It is late in October. Sirius has been coming every day for the past weeks, and has barely looked at Lily. James watches them silently but doesn't make a move.

Harry adores Sirius. There have been more than a few awkward times, when Harry has chosen Sirius over his father, and none of them are quite sure what to do. But Harry smoothes it over with his smiles.

Right now he is with Remus. They'll be back in half an hour or so; Lily wonders whether Remus might have known the situation when he offered to baby-sit. She looks between James and Sirius, sipping her tea, and knows that it's coming.

Even so it comes with a jolt. "So when were you going to tell me you were fucking him, Lils?" James asks. She was looking at her tea and continues to do so, feeling a flush rising in her cheeks. She sets her cup aside.

Sirius is staring at her, not daring to look at James; then realizes what he is doing and switches his gaze to the floor. She forces herself to relax. "The morning we found out I was pregnant."

"I see. And was this a mutual decision? Or I guess Sirius just went ahead with it."

She doesn't have anything to say to that.

"I take it you aren't surprised that I know."

"You've been a little tense ever since," she says dryly, then winces at her wording, hoping he won't catch on.

"Ever since what?"

Damn him.

"Ever since you overheard Sirius telling me?"

Damn him to hell.

"James," Sirius says, "you're rightly angry, but you called me back here so we could talk, not incriminate."

He sounds so reasonable Lily could just scream. She knows what James' reaction will be.

"You're in my house, Black, shut the fuck up."

That wasn't so bad as she expected. Though she's starting to feel a little scared under James' collected stare. This is too thought-out for him. He's too calm. She risks a glance at Sirius and meets his appealing gaze. He wants her to help him set things right.

"I'm sorry," she whispers, looking at James and feeling the lie.

"No, you aren't."

"I am," she says, "truly I am. I didn't mean for it to go as far as it did. It was just – I can't explain it." She remembers telling Sirius the same thing about James and stops herself, her breaths coming out shallow as she panics. "You love him too, James, can't you understand how it is?"

Sirius sinks slowly back into his chair. He's watching James now, he doesn't want to look at Lily. He sees James' fingers tighten on the arms of his chair, his jaw clenching, and knows that Lily won't notice and will plough on through.

"You never loved me," James says. She makes a small noise to deny it but it comes out all wrong.

Sirius starts to stand. "Do you want me to –"

"Did you love her?" James asks. Sirius sits back down.

"I don't know."

"She loved you?"

"Yes."

"And what about me?"

"I love you more than anything, James, you know that," Sirius says quietly.

"I'm having a little trouble understanding why you fucked my wife, then."

"It wasn't –"

"It was," he says. "You fucked me over when you stayed with her. You knew what it would do to me and you screwed her anyway."

Lily is still trying to deny it. "James, it wasn't like that, he didn't –"

"He did everything he could to hurt me."

"Not on purpose!" Sirius says in a strangled voice. "It's over, James, please!"

"It was my fault for marrying you," Lily says, "I should have known better."

Sirius goes very still. James pushes himself up slowly.

"My mother thought I loved you and I was guilty that she died."

Sirius closes his eyes. He has hated himself for a long time now, so it isn't hard for him to face James' reaction. Lily has obviously never seen him really angry. She would lie, lie her pretty ass off to save herself if she knew what he was about to do.

James is drawing his wand. The doorbell rings.

"Why didn't you ever tell Remus that charm?" Lily says reproachfully. She gets up to answer the door, not looking at James. "Harry's going to catch cold waiting for us."

"Avada Kedavra," he says. He isn't even sure that it will work, as he wasn't sure up to that moment whether he wanted it to end this way, but it does. He turns to Sirius, who is facing him wide-eyed.

"Christ, James, have you gone mad?"

James shakes his head. "I want you to know that I blame you fully and hope that you rot in Azkaban." He says, "I hereby bequeath you all my possessions. My wand's included in that, by the way, and I've destroyed yours. It's a good thing Remus never trusted you."

When Remus comes in Sirius is standing over Lily and James' bodies. Later he wonders if he imagined the look on Sirius' face. As the Ministry takes Sirius away laughing he decides that he must have. A Sirius in pain isn't something he quite recognizes; Sirius laughing makes much more sense.

Over the years, Remus watches Harry grow up with James' looks and Sirius' temperament, so that he begins to question what happened.

"They were a lovely couple," an aquaintance was quoted as saying, "though unfortunate in their choice of friends. They made many great contributions to society during the years given to them."

"They loved each other very much," Remus told the same newspaper, glad that his doubt wouldn't be conveyed in print. The editor didn't see fit to include his last word, "I never would have believed Sirius to be capable of such a thing."

-fin-