Previously in the Darklyverse: Narcissa spoke to Andromeda about switching sides. The Order began kidnapping British Aurors while protecting Canadian officials overnight. Hogwarts locked down after Vicky leaked Canadian news about the war to the student body.

xx

January 30th, 1983: Sirius Black

Sirius knows from the second Andromeda walks in the door to the Weasleys' dining room that it's no good. It's been four days since Andromeda met with her sister to bring her into the Order, and from what Sirius can tell, a fat load of nothing has happened since then to the Death Eaters on Narcissa's account. Andromeda is supposed to be reporting back to the Order with concrete steps Narcissa will take to bring down the British Ministry, but from the way she's shaking her head and pursing her lips, Sirius is positive that she's having trouble convincing Narcissa to act.

"I'm having trouble with Narcissa," she says. Yep—there it is.

"Still?" Sturgis says pointedly. "If she's supposedly so reformed and so committed to the resistance—"

"I never said she was reformed," says Andromeda with thinly veiled impatience. "Don't get me wrong, she's still a purist. She just—wants the violence to stop, I think. But the only way to stop the violence is to commit even more of it against the Death Eaters, and—I mean, that includes her husband and their closest friends. She was never just going to agree to that overnight."

Sirius and Remus exchange a look. "Narcissa has always been naive," says Sirius darkly, "but she can't have been surprised that that's what we asked of her. What did she think?—that she was somehow going to overthrow the whole lot of terrorists by asking them nicely?"

"Not to mention that her husband is Minister," points out Molly. "Did she really think there was a way to oust him that wouldn't involve taking him out?"

"I know," sighs Andromeda. "I know. But I owled her again a day ago, and she's still resisting."

"I don't know how much longer we can keep this up," says Frank. "We're locking up all the Aurors we can, but they keep sending us Hit Wizards and Obliviators and—"

"Basically anyone the Ministry can get their hands on," growls Moody.

Alice says, "We can't lock up every foot soldier in the British Ministry. We're running out of room as it is."

"How many prisoners we at now?" asks Dung idly.

"A few dozen," Kingsley says. "That number is just going to keep snowballing if we don't…"

"I know," Andromeda repeats. "I just don't see how I can…"

And Sirius knows what he needs to do. He looks at Remus with panic in his eyes, but Remus doesn't seem to have figured it out; he's not looking at Sirius, anyway, flicking his gaze from person to person as the Order sits and laments and—worries. Sometimes, Sirius feels like all they do anymore is worry. At least, when they were in Britain, they were taking action, even if they were losing.

"Send her to me," he finally says, cutting across Arthur mid-sentence.

Everybody looks at Sirius. "What?" says Sturgis.

"Send Narcissa to me. If she won't listen to you, Andromeda, maybe she'll listen to me instead."

Lily is frowning. "But you and Narcissa were never close, were you? Andromeda was the one who she…"

But Andromeda is nodding grimly. "I think Sirius is right. I think it's worth a shot, anyway. Be sure you talk to her about Regulus, okay? I was never close with him, but you were, and so was she, and if Regulus wanted this war to be over, maybe she'll listen to that."

"When is she supposed to see you next?" he asks, hating everything.

"In about an hour at our house. Will you come?"

Sirius looks at Remus, then back at Andromeda. "Not like I have anything better to do, is it?"

He zones out for most of the rest of the Order meeting. It's not like they're going over anything particularly new: Sirius has been gleaning what he can from sneaking into the Canadian Ministry as Padfoot, but nobody else has any source of information, not now that Vicky is locked in Hogwarts without a means to communicate and Agatha has been taken prisoner—well, "prisoner"—along with the other Aurors here in Canada. Even on Sirius's spy trysts, he doesn't pick up much that they don't already know, just that the Canadians are going to continue to target soldiers on the ground instead of the Death Eaters who are the real problem and, more recently, that they don't understand why they're suddenly facing so few attacks from Britain.

No shit, Sirius is thinking. What does Canada think the Order has been doing all this time if not working to minimize casualties? It's honestly lucky that Canada hasn't figured out what the Order has been doing. Maybe they'd be grateful for the backup, but maybe not, and either way, they'd almost certainly want to murder all the people that the Order has taken prisoner.

For the millionth time, Sirius wonders who's going to reconstruct Britain and how if they even manage to oust Malfoy's regime. It won't be good for so many innocent British witches and wizards if Canada takes over, but who else is going to do it? The Order doesn't have any legitimacy anymore, that's for sure.

But he's just going to have to accept that it's not in his hands—it's in the Britain's, and he isn't a part of Britain anymore. He hopes that someday he can move back—that the Order won't be stranded in Canada forever.

At the Tonkses' house, Andromeda leaves Sirius alone in the living room to wait for Narcissa's arrival. He thinks she means at first to join him, but the silence is strained enough that it's probably scared her away, and he doesn't blame her: they didn't exactly leave things in a great place when she left the Defense post at Hogwarts after being his professor, and even since she joined him in the Order, they haven't talked much. It makes his confidence waver a little. If he can't even get right with Andromeda, who used to be his favorite cousin, then how on earth is he going to get through to Narcissa? Narcissa never liked Sirius, not like she liked Andromeda and Regulus.

Andromeda's right: he's going to have to play the Regulus card. Worse, he thinks he's going to have to tear down Narcissa's image of her husband, and that's going to mean talking about how Lucius probably personally murdered Emmeline. Sirius has had years to get used to the idea of Regulus being out of his life, even if his death wasn't all that long ago, but Emmeline? Every time Sirius thinks about her, it aches.

When the fireplace lights up green, Sirius can feel his heart starting to race—and then Narcissa is there, stumbling out of the hearth and frowning at him. Her nostrils flare. His do, too, he thinks.

"I'm supposed to meet Andy. She didn't say anything about you being here today."

"She and Ted took Tonks out to lunch. I asked to talk to you. I wanted to talk to you."

"Can't imagine why," Narcissa drawls. "You haven't had anything to say to me in—how many years has it been since Aunt Walburga excommunicated you?"

"Six and a half," says Sirius. He doesn't have to do the maths, doesn't hesitate: the answer is right there on the tip of his tongue, just below where it's a constant dead weight on his mind. "You do realize that, if she were still around, you'd get the same treatment for what you're trying to do here, don't you?"

Narcissa finishes dusting herself off. She won't look Sirius in the eye. "Yes."

"But you're—what, only willing to do it halfway?"

She finally does look at Sirius right then. "We're talking about my husband—friends we've had for years—"

"We're talking about murderers," says Sirius. "Whatever else they may be, they're torturers and murderers, and they do it for sport—because they get off on it. If you want the violence to stop—"

"I do." She's whispering now. "I do. But I can't kill them, Sirius. I won't."

"You know, Regulus wanted it to end, too," he continues. The wobble in his voice is entirely involuntary. "I'm never going to know what the tipping point was for him, you know? After all, he had no qualms about orchestrating a Death Eater ambush of a bunch of school kids when we were at Hogwarts that got two people killed, and after that, after he graduated, who knows how many more people—"

"Is there a point to this?" Narcissa interrupts.

Sirius takes a deep breath. "Yes. My point is, I don't know what made him realize that he didn't want this life for himself. Maybe it was the guilt, you know? Maybe he realized he couldn't live with himself for it, just like you told Andromeda you can't live with the knowledge of what exactly goes on when Death Eaters make their attacks. I wish I could ask him—I wish we could be brothers—but we never will, not ever again. He's gone."

"But that was the Dark Lord who was responsible. I don't see how Lucius—"

"Do you remember Emmeline Vance?"

Narcissa looks uncomfortable, doesn't respond.

"Of course you do. I'm sure Lucius spoke to you about her—how he put her under the Imperius Curse and killed both her and her Secret-Keeper when she broke free of it. Do you remember when Bellatrix had her parents murdered when she was just a kid at Hogwarts?"

"Sirius—"

"She was my best friend." The wobble in his voice is getting more pronounced; he suddenly feels hot around his sinuses. "She was my best friend for years, and it nearly broke us when my cousin—your sister—murdered her family. She went through hell, you know, Emmeline did. She suffered through her grief alone for years—her boyfriend turned out to be a Death Eater spy—then your husband took away her autonomy. We had to dredge up all that pain to get through to her—to get her free—but she never really was free, was she? She spent the last days of her life in hiding, terrified not just for her own life but for the lives of everyone in the Order, of everyone innocent in Britain—"

"Sirius, I'm sorry about your friend. I am. It was… it was wrong of them to do that. But—"

"It's not just about Voldemort," says Sirius quietly. "You can't pin every bad thing the Death Eaters have done on him. Bellatrix hand-picked the Vances to be her first casualties. Voldemort wanted me and the Potters dead a lot more badly than he wanted Em dead, and yet Em's death was the one Lucius made a priority—because it was personal, wasn't it? She got out from under him, and he just couldn't let that stand, could he? He's in control of the whole of Wizarding Britain, and he's still not happy, is he? Is that really the example you want to set for Draco?"

She crosses her arms. "And what am I supposed to do about that?—leave Draco without a father?"

"Is it really better to raise Draco with the full understanding that his father is a murderer? Or were you planning on lying to him—concealing somehow your family's involvement in the Death Eaters? I mean, it's a little hypocritical, don't you think? Anyway, I'm sure he's a smart kid. He'll figure it out. You can try to hide it, but he'll put it together, and he'll turn into Lucius, and if that's the kind of kid you're okay with raising—"

"It's not." Narcissa's voice is louder, steadier, now. "It's why I wrote to Andy in the first place. I want better than that for him."

"Then why—?"

"Because his father is already a murderer," she goes on, "and if I do what you're asking of me—if I kill them all—then his mother will be a murderer, too. Is that really what's best for him? At least this way, he has one parent who…"

Sirius considers this for a second. It's not that she's changed his mind—she hasn't—but he doesn't know if he can make her budge, either. Still, if there's another way he can get her to end this war…

"What if they didn't have to die?"

"Excuse me?"

"What if there were a way to—to capture them without killing them? Would you do it? Would you help us?"

It all hinges on this moment, and he's genuinely got no idea what she's going to say. He thinks there's a chance. She reached out to Andromeda, after all; there's obviously some part of her that wants to make a difference. On the other hand, if she doesn't believe his intentions—if she doesn't trust him—

She leans forward. "I'm listening."