A/N: We're officially nearing the end.

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Chapter 28

'Head over Feet.'

James had been shocked, and then filled with an unending, blinding rage, and then finally completely and absolutely heart-broken as Dumbledore recanted the vital details of the books to them.

He sat, unspeaking, while he was told about Peter's future double-crossing of the young Potter family - how he would betray the location of their Fideilius protected home in Little Whingeing to Lord Voldemort in exchange for power, and the devastating consequences that it would go on to have.

Lucy couldn't stop herself from watching Sirius in the seat next to hers, studying his reaction when he was told that he would be wrongly blamed for the deaths of his friends, and left to rot in Azkaban for 12 years. He wouldn't know what it was to be a free man until the curtain of death came for him at the age of just 36.

He stared straight ahead, the muscles in his jaw working, not saying a word. She longed to reach out to comfort him, but she was almost frightened about what his response would be. Now he knew the full extent of what she had been keeping from him all the time she had been there.

"Do you think you are up to the task, Mr Pettigrew?" Dumbledore asked when he had finished relaying the details of his plan to subvert the prophecy laid out in the books. He surveyed the smaller boy over the top of his crescent shaped glasses.

Though he was already sat down, Peter looked like he was close to collapsing.

His head had shook back and forth in almost indiscernible movements all the way through Dumbledore's revelation of his murderous treachery, described so clearly in black and white in front of them. His small, watery eyes were unblinking, an unmistakeable look of terror taken root within them. He was in shock.

His gaze darted around at them all. Neither James nor Remus could stand to look at him.

When Peter's eyes met with Sirius's, the dark haired boy's fist clenched until the white of his knuckles protruded through the layer of skin. Though he wasn't moving, Sirius's unnatural stillness seemed to be as threatening as if he had lunged forward. Sensing his former friend's bridled rage, Peter cringed visibly back from him.

In the last hour Peter Pettigrew had learnt that the fate of the world, along with that of his best friends, would rest squarely on his barely developed shoulders.

He moved his focus back to Dumbledore with a look of anxious resignment and nodded. There was the briefest glimmer of relief in the Headmaster's expression before it became impassive again.

He swept his eyes over the violence and resentment that remained fixed on the other faces in the room.

"Young Peter will need his friends now more than ever if he is to adopt his crucial role," he warned them. "Push him away, and the prophecy set out in these books could very easily still come to pass."

Remus was the only one other than Lucy that gave the Headmaster some kind of acknowledgement.

"We understand," Remus said softly, glancing at Peter for the first time.

Dumbledore nodded gratefully at him before turning his attention to James and Sirius.

"While your anger is understandable as you come to terms with what may come to pass, it is of critical importance that you remember it is not the Peter you see in front of you responsible for those dreadful things, but just one possibility of what could arise should the wrong path be chosen."

He looked at the two of them intently.

"We all of us have both light and dark within. What matters most is the part we choose to act on."

"Some have more potential for dark than others," Sirius replied. Lucy found it strange to hear him speak again after he had remained silent for so long. His voice didn't sound like his. It had a dangerous, guttural undertone.

"And some should understand that the way we treat those we deem inferior can elicit terrible repercussions," Dumbledore replied.

Sirius stared stonily back at him.

"Help your friend to make the right decisions," the Headmaster urged them.

Sirius turned to James, asking him what he was thinking without saying a word.

They both looked over at Peter's seemingly harmless form and he seemed to jump under their unexpected scrutiny. There was an endless apology going round and around on a loop in his eyes as he peered nervously back at them.

"Above all, I would ask that you approach the future with a positive and open mind," Dumbledore continued seriously. "It is not over until the Fat Lady sings, as they say."

"But she's always singing," Peter replied uncertainly, before wishing he hadn't opened his mouth.

Even after everything they had heard, Sirius couldn't resist rolling his eyes. He couldn't even begin to imagine how the one with the least ability to conspire, or even form intelligible sentences, of all of them could ever turn out to be the most deadly, in any universe.

"Now," Dumbledore continued, "you may or may not already be aware of the rumours regarding a resistance group called The Order of the Phoenix. We will need to present your case to the current members forthwith, and when the time is right, you may join their ranks."

"I want to join now," Sirius said immediately.

"Me too," James said resolutely.

Dumbledore peered at them. "Yes, I rather suppose you do," he replied simply.

.o.

After leaving the secure confines of the Headmaster's office, they made it as far as the first corridor before Sirius could no longer hold himself back.

"I don't care what Dumbledore said, I don't want him hanging around with us anymore," he jabbed a finger towards Peter as if striking an actual blow,

Peter recoiled in shock.

Remus put a hand out across the other boy's chest; shielding him from any physical blows should Sirius lose the last tenuous thread on his control.

"He hasn't done anything," Remus reminded him.

"Yet," Sirius argued, his eyes flashing.

"He's still our friend, Sirius."

"He's a traitor!" Sirius exploded in a way that Lucy had never seen before.

"We need him on our side," James cut in, his voice jarringly calm and constrained in comparison. It seemed to take the wind out of Sirius's sail. His chest heaved as he looked back at his best friend.

"How can someone so imbecilic end up with so much control over our lives?" he spat, disorientated at the unfairness of it all, searching for some kind of answer from James.

He pinned his murderous glare back on Peter. "If it was up to me, I'd kill you now. Before you can hurt anyone I care about. You're lucky we need you."

"Remember what Dumbledore said," Lucy pointed out as softly as she could muster, not wanting Sirius's ire to turn in her direction though she knew it was only a matter of time.

"We can't ostracise him," Remus agreed. "That's what causes it in the first place."

Sirius held his hands up. "I've said what I have to say."

"Go and cool off," James said. He placed a hand on his shoulder. "It'll be okay Padfoot, we'll get through this."

Sirius's jaw clenched again, but he nodded.

He looked to Lucy. "Are you coming?"

She frowned. Though it was worded as a question it didn't sound much like he would accept a no.

She suddenly found that she did not want to be alone with him. Not while he was acting like he was. He seemed to be one tiny step away from completely losing control.

She realised that he had not spoken directly to her since Dumbledore had told them exactly what was in the books she'd given them. He obviously blamed her too.

Against her better judgement, she followed him away from their small group. She had let them all down, and she knew she owed Sirius the chance to get the answers he needed from her, even if that meant dealing with his anger as a by-product.

She followed him down through the castle, neither of them speaking. They passed a few other students on the way, but they may as well have been ghosts for all the attention either of them paid to them.

A group of girls Lucy recognised from a couple of their classes had smiled at Sirius as he passed, but he seemed to be blind to them, focused only on putting one long stride in front of the other. They looked to her, following closely on his tail, as if asking her what the matter was with their usually gregarious acquaintance. She avoided their questioning stares.

Sirius finally reached his destination, stalking out onto the castle grounds and filling his lungs in a staggered breath. As he had hoped, it allowed some of the tension to leave his body.

It was a few degrees below freezing out in the open air, but neither of them seemed to be in a position to notice. They kept walking until they reached the perimeter of the Forbidden Forest.

Lucy slowed down as they approached it. Even in broad daylight there was something unnerving about the thick forest of ancient trees, filled with countless deadly creatures she had only ever read about.

"We're not going in," Sirius said distractedly, picking up on her reluctance.

Sitting down on a gigantic felled trunk at the very edge of the forest, he leaned forwards until his hands were resting over his knees. They subconsciously curled themselves into fists.

"I don't understand why you didn't tell us all this from the start," he said in a low voice.

His eyes were fixed resolutely on the ground in front of him as he spoke as if he couldn't bring himself to look at her. She was relieved to find that, for now, the fresh air seemed to have clasped a lid on the release of his raw emotions.

"You treated us like we were just characters in a child's storybook, acting out scenes for your own personal amusement. You sat with James and Lily, day after day, knowing what waited for them. You-"

He stopped himself, raking his hand up through his hair.

"Any point in the past few months, you could have told us. Months that we could have spent planning how to save ourselves, to stop it all from happening. Wasted."

He finally looked up at her, but she wished that he hadn't. She could see the look of betrayal on his face.

When he didn't speak anymore, she realised he was waiting for her to explain herself. He needed her to say something that could explain how someone who had chosen to stay with them over her own family could have ever acted in the way that she had; lying to them for so long while smiling in their face.

"You're right," she said. "I was selfish and stupid and arrogant." She felt the lump in her throat threaten to choke her. "It was easier to pretend that Hogwarts was all in my head, that maybe I was just unconscious somewhere dreaming it all up-"

She paused, catching a glimpse of the disbelief on his face.

"-Because if I could convince myself that none of you were real, that nothing here was real," she continued resolutely, "then it didn't matter what I did, or what I kept from you, there would never be any consequences. If you were all just part of my imagination, then you couldn't get hurt."

He stared at her. "And yet you still ended up giving Lily those books. Decided we were real after all, did you?"

"I started to hope you were real," she corrected wildly, "because if you weren't, if I woke up and you didn't really exist, then-"

She stopped talking and cast her eyes away from him, unable to carry on while he stared at her with so much barely hidden resentment.

He pushed himself up from his makeshift seat in one swift movement. "You've chosen this life with us now, you don't get to run away from this," he said.

Lucy forced herself to look back at him, maintaining his eye contact. The air around them seemed to quieten, as if waiting with baited breath for the tension to be broken.

"Just tell me one thing," Sirius said finally, his voice clear and solid in the silence. "Why did you decide we were suddenly worth saving?" Before she could speak he added, "And don't pretend it had anything to do with caring madly about Lily. It's a simple question," he said, "why now?"

It was like the question was burning away at him from the inside out. When she didn't answer, it was as if something within him cracked.

An abrupt noise sent a tremor of fear rippling through Lucy's body. She quickly realised it had come from Sirius; his human groan of frustration had tumbled into an animalistic growl, the sheer force of his emotions leaving him fighting the impulse to turn into his canine Animagus. His confused body gave a shudder, pushing Padfoot firmly away.

Against her better judgement, Lucy stepped slowly closer to him. It hurt her to think she was causing him any more pain than he already felt.

"I just couldn't lie anymore," she told him, looking at him with pity.

Sirius's eyes flashed yellow in response, a few of his teeth growing longer and pointed. He shook it away again with a twist of his head. "Not good enough," he said, his voice startlingly close to a snarl.

She exhaled in exasperation.

"I've already told you why, Sirius," she said, tired of the games.

Sirius shook away another roll of repressed magical energy, narrowing his eyes at her in a wordless question.

"Last night in the common room," she continued in explanation. "You chose not to believe it, to think it was some kind of joke."

Sirius blinked, a spark of recognition dawning on his face. His expression became suddenly still and unreadable.

"Because you love me," he realised aloud.

His body gave one last gigantic convulsion, and this time he allowed himself to succumb to it. In just a few seconds Lucy found herself standing alone, the newly transformed black hound turning on its heel and bounding away from her into the forest.

She stared after it into the dense woodland, darkly shadowed as if smothered by perpetual nighttime despite the grey-white sky of daylight above her. Already, Sirius was no where to be seen, swallowed by the gloom.

She breathed out a curse word.

Seeing no other option but to head back to the castle alone, she forced herself to move, putting one unwilling foot in front of the other.

Climbing back up the steep hill towards the stone walls of the school, she trod the familiar route back towards the gravel path that led directly to the school, cutting a curved line through the crunching, frosty grass. She was just metres away from one of the castle's many gaping entries when the downy hairs on her neck prickled, sending a warning shiver down her spine. She was being followed.

Turning quickly to catch the culprit, she felt ridiculous when there was no one to be seen. A few crumpled brown leaves scattered in the wind, as if mocking her unfounded fear.

Wanting to get as far away from the area as she could, she turned back to continue up to the school's entrance.

Having taken just one step, she stopped in her tracks. A solitary figure stood blocking her way, as if he had appeared from thin air. Back in human form, Sirius stepped towards her purposefully, coming to a halt a arm's length away.

"I love you too," he said.

Lucy stared back at him as if he was a mirage. She had waited all her life to hear Sirius Black say those words, but this was not how she had always imagined it.

In her many dreams, these three words had been whispered through Sirius's barely parted lips at the height of a passionate embrace. Or during a tender moment in front of the Common Room fire.

What she had not imagined was his perfect features distorted with inner torment, as if loving her was the last thing he had ever wanted to do.

"All you've done is lie since the day we met," he said, as if unable to justify the way he felt even to himself. He shook his head, "But you're all I can think about. I can't get you out of my head." He gripped at the dark hair against the top of his scalp, as if he could physically pull her from his mind. "Then you have to go and sacrifice your absurd little Hogwarts fantasy just to help us," he said, "to save us. Even though you must've known how we'd react, or that you could end up in Azkaban for it."

The storm brewing inside of him was tangible. "I've always known what path to take - been clear on everything - but you've waltzed into our time and blurred all the lines."

His expression was fierce, as if he wanted to crush understanding into her until she was able to see the extent of what she'd done to him.

"You love me," she managed to sound it out, trying to process what he'd said, sandwiched between his rage as it was.

Sirius's warm, ragged breath released draconian puffs of condensation into the winter air between them.

Without warning, he moved forwards, on top of her before she could retreat in instinct. His hands moved to the sides of her arms and gripped onto them, his eyes searching her face as the rolling wind whipped violently around them, agitating their hair and clothes. She couldn't tell if he was going to shake her or kiss her.

In the end he did neither.

Dropping his hands away, he retreated backwards in one swift movement and started to laugh, ferociously and without warning.

"Merlin help me," he cried, the laughter turning to melancholy. "I'm in love with you."

Lucy looked back at him in silence, her mind swimming. She felt a painful sort of euphoria. It was as if loving her had broken him in some way.

"Tell me we can beat him," Sirius's voice was suddenly desperate, his eyes turning sorrowful as they fixed on hers.

She knew who he meant without him needing to say it. The Dark Lord. Responsible for the death and torture of so many innocent loved ones.

It became clear to her in that instant why the idea of surrendering to his feelings for her had affected him so badly. He was scared of letting her to get too close, of becoming too attached before he could be sure he actually had a future to share with anyone.

"We can beat him," she replied.

Her tone was unexpectedly stoic and steady in the face of Sirius's volatility. It brought an unexpected peace to his features, as if the fact she had said it with such assurance could make it true somehow.

Standing in front of one another on the freezing grounds, with no one else in sight, Lucy started to feel the dangerous threat of hope that maybe this was the one time she wasn't lying to him.