Previously in the Darklyverse: The Potters switched their Secret-Keeper from Sirius to Peter. Sirius assumed Remus was the Death Eater spy.
xx
November 1st, 1981
7:02 A.M.
Sirius takes his flying motorbike to Peter and Emmeline's flat the morning of November the first. Later, he wouldn't be able to tell you why he didn't save himself some time and Apparate there. He's really just planning to check in and make sure that Peter is okay after how anxious he seemed during yesterday's recasting of the Fidelius Charm; once he checks in, he figures he can Apparate with Em to Scrivenshaft's for a perfectly boring day at work, go back to her and Peter's, and fly his bike home.
He parks his bike along the side of the three-story house converted into flats inside, one of which belongs to Peter and Em. Whistling to himself, he knocks a few times on the door.
Em answers a minute later, pulling on her traveling cloak. "Oh, hey, Sirius. I was just about to meet you at Scrivenshaft's. What's up?"
"Peter's not in there, is he? Has he left for work yet?"
"He's not here," says Emmeline, frowning. "Actually, he wasn't here when I woke up this morning, so I don't know if he had an early morning at work or what—he didn't mention anything last night, but maybe."
"Right. Yeah. Listen, I might run a little late for work today, all right? I have to make another stop before I go."
"Why, what's wrong?"
Days later, Sirius will be positively kicking himself for not taking the opportunity right here, right now, to tell Em about the Secret-Keeper switch. Maybe she wouldn't have believed him, but at least that way, word might get around, and there would be at least a chance of somebody telling the authorities or fighting to get Sirius a trial.
But Sirius isn't thinking about any of that. Sirius, like a naive bastard, is just thinking that he needs to find Peter and make sure he's okay. "Nothing's wrong. Not yet. I just need to find Peter. I'll see you soon, okay?"
He ducks out of the flat, hopes back on his bike, and points it skyward. He's not sure where else to check for Peter, so he figures he'll start by making sure Lily and James are okay, that nothing went wonky with the Fidelius Charm, and strategize from there.
Of course, when he gets to Godric's Hollow, Lily and James are not okay. Lily and James are so not okay that their house has been blasted halfway to smithereens—Sirius can see it in the air from a kilometer away. Instantly, Sirius's good mood is gone.
It can't be.
It can't be.
He lands toward the end of the street, trying to dodge the prying eyes of the Muggles who are swarming the house. He takes it at a run, and when he bolts inside, he finds James collapsed near the doorway, Lily in the nursery. But Harry—
—is in Hagrid's arms. For a horrible moment, Sirius assumes that Hagrid is carrying Harry's corpse, but then Sirius realizes that Harry is still breathing.
"He survived," Hagrid croaks. "Nothin' but a scar on 'im! It's a miracle!"
"Yeah," echoes Sirius. "A miracle." A miracle would have been Sirius's best friends surviving the Killing Curse. A miracle would have been Peter—
—Peter! Christ. He was so blindsided by Lily and James's deaths that it didn't even occur to Sirius until this moment that Voldemort must have tracked them down somehow, and that somehow must have been Peter.
So Peter Pettigrew is the spy for the Death Eaters. Sirius can't believe it. He can't believe it. Peter, who sat there and promised to protect Lily and James with his life, who they assumed was so down because he was worried about more deaths coming. Here it is, the truth: Peter was anxious about the deaths. Peter probably skipped back to his master with the secret of Lily and James's whereabouts, proud to contribute even more deaths to the cause…
And Peter being the spy means that, all along, Remus has always been innocent. They could have made up forever ago, and instead, Sirius blamed him when it was Peter all along…
"How did you know to come here, anyway?" Sirius asks. He comes closer to get a good look at Harry's face: there's a lightning-bolt scar gracing his forehead that wasn't there yesterday.
"Dumbledore put a charm on the house," says Hagrid. That makes sense: the cottage wouldn't have shown up in the orb because they'd made it Unplottable before Lily and James moved in. "Asked me to come check it out, warnin' me that Lily and James's bodies were on the ground. I'm s'posed to take him to Lily's sister."
"Lily's sister? But she and Lily never got along."
Hagrid shrugs. "Iss Dumbledore, innit? If he says to go to the Dursleys', I'm goin' to the Dursleys'."
Part of Sirius wants to protest. He's Harry's godfather, he's the one person left in the world who loves Harry the most, and Harry should come with him. But how is Sirius supposed to raise a baby? After all, he doesn't have the faintest idea where to start looking for Peter, but after Sirius has taken Peter out, he has every intention of going out with him.
"Take my motorbike," says Sirius at an afterthought. "I won't be needing it anymore."
He hands Hagrid the keys to the bike and turns on the spot.
xx
November 1st, 1981
11:17 A.M.
It's three hours into Sirius and Emmeline's shift at Scrivenshaft, and Sirius is nowhere to be found.
It's not like traffic to the store is particularly heavy today, so it doesn't give Emmeline much grief to man the till in addition to her usual duties stocking products and assisting customers. Still, when Sirius warned her that he might run late to work today, Emmeline was thinking something more along the lines of half an hour or an hour late, not—missing nearly half their shift and counting.
And then two women come in, dawdling over a shelf of peacock quills, and Emmeline overhears them say—
"—Can't believe he's gone! Dumbledore did say in the paper that there's reason to believe You-Know-Who is coming back someday—"
"—I don't care what Dumbledore says. After all these years? It's a relief to know that You-Know-Who is out of the picture. The Death Eaters have all scattered now that their master is gone—"
"—It's just a shame about the Potters. Lily and James Potter. I wonder what's going to happen to their baby—?"
"—He's a hero, all right. Killed the Dark Lord, and he's only a baby!"
It takes everything Emmeline has to stay put and not say anything to the shoppers about anything other than their purchases, but after three sets of customers have all come in talking about Voldemort and the Potters, Emmeline has had just about as much as she can stand. If what they're saying about Voldemort being gone because of little Harry Potter is true, then—! But Lily and James… they can't have lost Lily and James. If Lily and James are dead, that means Sirius gave their whereabouts to Voldemort, and if Sirius gave their whereabouts to Voldemort—
Sirius can't be the spy. He just can't be. Emmeline sees him every day. She saw him this morning, and everything was fine! Why would he act so normal if he knew that James and Lily…?
She sticks the "Closed" sign on the door and steps out of the shop, but instead of heading for The Leaky Cauldron like she and Sirius usually do for lunch, she heads to the vendor down the street selling Daily Prophet papers and hands her a Knut. It's a special edition, released about an hour ago with breaking news that wasn't covered in the normal paper that owls start delivering at six o'clock, and it confirms everything Emmeline hoped and feared.
Voldemort is missing, presumed dead. He killed James, and then he killed Lily, but somehow, he couldn't kill Harry. Maybe the prophecy really was true: maybe Harry does have the power to vanquish the Dark Lord, or however it went.
But if Voldemort was able to get into the Potters' home, how could Sirius do this to James and Lily? How could Sirius do this to Emmeline?
No wonder he didn't show up for work today: word of Sirius being the Potters' Secret-Keeper may not have reached the public yet, but the whole Order knows what he was, and it's not like there's any way his life can go on normally after this. Sure enough, Remus and Frank and Doc all stop by Scrivenshaft's that afternoon, each carrying a copy of the Prophet, each asking the same question: where is Sirius?
Where is he, and what has he done?
xx
November 1st, 1981
6:53 P.M.
Alice is halfway through changing Neville's diaper when there's a crack outside followed by a knock at the door. "Frank, can you get that?" she yells while narrowly dodging a line of pee. "Gross, Neville, honey," she mutters, but he just giggles at her and claps his hands.
She distantly hears Frank fly toward the door and open it and say hello to whoever it is who wants to see them. Alice can't hear what they're saying, but she's just Scourgifying Neville's old diaper and putting it away when there's a much quieter knock on the nursery door; Alice turns around and sees Emmeline standing in the doorway looking lost.
"Hey, Em. Have you heard?"
"Yeah, I've heard, but Alice—Peter never came home tonight."
"What?" says Alice, thrown.
"He wasn't at home when I woke up this morning. He should have been home almost two hours ago, and I still haven't seen him. Al, you don't think it's related to…?"
"What happened to Lily and James?" asks Alice. Emmeline nods. "Maybe he wanted to track Sirius down and confront him?"
"But he was gone early this morning, hours before the news made the paper. He wasn't on orb duty, and even if he had been, the orb wouldn't have picked up any Unforgivables being cast at the Potters' house—Dumbledore made the place Unplottable."
Alice says, "Well, maybe he left early for work, found out while he was there what had happened, and left to go try and find Sirius. Did you check with his office to see if he showed up today?"
"I haven't yet, but I'll Apparate there tomorrow morning if Peter is still gone by then. I just want him to come home, Alice. I just want to know that he's safe."
"Do you want me to come home with you tonight and keep you company?" asks Alice. "I can stick Frank with baby duty for the night. He won't mind."
"Oh, no, you don't have to… actually, you know what? Yes. Yes, that would be nice."
So Alice dashes into the bedroom to hand Neville to Frank and then Apparates to Emmeline's flat. Peter is still nowhere to be found. When Em calls out, "Peter?" and waits a moment to see if he answers, there's a hopeful little lift to her voice, but it shutters back down again when there's no response, when Peter doesn't turn out to be hiding in the bedroom.
"I just can't believe any of this," says Emmeline when she collapses down into her recliner. "Sirius hated the Dark Arts. He hated his family, and he never would have chosen any of them over James. I can't believe it."
"I guess we never really know people's true motivations, do we?" says Alice. "I just don't understand why Sirius would take Peter out, too."
"Peter can't be dead. He can't be dead. Peter is the person who kept me alive for months—for months—and I refuse to accept that I'll never see him again. I love him, Alice."
They stay up until one o'clock in the morning waiting to see if Peter shows, but he never does. Finally, Alice says, "You should get some sleep. I'll wait up for a few hours, and I can wake you up if Peter shows, and if he doesn't, we can trade off halfway through the night."
When Emmeline gives Alice a hug goodnight, her whole body is shaking. "Everything's going to work out," Alice tells her, even though it's not, even though Marlene and James and Lily and so many others are all dead and Peter might be joining them.
xx
November 2nd, 1981
8:48 A.M.
When Peter allows Sirius to corner him, they're in Muggle London on a street that's bustling with rush hour traffic, and Peter has to play this very, very carefully if he wants to be remembered as a hero. He can still hardly believe what he did a day and a half ago, giving Voldemort the Potters' whereabouts. James, one of his best friends in the world, is dead, and so is Lily, and Peter had that decision in his hands and ensured their deaths—and for what? He didn't have to tell Carrow that he had become the Potters' Secret-Keeper. He could have kept skating by as a spy, playing both sides, and no one would have been any the wiser. Instead, he handed in the privilege of working on the light side, and two people he loved are dead as a direct consequence of his actions.
Part of Peter knows that Lily and James did nothing to deserve dying, but there's a bigger part of him that resents his friends for always putting him last (did they? He doesn't allow himself to think too deeply about it), that was terrified of what Voldemort would do to him if Voldemort wins the war while Peter is still playing both sides. But Voldemort didn't win the war, because little Harry Potter left him as good as dead, and the people in power aren't going to protect Peter if Sirius gives him away as a traitor.
He has to go into hiding. There are no two ways around it. He can't save his livelihood, but if he plays his cards right, maybe, just maybe, he can save his reputation—if he sets himself up to be a martyr.
The thing is, he can't just frame Sirius for getting Lily and James killed—it would be his word against Sirius's, and that's not good enough for Peter to feel safe. No, he has to frame him for something bigger—something public and witnessed by many others who can corroborate Peter's story.
So he whispers, "Diffindo," pointing his wand at his right hand and screwing up his face as the spell cuts through the bone of his index finger to sever it cleanly. Stashing his wand in his back pocket, he waits until Sirius Apparates onto that crowded Muggle London street, and when Sirius comes charging at him, he cries, "Lily and James, Sirius! How could you?" The tears aren't hard to fake—they come flooding down what with the pain from losing his finger.
"You fucking piece of sh—"
Sirius is taking out his wand, but Peter is faster. He reaches back behind him and grabs his wand, but instead of pulling it out and pointing it at Sirius, he holds it behind his back, whispers the incantation that blasts half the street apart, and then quickly becomes Wormtail and scuttles down the drain.
The last things he hears before he drops down into the sewers are the sounds of screaming and crying punctuated by a manic, desperate, broken laugh.
xx
November 5th, 1981
4:35 P.M.
So Sirius was the spy. Remus doesn't want to live on a planet where Sirius was the spy, but here he is, standing in the rain at Lily and James's funeral, the incontrovertible evidence that Sirius gave their location away to Voldemort. If he thought Marlene's funeral was bad, James and Lily's is unbearable—if Marlene was one of his best friends, James was one of his soulmates, and so, to be honest, was Sirius.
Now he has to live with the knowledge that one of the people closest to him in the world killed both their other best friends and a street full of thirteen Muggles. Sirius, the person Remus loved more than anyone else in the world, killed fourteen people in cold blood and as good as did the same to Lily and James. Sirius—the person Remus has spent the last several years pining over because of their breakup—is not just a traitor but a murderer.
Peter's funeral is the following day, and it's not any easier to stand. He stands in a row with what's left of his house and year and wraps an arm around Emmeline, who is crying. Seeing as they've both lost their roommates within the last couple of months, Em has moved into Benjy's old room in Remus's flat, and she pretty much doesn't come out of it for anything but work, bathroom, or meals. With him losing Sirius to the Dark side and Em losing Peter to his demise, Remus feels simultaneously like they're the only people left in the world who understand each other and like there's always going to be an element of blame tainting their relationship from here on out—"your ex killed my boyfriend."
Without James here to fund Remus's unemployment, he hasn't figured out yet what he's going to do to make ends meet. Em is paying his rent for now, but working at Scrivenshaft's, she's not exactly made of money. Finding something to eat is easy—if Emmeline brings any food into the house, he can double it and give himself a portion—but if Em can't keep funding his half of the flat, he figures he can take a bit of land, make it Unplottable so that he won't have to pay property taxes, and use his Transfiguration skills to build and furnish a place for himself. All his other expenses—well, he'll just have to make do.
James would have done a better job constructing a home for him Remus ever could. He literally got paid to do it before he and Lily had to go into hiding. But James is gone—Sirius took him away from Remus.
Sirius did that. God, it's only getting harder the more times Remus says it to himself.
At least it's over, he tells himself. Voldemort is gone, if only for now, and he still has Em and Alice and Mary.
Or so he thinks.
xx
December 12th, 1981
5:26 P.M.
"Is she… I mean, can we…?"
"You can talk to her," says the Healer, nodding and smiling in this way that makes Mary want to scream. "You can even hold her hand, if you'd like. She's not violent, and she doesn't get agitated easily. Neither of them does."
So Mary takes Alice's hand. "I love you, Al," she says. "You did good. You did really good, and you can rest easy now."
It looks like Mary did the right thing, getting out of the Order before it was too late, because it's definitely too late now for Alice and Peter and James and Lily and Marlene and others outside of Mary's closest circle in the Order—the list just goes on and on. Now, it seems like the only question left is—was it worth it, saving her own skin by getting out when she did, or should she have stayed and fought and tried to protect the people who might otherwise not have died if they'd had her support?
She tries not to let herself think that way—she figures it's no use blaming herself when the damage is done and the people she loves are dead or, in Alice's case, insane. "I'm sorry I couldn't save you," she whispers, and she squeezes Alice's hand.
Alice looks like she's trying to speak, but no words are making it past the tip of her tongue. Mary remembers her—bright, sweet, polite Alice who never complained and always tried so hard to become better than her upbringing—and she wonders how much of that Alice is still in there somewhere. Is she in any pain? Does she know who she used to be? How much of her identity is still left, and is she frustrated that she can't express any of it?
When she's getting ready to leave St. Mungo's, she considers dropping by Emmeline and Remus's flat to say hello—after all, they won't be busy with Order responsibilities anymore, and without that in the way, they should be sticking by each other, shouldn't they? Don't they all deserve to still have each other at the end of the war?
But Mary feels like the war is still a chasm in the middle of her relationships, with her safe and protected on one side, doing nothing to help those exposed on the other. If she wanted to earn their love, she should have been in the trenches with them, and she wasn't, and there's nothing she can do to change that.
So she heads home, and she gives Reg a kiss, and she braces herself for a lifetime without her friends, without Marlene, without anything that ever mattered to her for the right reasons.
xx
END OF PART EIGHTEEN