6.
On the evening of October 23rd, Sirius comes to the Potters' place for one last discussion of the Fidelius Charm they plan to cast the following night. He is, understandably, in an appropriately somber state of mind. The last thing he expects is to be met at the door by a disheveled and desperate-looking James Potter, who says only "Thank heaven you're here!" and thrusts a squalling, angry baby into Sirius' arms.
Sirius wordlessly settles the crying baby Harry onto his hip and follows James inside the house, watching as James resets the wards on his front door. Then they both walk into the living room, young Harry howling with typically lusty infant wrath the whole way.
"See if you can get him to calm down, won't you, Sirius?" James calls over his shoulder. "He's driving me out of my mind. You can always cheer him up."
"What's wrong with my favorite godson?" asks Sirius, trying to project a cheerfulness he doesn't feel.
"He's cutting a new tooth, poor thing," James explains above Harry's loud sobs. "Been in a foul mood all day. Lily tried every charm she could think of on him, but nothing worked – she even tried a couple of Muggle remedies. Useless. She finally couldn't stand it anymore and took off for her mother's. She'll be back in a couple of hours, though."
Sirius looks into his young godson's red little face, into his vivid green eyes, currently awash in angry tears. He reaches down inside himself and finds a bit of Padfoot, and chuffs for baby Harry in an amusingly doggy fashion, blowing a burst of air out of his nose and onto the baby's face. Harry's screams cut off at once, as though some internal crying switch has suddenly been toggled to 'off'. He goggles up at Sirius comically and touches Sirius' nose with one tiny damp fist.
"Oh, it can't be as bad as all that, mate," Sirius says to the baby soothingly, and kisses his knotted forehead. "Just think what a fine set of choppers you'll have once it's all done. Why, you'll be the envy of alligators and crocodiles everywhere!"
"He won't either," James argues testily. "He'll have pretty teeth, like his mum."
"Not if he keeps cutting new ones at this rate," Sirius answers, smiling. "What's this, the fourth one this fall? Pretty soon he'll have a smile like a Hungarian Horntail. Won't you, Harry, old bean?"
"Zziltip!" Harry replies, still eyeing Sirius' nose suspiciously. "Doonaleeesha."
"Zziltip - too right!" Sirius agrees solemnly. "Couldn't have said it better myself. Quagalog tret!"
"Zagmire," Harry agrees.
"Flabbanbroxen trinx?" Sirius asks him.
"Blecca-blecca brong eef," Harry explains. "Jastamount!"
"Meeef meff," Sirius says to him in understanding tones, and turns to James. "He says his mouth hurts like blazes, and he's vexed at you for passing your absurd hair on to him."
Harry slings a companionable arm around Sirius' neck and regards his father gravely. James can't help but laugh.
"He never said that," James answers. "He likes his hair – likes how he can make it all stand on end at once. Would you care for some tea or something while you're busy making dubious translations of Harry-talk?"
"Dubious indeed," Sirius says. "You don't know the half of it. Yes, please, and I'll need a shot of firewhiskey too." He takes Harry over to the sofa and sits down on the floor at its foot, stretching his long legs out under the coffee table and setting Harry to standing before him, guiding the baby's little hands to the edge of the table. Harry grasps it tightly and wobbles a bit as he tries to find his balance.
James goes into the kitchen to make a pot of tea while Sirius helps Harry with his standing practice, the two of them having an animated conversation in Harry-talk all the while. Sirius has not felt so relaxed and untroubled as he does right now at any time over the last three days. While Remus has not moved out of their home after the last conversation he and Sirius had, he has spent most of his time out of the house, doing whatever it is that he does. Sirius does not want to even think about what that might be, and he mentally cuts off the burgeoning train of thought that springs to his mind full-blown in midstream, as he has already done thousands of times for the last seventy-two hours, every time Remus has entered his thoughts.
The two of them have been distantly civil to one another whenever they have been unable to avoid being in the same room together, and this has been a practical, if agonizing, way to work around the many corrosive issues that have been shivering like an early frost between them, steadily freezing their spirits and eating away at all the good things they have always shared. Sirius has made a concerted effort to be aware of all the things he now realizes he must not allow Remus to know; while simultaneously attempting to forget every single word Remus said to him three days ago. It is a bizarre, double-sided way to think, and Sirius has sometimes felt as if his mind has been tearing itself in two over the past days. The truth is, no matter how hard he tries, he cannot forget. He cannot forget how love, always as easy and natural as breathing for him in the past, has suddenly become an incomprehensible maze, full of conflicting directions and riddled with false paths that lead only to impassable barriers. And he cannot forget the terrible promise Remus extracted from him in the end – the deadly curse he swore he would perform when the final extremity came round at last.
Thunderclouds are beginning to gather on baby Harry's brow once more and Sirius makes an enormous effort to put these awful thoughts aside as he tickles the baby to distract him and lifts him into the air. Harry laughs gleefully, and kicks his chubby legs out behind him.
James brings a tea tray into the room and sets it on the coffee table, then flops into a seat on the couch, watching as Sirius plays with his son. He pours a cup for himself and for Sirius.
"I knew you could get him to stop crying," he says gratefully. "You always do. Lily simply despises you for that, you know. Do you want the firewhiskey in your tea?" He points to a shot-glass filled with amber liquid on the tray.
Sirius does not answer right away; he is still assiduously not thinking about Remus and the Nihiliatus Curse while he raises the half-giggling Harry up and down in the air before him. After a few moments, he realizes that James is asking him a question.
"Hmmm?" he asks James. "What were you saying?"
"Firewhiskey. Tea. The blessed sound of Harry not crying for the first time in eight hours. Eh?"
"Oh, oh, yes. No, the firewhiskey's not for me. Hang on a tick."
Sirius settles Harry into the crook of his arm and reaches for the shot glass with his free hand. James looks on, slightly alarmed.
"Sirius Black! You are not planning to give my innocent baby boy a shot of booze, surely?"
"Not exactly," Sirius answers, dipping his index finger into the shot glass. "This is a little house-elf trick Reggie's old nurse Trilby used when he was teething. He would cry something awful and I'd often to see her sneaking saucers of whiskey into the nursery for him." Sirius gently coaxes Harry's mouth open and rubs his moistened finger over Harry's sore gums, smoothing the firewhiskey onto the worst spots. Harry's face screws into a scowl of displeasure over the unfamiliar taste, but he doesn't cry, and he allows his godfather to dip another helping into his aching mouth in short order.
"Yes, poor baby, I know," Sirius says, gently coating the baby's gums again. "Tastes bloody awful, doesn't it? But it'll really help, you'll see."
After a moment, Harry says "Glillp-glay," and suddenly smiles broadly, showing all four of the tiny milk teeth he has already brought forth to excellent advantage.
"Merlin's beard!" James expostulates, amazed. "It works! You misbegotten wanker, Pads! Why on earth didn't you show us this trick sooner?"
Sirius chuckles. "I don't recall you ever meeting me at the front door with a screaming baby before, Prongs. And begging piteously for help, at that. Right pathetic of you, really."
"Hmmph. Have I ever mentioned to you that you look exactly like a turnip when you get that smug look on your face, mate? Does he need some more?"
Sirius surveys Harry critically while Harry examines his own fingers with interest. "Maybe not right away. If he gets too much all at once he'll just fall asleep, and then you can explain to Lily why her son has a hangover in the morning. We'll see if he starts crying again, after a while."
"I'll leave the dosage to you, then," James agrees, and hands Sirius his cup of tea. He glances around the room for a moment and sighs. "Our last night in this house. It's not …not quite the way I imagined it."
There are no visible signs of disarray around the pleasant, slightly messy room. No one would ever guess, just from looking, that the family that lives here will be going into deep hiding in Godric's Hollow the very next day.
"Is Lily explaining things to her mum, then, tonight?" Sirius asks James.
"I imagine she'll be trying, anyway. It's hard to make the whole mess clear to Muggles without frightening them too much. And you know her mum won't be too keen on the idea of her daughter and her grandson just dropping off the face of the earth for … however long it takes. How'd it go over with Remus?"
Sirius has been dreading this question for three days, though he has known that James would certainly be asking it. He jerks involuntarily a bit and Harry looks up at his face inquiringly.
"Vreep?" Harry asks.
"Sirius?" James asks, also gazing at Sirius inquiringly.
Sirius looks at both of them in turn, and suddenly smiles, as disturbed by their questioning as he is. They are already so much alike, the two of them. It is the source of an odd kind of quiet and deep delight that helps to ease much of Sirius' inner distress, at least for a moment. Enough to answer their questions, anyway.
"It was … it was a bit dodgy, talking to him, but we managed to sort it all out," he answers uninformatively. "Not something either of you two need worry about." Sirius does not think James needs to have his already pressing load of burdens made any heavier by Sirius' newly made discoveries about Remus. Nor does he need to know of the desperate end-game strategies Sirius is currently formulating in response to all that Remus has told him. James has all he can do trying to think how to keep his own immediate family safe.
"But he vetted the plan once you told him, didn't he?" James asks. "Analyzed it down to its atoms? That's what he's best at, seeing all the things you and I miss. What did he think?"
Sirius lets Harry pull himself up by grasping onto Sirius' hands for a moment while he tries to think of the wisest way to answer James' questions. He decides it is best to be as honest as possible under the circumstances.
"He thought the Charm could work as far as it goes, but the plan itself is deeply flawed," Sirius admits. "He believes the identity of the Secret Keeper is the weak spot in the strategy. That part, according to Remus, will be an open book to Voldemort and Company as soon as we cast the Charm."
Sirius sees the look of frightened dismay on James' face and wishes he had not even brought the subject up. James too, Sirius can see, has been thinking about what a horribly obvious choice for this role in the Charm Sirius really is.
"But he added a few little wrinkles to the plan to offset that weakness," Sirius adds hastily. He is already mentally scrambling for the right answers to any questions James may have about what Remus' "wrinkles" might have been.
"Does he think we should have let Dumbledore be Secret Keeper after all, then?" James asks anxiously. He is clearly ready to make this change at once, should Sirius ask it.
"Yes …and no. He does understand the reasons why we …decided not to go that route. But he-"
"You told him? About what Albus believes …er …about you?"
"Yes, I thought that was best. In any case, regardless of the… other things, Albus still wouldn't be the right person, by Remus' way of thinking. After me, he's the next most obvious choice for the Secret Keeper."
"What about Remus himself?"
"No, no, it's the same problem. Remus would be the third most likely choice. He's known to be a very close friend of yours and his abilities are quite well respected around and about. We'd need to take a different tack altogether if we were going to change Secret Keepers at this late date. Besides, I …I have a few new tricks up my sleeve, in case anything…should go wrong."
James frowns at Sirius, who is stubbornly not looking at him while he plays with Harry. The baby has apparently decided to turn his godfather into a one-man facsimile of the African jungle, and is currently crawling all over him on an impromptu safari.
"Don't muck about with pleasant little euphemisms tonight, Sirius," James says sharply. "We're talking straight here. We've got to. In case you're captured and tortured, you mean. "
"That won't happen, James" Sirius answers softly, and truthfully, up to a point. He does believe that the Nihiliatus Remus has taught him will work just the way it is supposed to, and that if he is captured, he is quite unlikely to live long enough to be tortured at all.
But of course he can't test the curse out in advance to be certain it works, and that small area of uncertainty has been troubling him more and more over the past few days. It would certainly be the blackest of jokes on him - and on Remus too - if he tried mumbling "Nihilium" in some black hole of a Death Eater stronghold one fine day and just turned into a newt or sprouted horns or some other silly thing. If he is captured, the Curse ought to kill him and the secret right along with him as advertised, thus fixing Voldemort's little red wagon right properly. But Sirius would much prefer to be completely certain that he will be unable to reveal anything, no matter what coercion he might have to face, should the Curse somehow fail. He does have a great deal of confidence in his own abilities, and this confidence is actually quite well warranted. But he is not so foolish as to expect to be immune to torture simply because he hopes he will be. He does have some reasonable doubts. No one has ever tried to twist a secret out of him by force before, after all.
And he cannot afford any doubt, not now, and not about this. He forces himself to look away from Harry and to meet James' eyes.
"I can almost guarantee you that won't happen, James. Remus and I …we've worked out a couple of things to try. Secret stuff - you know he does secret stuff for the Order. I'll tell you about it after, when we get the chance. None of it is really material to casting the Fidelius anyway." Sirius hates being deliberately deceptive with James, but he doesn't see how it can be avoided.
And James' sharply searching gaze in response does very little indeed to ease Sirius' conscience or his peace of mind. He might have known it would be damn near impossible to deceive James Potter in any way.
"You'll tell me about it 'after', Sirius? After what? After the earth's magnetic poles suddenly decide to reverse polarity? After all the ley lines in Scotland turn into bowling alleys with butterbeer on tap? After Voldemort crosses me and mine off of his Evil Over-lord 'to-do' list?"
"After we all retire and settle down to write our memoirs if you like then, Potter, you blithering idiot," Sirius snaps. "After we lose all our hair and have gout and start going to bed at six P.M. and develop an inordinate fondness for nightcaps with tassels! What would you like me to say? How should I know how long all this is going to take? I'll explain it after! Let's move on!"
What Sirius really needs is some sort of back-up plan, and so far, he has been unable to think of one. He wishes he could plug into James' brain the way he once did when they were schoolboys together, dreaming up the most outlandish and unlikely pranks and projects and then, together, somehow making them really happen. But the question of how Sirius can most effectively keep James' secrets is not something James should ever have to concern himself with.
Baby Harry, meanwhile, having heard the sharp edges in their tones of voice and sensing the disturbing emotional direction of the conversation - and being in a decidedly cranky frame of mind himself on this night - suddenly contributes a shrieking outburst of sobs to the discussion. Both James and Sirius are so startled by the sudden high-decibel howling that they almost jump, and every tense thought is instantly blasted right out of both their minds.
"Oh, dragon dung on ice!" James curses. "Not again! And he was being so good, too."
"Fire and brimstone!" Sirius also curses, and tries tickling the yowling toddler into submission once more.
Harry is having none of it, however, and doesn't shut up once until Sirius finally tries holding him upside-down in midair while James desperately sets off a marvelous display of multicolored musical bubbles from his wand. This combination of novel experiences does finally quiet the baby, who stares at the floating bubbles upside-downly and grasps at them with his small hands, giggling madly each time one of them bursts and peals forth a single perfect tone. After a few moments, Sirius is able to ease him back into a supine position in his lap and gives Harry's sore gums a new coating of firewhiskey.
"Drixxxit…fahghntn," Harry remarks a bit snappishly afterward, and sticks his thumb in his mouth.
"Fletnic eggt," Sirius answers him in a soothing whisper and unconsciously begins rocking his body a bit, so that the baby in his lap can be lulled by the movement. "Shelemon dep neft."
"Talks quite a lot for his age, doesn't he?" James comments softly and with visible pride.
Sirius looks up at his very best friend in the world and grins warmly at him.
"He's a regular human dictionary, Prongs. A prodigy. Just wait until he deigns to learn English."
Dealing with the sudden emergency of appeasing an irate infant has worked a peculiar small miracle on both the adult men's minds. Both are able to reappraise the issue of the Fidelius Charm, Voldemort, and the proposed identity of the Secret Keeper with completely cleared heads. They both speak at once, almost in unison.
"You know what we need to do, Sirius?" James says.
"I'll tell you what we really ought to do…" Sirius says at the exact same moment.
They both stop momentarily, gazing at one another, and then burst out laughing quietly together.
"We need to-" James begins.
"- make a last minute switch," Sirius finishes.
"Yes! Someone we haven't even thought of before, someone-"
"-someone no one will ever think of. Not the most likely choice or even the second or third, but-"
"- but the least likely! And then we won't-"
"- we won't even breathe a word about it to anyone – not even-"
"- not even Dumbledore, and-"
"- and then we'll hide the secret Secret Keeper somewhere safe, and-"
"- and then that gormless git Voldemort will put all his efforts into-"
"– into searching out the wrong Secret Keeper! Good heavens, it's brilliant!" Sirius says excitedly. "It solves everything!"
He is so vastly relieved to have found his back-up plan at last that he doesn't even feel guilty about not mentioning to James precisely which problems this last minute switch will solve. He can't stop grinning and feels as though a great and powerful searchlight has just switched on in his head. He begins calculating furiously.
"But who?" James vocalizes for him, putting words to Sirius' mental processes perfectly.
Sirius raises his hand and waves it at James in a tense hang-on gesture while he thinks hard, running through hundreds of names and personalities in the space of moments.
Eventually, the perfect choice comes to him.
"I've got it!" he says to James, and actually lets loose an amused cackle. It's so perfect – so completely and utterly absurd - that it's hilarious. It's perfect. He bends down and smacks a small kiss onto Harry's messy little head in his relief and his delight.
"Well, then?" James asks, also smiling. He can see how certain Sirius is, how happy he suddenly looks. "Who?"
"It's ideal," Sirius says. "No one will ever figure it out, not in a thousand years of puzzling. Care to guess?"
"No, I bloody well don't care to guess, you gigantic pain in the arse. Out with it! Who?"
Sirius looks up into James' eyes, almost drowning in his newfound assurance that James, his brother James, will really and truly be all right.
"It's perfect," he says to James once more. "Absolutely perfect."
"Who, who, who?" James repeats insistently.
Sirius grins at him one more time before he answers.
"Peter."
