the right move."
MINISTRY HOLDING CELL
July 3, 1988.
Remus and Sirius were nearing the end of their third day of imprisonment, deep in the bowels of the Ministry of Magic building. They were fed well, which Remus saw as a good sign, but Sirius still spent most of his time in silence, curled up in the corner while he picked at his food and sulked. Though he still wished Sirius would show some gumption, Remus couldn't blame him for his sour mood.
It was late; Remus guessed it was ten or eleven o'clock based on the amount of moonlight he could just barely see pouring into a tiny slit window at the end of the stone corridor. Sirius was fast asleep, snoring lightly in his corner. The witch who came to deliver their meals never said a word, but she'd taken slight pity on Sirius and given him a blanket on the second day, but he still had no bed.
Remus tried his best to sleep, but it was impossible to stop thinking about all the what-ifs that were to come. A number of witches and wizards in official Ministry robes had come down to his and Sirius's cells, but they never spoke, only watched and murmured to each other too quietly for Remus or Sirius to hear. Day in and day out, Remus tried desperately to pick up any hint that might tell him whether they would get a trial or whether this cell was just a quick stop on the way to a much worse fate.
As he lay with his thin pillow propped behind his back, Remus agonized over every interaction he'd had with Mary since he visited Sirius. He couldn't think of a single instance where he ever thought she was truly suspicious of him, and he saw the image of her crying as she turned them in every time he closed his eyes.
Suddenly, and he was surprised Sirius hadn't heard it too and awoken, Remus heard footsteps coming their way. They were getting closer, faster, and Remus was about to shout to Sirius to wake the hell up, someone's coming, but then who should appear out of the shadows but Mary Macdonald herself.
"What the hell are you doing here?" Remus snarled, keeping his voice low so as not to wake Sirius. If he were to open his eyes and see her there, there was no telling what he'd do.
Mary looked like hell—her usually bouncy curls hung limp at her shoulders, she was pale even in the near-darkness, and the bags under her eyes rivaled Remus's.
"I wanted to apologize," she said, sounding downright terrified. "I'm not supposed to be down here, but my Ministry card gives me access everywhere…bit of an oversight there," she said with a nervous laugh.
Remus scoffed. "Unless you've come to break us out, you're better off turning around." He started to turn away.
"I know why you did it," she blurted out, and her eyes widened; she hadn't meant to speak so loudly, and she covered her mouth as though that would help trap the sound. "I know why you helped him."
"Mary," Remus said, getting more and more frustrated with her by the second, "I didn't help him escape. I only helped afterwards because he's innoc—"
"You didn't just lose James and Lily that night," she whispered, cutting him off. "You lost him too, that's why it hurt you so much. Not only was he gone, but he betrayed your best friends too…I don't blame you, by the way, for how you were afterwards. That combination would hurt anyone, but you weren't the only one who missed them. You weren't the only one hurting. James and Lily were my friends, too," Mary said tearfully. "I should have known the second you told me you were visiting that you never moved on."
"Of course I didn't, you don't just move on when your best friends have been murdered!" Remus spluttered; he'd finally found his voice, spurred by the angry realization that Mary seemed to be saying he should be over what happened at Godric's Hollow by now. She just didn't understand—something like that was impossible to get over. "After they died, I had no one! I didn't even have closure, that's why I wanted to visit, you knew all this! And look what you've done now, turned the both of us in without even stopping to consider that maybe you don't know the full story!" he whispered as furiously as he could.
"You had me," Mary said, her voice shaking. "I was always there for you, always trying to help, only you didn't want to be helped. You were all I had left too, did you ever stop to think of that? Did you ever consider for a second that maybe you weren't alone all that time, that maybe someone actually did still care?" Both Remus and Mary were shocked into silence and Mary drew in a sharp breath and didn't let it back out, as if she was trying to breathe the words she'd just said back in. But there they still hung in the damp air between them, and the pounding of Remus's heart against his chest like felt like the hoof beats of a hundred centaurs.
Mary shook her head at the ground. "But all along, you only wanted one thing."
"Oh yeah? What's that?" Remus challenged.
Mary's eyes slid downwards and sideways; she was started at Sirius's sleeping form. "It's like I said. You'd always choose him. Even knowing he was guilty, even after he betrayed James and Lily and left Harry to die…Merlin, you're no better than he is!"
"How dare you," Remus hissed. "You're right, you were there for me, and you saw how much their deaths ruined me, how some days I could barely even get out of bed, how angry I was at Sirius before I realized I was wrong. So how dare you stand there and say otherwise?"
Mary didn't look angry anymore, but she didn't look sad, either. It was something beyond that.
"Is that why you turned us in? Because you thought I ran back to him knowing he was guilty? I visited him thinking he was, but if you'd just listen—"
"I let you convince me you were fit to visit him," Mary interrupted. "I won't let you convince me he's innocent. For all I know you were both on You-Know-Who's side all along, and I couldn't just leave things be when I knew you were housing a criminal!"
"Do you hear yourself?! What about me would ever make you think I'd support Voldemort?!" Remus had to fight to keep his voice down. Immediately, he regretted asking. Mary didn't say anything; she simply stared Remus down, her eyes filled with tears. The longer they stared at each other, the worse the sinking feeling in Remus's stomach got, until finally…
"No," he moaned, aghast, his face ashen with fear. "No, no, you didn't, please tell me you didn't—you didn't tell them—"
Mary nodded slowly and Remus backed away from the bars feeling like he might faint. She'd told the Ministry that he was a werewolf.
"I had to," she cried.
"No, you didn't," said Remus, his mouth bone dry.
"Remus, they made me—!"
"I want you to leave," he croaked. "Go." Mary didn't move. She was staring at Remus with that same strange look on her face; it was almost like heartbreak.
"You love him," Mary said through a half-sob. It almost sounded like an accusation, and Remus was left speechless, his mind reeling. "You do, don't you?"
Remus's eyes darted from Mary to Sirius, back and forth, back and forth. His heart hammered against his chest so hard he could hear the thumping in his head. Try as he might, he couldn't form words; it was like his brain and his mouth had disconnected from each other. He couldn't deny what she'd said, either.
"You see? You do, and you've been on his side this whole time. There's a point where you have to put the good of the Wizarding world before your friends, and I'm sorry, but I reached it."
Remus could scarcely breathe; he could usually understand where someone else was coming from, but such a brash decision coming from someone as levelheaded as Mary usually was had shaken him to his core.
"I don't want to see you in this cell any more than you want to be in it," Mary continued. "Especially when—" her breath caught in her throat. "—especially when I think all along I might have been a little bit in love with you."
Mary looked as horrified by her words as Remus did upon hearing them. She covered her mouth with one hand and glanced at Sirius, who was still sleeping soundly one cell over. Her eyes were puffy with the sort of redness brought on by tears that form, but never get heavy enough to fall. With one last miserable look at Remus, she quickly turned on her heel and ran back down the corridor, leaving Remus in his cell, feeling like he'd just been Stunned.
Six feet away, Sirius lay facing the opposite wall wrapped in his thin blanket, his eyes wide open and his heart beating a mile a minute.
SORRY I KNOW IT'S ANOTHER CLIFFHANGER! All the more reason to add this fic to your story alerts so you know when the next chapter is up! Reviews make my Patronus stronger so don't hesitate to leave one!
-C
