Chapter 37
"Open Invitation"

abc.

"The Matter of our Discussion", by Boom Bip.

Abc.

Lily, I found scrawled on the back of an old Prophet –

I had to leave and tell Sirius, please, it is not because of some silly broken heart. He and I were both well aware of the situation we were in and I just realized when he said – I don't love you and I'm seeing someone else, well...I realized I was tired of sitting still. I've been sitting still for too long.

My life had become stagnant, just waiting waiting for me to wake up and I've woken, Lily. The lease is up in a couple of weeks. You can renew it, of course, but I'm certain that husband of your's may have something better lined up. Absolute Godspeed to you and if we make it through this, I hope to see you again.

Bridget

Bridget had left and her things were gone, all the morning after Regulus had died. Or, the morning after Sirius had found out Regulus had died. Being involved with the Death Eaters, well, his death and the circumstances surrounding it were shrouded in mystery. All that was known for certain was that Voldemort or one of the followers had made known to the Black family that their youngest son was dead at the hands of the Dark Lord.

This was some sort of breakthrough for the Order of the Phoenix and some strange tragedy for Sirius. He was estranged from his family – the evil members of it, at least – and his brother included but when he came home that night and told me in the dark that Regulus was dead there was heartbreak in his voice, his eyes.

So, we were going to move. We as in me and James but it felt like the three of us because Sirius never left. Sirius never left and he drank and smoked and had some quiet ache inside of him that he rarely spoke of. I spent my days with him, packing and smoking and drinking alongside him. Not the best of influences, I could easily admit. James's involvement with the Order intensified so that he hardly was home but to sleep. Yet somehow, apparently, he had a place lined up for us and I had no expectations.

"It's crazy you're packing everything up to let him move you to God only knows where."

Sirius would sit and watch television and observe.

"He's probably moving you to a smaller place, you know. Bloody hell, what if he's moving you in with his Mum? Or me, the three of us in old Uncle Alphard's..."

I waved my wand and reminisced over some photographs, tried on old clothes. Typical things that are done when packing.

"Could you turn that down?" I'd never met a Wizard so devoted to the television.

"Sure, sure," A pause and the volume stayed large. "Just...tell me who this is."

I joined him in the living room where his feet were propped up on the coffee table, bottle of beer resting against his side and cigar smoking from between his fingers.

He did not look up, eyes fixed on the screen. I watched the program for a minute, took note of who had grabbed his attention and then chuckled.

"Farrah Fawcett."

An episode of Charlie's Angels was playing and we rarely received American programming but the show with three beautiful women had caught on worldwide.

"Farrah," He repeated, slightly in awe and dragging from the cigar. "She's the most beautiful woman I've ever laid eyes on. Her hair..."

I finished packing in silence and looked around the barren flat with unease in my stomach, while he sat and quietly watched the crime-fighting trio, blonde voluminous-haired Farrah his instant favourite.

With a beer in hand and my feet propped up on one of the many boxes that crowded the living room, I watched with him and could understand the attraction. James would laugh and say he liked that about me – I was not often jealous over another woman's looks, just appreciative.

"You know – someday we're going to be forty and we'll look back on this and it'll all look so easy. It's going to be easy someday, Lil. We might even miss it, the excitement. Seems like we should be enjoying our youth, you think?"

We did not talk of Bridget and I could not think of anything else when I looked at him but his dead brother. How did someone just go through their day with the thoughts of dead siblings in their mind? How did they not just break down and feel as if a piece of them was missing, too? I could not say I liked Petunia, I could not say I even loved her very often but she was my blood and we were bonded for life, whether we liked it or not. And if she died, if she or that horrible Vernon of hers died – my heart would break. Jealous, evil, bitter girl that she was, my heart would break. I wondered how Sirius's heart was still full.

I felt it for him, whether it made sense or not. When I looked at him and thought of him and his situation, his life – my eyes welled and my breathing choked and my chest ached, actually ached for him.

"Sirius," it had been but days and it felt like weeks – since Bridget left, since James decided we were moving, since Regulus's death was made known – and he could still take the opportunity to lose his mind, I decided. "How are you?"

Farrah's bright smile and bouncing hair flashed on screen and Sirius's face did not light up as it had earlier.

He did not respond.

"God, Sirius, it would make all the sense in the world if you were just broken, you know. I'm feeling it for you, I can't imagine your mind right now."

The girls laughed, Sirius's jaw clenched.

He clicked the set off and as he spoke his hand came up to clutch his chest, just over his heart and his voice was low, nearly dangerous.

"I have lost...people I spent a lot of time with. Bridget, even if there is someone else, she was so wonderful. Remus, he comes and goes and fails and flails and none of us know what he's thinking about it all. Regulus...Regulus was not a good person or brother, but when I heard...when they told me, I just – I just remembered him as my toddler brother, scared of the dark or asking questions when I got magic first. I remembered our mutual and brief admiration for one another. He was innocent and smart and well-loved. He looked up to me because I was the oldest, you know. I lost my little brother years ago, Lily, but to know his heart stopped beating, to know he lost himself to that world..."

I choked out a sob and neither of us spoke again until James returned home, news of plots and plans and deals.

When we left that flat forever I gave Sirius a departing gift, rather backwards as I thought of house-warming gifts and wasn't that the world I should be living in? Nice parties with nice people and nice gifts and nice marriages and beautiful babies. I gave him the poster of Farrah Fawcett in a red swimsuit, with her head full of bouncy curls thrown back and a wide, toothy smile across her face. Her leg was bent up and her skin was tanned and she was some sort of all-American girl. But she was beautiful and he loved it and hugged me tightly and breathed my hair.

There was something in moving and feeling and breathing that made me feel like we were going to be okay but also doomed.

Such misplaced faith, I thought, as I cradled his head and James looked on with some fierce protection in his eyes and folded arms. The flat was empty, Sirius's heart was empty and there was something to be said for fresh starts and bright futures – but I did not feel as if moving and leaving and trying was really going to bring us either of those hopeful, hopeful things. I would keep an open mind, though.

Abc.

Remus Lupin – somehow still my nemesis as he slowly became everyone else's, too – returned home from a mission wounded and bruised and days away from the full moon. His elbow was broken and they were worried not even magic could heal it before he transformed and ruined it worse.

Remus Lupin was at an odds of sorts. He was the bad guy in our situation and only bad because they needed someone to be bad. He was a werewolf, so he got sent to strange, dark places with strange, dark people and no one really knew if he was ever going to come back from them. Remus was trapped in his dangerous little pattern because there were few other options for him – or any of us – and none of us had a calling anymore, we were all just in it to win. Or live.

We were at the Order headquarters when he came calling back and he smelled of singed clothes and skin, sporting burns on his knuckles that sent me into Medi-witch mode, making me wonder if things were different would I have had stuck it out at St-Mungo's?

I couldn't think of what normal path my life was supposed to have had taken. I could not think of a life without looming danger, anymore, and it worried me that I may never get back on track.

I healed his burns and dabbed his cuts with strong-smelling healing liquid and we were quiet alone in the room as the others discussed the information he'd found out. James would tell me later. He was a good husband like that.

"How's it been?" Remus asked and to be in the midst of the meeting, yet not apart of it was peculiar. The interactions of the Order members was not really something I picked up on before – who was involved, who was passive, who was pissed off and just wanted it over. Sirius took the role of boisterous, pissed off member this eve and he would slam his hand on the table and say that it was not enough, never enough information. We didn't know enough and the other side always knew more, always knew too much, knew our moves before we knew them. Sirius was pissed off and wanted it over and I felt old as I watched him.

"Quiet. He's been quiet 'til tonight, actually. Watched television, sat on his arse and watched me pack without helping. If nothing else I expected to find out who his new woman is."

Remus swallowed and I was working on bandaging and healing what I could – he needed a trip to St. Mungo's to be certain but subduing the pain was the mission for the moment.

"He's angry with me, for not being here. He thinks I should be here more to...to watch out for him, I don't know. Tell him his dead brother is no big deal and fucking around on Bridget is perfectly acceptable for the times," Remus shook his head and looked as old as I felt.

"You look horrible, Remus."

"Can't you just see him getting himself killed? He's getting to that point – not suicidal, sorry, I don't mean that. But he's getting to that...out of control point. He's too impatient for this sort of sit and wait, trial and error, life and death thing."

Arm in a sling and eye bruised, Remus involved himself in the argument occurring around the table as I tidied up and worried about more men than just my own husband.

Abc.

"It's so funny to me that we spend our entire lives, our entire childhood, at least – being taught that our family is important. Blood is important and bonds us for life and no one will care about us more than our brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers. That's the kind of love that is irreplaceable, we're to think. But everything I've learned after that is the very opposite. Maybe it's just the times but I've never witnessed so many disposable familial relationships in my life, my own included. Dammit."

James held my hand tightly as we walked, more dragging me along behind him than anything.

"I've spent every day I can remember since I turned ten, I swear, just dreaming of escaping. But escaping what and escaping to where? Because even when I got Hogwarts, my escape, I still dreamt of escaping. It makes me worry I want to escape the very person I am, the very life I lead. I feel so totally alarmed when I catch up to my thoughts and they're all regarding how nice it would be to start over some place far, far away. I don't know where my subconscious is leading me to but it's as if I'm damned until I've found it. I can't breathe easy, can't get over the lackluster family ties I have until I know there's a brand new future out there for me somewhere,-"

I gasped and he sighed and then grinned and took his hand away and stepped forward, gesturing in front of him though there was no need to.

Very suddenly, we were home.

My unfinished rant hung between us, tense, for a moment until I, too, smiled and looked through the dark to see where he had brought me. It was nearly funny how clear things became that night.

There was a wholeness in my heart as I considered what he had done for us and thoughts of being some passive, uninvolved wife diminished. I realized he'd found this place because he had wanted to – because he saw what had been happening to me, how many pieces I was about to be in and he was my husband and he had sought out a home to make us real, to bring me back.

Through all that was incomplete that night, through all that was broken and fractured and falling and fading and impossible, I felt entirely complete and at ease and it was foolish, naive but it was such a warm feeling that cold night.

"What do you think?" He asked, his voice quiet and husky in the lingering-winter air. The collar of his pea coat stood up around his neck and his hands were shoved deep in his pockets, his hair wind-strewn and nose red.

He looked like a husband then or maybe I was just looking at him as my husband for the first time since the wedding. Everything was so fast, only flashes of the months really remained in my mind. The rings on my finger were cold against my skin and I looked down at them to assure they were really there.

"I think it's beautiful. I think it's everything anyone would want but never think to look for."

We went inside– all of my things were there, of course, he was a magical, magical man – and that night I learned about Godric's Hollow and I learned a little more of all of the evil going on around us. Godric's Hollow was a Muggle village near Cornwall, though with a generous Wizard's history, as well. It was a small but lively village, private but friendly. The home he had found us was a cozy one, roomier than what you'd expect but with all of the warmth a cottage in such a village should offer.

There was a fireplace in the living room and a veranda on the front, flower boxes on the windows, cobblestone path and a large back yard. Goosebumps rose along my arms when I could very clearly, save for blurriness around the edges, see a future here with him and even, maybe, some crazy day, a family.

He had not done any decorating, for which I was thankful and felt a bit more apart of the process than I had. I apologized, I kissed him, I thanked him for watching out for me, for not leaving me behind – For being aware of my imminent suffocation from our world of problems but never interfering to the point of having my feel inadequate.

"We can build this up together. Furniture and photographs and everything...food, beer." He chuckled and I thought he looked absolutely dashing in his grey knit sweater and his dark jeans, boots kicked off and glasses unfogging.

"What an idea, starting our life together. Why didn't we think of it sooner. Good timing. We've got people to take care of now."

"Sirius is going to come back around better than ever, Lily."

"And Remus?"

"He'd never betray us." Doubt barely there on the tip of his tongue.

We had a bed and we had a curtain in the bedroom and we slept soundly that first night and I hadn't even seen the place in the daylight but it felt like home even in the cloak of dark.

I could've cried, I would've cried – I waited to cry until he was fast asleep – Because I felt stable and I felt safe and felt so securely in love with him but sometimes there was nothing like stability and safety and security to shake you up. Sometimes there was nothing like hope and happiness and oh, prayers to shake you to the very core because there it all was and there it all could go.

When he held me that night, I took note of it. I was aware of how I instinctively took the left side and turned away from him, curling up and making myself comfortable and then he'd find his place. That night it was him pressed to my back, one hand curled over my stomach and up under my top and the other rubbing small circles on my scalp until he drifted off. It was warm, not too warm because of the cold night, and I wondered how this was comfortable, how this was nice. To be so close to someone, so void of any personal space – it was funny to me that this was how people were, this was how they slept. I could not remember compromising my sleeping positions for this shared one and I decided it was just something that came with attraction, love, a bond.

I felt more alive that night than I'd ever in the last year. I was well aware of all coming down on us, well aware of the trouble we could get into and the trouble already plaguing our world. It was that clarity, that comprehension that had me breathing easier. There was no time to worry about lost families, my own or someone else's, and there was no time to regret and doubt and complain. Everyone should live their lives, I thought, as if they're not going to get another chance for anything.

"What's the matter?" He awoke and we had no clock but the sky was brightening and I wanted to sleep before dawn was truly on the horizon. He heard my crying, felt it, rather than saw it. His fingers wet themselves on my cheeks.

"Nothing. This is so right. I just am so happy but so worried, so aware. I'm sorry."

"Mmm," he murmured and he nuzzled his face into the back of my neck and the feeling was instant comfort. "You think too much. I love you."

There was really no need for anything else.

Abc.

"Open Invitation", by Black Rebel Motorcycle Club.

(hidden track after "the Line").

Abc.

If you are reading, thank you for reading. I hope summer is well for all.