Previously in the Darklyverse: Lily, James, and Sirius turned to Reginald Cattermole for help with most of the Order captured by the Ministry. Death Eaters captured James after he tracked down Snape's address in order to locate and destroy the diary.

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June 7th, 1982: Sirius Black

four

It's about seven o'clock, four hours after James's Patronus delivered Snape's address and said he'd be home soon with the diary destroyed, and James hasn't come home yet.

By now, it's three in the morning in Britain. If all went smoothly, James should have been back hours ago—after all, how long could it take for him to use the address he got at the Ministry to Apparate to Snape's home, grab the diary, and stick a basilisk fang in it?

"He's dead," says Lily in a choked voice. "He's not back yet because he's dead."

"We don't know that," Sirius tells her. "He could just be—"

"In Azkaban?" she says sharply. "If the Ministry got to him and arrested him, he's probably surrounded by dementors sucking all the happiness out of him. And if it was the Death Eaters—well, the only way they haven't killed him yet is if they're still torturing him."

"Look," says Sirius, lowering his voice—Harry's just toddled into the room. "He said that the goblins need four more days to destroy the soul in the sword, right? So let's just—give it 'til Friday. When it's Friday afternoon here, it'll be Friday night there, and it will have been four days. For all we know, James could be back by then, and if he's not… I mean, we can't kill Voldemort in the meantime, can we?"

There's a pause as Lily watches Harry scribble in a coloring book with his tongue poking out of his mouth. "Fine. But if James isn't back tomorrow, I'm going to Spinner's End."

"Spinner's End?"

"Severus's house," she clarifies. "God, I can't believe Severus is living in his parents' home. His father was an abusive piece of shit—he's got to be dead because there's no way they're living together. James traveled all that way—probably got himself captured and killed—and this whole time, I could have just Apparated to his childhood home and spared James the risk. He could be alive right now if I weren't so stupid as not to think to check there."

"We don't know he's dead, Lily," Sirius reminds her, but honestly, even his own hopes aren't high.

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three

Lily Disapparates to Spinner's End the following afternoon. They fought about it, of course—Sirius wanted to be the one to go, but as Lily reminded him, even if he had the address to the place, he didn't have a visual of it to use to Apparate there accurately. He tried to argue that he'd use Floo powder instead, but Lily insisted that she go instead: if Snape's mum (or, for some godforsaken reason, his dad) is still living in the family home, she'll take better to Lily suddenly appearing in her living room than Sirius, whom she's never met and about whom the only thing she knows is that he mercilessly bullied her son.

She's been gone for about five minutes when there's a crack in the kitchen. Sirius thinks it's Lily at first, but when he calls, "You got it?" and heads back there to greet her, it turns out that it's not Lily—it's Cattermole. "Oh! Hello. Are you—what—?"

"I wanted to give you an update," says Cattermole stiffly. "Potter, um…" He hesitates on the edge of his news, then seems to decide against explaining and simply hands Sirius the newspaper he's holding.

Sirius has to read the headline about six times before it really sinks in. "Oh."

"He stopped by my flat yesterday, you know, after he left here," Cattermole says in an apologetic tone. "He wanted somewhere to wait it out until nightfall."

"He and Lily had just gotten into a monster fight," says Sirius dully. "She didn't want him to go. If he'd stayed another minute, she would have found a way to stop him."

"I'm guessing he didn't manage it, did he? To kill Voldemort? If he had, that would have made the paper."

Sirius shakes his head. "No. He didn't even get the objects we need. Lily's off right now picking up the diary."

Cattermole claps him on the shoulder, looking uncomfortable. "I'm sorry for your loss, Black. I know you and Potter were… well, I'm just sorry, that's all."

He manages to keep it together until Cattermole leaves, but the instant he does, Sirius is on the ground. He doesn't even remember his knees buckling: one second he's standing there clutching a newspaper article that says his best friend is dead, and the next, he's sobbing in a heap on the floor.

This, of course, attracts Harry's attention, and it's not long before Harry has run over to the kitchen and stopped in front of Sirius, his thumb in his mouth. "Sissi?" he asks.

But Sirius can't answer him. Sirius thinks Lord Voldemort could show up in this house right now, and he still wouldn't be able to drag himself off the floor and acknowledge him.

After a moment, he feels a small hand pat his shoulder, and he tries valiantly to get a grip on himself. "Harry, buddy," he says in a warble, pulling himself into a sitting position, "sit down. There's something I need to tell you about your daddy."

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two

With James dead, there's no reason for them to stay in the house—Sirius is a sitting duck with the Ministry on his tail, and it's not like they need to stay put so that James can find him when he returns home. None of them is exactly in the mood to go on any grand traveling adventures, so they Apparate to Ontario at the other end of the country and get themselves a hotel room where they sit and wait for the hours to pass. Harry seems to have mostly bounced back, occupying himself playing make-believe with his stuffies and listening to Lily read to him, but Sirius suspects that he doesn't fully understand what's happened—that he's never going to see his father again. And how could he? The boy isn't even two years old. If not even Sirius can wrap his head around James dying, how's a not-quite-two-year-old going to do it?

At least nobody else has died that they know of. Sirius has pored over the Prophet copy Cattermole gave him a hundred times by now, and the only update it gave on the rest of the Order is that the Ministry waited an extra day to move Remus to Azkaban because of his werewolf transformation. That's good, Sirius reminds himself: it means that nobody killed Moony, and Moony didn't kill anybody, either. Ever since he found out why Remus didn't show for the full moon, Sirius has been moderately worried that something awful happened while Remus was locked in the Ministry without his Wolfsbane Potion.

Meanwhile, with both Dumbledore and McGonagall in Azkaban, Hogwarts is apparently struggling to operate without its two Heads. Sprout is pulling triple duty as Herbology professor, Head of Hufflepuff, and interim Headmistress, while Transfiguration classes have been cancelled as Sprout tries to find somebody to cover McGonagall's lessons. Sirius wonders how Meredith McKinnon's old friend, Helen Brown, and the rest of the student body are faring—whether anybody on the faculty knows enough about the Order to give the students their side of the story.

Sirius thinks it's bullshit that the rest of the Order has been dumped in Azkaban without even the promise of a trial, but at least everybody should be safe there, even if being surrounded by dementors must be the worst kind of hell. He thinks about Remus being trapped inside his head with all his demons, and Sirius wishes he could reach out and save him.

He waits until Harry's been asleep for at least half an hour before he brings up the thing he's been dreading talking to Lily about all day. "So, Lily," he says, his voice wavering, "the sword should be destroyed in the next day and a half, and you've stabbed the diary, which means—we need to talk about who's going to go after Voldemort."

"Yes, I've been thinking about that," says Lily in an oddly calm voice. "I should go. It should be me."

This surprises Sirius: after her outsized reaction to James leaving the family to get the remaining Horcruxes, he had been half expecting Lily not to want either of them to go. "But—you've got Harry to think about. And—"

"Look," she says, "James was right about one thing: it's safer for Harry if you stay here, where the Death Eaters are less likely to find you. If Harry loses his mum… at least he'll still be alive, right?" Her voice cracks.

"But I thought you wanted…"

"I was a fool," whispers Lily. "I thought we could outrun this war, but as long as Voldemort's still out there, we'll never be free, and Harry will never be safe. I could kill James for dying on me, but—I have to do this, Padfoot. I can't let you go. It has to be me."

"Lily…"

"What?"

She looks very old in that moment, and Sirius feels old, too, like he's aged thirty years in the week and a half since Em and Mary died. (Has it really only been that long? It feels like it's been a lifetime.) "I'm so sorry about Prongs."

"Yeah. Yeah, me, too."

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one

Lily's eyes are still tired, but she seems to have a renewed drive to make the most of what little time she has left with Harry and Sirius, if only so that she can give Harry one last good day with his mum before she goes. They venture outside the hotel and around the country, swinging by Gros Morne National Park to look for moose and whales after lunch, then watching the tides at the Bay of Fundy in the evening and, finally, walking along Victoria's Inner Harbour as the sun is setting.

By bedtime, Harry has started asking about James. "Remember what Uncle Sissi told you?" Lily tells him gently as she and Sirius sit at Harry's bedside, now safely back in the hotel. "Daddy's not coming back, sweetie. We're not going to see him again."

Harry's eyes start to well up. "Want Daddy," he pouts.

"I know, baby. I know. He would have wanted to be here, too, but he can't come back. He's up in heaven now. But he wanted you to know that he's always gonna love you, okay? Even if he can't be here, Daddy loves you, and so does Mummy, and—Uncle Sissi's going to take good care of you after I'm gone."

"Gone?"

"Yeah," sighs Lily. She smiles, but her eyes are sad. "Mummy has to go away, too, in the morning. I'll do everything I can to come back to you, okay? I promise. But if I can't, and I have to join Daddy in heaven—well, I want you to know that it's not your fault, and I'm trying to protect you, just like Daddy was. I know that doesn't make any sense now, but I just hope you'll understand when you're older."

It's a while before Harry cries himself out. Sirius feels like he's intruding, sitting in on this horribly private moment between mother and son, an outsider in the family—but he knows that's not right. Without James here to be Harry's father, Harry's Uncle Sissi is the closest male role model he's got, and if Lily gets herself killed tomorrow…

Sharing this hotel room reminds Sirius of living in his old flat with Lily, where they used to share a bedroom and listen to each other snore as they drifted off at night—except, this time, Harry's asleep in the bed with Lily, and Sirius can tell that neither adult is anywhere close to sleep. He's still up around two in the morning when he hears Lily's covers rustle and her feet hit the floor. "I should just go now," she says—clearly, she can tell that he's also awake. "I'm not sleeping anyway, and at this point, I'm just… avoiding having to leave him."

"You're going to survive this," Sirius tells her. "You're going to kill Voldemort and come home to your son. Send me a Patronus after you get him telling me where to meet you, okay? Take my wand—you'll need it if yours gets taken. We'll let you know our location so that we can sync back up with you. Everything's going to be all right."

But how can everything be all right without James?

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A/N: Again, I am very, very sorry. D: