"Jesus Christ," James is saying when Lily comes in the next afternoon. She comes up behind him quietly and, seeing Sirius, backs out of the room. James continues and she stops to listen.

"What the fuck do you mean, it could be yours?"

"James," Sirius starts miserably, head hanging. His inability to meet James' eyes keeps Lily undetected for the moment, because they are both looking away. She has covered her mouth to keep James from hearing her sudden deep breaths. Sirius has told James. She starts to feel dizzy and nauseous. She is rooted to the spot or she might have run to the bathroom, a mixture of terror and what she supposes is a first bout of morning sickness.

She was going to tell James, until this thing came up. Then she thought they could overlook it, forget it, make a happy family. They could learn to love each other, get to know each other.

Now this.

"For Christ's sake," James says, dropping into the couch across from Sirius. His legs are stretched out casually but his tense figure tells Lily that he's about to break. She waits for the explosion. "How long?"

Sirius swallows. "Before she met you. I didn't know about you either until…" He trails off, trying to find words that don't shift the blame from himself. "I should have stopped it, James. She chose you."

"Apparently not," James says bitterly. "Jesus."

"It's over," Sirius says. "Before we knew about all this, we wanted to end it for your sake."

"You're late," James snaps. "What did she do, come crying to you while I was out working my ass off for her? You thought she was lonely?"

"Well, she was. You barely know each other. It isn't your fault," Sirius adds quickly. "It's just how it is."

"I should have worked less," James mutters. "No, never mind, she was with you the whole time."

"I think –"

"Don't tell me what you think, like you know my wife better than I do. Harping out solutions, will you just shut up? If I wanted to hire someone to sleep with my wife I would have done it." James is suddenly furious. "God knows I've given her everything else she's ever wanted. Fuck, what the hell am I going to do?" He covers his face with his hands. "I might have seen it coming from her, but come on, Sirius."

Sirius is as close to crying as he'll ever get: his voice is steady but his hands are shaking. "We tried to end it after she married you. I mean, I did end it. But she's just – no, I don't want to say that. It wasn't all her. And it was… It's harsh to think but James, it was hard on all of us. It's been hard on us too."

James glares. Sirius and Lily were not an 'us' that he had ever worried about. All those weekends he went away and left them with the house, the chummy afternoons spent together, those were the days of smart people with a mutual friend. Not lovers. Not traitors.

He's known Sirius for too long for the charm to work on him, that Sirius has unconsciously turned on in the vain hope that James will forgive him. "Get the fuck out, all right? If it weren't for that child, I swear to God…" James runs his hand through his hair, yanking it straight up. He hasn't done this in years but even so Lily feels a twinge of annoyance at his nervous habits, and endless energy. She wants to lie down, knowing she should stay to talk to him.

Oh, hell, she thinks. To hell with both of them. She crawls into her bed down the hall, listening to the sounds of James telling Sirius not to bother coming back, and handing him his cloak, and the door slamming. Then James changing the locking spells.

Lily knows that what she did was wrong. She thinks of the way she had twisted her mother's wishes and of the damage she had caused to Sirius and James. She loves Sirius and can't quite bring herself to regret it all: a little piece of her blaming James for not being good enough.

So she doesn't cry. She blinks into her pillowcase, focusing on the way her eyelashes scrape against it, and when she can't help it anymore she invents ways that she could be with Sirius, that Sirius and James could still be friends.

When James comes in she is sleeping. He looks at her, loathing her, his body still loving her as his mind rejects her. He sits beside her and strokes her hair and looks out the window, down the street. He is crying.