Chapter One- James
The sky was clear, deep black with the silver stars shining bright, Sirius' namesake brightest of all. Frost was coming soon, it was not quite cold enough but you could feel it there in the early morning quiet. Soon it would be too cold to camp without a fire. Sirius wondered what winter would be like, hiding away. He did not fear the cold, though it would be hard. He was determined to use as little magic as possible and stay off the radar for as long as he could. The cold was a challenge, a problem he could solve and something that would keep him occupied. No, what he feared were the days like yesterday when the weather was still good, when camping out in the woods almost felt like camping. The days where he was bored out of his mind and he had no one to talk to him. He took out a little tin car from his pocket and ran it over a fallen log for a while, before putting it away into his pocket once again.
He wasn't made to hide. He'd always rather sought the confrontation and started a fight. Best to have it over with, win or lose, rather a swift end than to cower your life away. If this had been about him, he would have sought out Voldemort and tell him where to stick his ideology, his prophecies and his stupid cowardly followers. He'd face the dark lord, and see how much damage he could do. And if he would not be able to kill him, then Sirius would at least see if he could not reduce the nose-less bastard to something alive but harmless, a limpless shadow of a man.
But it wasn't about Sirius. None of this was. It was about James, Lily, and most of all about their little son, who'd been prophesied to be the one to kill the Dark Lord. Sirius felt a weird sense of pride that it would be Harry, that out of the two possible candidates Voldemort had chosen to fear James' son the most. But it had put his friend in danger, and James' family as well.
And then there was the other thing to think about. The thing that had kept him awake this past night when he could have used his sleep. The unthinkable thing he did not want to think about, never wanted to think about, and yet it had to be confronted. He picked up a stick and prodded in a log, watching as the crawling insects scattered in the dark.
One of his three best friends, one of the three people he trusted most in the world, who he had confessed all his secrets too, laughed at all his fears and insecurities with, one of the three people he would die for was a traitor.
It could not be James, because why would he betray his own wife and son? And he was James. And it made no sense.
It could not be Peter. Peter could not hide a secret for so long. He lacked the strength to stand up to James and Sirius, and to be quite honest, Sirius could not see him be brave enough to seek out Voldemort. Also, he was Pete. Pete would not betray anyone. He was someone to laugh and joke with.
And so it had to be Remus.
Remus.
But Remus was the kindest person Sirius knew. Intelligent and talented and brave enough to stand up for what he believed in.
He took the stick and slammed it against the fallen log hard as he could. It broke, and shot up, and as it did, it hurt his hand. Which was stupid, because the action was stupid and he did not want to use magic. The whole point of him camping was to draw the death eaters away from Peter, away from James, in their clever scheme where they had not chosen for the most obvious secret keeper. Let the great hunt for Sirius Black begin, and he would do his very best to buy Harry time to have a childhood. And a sibling. A few, probably. James and Lily were as unfit to hide away as he was, but at least they had each other to pass the time.
His hand hurt quite a bit and he sucked on it to cool it down, then frowned as he tasted blood. Great, that would leave a trace. There were several illegal tracking spells that used blood and no Death Eater would be too kind to use them. So the choice was either to use magic and erase the trace, or to leave a potential weakness in a place harder to discover. None of the choices was ideal. Sirius growled at himself and pulled out his wand.
Remus must have faced his own bad choice. Sirius could not believe he would have willfully betrayed his friends. Remus had been undercover for a long time, hard to reach. He must have made werewolf friends, or found werewolf-cubs to care for... Something important that the Death Eaters had found and used against him. It must have been something like that. Sirius could not see it happening any other way.
So that meant that Remus needed saving as well and since Sirius and James were both in hiding, they needed to trust Peter to do it. But they could plan together, at least. Even in hiding they could risk meeting from time to time. James would agree.
James would understand Sirius needed to keep himself occupied. He was never at his kindest when he was bored, and when he wasn't kind he was eerily like his father. Turning into a man like Orion was Sirius' greatest fear.
James would understand.
A sudden dark shape moved over Sirius' head without making a sound and he felt his heart in his throat. Muscle memory had made him aim his wand without him even realizing it, and he had to force himself to put it away when he realized it was only an owl.
A wild one, no doubt, on a hunt in the early morning. No. In the faint light of the nearly rising sun Sirius could just make out the white of an envelope in the owl's beak.
But that could not be. No one was supposed to know where he was. Were there blood-spells his parents had not known of that could trace someone from afar?
Frowning he took the envelope from the beak of the owl, only to find it was not an envelope, but just a hastily folded piece of parchment, damp with the morning dew.
" What's this?" he asked, not expecting the owl to answer, yet somehow needing to voice the rising feeling of dread. Something was wrong. Something was very wrong.
The words played like a mantra in his head as he unfolded the paper.
-Come now. Something amiss at the Potters' .
BB
BB was Bathilda Bagshot. James' neighbor.
There was no hesitation to use magic now. Sirius' wand was out in an instant and he had transformed the little tin car he'd carried in his pocket back into the flying motorcycle it really was. There was no need for hiding if something was happening at the Potters' house.
No one should have remembered the Potters' house even existed, let alone be able to find it.
He was flying without even remembering getting into the air, speeding his bike, narrowly avoiding first one owl, then a second one. The birds seemed to be everywhere.
Someone had gotten to Peter, someone had gotten the truth from him, someone…
Or -
A thought hit him with the force of a balled fist, and the motorbike skidded in the air. He could barely hold on and only a wave of raw magic bursting out saved him from falling down.
Peter.
What if it had been Peter?
The rat. A ratting rat. The rat, a ratting rat.
He stopped at Peter's place first, landing the motorcycle in the small front yard and knocked the door. Hard. Twice.
There was no sign of a struggle.
"Do you mind?!" A voice came from a window of a neighboring house.
Sirius didn't. A simple Alohomora opened the door and for a minute Sirius felt frustrated at Peter's lack of more protective spells.
"Pete?"
The room was clean and well organized. Peter's mother still came round on mondays, cleaning it, with no regard for the fact that the place should be secret. She did his laundry too. Sirius made his way upstairs.
"Wormtail? Are you sleeping?"
The bed was empty.
The drawers were closed, the socks inside still colour coded. Red for sundays.
Nothing was out of place.
And yet Sirius would have preferred to find the place ransacked. The silence was ominous.
And there was the mantra, growing louder in his head.
The rat, a ratting rat.
No.
Sirius felt sick.
The top of James' house had been blown straight off. From the air Sirius could see the sheets of James and Lily's bed, ripped to shreds and covered in debris. Unable to tell what might lie beneath the rubble he landed the motorcycle on top of them.
" James?" His voice came out wrong. A hoarse and pained cry, a sound of terror that he only ever heard other people make. Something large was moving in Harry's room.
Wand out, Sirius made his way there.
" James?"
The door of Harry's room was blown away. There was furniture everywhere, more than the room had previously held, as if someone had summoned all she could think of to block the door. Sirius saw the toy broom he'd gifted Harry for his first birthday still wedged between the door handle of the door that lay splintered on the floor.
There was a pile of cloth, like dirty clothes or.. No.
One sweater had the exact colour of Lily's hair. No.
Lily's hair.
His eyes found her wand next, shattered on the floor, and then they found a pale hand frozen as it reached motionlessly to the sky.
" Lily.." he tried to speak but no sound came, just a strange animal sound of a beaten dog.
The rat, a ratting rat, the rat, a ratting rat. The words pounding in his head at the beat of his heart racing in his chest.
" Sirius?"
A shadow blocked the red light of the morning sun and Sirius looked up from where he had fallen to his knees.
He got up. " Hagrid." he said.
He did not dare ask for James. But he had to. He had to. " James…?"
"Gone." Hagrid said.
Sirius let out a howl of pain, and Hagrid reacted to it like he would to an animal in need, his one free arm around Sirius' shoulders, holding him close to his chest as Sirius sobbed.
"There, there." Hagrid said. " There, there."
He said the same to the small child in his other arm, woken by the sounds of pain and soon also crying.
Sirius head shot up.
" Harry!" he whispered, reaching out for the child. He swallowed as Harry reached for him and grabbed his hands with his little fists. There was an ugly scar on the child's forehead that had not been there before, and Sirius hated to imagine what had caused it. He touched it gently, trying to see if there might be something he could do to heal it, but Harry turned his head away.
Sirius straightened himself.
" Give him to me, Hagrid." Sirius said, his voice almost sounding like his own. " I am his godfather."
Merlin and the stars above how would he ever be able to raise a child? But he would. He would. He would find a way to do it as well as James had.
"Can't do that." Hagrid said " Dumbledore's orders. He's to go ter his aunt."
" His aunt?" Sirius asked.
" Dumbledore's orders" Hagrid said again, patting Sirius' back in sympathy.
Sirius nodded slowly. Hagrid would never go against Dumbledore, and he did not want to start a fight with a good friend in the ruins of James' home.
" Well, you take my bike then." Sirius said softly. " I suppose I do not need it anymore...and a blanket. You should wrap him up safely. Lily keeps the blankets…" he turned and found the white closet turned on it's side. He turned it upright and took a small soft blanket from it. " there."
He would talk to Dumbledore about it. He would have to arrange a proper funeral for James and Lily. He would have to find Remus, apologize and beg his forgiveness. He would have to write the best eulogy a man had ever had.
But first…
The rat, a ratting rat.
He had never found out exactly what breed of dog he turned into when he transformed. But he had wondered what it had said about him that his animal form so closely resembled the grim omen of death.
He'd always feared what he'd have become if James had not been around.
Well, Peter…
I guess now you and I will find out together.
