Author's Note: Hello everyone, here is the next chapter. I'm going to be posting on Sundays now, as I returned to work this week and I'm still working out my schedule for home and work. This is short, so if I'm organized this week, you'll get another chapter. MNF

Chapter 28:

Promise

Lily had sent James a Patronus message telling him what they were doing. They agreed to send Junie and Sirius home at nine when the boys needed to be in bed. Sirius met Junie in their bedroom. She'd been home for a few minutes and had changed out of her work clothes into a tee shirt and pyjama bottoms.

"Hi," he said softly.

"Hi," she returned. "I'm sorry I ran away."

"Considering the level of transgressions I have here, running away hardly seems worth apologizing for," Sirius said, tentatively sitting down on their bed. "Will you forgive me?"

"Oh, Sirius, I will, but I need you to listen too," she said softly. "Marley explained what she thinks was your motivation in supporting the ward, and I think it is a generous and selfless action. If it were any other hospital, any other ward, I would have been thrilled at your doing something to further Muggle medicine; but I hate that hospital."

Sirius moved to speak, but Junie shook him off. "Let me get this out because I've never told anyone about the day mum died." Junie looked away, staring at the fabric of their duvet. "No one tells you that death is horrible and ugly and retched."

"She was so stubborn, Sirius. She could have been in and out of St. Mungo's in a matter of hours, and damned cancer would have been gone; but she was a Muggle, and magical medicine wasn't meant for her," Junie said with vitriol. "Dad had never told mum that he was a wizard until after they were married, the dumb Statute of Secrecy. She was quite unhappy about it, but they were already married, and she didn't see a way out. She was opposed to memory charms, didn't trust the whole concept.

"Mum and Dad lived as Muggles, essentially. Sure, Dad worked at the Ministry, but my father's job doesn't involve much magic. In fact, that's how he was at Hogwarts – just enough magic to get in, but his NEWTs were in subjects like Care of Magical Creatures, Arithmancy, Herbology, and Potions. Not much spell casting but a lot of book learning. Dad would fix things with magic or do some cleaning, but they didn't rely on it. Then I was born.

"For the first few years, I didn't show any signs of being magical, and Mum was hopeful I'd stay that way. Unfortunately, I didn't. By the age of six, I could Summon things and fly without a broom. Before I started Muggle primary school, it was drilled into me that I couldn't do any magic, not even accidental magic. I was terrified I would mess up, and I hid my magic so deep…well, you knew me my first year. I didn't learn any magic at home, which is why I came to school with so little knowledge about the wizarding world for someone who was a half-blood. I excelled at school, but I just never felt that comfortable, which is why I loved what I did for the DMLE. I bridged the two worlds." Sirius scooted closer while she was talking and took her hand.

"Dad and I both pleaded with her when she got sick. She refused. First, there was what cancer did to her, making her weak and unsteady. Then there were the Muggle treatments. Nausea the day after, the hair falling out, the exhaustion, the sensitivity to light. When it was clear their therapy with strong chemicals wasn't going to work, they bombarded her with radiation, and the illness process started again. By the time they said there was nothing left to do, Mum was half the woman she used to be." Junie angrily swatted the tears from her face that she didn't realize she'd been making. "She wasn't happy, she wasn't funny, she was just a pile of skin and bones that was exhausted.

"In the end, she couldn't eat or drink. She didn't know who Dad, or I was. She didn't make sense on that last day, talking about going on an adventure." Sirius moved closer to hold Junie. "No one said how horrible it is to watch someone die. She made these awful noises; rattling, gasping, choking on air. Dad couldn't stay. It was just me with her, and after an hour, I couldn't take it anymore. Sirius, I put a Cushioning Charm over her mouth and helped her die.

"I killed my mother," Junie said before she collapsed into nearly inconsolable sobs.

"Oh, sweetheart," Sirius cooed into her ear. He held her to him and rocked her back and forth, shushing her much like he did for Harry when he'd awoke while he was childminding. Eventually, Junie had ugly cried herself out. When she looked up at him, her eyes were red, swollen, and watery, while her cheeks were flushed and swollen.

"Do you hate me?"

"Hate you? How could I hate you? You helped your mother pass more peacefully. There is nothing to hate about that," he said softly, taking his handkerchief out of his pocket and drying her face. "I have dealt with people who are truly murders, some of them my relations, and I would never put you in that category."

"Why?"

"Juniper, my love, murder is committed out of hate or greed, or passion turned wrong. You acted out of compassion and love. Your mother was never going to walk out of that hospital. What you did was ease her passing. I'm quite certain if we could talk with her now, she'd say the same to you."

"Do you understand why I wouldn't have ever put her name on that place? It was such a dark period in my life – I'm sure James must have told you about it. He was the only person, well, besides his mum that I let even come to see me. I didn't want to be comforted. I wanted to be punished, but no one knew what I'd done."

"It was Fee who reached you?" Sirius asked, and Junie nodded and then questioned him with her eyes. "She's good at getting through to people who don't want to let anyone in."

"Never in a million years would I have expected you to put her name on the place I despise. Why did you do it? We haven't exactly been close up until this year."

"Well, if you were talking with Marlene, then you probably know the reason. She was the only person I talked with it about it, and that was eight years ago."

"As a way to atone for not mourning your own parents?" Junie asked, and Sirius wiped her face again.

"Sort of, but I also thought it might be a way for me to ask for your forgiveness. I was too much of a coward to come out and speak with you about everything that happened in school," he explained, and she made a very unladylike snort.

"Why is it men can't just say what they want?"

"We're never sure what women are going to say in response." The pair was quiet for a moment before Sirius untangled himself, moved toward the head of the bed, arranged himself more comfortably, and then offered Junie his hand. She crawled to where he was, and she positioned herself between his legs and leaned back against him.

"Why didn't you tell me about this sooner?"

"I had every intention of telling you last fall when the name was formalized. Then my birthday happened, and your name appeared, and I couldn't talk with you about it then. Then it was the holidays, then your birthday, and then things were moving so quickly, and you were living here, and I was terrified if I told you that you'd leave me."

"Oh, Sirius, I wouldn't have left you," she said, turning to look at him. "I couldn't leave you; I'm too deeply in love with you." He leaned his head down, his unbound hair creating a soft, privacy curtain, and kissed her with devotion.

"I think I've been quite childish," he said when he was done.

"I was over-emotional," June replied. She turned, so she was kneeling between his legs now. "We have to promise that regardless of what it is, what we expect the other to say, or how we might hurt each other, there are no more secrets."

"Promise to not let things fester until we are too angry or frightened to share," he continued. "Promise to always talk things through and to never, ever go to bed angry. We will share our problems, worries, past, and future with each other. All of it, together."

"Well, not absolutely everything," Junie said coyly. "I am not telling you what my wedding dress looks like, nor am I letting you see the silky, little things Lily and Marley gave me for the honeymoon." Sirius kissed her again.

"I can live with that," he said before pulling her to him and beginning to snog her breathless. Even though they were both revelling in the feeling of their embrace and anticipating where it would lead, the couple was thankful to have weathered this crisis together.