A/N: Sorry this is late...
Thank you for your support, as you know, it's much appreciated! I hope you enjoy this chapter, I had writer's block (and I still kind of do) so it's good I pre-wrote this one.
Anyway, have a lovely day and enjoy!
SEVERUS' P.O.V
The love between friends is seriously over-rated. Forget Narcissa. Her incessant anxiety and condescension is irritating. She might be a Malfoy but that doesn't make her the boss of everyone and everything. It is not her business how I go about winning over Dumbledore, it is not of her concern how I infiltrate the Order and it's certainly none of that meddlesome, interfering, officious –
"Severus?"
Narcissa, breathless, catches up with me and hurries to keep to my brisk pace. I walk faster, studiously ignoring her.
"Severus, listen to me! Stop walking away – and… Severus. It's really very rude, come on, I just meant – Severus… Severus!"
She pulls on the sleeve of my robe. I shove her off; she stumbles but is at my side again in a second. Why can't I get rid of her?
"… and you can't just expect for everything to magically work out! You need a plan and – Severus! Slow down… Listen to me –"
We turn down a street and onto Diagon Alley. Narcissa is still following me.
"No, Narcissa, you listen to me," I snarl, "I don't need your help."
She looks back at me, her blue eyes conveying anger and hurt. She draws herself up, into the disposition she reserves for people, in her regard, under her station. I stare back at her levelly. It will take more than that to intimidate me.
"Very well, if that is what you think. In time, I'm sure you will find yourself very much mistaken," she glowers at me.
"Oh, I doubt it," I hiss.
With one last look of contempt, she saunters away, the crowd drawing back from her in recognition of her status.
LILY'S P.O.V
We arrive at Potter's Cottage in the early evening. Sirius is waiting at the gate, apprehensive but happy to see us. Once inside, we recount all the events of the previous night. Sirius doesn't sit down throughout the whole affair – he stays standing, sometimes pacing.
"And my brother?" Sirius asks both worriedly and impatiently.
"I'm sorry Padfoot," Remus says.
Sirius nods, looking at the floor, as if he had expected this answer.
"But he's…?"
"Still alive," James says.
"Did he, you know…?"
"Kill anyone? I don't know."
"Oh."
Sirius turns away and walks out of the room.
"Poor Sirius," Alice murmurs.
"He knew. He knew Regulus was one of them. I guess he just wanted to be sure. They haven't spoken since he left Hogwarts," Marlene says, looking at the door where Sirius had exited.
"Does he speak about him to you?" James asks.
"No," she replies, "we don't talk of his family much at all, unless it's to acknowledge what prejudiced bastards they all are."
James and Remus smile weakly.
"I wish there was something we could do," Alice says.
"There isn't," I feel the words leave my mouth, "when someone you love turns their back on you, there's isn't a thing in the world to make it easier."
"Maybe you should talk to him," Remus says suddenly.
"Why? What good could it do?"
"Well… you know what it's like…"
"Know what what's like? When someone you love decides you're not good enough? Yeah but my sister didn't join the darkest force of evil set on mass murder. Beside, everyone here has lost someone in one way or another. I'm no better qualified than anyone else."
"No but maybe you can reach him in a way that we can't. Please Lily."
"But Mar…" I trail off but Mar nods at me, as if giving permission for me to go after him.
I get up and go the way he left. I find him upstairs, sitting in the bathroom, his back against the bath tub. I slide down next to him.
"Hey."
"Hey," he looks at his shoes, his arms wrapped around his knees.
We say nothing for a while, him looking as if he's about to say something but then thinking better of it. I don't want to push him. At last, he breaks the silence.
"He was all I had, back home," his voice cracks, "I wouldn't even call that wretched hell hole home if it hadn't been for him. When I left at sixteen… I knew that it would mean I'd have to leave him. I don't regret leaving, I mean my Uncle Alphard left me a decent amount of money so I have a place of my own - I don't have to stick around Grimmauld Place often… but walking away from the only immediate family member who ever held any compassion for me was the worst thing I think I've ever had to do. It was hard and over time, I realised that he and I couldn't be brothers again, at least not in the way we used to be. He hates me, he'll never forgive me for leaving him behind and I don't blame him. I'll never forgive myself. Sometimes I think – I think I should have tried harder to make him see that our parents talked a load of shit, but he wouldn't have believed me. He thought they were wonderful and they thought the sun shined out of his ass. I mean, he was sorted into Slytherin for a start, became the Seeker for the Quidditch team, member of the Slug Club, agreed with everything they said and joined the Death Eaters when he was sixteen. The perfect son. He's only just out of Hogwarts for Merlin's sake! My parents aren't Death Eaters but… who knows what they're doing now? I don't care about any of them. I hate them all.
"I think if he'd been sorted into any other house than Slytherin, there might have been a chance…"
He swallows before continuing.
"But when you're surrounded by all these misconceptions and lies all the time, from your Housemates, your friends, your family… you start to doubt what you once thought. He's too far gone for me to reach him now. When we were in our sixth year, I watched him hex a Muggle-born. He didn't think twice, he just shot the spell right at her heart – she was in the Hospital Wing for days. I never thought he would do it, and definitely not with so much certainty. It was like seeing a whole new person and I can't help but wonder –"
"Where the person you loved and trusted went," I finish for him, my eyes wet.
"I never thought Severus would hurt me. Never in a million years. Even after our friendship ended… I knew he wouldn't hurt me but he did, again and again. I could never hurt him and that's where he and I are different. One day we were in a corridor and he bound me and took me to the Room of Requirement. He tortured me until my blood ran dry. I can still feel it sometimes, the pain. It plays in my mind and every time I see him –"
"It's like seeing two different people."
We look at each other, tears streaming down both of our faces.
"Look at us," Sirius says, trying to smile, "we're a mess."
"I know," I reply.
We sit together, leaning against a bath tub, the burden I'd been carrying for so long, finally feeling a little lighter.
"…and then," Sirius says, laughing, "He ran out down the hall with mum's bra on his head. He didn't notice until we got to the station."
"James is such an idiot sometimes," I grin, giggling with him.
"Oh! There was this one time when we convinced Wormtail that he was cursed. Everything he touched would turn to stone and we put levitating charms on him all day and nobody could take them off – he just started drifting out of classrooms… It was so funny, we didn't take the charms off until he ended up stuck in the Astronomy Tower, having turned the doors and windows to stone."
"How did I not know about all of this?"
Sirius shrugs, "Prongs thought it would be better if you didn't know. You should have heard the way he talked about you in fifth year – like you were some kind of goddess. What with all of us under one roof, I'm surprised you didn't notice."
I look down at my hands, "I tried my best not to notice him at all."
"And look how that worked out," Sirius snorts.
"Did he really talk about me that much?"
"Yeah, all the Merlin-damned time! Drove us all crazy. By the end of sixth year, I was pulling my hair out. Your interactions, thought often amusing and witty, were so full of UST, I was surprised you didn't just start pulling each other's clothes off."
"UST?"
"Unresolved Sexual Tension, it's the foundation of all great love stories."
"Oh. Admittedly, I was a bit worried and unsettled by the whole thing… no guy had ever looked at me like he did –"
"Are you blind? There were many guys, believe me."
"Are you sure you're not just imagining it?"
"I'm sure Lily. Then again, whenever Prongs caught a guy looking at you, he would beat them to a pulp. Nobody would ever have dared ask you out, not when the threat of Prongs' wrath stares them in the face."
I laugh, "James has no wrath."
"Oh believe me, he does. Didn't you ever notice people staring at you?"
"I always thought they were staring at Mar."
"As stunning as Marlene is, you got some attention too. You know, I think you are quite possibly one of the nicest and bravest human beings I have ever met."
"Thanks but I'm not very nice and I'm certainly not very brave. You're brave, James is brave…"
"There are different kinds of bravery. You married Prongs; if that's not bravery then I don't know what is."
"Enough about me, you know Mar talked about you a lot."
"She did?"
"Yeah, constantly. How she thought you were 'the one', how you make her better, how much she loves you… She loved you long before you ever knew."
"Weird, I can't imagine her saying any of that whilst we were at Hogwarts."
"Why not?"
"Because she was so like me – I'd never say I loved somebody, even now… I suppose that I just don't see the point of promising somebody something that's so unreliable. That's what love is, right? A promise and what happens to promises? They get broken."
"Padfoot… that's not true. Sometimes love doesn't work but Mar would never –"
"I'm not talking about Mar! I'm talking about me!"
"What do you mean?"
"I care about her; I have strong feelings for her but love? I don't know."
"She loves you, you know that and I'm sure I've heard you say it back –"
"Say it back and that's all it is! Words. They mean nothing. Truth be told, I'm shit scared Lily. You and Prongs, you've always had it easy –"
"That is so not true. We may talk a lot but there are hundreds of miscommunications. Despite how much he's changed, he's still obnoxious at times, I get caught up in myself and my grief, we hardly see each other because of all the work we're doing for the Order and whenever we do spend a lot of time together, we argue."
"But you love him?"
"There is absolutely nothing neither he nor anyone else could do to make me love him less."
"I know I act like I'm confident and that I know what I'm doing but –"
"Sirius, we're what? Nineteen? Nobody knows what they're doing. You just feel like crap right now, I'm sure you'll be back to your usual infuriating cocksure self soon. Although, it's good to know you have some depth to you."
"Now, now, Lily-flower, isn't it a great ignorance to think that people are less complex than they are?"
"See? You're back already."
"Damn right. Do you ever think that people forget things too easily? Everything is so flimsy and temporary. In eighty or so years, nobody'll remember us."
"So? As long as we remember, who cares? I remember when Marlene punched you in fifth year."
Sirius groans, "Now that's one thing I would like to forget… why can't people let these things go? It's the hedgehog thing all over again."
"Mar and Al still tease me about Snape kissing me years ago."
"Oh yeah, I remember that… Prongs was fuming for days afterwards. I don't blame him and you were just as bad when Prongs was snogging Melanie –"
"Not my finest hour, I'll agree. James and I are quite jealous people and that's not good."
"Marlene and I… well if I caught her with someone else, I don't know what I'd do. I might be angry, I might just walk away, I might shout in her face, I might be upset… I just worry that if I see her with someone else, I won't care at all. Surely if you love someone, then they have the power to hurt you and if her being with someone else didn't hurt me, then I can't love her, right?"
"I don't think it works quite like that. You can't measure love with pain."
"I think you can. My parents disown me, so what? I never cared anyway –"
"Sirius…"
"Don't Lily, don't say that they're family and that I should love them anyway."
"Well at least your parents are still alive!"
He is quiet for a moment.
"Not to me, Lily. The minute they turned their backs on me, I knew that was that. We aren't related anymore. I have a family: you're my family, Prongs is my family, the Marauders are my family. Don't you see? Family isn't blood."
"I suppose not."
"You know, it always used to befuddle me that a guy like Prongs would fall for you."
"Well thanks."
"No, no, hear me out. You were always pretty and then you became hot in fifth year – that's the truth, don't give me that look –but Prongs dated plenty of pretty girls and whilst there was a wit and air about you that reminded me a little of myself, there wasn't a clear reason as to what made you so special. Then… then I got to know you. I was surprised that you fell in love with him, what with his reputation being what it was. I was worried for you, I mean Prongs is the best but I didn't like the idea of him messing you around. Moony thought a lot of you, still does and so when you came to live with us, I wasn't overly sceptical. I mean the idea of having the girl Prongs has been obsessed with since fifth year living in our house didn't exactly thrill me, but I got used to it. I just want you to know that even though I give you hell and drive you insane, I couldn't ask for a better sister."
"You didn't have to worry about him messing me about… That's really sweet Sirius. You know I love you, as a sibling of course," I add, noting his confusion.
"Okay, I've had enough of this touchy-feely stuff. Um, this remains between the two of us, right?"
"Of course, I won't tell even James."
He sighs, relieved, "Good, can't have them thinking I've gone soft."
He jumps up and he gets to the door before he pauses and turns around.
"Thanks, Lil."
"Anytime," I smile at him, my regard of him altered, my love for him stronger.
