(A/N: BYOT warning... tell you what, why don't we make that permanent for this story?)
Chapter 2: Returner
The next day, if anything, was worse.
The Blacks had worn themselves out crying and eventually helped each other numbly up the stairs to bed. Aletha knew she was wishing that she would wake up in the morning and find it had all been a dream, and when she saw the answering wish in Sirius' eyes, it was all she could do to stand up and go into the bathroom to start her daily routine.
The house seemed echoingly, achingly empty without the noises of Remus and Danger on the other side. Sirius tried to toast some of the scones Danger had made yesterday morning and burned them, but both Blacks ate them anyway, not willing to waste anything their friend had done for them.
Yesterday morning. It seems like so much longer ago than that.
Could it possibly be less than twenty-four hours since she'd last seen Remus' quiet smile, or heard Danger's sparkling laugh?
And could it be possible she'd never see them again?
She kissed Sirius goodbye with a new urgency, looking at his face for a long moment afterwards, feeling him doing the same.
When someone you love vanishes, everyone else you have is suddenly doubly precious.
Her attitude towards her work during the day fluctuated wildly. At one moment, she would feel as if she could save her friends, end the war, make everything right in the world if she could just cure this case of dragon pox or help to heal this infected bite. At another, nothing seemed to matter. Four of her best friends in the world were gone – but not quite gone. They hovered tantalizingly out of reach, their return still just within the realm of possibility.
Hope is one of the worst torments ever invented.
And when she wasn't hoping for them, she was frightened for them, as her mind invented gruesome possibilities for what could be happening to them. Everything she saw that had happened accidentally, she imagined being done deliberately to the Lupins and the Pettigrews.
By the end of the day, she was literally shaking, and wanted nothing more than to go home, and at the same time nothing less, since home would remind her even more of the missing links in her life.
She was just entering the lobby when she saw a familiar face. Sirius was sitting in one of the chairs there, obviously waiting for her. She tried to smile at him, but knew it failed miserably, and his returning expression was as false and sad as her own had been. Slowly, he shook his head.
Nothing. No news. They haven't heard anything or found out anything.
She tried to smile again, to let him know she was grateful, but this expression flopped even worse than her first attempt. He was getting up now, coming across to her, and she wanted to fall into his arms, but settled (in public) for a discreet embrace.
"There's something we have to do," he said quietly in her ear.
She pulled away slightly to look at him. "What?"
Sirius' eyes were alive again, but filled with pain. "Their parents," he said. "We have to tell them."
Their parents...
"Just Remus' dad and the Grangers," said Sirius quickly. "James and Lily are doing Peter's mum and the Meads."
Why us, Aletha wanted to wail. Why us, can't someone else do it?
But she knew this kind of news would be best carried by a friend, someone the parents knew.
Still, she hated herself for what she was about to do. The Grangers had been like parents to her as a little girl, and again over the past two years, after her mother's (to her) unexpected death and her father's disappearing act. How could she hurt them like this?
Because not telling them would hurt them more.
So she and Sirius Flooed directly from St. Mungo's to number seventeen, Oxman Road, Cold Crossing, Surrey. John Lupin came into the living room to greet them.
John was a physically powerful man; Remus favored his more delicate Muggle mother in that respect, besides being debilitated by his monthly transformations. He spoke little and deliberately, but he wasn't stupid – Remus got his intelligence and shrewdness from both sides of the family.
John proved that within the first few seconds of their visit. "What's happened?" was his quiet and somber greeting, as he advanced to shake hands with them. "Is he hurt, dead, or captured?"
Is that supposed to make it easier?
"Captured," said Aletha, since Sirius was still staring at the older wizard in surprise. "Last night, in Bath. With Danger, and Peter and Evanie." John knew the other Marauders well, from their visits to Remus over the holidays, and he had met all their wives at least a few times.
"Taken alive?"
"Yes, sir," said Sirius.
"A-purpose?"
"They think so."
John stared past them for a moment, into the fire in the fireplace, still burning from their arrival. "I knew it had to come," he said softly. "When he was bitten, I knew it would be him. I hadn't thought it would be direct, though. That's not in his favor. He would have done better to influence and instruct..."
Aletha had the oddest feeling that the man had forgotten she and Sirius existed, that he was talking to someone only he could see. After a moment, he shook his head and brought his focus back to them. "Thank you for bringing the news yourselves," he said gravely. "Have you told her parents yet?"
"No, sir," said Aletha. "We're on our way there now."
John nodded. "Tell them gently," he recommended. "She's everything to them."
Aletha bit back a savage comment – as if I didn't know – and merely nodded in return.
The Grangers had set aside a small room in their home for Remus and Danger, and their friends, to use as an Apparition point. Aletha thought of that room now, imagined the bright, straight line connecting her feet and it, and pushed, propelling herself through the world to that place.
She felt rather than heard the loud crack as she Apparated in. The sound Sirius made an instant later literally hurt her eardrums.
"Well, it's about time," called a voice from upstairs. Rose, Danger's mum. "I've been waiting for hours to hear how that nice little date of yours went last night!"
"Now, Rose, don't fluster the girl." David, her dad, and his voice sounded closer – the kitchen, maybe. "Not with Remus right beside her – I distinctly heard two..."
"It's us," called Aletha, opening the door, unable to listen to the Grangers teasing, as they thought, their daughter any longer. "It's Sirius and Letha."
"So it is." Rose appeared on the stairs, looking surprised. "Is something wrong?"
"Yes, ma'am," said Sirius, stepping out of the room (really more of a cupboard) and giving Rose a respectful bow. "I'm afraid so."
"Oh dear." Rose came all the way down the stairs and into the hall with them, looking anxiously from one face to another. "Is – has something happened to my girl?"
"We should probably just tell you all at once," said Aletha, hating herself as she said it. "Instead of dragging it out."
"A good idea. In the kitchen, then?"
They preceded Rose down the hall and took seats at the kitchen table at her wave. David set the plate he was wiping in the dish drainer and sat down with them, and Rose took the last place, reaching, unconsciously it seemed, for her husband's hand, and finding it already halfway there.
Remus and Danger could have looked like that. Did look like that, some days. As if they could read each other's minds. What she had to do was tearing Aletha up inside, it hurt so much the pain was physical, she couldn't do it, not this...
Sirius' gentle squeeze on her arm brought her back to the present for the moment. "There was a Death Eater attack on a restaurant in Bath last night," he said to the Grangers. "Danger and Remus were taken prisoner, along with Peter and Evanie Pettigrew. As far as anyone knows, they could still be alive."
Rose's face shot through horror into hope for one moment, then shut down again. "She would have been better dead," she said softly. "They would all have been. Wouldn't they?"
"We don't know," Aletha began, hoping to take a little of the pressure off Sirius, her wonderful Sirius, who had relieved her of a duty she couldn't possibly have performed.
"Don't lie, Letha," said David sharply. "We've known each other too long, don't lie to us. Tell us straight. What will they do to her?"
Everything she knew, and everything she had imagined, raced through Aletha's mind. She opened her mouth to answer, but Sirius once again cut her off. "You don't want to know," he said flatly. "Trust me, you don't want to know."
"Of course we want to know!" said Rose hotly. "We're her parents! We deserve to know!"
"If you don't tell us, we'll imagine all kinds of horrors," added David. "The truth is always better."
Sirius shook his head. "Not this time." His tone brooked no argument, no disagreement. "I've seen some of it. Heard stories of more. Please forgive me for this, but you're Muggles. You have no idea what magic can be made to do, in the hands of people who don't care about life and like causing pain. Trust me. Whatever you can imagine, the truth is worse."
The silence was broken only by Rose's dry, racking sobs, and David's ragged breathing as he stared balefully at the tabletop.
Another day passed in a blur of work and pain, Aletha working mechanically, then rushing off to her one private place, a stall in the women's bathroom, to sob for a few seconds before drying her eyes and returning to work. She had never been so thankful that it was Friday.
Sirius came home a few minutes after she did, with once again nothing to report. "We keep getting leads," he told her over the tasteless dinner, her hopeless best attempts at cooking. "And they keep drying up. Every one of them dries up midstream. I almost think they're planted, so Voldemort can laugh at us trying to find them..."
"Why them?" asked Aletha, voicing a concern that had been on her mind almost the entire time she'd known. "Why would the Death Eaters go to all that trouble to take them alive?"
"They're Order members," said Sirius heavily. "He's trying to demoralize us."
"So you don't think their being werewolves has anything to do with it?"
"Letha, how would he even know? The Registry Office's records are sealed, and unless Voldemort has someone very high up in the Ministry, there's no way he could have access to them. And think about it. Who knows? You and me, James and Lily, Peter and Danger, Dumbledore and McGonagall. Who on that list would have told Voldemort that Remus Lupin and Evanie Pettigrew were werewolves?"
"Stop that!" Aletha was on her feet, suddenly blazingly angry. "Stop talking about them as if they're dead!"
"I hope they are!" Sirius was on his feet as well. "And don't lie – so do you! You want them to be dead, or you should!"
"No, I don't want them to be dead! I want them to be rescued!"
"Oh, right," Sirius sneered, suddenly looking more like his brother Regulus than usual. "You want us to go find out where they're being held, waltz in there and liberate them, and waltz back out. All without losing anyone else. Dammit, woman, what do you think we're trying to do?"
"DON'T SHOUT AT ME!" Aletha screamed back at him. "THIS ISN'T ANY EASIER ON ME, YOU KNOW!"
"OH, LIKE HELL IT'S NOT! YOU'RE NOT THE ONE HAVING TO FOLLOW UP ON THESE LEADS, KNOWING THAT EVERY BAD ONE IS ANOTHER HOUR OF HELL YOU'RE LETTING THEM SUFFER THROUGH!"
They stared into each other's eyes for a moment, breathing heavily.
"You know what's the worst?" asked Aletha finally.
"No. What?"
"I keep expecting Danger to bang on the wall and tell us to keep it down."
Sirius exhaled shakily, then cracked a smile, beginning to laugh and cry at the same time, and then Aletha was doing the same. They stumbled into the music room together and sat down on the floor, holding each other, apologizing half-incoherently, over and over, insane laughter fighting for equal time with their sobs.
"I don't want them to be dead," mumbled Sirius into Aletha's hair some indefinite time later. "But if it's that or them alive and being tortured..."
"I know." Aletha pressed herself against him, not sure whether she was giving or taking comfort. "I know."
"Sirius! Letha! Wake up!"
Aletha blinked. She was on something much harder than her bed, and someone was calling her name...
We must have fallen asleep on the floor.
"WAKE UP!" shouted the voice, which she suddenly identified.
James!
She sat up quickly and looked at the fireplace. James' head was sitting in it, and his expression made her heart leap.
He looks... happy!
"What's happened?" she asked quickly, shaking Sirius. "Good news?"
"Yes. In a way. Yes." James' hazel eyes fixed on Sirius, who was now awake. "We need you in right away, Padfoot. And you too, Letha, if you can come."
"It's Saturday, of course I can come – now what is it?"
James smiled. "It's Wormtail. He's come back."
Sirius sat up suddenly. "Is he all right?"
"Cut and bruised, tired out, but that seems to be the worst of it – we'd like you to check him over, Letha, to make sure we haven't missed anything, since he doesn't need a stranger poking at him right now."
Aletha nodded eagerly, then realized what James was saying implicitly. "He was alone?"
James' smile faltered. "Yes. Alone."
"Has he said anything?" asked Sirius urgently, getting to his feet. "About the others?"
"Not yet, we haven't asked him – he's worn out, and we don't want to push him too hard before we know if he's all right – can you come right away?"
"Of course," said Aletha, accepting Sirius' hand to pull her up. "As soon as you get out of the fire."
James winked. "DMLE infirmary," he said, and vanished.
Aletha went first, Sirius right behind her. James was waiting on the other side of the fire, and led them quickly to the screened-off bed where Lily was already sitting with her hand in that of an exhausted-looking Peter Pettigrew. He found strength to smile at Aletha and Sirius as they came around the screen, though, and Aletha's examination found nothing terribly wrong with him.
"You should be able to answer questions," she said to him. "But if these bullies start making you feel too tired, just tell them to bugger off, and they have to do it. Healer's orders." She fixed first James, then Sirius, with a glare. "Got it?"
"Got it, ma'am," said the two in unison, saluting her.
Lily had fetched Peter a drink of water. He sipped on it in between answering questions. Aletha noticed, too, that although Peter's clothes were very ragged, he was clean, and suspected Lily's light touch with Cleaning Charms might be responsible.
The story was drearily like what they had all suspected. Death Eaters had Apparated inside the restaurant, apparently having scoped the place out beforehand, since eight of them had appeared encircling the table where the four friends were sitting, and had disarmed and bound them all before they could react. They had been Portkeyed away to somewhere damp and dark, with a stone floor and the sound of dripping water nearby.
Masked figures had come for them, taking Evanie away first, then Peter. He had no idea where she'd been taken, or what had happened to her, and Aletha had to halt that line of questioning as too traumatic at the present moment. Peter himself had been taken to another room, unbound, and left alone in the dark. And then he'd heard a noise.
"Snakes," he said with an effort. Lily put a comforting hand on his shoulder. "Lots of snakes."
"How did they know?" asked Sirius. Peter had always feared snakes, even before he knew his Animagus form was one of their favorite snacks.
"Probably just a lucky guess," said James. "Go on, Wormtail."
"That was what saved my life," said Peter, smiling weakly. "Being able to turn into Wormtail. One of them, a big one, tried to crush me. I transformed and got away before it could figure out where I'd gone. And then I just ran..." He looked miserable. "I know I should have stayed and tried to help them, but I was so scared, all I could think of was getting away... not even Evanie..."
"You did the best thing you could have," said James quickly. "What could you have done? One man, alone, without even a wand?"
"Now we know they're alive," said Sirius. "Or they were, as of that night. Now the big question. Where were you?"
Peter shook his head slowly. "I'm sorry. I don't know. I just ran, I wasn't really thinking. I don't remember almost anything of the next two days. Just running, and staying away from predators, and finding food anywhere I could. I knew I had to get somewhere, but I wasn't really thinking as a human at all. My next actual memory is turning back in an alley near here and scaring some poor old Muggle bum."
Sirius barked out a quick laugh. "Fine. We've at least got the time differential. Wherever you were, it was far enough away that it took you two days to get back here in rat form. And maybe we can do something with tracing spells, or a scry or something..."
Aletha tuned out as James and Sirius began to discuss technical details. A small part of the weight on her heart had been lifted, but others had come to replace it. She had hoped, secretly, that some of her friends had been killed trying to escape, but Peter's story made that unlikely.
And snakes aren't exactly something most people have lying around. They did their homework about Peter. It's more than likely they did it on the others too...
And now she was frightened. Because she knew exactly what each of the others feared most.
Danger's afraid of seeing Remus hurt people, or kill them, and not being able to help him. And of course, Remus and Evanie have the same fear. Wouldn't anyone be afraid of killing people they love, people they care deeply about, without being able to help themselves?
And there would be an opportunity for all three of those fears to be fulfilled the very next night.
But as far as anyone fighting against the Dark knew, nothing happened that next night. The Order of the Phoenix had been prepared for an attack on their headquarters – although its exact location was hidden by a Fidelius Charm, any one of the three might have broken under torture and revealed the general location, and the two werewolves, being members of the Order, would be able to find the house themselves. And werewolves often went after familiar scents more savagely than after unfamiliar ones...
But nothing happened. There were no reports of any unusual werewolf activity anywhere in England, and all the best efforts of the Aurors turned up nothing from Peter's journey. James and Sirius, in particular, worked to exhaustion for a week and a half after Peter's return. Finally, Lily and Aletha invaded the DMLE, each Stunned her own husband, and hauled him home for some much-needed rest and food.
"You'll do them no good by killing yourself," said Aletha severely to Sirius when he woke up.
Another two weeks passed, and another full moon. The night afterwards, the Dark Mark hovered over a house in Surrey. One Death Eater was dead, killed by a blow to the head from the kitchen cabinet he lay below, and one on the floor groaning, too badly burned to move, when the Aurors arrived. John Lupin lay unmoving in the corner of his kitchen, his wand several feet away.
"Definitely the Killing Curse," reported Andromeda Tonks after the examination. "But they probably meant to make you think a werewolf had done it. Look what this one was carrying." She handed James a large replica of a long-clawed paw.
John's funeral was the next week. Many of his Muggle neighbors attended, as did his son's friends. He was buried next to his wife, Katherine, who had died in a fire a few years before.
The Death Eater recovered, but told interrogators nothing beyond a name, Sebastian Davis. He was placed in Azkaban after a quick trial.
Christmas came, but no one felt like celebrating. Peter was wan and seldom seen, coming to Order meetings and doing whatever anyone needed of him, then disappearing again. Aletha wondered if he was trying to comfort Evanie's parents, and if it was working, or if they were asking themselves, "Why him and not her?"
Peter certainly seemed to be asking himself that question. His mother complained that he was never home anymore. With the woman's well-known shrewish temper, Aletha didn't blame him.
After the passing of the third full moon since the disappearances, in January, even Sirius had to admit that it was unlikely they would find anything. Remus, Danger, and Evanie were in all probability, and everyone secretly hoped, long dead. Still, it seemed wrong to let them simply fade from everyone's thoughts. The war had stolen them, but it shouldn't steal their memories.
And so a memorial service was planned. On 31 January, the Order of the Phoenix gathered at their headquarters to mourn three fallen comrades. Enlarged photographs of Remus and Danger dominated one long table, with a large piece of parchment and several quills lying there, for people to write messages to them. Evanie had her own, smaller, table at the other end of the room. Peter spent a long time there, and charmed his message to be invisible to everyone else when he was done.
Favorite foods of the three were served, though it was generally agreed that even Fabian Prewett, the Order's current resident cook, couldn't equal Danger as a culinary artist. Stories were swapped about them, with David and Rose, special guests for the occasion, holding their own against the entire rest of the Order with tales of Danger's childhood. However, in Larry and Patty Mead they met their match, and the two couples finally had to admit they had just about an equal number of stories about their girls.
The Marauders had to be Remus' representatives, and fulfilled their role admirably, from personal experience and the research they'd done into the contents of his own and his family home. Both sets of possessions had come to the Potters and the Blacks – Remus hadn't left a will, and John Lupin's hadn't dealt with the possibility of his son dying before himself, so the court (Aletha suspected Dumbledore's hand in it) had declared the two couples the closest thing to family currently extant and assigned all the Lupins' worldly goods to them.
As the occasion began to wind down, Rose Granger tapped a spoon on her glass, bringing the room to silence. "I have an announcement," she said. "And as friends of my Danger and her Remus, I think you should all hear what I would have told them first if they were here." She smiled warmly at David. "I'm pregnant."
There was one moment of shocked silence, then the Order swarmed forward to offer congratulations and best wishes.
"Our Danger's being our good angel, just like she always was," said David, the occasional tear escaping his eye, even though he was smiling broadly. "She always knew how much we wanted another child, even though we were thinking it might be too late. This little one is a gift from her and Remus."
After the service was over, the letters everyone had written were burned in the fireplace. People cried openly as the parchments vanished, the words disappearing in curls of flames. Evanie's was the first to be burned, and as soon as it was gone, Peter, who had been oddly dry-eyed throughout the evening, collapsed where he stood. Mr. and Mrs. Mead offered to take him home with them right away, saying they'd hardly seen him lately.
The fireplace was cleared for their use, and then Remus' and Danger's parchments were burned, together, as the two had done everything in life since they'd found each other.
"Carry my love to heaven," whispered Aletha, her voice catching, watching the smoke rise.
(A/N: Remember, CONSTANT VIGILENCE... applies to me as well as to Rowling... she's quite a bit sneakier than I am, better planning and more revision and all that... but I think I'm still pretty sneaky. So enjoy the angst-fest – it gets "better" before it gets better... if that made any sense at all... and please, please remember to tell me how you liked it!
Oh, and I don't think I'll be going on hiatus from this. Except for those two days after HBP, when no one will be online anyway. This is far enough from canon that you ought to be able to remember that it isn't... I hope... so I'll be posting up to Thursday, possibly Friday. Enjoy!)