(A/N: HEAVY angst ahead. You have been warned.)
Chapter 5: Alone
Aletha sat alone by the fireplace, a cup of tea in her hands and a quiet smile on her face, waiting.
She glanced at the clock – it was 1:24 AM. She'd gotten out of work at midnight and been home within a few minutes. Sirius' shift ended at one, but he had to report in, a process which usually took about half an hour. So he should be on his way home soon.
She hoped he was. She had something to tell him.
She sipped at her tea, thinking dreamy, happy thoughts, filled with songs and games and laughter, and the promise of a brighter future. The war would have to end sometime. Perhaps not until Harry grew up, or Neville, and defeated Voldemort, but they would all survive.
Except the ones who already haven't.
Her eyes rested on the framed picture of her and Sirius' wedding, in pride of place on the mantel, and on two couples in particular.
Two years to the day. Two years since we knew anything, heard anything, except for what Peter could tell us.
She still missed them. The pain was duller now, and less intrusive in her life, but she was learning again what she had learned when her mother died and her father disappeared – it would never go away entirely. She was never going to "get over it".
To do that, I'd have to forget them.
And I'm not willing to make that trade.
She smiled at the photograph, Danger laughing at something Remus had said, Peter stroking Evanie's arm tenderly. Idly she wondered, if they had been able to have children, what would they have looked like?
She spent some time designing babies for them – all the Pettigrew children would look unprepossessing, but become darling when they smiled, just like their parents, and any child of Danger and Remus' was sure to get the untamable Granger hair and the strong Lupin face. Peter and Evanie should only have girls, she decided, so their father could spoil them rotten, and Danger and Remus should have twins, a boy and a girl, in Harry's year or one below so that he and they could drive the teachers mad...
He and they and one other.
Aletha smiled quietly again, then thought to check the clock.
She was startled to see that it was already past two. Where was Sirius? He usually sent her an Order message if he was going to be late – but he might have been delayed somewhere he couldn't send a message from, or he might have forgotten. He did tend to do that.
Besides, I'm not allowed to worry until he's an hour late. That's the rule. Fretting has to wait for another hour after that, and full-blown panic is not allowed to ensue until he's three hours overdue. Remus had proposed the rule, only half in fun, after Aletha had ripped a curtain with pulling on it in anxiety when Sirius was an hour and a half late for dinner.
What would you think about this, Remus? Aletha wondered, then smiled at her own silliness. You'd be tremendously happy for us – you had that gift. You could always be happy with other people, without being jealous of what they had and you never would. Not many people can honestly do that.
And you always survived, no matter what happened. If you had come back, instead of Peter, you would miss Danger terribly, but you wouldn't be a ghost of yourself, wandering aimlessly through life. You'd be in the Department of Mysteries every day, or wherever else you could help best, fighting to end this war so that no one else's loved ones had to die...
I hope, whatever happened to you, they didn't break you. You had your pride. It was quiet and hidden, like everything about you, but you had it. You wouldn't take charity, in any form – we had to be so discreet about offering to rent to you at a price you could afford. And you were always careful not to give offense unintentionally. If you were going to offend someone, you wanted it to be deliberate.
She snickered, thinking of a few times when Remus had quietly deflated the egos of some of the more pompous Ministry officials he ran across. He had especially liked twitting Augustus Rookwood, a high official in his own Department of Mysteries, which of course meant that the comments had to be utterly subtle, never anything Rookwood could take open offense at.
God, I miss you. I miss you all. I think I will ask Sirius if we can move. We'll have a good excuse, at least...
Thinking of Sirius reminded her to check the clock again. 2:37.
All right, now I'm allowed to worry. And I will. Where has he gotten to?
Something silvery shot through the wall. Aletha's heart leapt.
A message!
But the creature made of silver light was not the dog she had been expecting, but a phoenix.
What does Dumbledore want at this hour of the night?
Aletha held out her wrist, and the phoenix settled onto it. A thought flowed into her mind, in Dumbledore's voice, as if she had just remembered something the Headmaster of Hogwarts had told her.
Please come to my office at the school as soon as is convenient.
That was Dumbledore-ese for "immediately". Aletha took Floo powder from the vase on the mantel where they kept it and threw a good pinch into the fire. "Headmaster's office, Hogwarts," she said as the flames roared green, and let them take her away.
She was shocked, when she emerged from the fireplace, to see the lines on Dumbledore's face. She knew, of course, that he was not a young man, but his age rarely struck her so strongly as it did now. Something terrible must have happened.
He turned towards her and smiled slightly. "Aletha. Please do sit down. I hope I did not wake you."
"Not at all, Sirius is out on nighttime rounds, and I was waiting up for him – has something happened to him?" She sat down, looking at him anxiously.
"Not directly, no. But I am afraid I do have bad news."
What other kind is there, lately?
"James and Lily Potter, as far as we can determine, are dead."
Something roared in Aletha's ears, and the room seemed to darken. She pushed the sound and the darkness back – she would not, she must not, faint, not now. "As far as you can determine?" she asked, proud at the levelness in her voice.
"Around eleven-thirty in the evening, the alarms and wards I set on their home to detect invasion, specifically the invasion of Lord Voldemort or Death Eaters, all activated at the same time. I was not able to leave the school myself at that point, so I sent Hagrid to see what was happening, as well as dispatching a message to the nearest available Order member who was a full wizard or witch. Hagrid reported back to me shortly thereafter that the house was destroyed, with no sign of James, Lily, or any attackers."
No sign of anyone? That doesn't make sense...
Wait. There's someone missing on that list. Matter of fact, he hasn't mentioned him at all.
"What about Harry?"
Dumbledore smiled, a real one, this time. "Harry Potter is alive and well. Hagrid is caring for him at the moment, and will be bringing him to his new guardians tonight."
"His new guardians – but that's us. Sirius and me. James and Lily wanted Sirius to have Harry if anything happened to them."
Dumbledore looked grave. Aletha frowned. "What are you not telling me, sir?"
"When was the last time you saw Sirius, Aletha?"
"Let me think. Peter left around five. We had dinner at six, and his shift starts at eight, but he always likes to get in early, so he probably left around... oh, seven-thirty, I'd guess. Why?"
"Do you believe," said Dumbledore quietly, "that any force in the world, other than harm threatened to yourself, could pry a secret from Sirius Black in less than four hours?"
What Aletha had been conveniently forgetting, or perhaps unconsciously blocking, flooded into her mind. Sirius was the Potters' Secret-Keeper. If Voldemort or the Death Eaters had found them, it was only because Sirius had told them where to go.
And Dumbledore was right. Sirius was too strong to be broken down in four hours – four days would be more necessary, and even that seemed unlikely. He could have been ordered to tell the secret under Imperius, or given some kind of potion to pry the truth from him, but he would have fought against that with all his will and all his magic, which were both considerable. Aletha had even seen him do wandless magic on a few occasions.
All of which pointed in one of two directions, neither of which she wanted to look in.
Either someone had found a way to break Sirius and force him to tell the secret of the Potters' location.
Or Sirius had told someone willingly.
As soon as she thought it, she wanted to laugh. It was preposterous, ridiculous, impossible. Sirius, willingly tell a secret to the Dark Side? A secret of this importance? Never. He was incapable of such an act.
"The whole point of being married is to have someone who knows you better than you know yourself." And she knew Sirius that well. There was no way in the world he could have turned traitor.
But the alternative was no better, and barely more likely. What, if anything, could break Sirius down so quickly? Dumbledore had mentioned one thing that might have done it, but nothing of that sort had happened. She was here, she was perfectly fine...
But there are ways to make one person look like another. What if they got some random person off the street, anyone would do, and made them look like me? There are potions and charms to do that, they're complicated but not impossible...
And then torture "me" in front of him. That might have done it.
But he would have known. He would have figured it out. He knows me too well, he would have seen something that didn't fit, and figured it out.
And he would never have sacrificed Lily and James to save me. For one thing, it's wrong – for another, it wouldn't get him anything. I'd kill him myself if he did that.
So she was back to the first option she'd explored. Sirius, a traitor to their cause. A spy for the Dark Lord.
Dumbledore coughed slightly. She looked up, startled, having almost forgotten he was there. "May I know what you are thinking?" he asked gently.
She explained, haphazardly, the two explanations she'd come up with, and why neither of them could be true, but obviously one of them must... "Do you know anything I don't, sir?"
"Only two things. First, I have spoken with Sirius' immediate superior. He arrived safely for work and went out on his rounds on time. Second, there is a part of Hagrid's report I am afraid I kept from you at first. As he was removing Harry from the house, another member of the Order arrived there. Sirius."
Aletha resisted the urge to pull at the neck of her robes; she was not choking, the air in the room was perfectly fine. "Was he... all right?"
"He did not appear to be injured or harmed in any way. He was, of course, upset by what he saw. He asked Hagrid to give him Harry, but Hagrid refused, on my orders."
"What?" Aletha stared at the Headmaster. "Why?"
"My understanding of what occurred this night is imperfect," said Dumbledore slowly, as if he were piecing his thoughts together as he spoke. "But I believe that Voldemort attempted to kill Harry Potter – and failed."
"Failed? He's never failed to kill anyone before – why now?"
"The magic remaining around the house at Godric's Hollow was chaotic, in turmoil. A great force for evil was thwarted by a still greater force for good. At the risk of sounding like a sentimental old fool, I must conclude that it was love – specifically, Lily's love for Harry – which saved his life, and which destroyed Voldemort."
Aletha shook her head. "I don't understand."
"Nor do I. Would you like to hear what I have been able to collect, as imperfect as it is?"
"Yes. Please." Facts were always better than suppositions.
"Voldemort entered the house and encountered James. Both of them cast spells, culminating in a spell from Voldemort which seems to have ended the battle. Nothing I recognize, which leads me to believe he may have invented it himself."
Aletha winced. Anything Lord Voldemort invented for use against his enemies would be painful, humiliating, deadly, or all three.
"Voldemort then proceeded upstairs, where he tried to keep Lily out of his way by binding her against a wall, while he did whatever he intended to do to Harry. However, the binding magic was broken from within, presumably by Lily. There was also the pattern of an interrupted spell, similar to or the same as the one used on James, which Lily probably took on herself, seeing that it was intended for Harry."
"How could you tell that?" Aletha was morbidly fascinated. Dumbledore knew things about magic she hadn't even known it was possible to know.
"A spell which strikes the one it was intended for leaves different magical traces behind than one which strikes by accident or is intercepted. That spell, whatever it was, was the second-to-last piece of intentional magic worked in that house tonight."
"What was the last?"
"The Killing Curse."
Aletha realized she was twisting her wedding ring on her finger and firmly settled her hands in her lap. Harry's not dead, she reminded herself. Harry's alive.
"It appears to have rebounded from Harry and struck Voldemort. Why, we cannot be sure. I believe it has something to do with Lily's sacrifice. But whyever it happened, the outcome was the same. Harry was unharmed, except for a cut on his forehead. Voldemort was... vanquished."
"Vanquished? Not killed?"
Dumbledore sighed. "There are spells which prolong life, delaying death. Some of them can be used by wizards or witches with scruples. Some cannot. Voldemort uses them all, indiscriminately, and searches constantly for new ones. He wishes, in the end, to conquer death, to live forever. The magics he has performed so far have given him, if not yet immunity to death, shall we say a certain resistance to it. I do not believe that he is dead."
"Too bad," said Aletha heartily. "But he's gone."
"For the moment, yes."
"May it be a long moment."
"Indeed."
Suddenly, the reality of what had happened only a few short hours ago dropped in on Aletha, and she had to curl her hands into balls and close her eyes, trying to keep hold of her composure.
I said I'd do anything to get rid of Voldemort. But not this – not this... James, Lily, why you?
But wait, we got off track. Harry.
"You never really answered my question, Professor. You told me what happened tonight, but not what that has to do with why Sirius and I can't have Harry." Assuming Sirius isn't a traitor and isn't lying dead in a ditch somewhere...
"A willing sacrifice of one person for another has a magic of its own. Harry will have some protection from this all his life. Additionally, since his mother's blood, if you will pardon such an expression, bought his life, his mother's blood can continue to protect it. Lily Potter has died, but her sister lives on. In the home of his mother's relations, Harry will be immune to evil such as Voldemort represents."
"You want to send Harry to Petunia Dursley?" Aletha was on her feet. "Professor, the woman not six months ago blamed Lily for their parents' deaths, at the top of her voice, at their funeral! She has no shame and no morals where magic is concerned, she'd do anything to keep it away from her family and her so-perfect little Muggle life – how can you be sure she'd even take Harry in?"
"She will," said Dumbledore calmly, not moved in the least by Aletha's outburst. "Antipathy to magic or not, she will not wish to be the cause of her nephew's death. Perhaps, when more of the Death Eaters have been tried and convicted, the danger will subside to a level where Harry may with safety reside elsewhere. For now, his aunt's home remains the safest place for him."
Aletha sank back into her chair, hating the old man's logic but having to concede that it made sense. Harry might not be comfortable or happy with the Dursleys, but at least he would be alive.
"The problem of Harry being, if not solved, temporarily assuaged, let us turn to another." Dumbledore steepled his fingers. "I do not wish to make any sort of rash assumption about Sirius. There may be a perfectly reasonable explanation for this that we simply do not know about. But in order to discover it, we must find Sirius. And my messages to him have gone unanswered."
"I'll help look," said Aletha quickly. "I know all the places he goes – well, most of them, anyway, I'm sure he has one or two he doesn't tell me about."
And maybe he had more, whispered a cynical voice in her mind. Maybe he had a whole second life he didn't tell you about...
All the time she was preparing to go hunting for Sirius, the voice kept making comments, and she kept pushing it away.
Sirius said there wasn't a chance you were the spy. What if that was because he was the spy himself?
He didn't want you knowing where the Potters were. Why? So there was no chance you'd be there when his master arrived?
He said the spy was clever enough not to take the bait Dumbledore was laying. If he knew about it, why should he take it?
You should have known. He's a pureblood, his family's notoriously Dark. Why would you think the apple had fallen far from the tree? He's probably been lying to you all this time, just stringing you along – the Muggleborn wife, the perfect reason for the light side to trust him...
And over and over, it returned to the three damning facts.
Sirius was the Potters' Secret-Keeper.
The Potters are dead.
Sirius has been seen unhurt since their deaths.
She wouldn't look at what those facts added up to. She refused to. There would be something, some little detail she'd missed, that would explain everything and make it all right – Sirius would laugh at her and remind her of whatever it was she wasn't thinking of, and take her in his arms and kiss her.
And then they would mourn James and Lily together, as they had mourned Remus and Danger, and Evanie. She would support him as he worked to catch the Death Eaters, and when it was safe to do so, they would claim Harry and bring him up as their own, teaching him his parents' names and faces, and what they did for him.
Maybe the house won't be too empty after all.
Those were the thoughts that kept her going through hours of fruitless searching. She'd charmed a quill of Sirius' to lead her to him, but time after time it jabbed out a destination on the map she was carrying, only to have it change almost as soon as she got there. It was as if he was deliberately trying to avoid her. It was very frustrating.
She would scold him for it as soon as she found him.
Finally, she was getting close. The sun was up, it was probably about seven-thirty, and she was exhausted.
Is he ever going to catch it for keeping me out all night, and worried sick about him...
She walked wearily through an alleyway and stopped dead.
She'd found Sirius.
He was standing directly in front of her, at the end of the street she'd been about to enter, glaring up the street at –
She looked.
Peter?
"Too bad you didn't get what you wanted," said Sirius in a conversational snarl. Everyone on the street had turned to watch.
Peter was shaking, his eyes filled with tears. "Lily and James, Sirius!" he cried in a high-pitched, trembling voice, wringing his hands first in front of him, then behind. "How could you?"
"Reach for it, rat," growled Sirius. His left hand flickered in the motion Aletha had seen a million times, on the Auror training ground, in battle, at parties. It was almost faster than the eye could follow.
The street in front of him exploded. Muggles yelled, screamed, dove for cover. Aletha staggered back, shaken, and shielded her head as debris rained down around her.
When she looked up, Sirius was staring at something. She followed his line of sight.
Where Peter had been standing, there was... nothing. A pile of cloth, that was all.
A pile of cloth with dark stains on it.
She could just see, vaguely, through the dust, what had happened to the rest of the street. Muggles were draped across the curbs in bizarre poses, obviously dead. There was a huge crater in the middle of the street, a foul stench was coming from it, it must have cracked the sewer open...
A sound drew her attention back to her husband.
He was laughing. He was standing there, with his wand in his hand, looking at the bloodstained robes that were all that remained of Peter Pettigrew, and he was laughing.
Uncontrollable fury rose in Aletha.
"YOU!" she screamed.
Sirius spun to face her, shock stamped across his features. "Letha – what – this isn't–"
Aletha wasn't listening.
"I trusted you!" Too furious even to draw her wand, she snatched up a chunk of brick from the ground and hurled it at him. "I loved you! And all the time – how long, Sirius? How long have you been working for him?"
"Letha, no – it wasn't–"
"Wasn't you, of course it wasn't, you'd say anything right now! Everything you've ever told me has been a lie!" She spread her arms wide. "So go on, do it! Kill me too! Make a clean sweep! You killed Peter, you betrayed James and Lily–"
Something struck her with the force of a physical blow, one more thing to lay at his door, one more betrayal to add to his roll. "You asked me once who could have told Voldemort about Remus and Evanie. Who on this list, you said. I'll tell you who – the first damned person you named! You!"
Sirius hadn't moved, he was still standing frozen, his mouth open in shock or denial. She took three furious, deliberate steps towards him and glared at him, wishing, truly wishing, that looks could kill. "I cannot believe I thought I loved you," she spat. "I cannot believe I married you. And I cannot believe that I am carrying your child!"
She slapped him across the face, hard, then turned and ran. Popping sounds indicated the arrival of Aurors, Ministry officials, Death Eaters, whoever. She didn't care.
Sirius didn't protest when the Aurors arrived and bound him, didn't fight when they hauled him back to the Ministry and threw him into one of the holding cells hard enough to bruise where he landed. His emotional buffer had overloaded back on that street, when he realized that Peter had played one final prank, the best of his career, and Wormtail had pulled off some lulus.
They'll never believe it wasn't me now. I could swear Peter was the Secret-Keeper till I'm blue in the face, but two of the four people who knew are dead, one's pretending to be, and the last one is me. They'd never believe me, no matter what I did.
He turned rat, the bastard. He turned rat and ran, right down into the sewers. He must have cut himself or something, to leave blood on the robes...
"A finger," he heard someone say around the corner. "We've got a positive ID, it's Pettigrew's..."
Merlin's beard, he cut his finger off? I didn't think he'd have the guts. That'd leave blood for sure.
But why, why, why did Letha have to be there? Why did she have to see that? If I could just have caught her alone and told her the truth – if I had only told her about the swap before we did it – if I had gone home and told her instead of going rat-hunting –
He groaned. If, if, if, it won't do me any good now. Nothing will do me any good now. James and Lily are dead, Aletha hates me, Harry – good God, Harry, he's going to grow up with the Muggles, Letha doesn't have any legal claim to him, it was all me! She's not his godmother!
He rocked back and forth on the floor of the cell, head in his arms, moaning. This is all my fault...
He hardly noticed when they came in and pulled him to his feet. He noticed mostly because he started to feel cold. Then he heard the rasping breaths, and saw the shadows on the floor, two silhouettes wearing hooded cloaks...
Go ahead. Take me to Azkaban. See if I care. He raised his chin defiantly. It can't possibly be any worse than this.
When the dementors took hold of him, he realized he was wrong.
"I cannot believe I thought I loved you." Her voice played back in his head, like a bad tape on an endless loop. "I cannot believe I married you. And I cannot believe that I am carrying your child!"
They were delighted. A new one had come, a strong one. They gathered about his enclosure, feeding on his energy and his remembrances. The best ones involved a dark female and a small one. They set about taking those.
The only thing better would be to take his essence. To take it and make it one of them, for that was how they reproduced, by slowly transforming the spirit they took within themselves, nourishing it with despair and horror, until it awoke and came forth as another like them, with an unslakable thirst for light and life, and an endless supply of souled creatures from which to draw it.
Or, at least, that was how it should be.
Sirius did not know that the weakness overtaking him and the sick chill all through his body was due to the gathering of dementors outside his cell. He only knew a few things, and they filled him with bleak despair.
James and Lily were dead.
Harry would be raised by magic-hating Muggles.
Peter was a traitor.
Letha hated him.
His child would grow up despising the name he, or she, bore.
And nothing was ever going to get any better.
He was alone.
With the last of her strength, Aletha composed herself enough to find a subway station, buy a ticket, get on the correct train, and get off at the proper stop. She remembered almost nothing else until she was on her own front stoop.
She shut the door behind her, walked the five steps to the large armchair, and fell into it.
"No," she moaned, wrapping her arms around herself. "No, no, no, no..."
But no one was there to hear her. No one was there to care. She could stay in this chair and starve to death, or cry until she dried up and blew away.
But some innate sense of responsibility to her child drove her, at various times during that day, to get up and eat, or drink, or use the bathroom.
Otherwise, she crouched in the chair, sobbing and howling in grief, unable to summon the strength or resolve to do anything else.
James and Lily and Peter were dead.
Harry was lost to her forever, since she had no claim to him, as only a friend of the family, that would override his aunt's right to keep him.
Sirius was a traitor, her marriage a sham and a lie.
The coming child would never know a father, except as a distant figure of shame.
She was alone.
(A/N: Phew. Everyone all angst-ed out now? This is the lowest point of the story – promise! It goes uphill from here! I know, I know, it can't very well go downhill, can it...
I'm very pleased. A few people have guessed bits and pieces of how the story will turn out, but no one has guessed my major (for lack of a better word) plot device, the discovery on which the whole story hinges, the seminal idea for this fic! I can't wait to hear (er, read) the gasps when I unveil it!
Next chapter, I promise, some of the characters you're all missing so... notice, please, I'm not saying you'll see them alive. Might be memories, or flashbacks, like Michelle (Neurotica) loves so much. And yes, as I said, next chapter the story starts turning around. So give me lots of review love, so that I can get this to a slightly happier place tomorrow before we all stop reading fan fiction for the real deal – TWO MORE DAYS! YIPPEE!)