Previously in the Darklyverse: Lily reacted badly to finding out about Sirius's prank on Severus in fifth year. Sirius stopped Peter from attempting suicide in the attic. Canadians placed Peter and Severus in indefinite detention. Sirius proposed to Remus.

xx

January 6th, 1983: Sirius Black

The entire Order pretty much finds out overnight that Sirius and Remus are getting married—as soon as Remus gets over his hangups and agrees to Sirius's proposal, anyway. Remus certainly hasn't told anybody, and the only owl Sirius sent about it was to Lily, but something clearly got lost in translation because the whole Order seems to think they're engaged by lunchtime the next day. Literally, Sirius and Remus are just digging into lunch when McGonagall shows up on their doorstep with her congratulations—and she's the fourth member of the organization to do so (the first three being Lily, Alice, and Frank).

Sirius is totally taken aback not just by how bloody fast word travels in the wizarding world but by the fact that it's McGonagall. He wasn't exactly her favorite student when he was younger, nor were they close when he was teaching Transfiguration there, and they haven't really ever talked outside of Hogwarts or the Order. "I only have a few minutes," she says as stiffly as he's ever seen her. "I'm between classes; I'll need to get back to my students." McGonagall, of course, is one of the lucky ones who found employment right away: she's taken up a post in the Transfiguration department at Ilvermorny.

"You didn't have to come all the way here," Sirius says apologetically. "We're not actually engaged—Remus hasn't said yes yet."

"Sirius may have gotten a little carried away in the delivery when he wrote to Lily yesterday to give her the news," calls Remus as he steps into the living room and approaches the doorway.

"Still," says McGonagall. Her lower lip wobbles a bit. "If Vicky's and my generation were so accepting… well, any wedding is worth celebrating in these dark times, but especially one for a couple as resilient as the two of you. I'm proud of you, Sirius—Remus."

To cover up how awkward he feels, Sirius declares, "Thanks for that, Minnie. Now Remus has to say yes, don't you, Lupe?" Blushing furiously, Remus looks away and mumbles some nonsense about slowing down and being reasonable.

For his part, Sirius has absolutely no interest in "slowing down" or "being reasonable." First Marlene, then Em and Mary, now James: Sirius has had enough grief to last multiple lifetimes, and that's not even counting the rest of the Order that they've lost—or Peter's betrayal. If fantasizing about a wedding can give Sirius one bright spot in a bleak, war-torn landscape, he'll do it as long as he can get away with it.

He tries not to think about James not being alive to be their best man. He also tries not to think about all the reasons they can't ask Peter to do it instead.

Sirius hasn't really known how to feel about Peter ever since Sirius caught him trying to—well, frankly, he also doesn't really know exactly what it was that he walked in on Peter trying to do in that attic. Was it a suicide attempt? It certainly looked like a suicide attempt: Peter's banging his head on the window appeared to be pretty goal-oriented to Sirius when he interrupted it. As much as Sirius has wished punishment on Peter over the last year-plus—and Sirius has wanted to see Peter punished—it wasn't until he was confronted with the possibility of losing Peter altogether that he realized he really, really doesn't want to see Peter dead.

It's like he admitted to Peter and Remus in the heat of the moment: Peter can't die until he fixes this thing between him and Sirius. The only problem is that there's no way Peter can ever fix what he's done. To do that, he'd have to bring back all the people who may have died as a result of his intel, and they're gone for good—Marlene is gone for good.

At least once a week, Remus brings up the issue and tries to—Sirius doesn't know what his endgame is, really, whether he's trying to convince Sirius to forgive Peter or to see him or what. It's not like Peter is being allowed any visitors in indefinite detention, even if Sirius wanted to check in with him, and that's absolutely not to say that Sirius wants to do so. Honestly, if Sirius could see Peter right now, he'd probably just start yelling at him again, and if Sirius has figured out one thing, it's that yelling at Peter isn't helping loosen the knot that clenches up in his chest every time he thinks about the man who used to be one of Sirius's best friends.

When Reg and Alice tried to argue that Peter should get free roam of Grimmauld Place, Sirius was the one who flat-out insisted that he stay wandless in the attic with Snape. Then, they all got asylum in Canada—all of them but Peter and Snape, who got locked up faster than you can say Colloportus.

"I'm just saying," Remus presses about twenty minutes after McGonagall Disapparates, "that you might feel more at peace with the whole thing if you could just—"

"Forgive him?" Sirius scoffs. "Tell me, Moony, have you forgiven him?"

Remus pauses at this. "I don't know," he admits quietly. "I just know that when I saw him at that window—"

"How do you know he wasn't faking? Doing it on purpose to get caught and manipulate us?"

Even as these words come out of Sirius's mouth, he knows that wasn't what Peter was doing. He knows Peter—Peter wouldn't—

—but Sirius is forgetting that, apparently, Peter would. That's the whole problem.

xx

Barely a few hours pass before Lily shows back up at the flat at the end of her shift at Zoudiam's. Her unannounced arrival doesn't faze Sirius: he and Remus agree that the flat is too quiet without the rest of the Order occupying it, and anyway, this is Lily—she's always welcome here. It's just—well—they never really properly dealt with Lily's reaction to finding out what Sirius nearly did to Snape all those years ago, and Sirius is pretty sure that Lily is burying her feelings of betrayal and mistrust by spending as much time with him and Remus as she possibly can.

He brings this up to Remus later that night, when it's bedtime and they're spooning in bed, Remus's nightshirt a little rucked up so that Sirius can rest his hands on Remus's bare waist. "Maybe she is dealing with it. Maybe seeing us all the time is her way of trying to remind herself that she knows us—that we're not defined by one thing we did," Remus tries to argue, but to Sirius's ears, his claim is weak.

"One thing I did," Sirius corrects him. "You didn't do a damn thing to Snape."

"No, but I forgave you, which in Lily's eyes is probably almost as big a transgression. It certainly was at the time to Prongs and Pete—uh—Pettigrew."

"Never mind whose fault it is," sighs Sirius. "You were right there with me the night she found out—you saw how she reacted. She completely freaked, and then she tried to kiss me, of all things—and now she's acting like none of it ever happened."

"Yeah, but look at the rest of her life—she's doing great, isn't she? She's working, she's raising Harry, she's helping Alice with Neville—"

"Do you see her stopping for even a second to take care of herself? She can't just… run on full steam forever. Nobody can."

Remus shakes his head. "That's not really fair to her. She did hand off some of her responsibilities when everything first went down at Grimmauld Place, and at the time, we were worried it meant she couldn't handle anything. Now that she is handling things, we can't just say she's repressing. It's like she can't win."

"It's not that she can't win with me," Sirius tries to argue. "It's just—there's got to be a balance, hasn't there? She's my friend—she might be the best friend I've got left—"

"Gee, thanks," Remus teases.

"Oh, shut up. You're my boyfriend; you don't count."

"I know, I know."

"My point is," Sirius continues, "she's my best friend, or at least one of them, and I worry about her. I want her to be okay, and I certainly don't want to be the reason that she's not okay."

Remus hesitates; his face falls. "You know," he remarks, "that's probably how Peter feels about us."

Sirius rolls his eyes and grumbles, "Not this again."

"I mean it, Pads. I want Reg and Lily to tell the Canadian Ministry that we want him and Snape to get visitation rights."

"He as good as killed Marlene. Moony, he's sick. There's something wrong with him. I thought we were agreed on this."

"Of course there's something wrong with him, but that doesn't mean he's evil. Sirius, do you ever think you're using your hatred of Peter as a way of… I dunno… of sorting everybody in the world into either good people or bad ones?"

"Excuse me?"

"Just…" Remus twists around so that they're facing each other, and he looks terrified. Sirius recognizes the danger signs when he sees them and rubs a thumb along Remus's cheekbone, trying to convey that he's not mad, exactly—at least, that he's not mad at Remus. Remus goes on, "It's not as simple as Peter wanting the world and everyone in it to burn. He's still the same person we all fell in love with when we were eleven-year-old kids. I mean, if it were you the Death Eaters were blackmailing—"

"I would have told someone," says Sirius, stung. "I would have done whatever I needed to do so that Carrow didn't have a hold on me."

"Because you're you," insists Remus.

"I don't follow."

Remus raises a hand to cover the one of Sirius's still cupping his cheek. "Wormtail—"

"Don't call him that," Sirius growls. "He doesn't deserve that name."

"Wormtail," Remus repeats, "isn't like you. He doesn't have your confidence, and he used to live his life in terror that he'd become one of the victims rather than one of the bullies if he lost your and Prongs's protection. I mean, Carrow burned Mary's house down. I nearly died when she poisoned me. He probably saw the tables turning and freaked."

"But he made excuses to justify all of us deserving his treachery. He said as much to Emmeline before he stole her wand and pulled another disappearing act to save his own skin."

"Yeah, and then he turned himself in. Does that sound like somebody who hasn't got any remorse to you? It sounds to me like Peter tried very hard to convince himself that he didn't need to feel guilty, but ultimately failed."

"So, what, you want us to be besties again? Remus, the Marauders are dead. Prongs is dead, and Pettigrew is as good as."

"I'm just saying it's… complicated," Remus sighs. "I just—I've barely said a word to him since before he confessed and ran off. I didn't talk to him at Grimmauld Place. All those times I could have said something, I just dumped the responsibility of interacting him on other people, or else I dropped off the food and cleaned the toilet and left without a word."

"Remus," says Sirius gently, "you're not responsible for Pettigrew trying to… hurt himself or whatever it was we saw him doing."

"Maybe not, but I didn't help. I want to help him, Sirius. Don't you?"

The truth—the answer Sirius wants to give Remus but can't—is that he does want to help Peter. He wants to go bloody backward in time and save Peter from himself. He'll just never…