By the time they were all seated at the breakfast table the next morning, word had already gotten around the school that Dumbledore had returned late last night. This was of a lot of interest to Sirius, who was expecting his brother to be expelled as soon as Dumbledore heard the explanation for the terror the whole school had been through last night. He had been wondering all of last night whether his mother and father might not take this news quite as well as they did the news that Sirius had been Sorted into Gryffindor House seven years ago, which had of course been not well at all.

"The thing I don't understand is how he knew how to do that spell," Remus said as they tucked into their toast and eggs.

"Well, nobody was thinking rationally at the time," Lily said, "but now that I remember it, it wasn't very authentic-looking, was it? Probably just some spell he made up. A real Dark Mark moves, but the snake was just sitting there. And it was really very small. The Death Eaters leave their sign above buildings, not inside them, and they can be seen from a mile away."

"But even an inanimate glowing skull is pretty good magic for a twelve-year-old," Sirius said. "Regulus isn't that smart. Although I suppose it's entirely possible that lots of Slytherins have been messing around and seeing how closely they can imitate the real thing. Maybe somebody showed him how he could do it."

"I imagine they won't be taking credit for it now," James said, "if they want to stay in school. Honestly, he must not be very bright. He should have known this would only get him in a load of serious trouble."

"He wasn't planning on getting caught, was he?" Remus said. His tone of voice sounded flat and unconcerned, like he was going along with the conversation but thinking about something else the whole time. Lily was the only one who seemed to be catching onto this, and kept trying to meet eyes with him across the table, like she knew he was hiding something.

Of course, he wasn't the one who was hiding something. Peter had been saying hardly a word all morning, like he was trying not to call any attention to himself at all. He was surely afraid one of his friends would think to ask him what had happened to him the whole time they were separated.

William Bell and the Doisneaus came and sat near them, and the two groups exchanged greetings. Then Arnaud said directly to Sirius, "Have you heard yet?"

"Heard what?" he asked.

"About your brother. See for yourself." He pointed across the Hall, and Sirius followed his gaze to the Slytherin table. There was Regulus dressed for another day of classes in his school robes, laughing with his friends and looking absolutely triumphant.

Sirius whipped back around to face the others. "No."

"Yes," Will said. "He gets to stay, but he got it pretty bad. Detention twice a week for the rest of the year as well as early curfew. He won't have privileges to go to Hogsmeade until he's sixteen."

"And he'll never be able to play Quidditch," Yvette interjected.

"Which I understand he tried out for this year, if I'm not mistaken-"

"No!" Sirius said again, looking like he had not listened to any of what they just said. He was staring into thin air with a slightly mad look in his eyes, as if the whole world had just stopped making sense to him.

"Sirius," Lily said gently, "he is just a child."

"So what?"

"So he didn't understand what he was doing. He didn't understand the...implications of it."

"That's what you think because you've never stepped foot in my house," Sirius said bitterly. "You've never heard what casual dinner talk is for my family. Oh, he knew what he was doing!"

"That's exactly what I mean. He's been surrounded by adults who take these things lightly and talk about them over dinner his whole life," Lily tried to explain calmly. "That's why he doesn't understand the seriousness of it. He thought it would be funny."

"Oh, yeah," Sirius said darkly. "I bet Sarah Locket would have thought it was really funny. I bet the Kinkaids would have thought it was really damn funny!"

His raised voice was making many people look their way down the table. James put a hand on his shoulder lightly, which alone without a word seemed to calm him down a little. Then suddenly, James felt his shoulders sink, and his entire exterior seemed to tranform in a second, expressing a completely different emotion than before.

"Maybe it's my fault," he said quietly.

Lily's eyes filled with alarm. "What?"

"Regulus is an idiot who can't think for himself. He's always been that way. He always has to have somebody to look up to and imitate." He stopped talking for a moment, his eyes seeming to be looking at something not there before him in that time. Then he went on in a lower voice, "He was my brother. He was. I used to be the one he looked up to. He wasn't supposed to turn out like this. I thought he wouldn't. Maybe I shouldn't have stopped paying attention to him so much after I came to school and had made so many friends..."

Lily reached across the table and rested her hand over his where it was sitting on the table. It seemed to pull him back into the present time; he looked up from the tabletop at everyone's faces again.

"He's still your brother," she said. "Now, you didn't really want him to get expelled, did you? Do you really think he deserves the treatment he'd get from your parents for that?"

"He's not my brother anymore," Sirius said. "I don't know what happened to my little brother, but that little monster that did that thing yesterday, that was not him. And I had no problem with turning him in for it."

"He is young," James said. "If he made such a drastic change in the way he thinks when he started looking up to other students in his House, then he could change his mind about things again. He's just twelve."

"What about it?" Sirius asked. "When I was twelve I'd already figured out my family was full of rubbish. I would never have done something that idiotic and insensitive when I was twelve!"

There was a comical silence. Remus was the first to say, "Erm..."

Sirius sighed as the others laughed. "Okay, so I was an arsehole when I was twelve. But I know I would have taken all this...everything that's happened...seriously."

"Well," Remus said, reaching for some jam and getting back to finishing his breakfast before the food would disappear. "You are also a Gryffindor. He was Sorted into Slytherin. I imagine it takes a certain kind of character to be able to grow into a decent person even when you were raised in a family like that."

"Wouldn't it be nice if that were the case with me?" Sirius said, trying to make his tone jocular. But everyone caught the note of sadness in his voice and went quiet.

"Sirius, don't say that," Lily said. "You're nothing like them."

He didn't tell her that the assurance hardly meant anything to him coming from someone like her, who seemed to think badly of no one. For days he had not stopped thinking about some of the things Sophia had said to him when they split up and wondering if they were true. After all, being a good person was about more than simply being on the right side.

"Look," Peter said, pointing to the table where the teachers ate. Dumbledore had joined the table and was now rising to address the Hall.

"Young ladies and gentlemen," his voice rang out, gradually silencing everyone. "Needless to say, I am deeply saddened by the great tragedy that happened yesterday. Many great witches and wizards who were passionately devoted to protecting the Wizarding World were lost. Some of them were dear friends of mine, some old students who came to school here who I can still remember sitting in the seats you sit in now.

"But while I am disheartened, I am also very proud of the way the students in my school have dealt with this problem our world has suddenly become faced with. Although some may feel safer at home with their families during these times, only two of our students are to be leaving, and their parents are pulling them out of school against their wishes. That you are all here this morning ready to go on with your lessons and start another day despite the serious change that has just happened is something to admire. I was not here yesterday, but the detailed accounts of how you all reacted to the situation last night pleased me very much. You were brave and acted quickly, and you protected and helped one another."

For a moment it seemed like he was looking in the direction of where James and Sirius sat at their table. James wondered if Professor McGonagall might have told him about him and Sirius disobeying an order they were given for their safety by leaving the other students they had been with to help Lily. If they had not been the ones to catch Regulus, he wondered if they might have been punished for that.

"It is clear that I have many very capable and courageous young witches and wizards in this school," Dumbledore continued. "And indeed as I look at all of you now, I am yet full of hope. There is no telling how long this dispute will continue; it may very well be years before we can all feel safe again. But with so many Aurors gone, we will be in need of brave volunteers. I have already begun recruiting members for what shall be called the Order of the Phoenix, of which I will be the leader.

"And with that, I will leave you to your breakfast. I wish you all a pleasant day, and please do not hesitate to stop by my office if you fancy a chat."

As he sat back down, some were laughing at his last words, but Sirius, who had understood, said sarcastically, "Subtle."

And the five said nothing more to each other, although they seemed to know they were all thinking the same thing.

Owls started flying in the windows and filling the Hall, dropping a lot more post than usual into students' laps. Sirius was surprised when a very large one swooped past their table and dropped a big package on the table with his name on it.

"Who would have...?" Sirius wondered aloud as he ripped it open. When he saw it was a stack of brand new records, he stopped and smiled.

"Andromeda?" James assumed.

Sirius looked quickly at the records (T. Rex, Heart, the Who, Cream, and the Kinks) which he guessed Andromeda must have bought in one of the many cities she probably visited on her honeymoon with Ted. Then he saw that a letter was included. He opened it and started reading it, his eyes lighting up in surprise as they traveled along the words of the first couple paragraphs.

"Not bad news, I hope?" Remus asked.

"No," Sirius said a little absently, staring at the letter. "No. She's...pregnant."

"Oh," James said with a little relief. "Wow. This soon? Well...that's good, isn't it?"

Sirius nodded slowly, still not taking his eyes off of the words. "Yeah. It is." After looking up at the date written on the top of the piece of parchment, he finally put it down and looked up. "She sent this the day before it happened. She didn't know yet."

They were all silent for a few seconds. Then Sirius added, "But it's still good news. I mean...I guess life is really just going to go on, isn't it? Even if some people are going to die...well...more people are going to go on living."

Then they stayed silent, but some of them smiled a little at that, in a calm, accepting way.

For the rest of the day, they didn't talk about the coming war anymore, because now the fact that it was on all of their minds simultaneously was enough. They started smiling and talking about other things again, and Remus even forgot about what had tarnished his point of view of the strength of this circle of friends because of one apparently weak link. After all, he should have expected none of them would ever be quite as strong or brave on his own as they all were together.

In a couple days' time everything felt like it was almost completely back to normal. Most of the students that had gone home because of the loss of relatives returned to school. Once Professor Dumbledore decided it was safe for everyone to go outside again, the new safety rules were no longer in effect. This happened perfectly on time for the weather to start getting warmer. The lake, which had been completely frozen days ago, now had only some chunks of ice left floating on the surface of it. The trees were glistening with the melting snow, their wet branches making them sparkle in the bright sun in a way that made it seem they had lights hung on them.

A few hours after classes were done, Sirius was outside on the second story atrium that went around the courtyard, leaning over on the short wall and looking down at the grass that was starting to peak through what was left of the snow. It was the first day he had been able to be comfortable outside in just his uniform dress shirt and no outer robes. He was wearing his Muggle style aviator sunglasses, the ones his mother had shouted at him for wearing once and almost taken away from him, and thinking very deeply about a lot of things as he stared down at the courtyard.

It felt like it had been winter for forever. He couldn't believe they had another half of a school year still in front of them, even with everything that had changed. There would be Quidditch matches. There would be more exploring during full moons. Even with a war going on outside this castle, there would still be some of those nights that he and his friends just didn't feel like going to bed and would stay up until midnight in the common room laughing hard about silly little things that wouldn't even seem that funny the next morning.

His thoughts wandered idly and fell on his brother, and a random memory surfaced in his head of a time when Regulus was very little and Sirius accidentally slammed a door shut on his fingers. Sirius had hugged him tightly for a long time and kept saying, "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to" until he stopped screaming and crying. From there, his mind went to the first time he came to stay with James's family for the summer, memories of him and James playing on brooms in the backyard and Mrs. Potter coming outside in bright sundresses to bring them lemonade or cookies she had just baked. Then a day in his fourth year when Sirius had said a smart comment about Professor Constantine under his breath during his class that Lily heard and which threw her into uncontrollable fits of laughter, and it was when he exchanged a smile with her afterwards that he first realized he and Lily Evans had become friends. The first time she ever hugged him, excitedly after he brought her a book she'd left in a classroom and had apparently needed badly, it had felt a little strange and he had immediately thought of his mother who he could hardly remember ever touching him. He thought of what Andromeda had said about how foolish it may be for the both of them to think they could just run completely away from their family and not be a part of it anymore. Words like "brother" and "mother" that he had thought meant nothing to him anymore but were not, after all, completely lost.

A soft voice behind him said, "Hey, Padfoot." Remus came up at his side and leaned on the wall beside him. "Nice sunglasses."

"Thanks," Sirius said with a smirk.

"It's nice and quiet here," Remus said. "Everyone else is outside by the lake and Lily and James already have their hands full enforcing rules and taking House points away."

Sirius laughed. Then they both stood there in silence for a while, gazing down at the ground many feet below. Then Sirius said in a tone that gave Remus the idea he had been thinking about how to begin saying this for a while, "Moony, I feel a little bad about something. There's something I think I should have told you."

Remus had no idea what he could mean. "About what?"

Sirius hesitated, like he didn't know if he should bring this up on a day that had started out perfectly bright. "About Madelin Wood."

Remus seemed to turn to stone, his face showing nothing. That was certainly not what he had expected to hear.

"I mentioned to you that I had Defence Against the Dark Arts class with her in third year," Sirius began. At Remus's nod, he continued, "Yeah. Definitely a bright girl. She was always impressing Professor Marlewe and taking points for Hufflepuff in that class, when she overcame her shyness enough to raise her hand. Anyway...we studied Boggarts that year. The day Marlewe introduced the subject, he gave us a whole class period to write eight inches about what a Boggart would turn into if it faced us and what we would do to defend ourselves from it. He left us to our work and everybody started talking about the assignment. And I overheard Madelin behind me talking to her friend...Stella something..."

"Selena Sterling?"

"That's the one. Yeah. Selena didn't sound very sure about what her greatest fear would be, but as Madelin was telling her, she had no doubt what the Boggart would turn into." Sirius paused, turning to look at Remus's face. "See, she said when she was seven years old she was attacked by a werewolf. It was a wizard who lived three houses down from them who her family had never even known was one. Another neighbor was able to rescue her right away and she was very lucky not to have been bitten deeply enough to be contaminated. But she'd had nightmares about the experience ever since.

"She went on to explain how her parents had informed the Ministry of what had happened and tried to have the werewolf arrested. They thought it was his responsibility to inform everyone of his condition for their safety. But as it turned out, she had been playing outside with her brothers and stolen something of theirs as a joke and was looking for some place to hide it, so she climbed over the fence into the man's backyard. He kept himself chained up there during each full moon and used sound-proofing spells on the area so nobody would hear him in there.

"The Ministry couldn't do anything about him, but of course her parents let all the witch and wizard families in the neighborhood know what had happened, and soon after that he moved away."

He left everything at that for a while, and Remus had the feeling he wanted to see what he thought of this so far. After he hadn't said anything more for a few seconds, Remus said, "Maybe he should have been even more careful than that."

"Maybe Madelin shouldn't have been trespassing into her neighbor's yard," Sirius said. "Maybe her parents should have kept a better watch over their kids and not let them go playing around the neighborhood after dark. After she told the story I heard Selena say something like, 'You know, I've never understood why the Ministry just lets dangerous monsters like those run free. They should all be locked up or something,' and Madelin agreed with her."

Sirius turned around and leaned back against the wall, looking to the side at Remus. "So I'm sorry if I didn't seem very supportive of the idea of the two of you going out together. I kept thinking all along that I should maybe say something about what I knew. But I thought it may never get serious enough for things like that to matter anyway, and you seemed really happy. I guess I didn't want to ruin it. But...in the end, I'm the one who ruined it anyway, aren't I?"

Remus looked up at him. "Don't be thick."

Sirius looked embarassed. He picked at something under one of his fingernails and wouldn't look at Remus's face. "Well...it does all kind of come back to..."

"Severus Snape."

He almost didn't say it. When he did, it just barely came out. "Because I almost let you kill him."

There had never once been a word about this between the two of them before. But Remus was prepared for it.

"Look, you've done some really stupid things, Padfoot," he said, "but so have I."

"You?" Sirius said incredulously.

"Yes, I have. One day when you're older and not such a dumb brute I'll explain it to you."

Sirius laughed and elbowed him in the side.

"But why don't you think about this?" Remus continued. "Bad people don't sit around beating themselves up for the stupid things they've done and wondering if they're bad people for doing them."

Sirius's smile faded and he looked serious again, although without seeing his eyes Remus couldn't quite read his emotions. The sunglasses hid what he was really thinking, even better than his own eyes usually could.

"The point is..." Remus looked back away from him into the sun. "It's not that I wouldn't forgive you anyway, but I think that there are already enough people who can't forgive you for that one thing. And you've been punished more than enough already."

Sirius was silent for a long time. And as if he knew exactly what his last words had caused him to think of, Remus said, "And I'm sorry things didn't work out for you either in the romance department. But about Madelin...well...It's strange, but I don't think it would have hurt me any less no matter how it ended, or when. You don't have anything to feel bad about."

"Oi!" called a voice from an entrance into the atrium. James had just come outside and was walking over to them. "What are you blokes talking about, eh?"

"Oh, the usual bloke stuff," Remus said casually. "Quidditch, whisky, women..."

At the same time James and Sirius broke out into loud laughter that echoed against the stone walls of the courtyard.

"Moony...you're a Prefect," James finally said, getting to the reason he had come looking for him.

"Is he really?" Sirius said in a sarcastically shocked voice, making them all start laughing again.

"Oh, yes. And there's a bunch of First and Second Year kids who have borrowed brooms from older students and are flying all over the place and falling in the lake cause they don't know what they're doing. Lily and I can't catch them all and get them down."

"Oh, and I suppose you want my help?" Remus presumed.

"Well - "

"Meaning you want me to take over in your stead because you're miserable at this disciplining and responsibility thing?"

"Well..."

"I think maybe I could be of some assistance."

As he walked off, James called, "Now, you tell Lily you're the one who put the words in my mouth! It wasn't my idea to refuse to come back down..."

"Right, of course," Remus mumbled, waving a hand at them as he dissapeared into the building.

James and Sirius laughed once more, both turning and leaning on the wall to gaze down at the same view Sirius and Remus had been looking at. James looked to the side at him and smiled.

"I remember when we bought those sunglasses," he said.

"You mean when you bought them for me," Sirius corrected.

"Yeah, well, you're too much of a dimwit with Muggle currency so I took care of it. And for how clever you are, you're too lazy to figure out how to convert the price into Galleons and pay me back."

Sirius smiled. "That was a fun summer," he reflected musingly.

"Yeah," James agreed. "Was that last?"

He nodded.

"Yeah. That was when there were those two weeks or so that we kept going to the cinema to see Star Wars every day. Remember?"

"Of course. Until your dad decided we were being mad and stopped giving us money."

"And then I think we even snuck in a couple times."

"Did we? I remember trying to convince you we should."

"I think we did." James paused, remembering all the details about that month. "And we scared my mum to death with that fake talking goblin head we left in the refridgerator."

Sirius slapped the stone he was leaning on, barking with laughter. "Oh, that was brilliant!"

Their laughter died down and they were left with the silence of the peaceful day, pierced every once in a while with the singing of some birds far away or the distant laughter of kids inside. It was a very long time before either of them spoke again, long enough for what remained of their reminiscing from moments before to be forgotten and replaced with new thoughts. But of course, what Sirius's mind drifted back to were more familiar than new thoughts.

"Girls," he said suddenly, and that was all.

James seemed to understand perfectly how whatever was going on in his friend's mind had come to that word. He just kept staring forward and said quietly, "I know."

Sirius sighed, adjusting his sunglasses, for they had started slipping down his nose as he peered downward. "Figures she would be the only one who ever really mattered, though. You know...Sophia."

James said nothing, only nodded.

"But I guess you could say I kind of had it coming to me," he added, trying a pathetic laugh.

James looked up at him. "I wouldn't say that."

"Why not?" Sirius asked, obviously trying to keep his tone light-hearted. "You're the one who was always-"

"Because. You're my best mate."

That stopped him.

"I'm sorry as hell about what happened. I'd never think you deserved it," James said.

Sirius straightened his posture. He took off his sunglasses and his eyes squinted in the bright light. "Well, thanks, Prongs."

"Any time, mate. Now, if you ever want to talk about exactly what happened - "

"No, it really doesn't matter anymore."

James looked at him skeptically.

"Well, I mean it does. But there were just some things she said that shook me a little. It seems stupid now. Besides..." He stopped a moment, and then his voice got quieter when he said, "She may not have even meant it."

Somehow, he knew this to be true. He had said a lot of things to Sophia himself that he hadn't meant, after all, when he was just angry that she had proven him wrong about something and not thinking right. They were both so alike, both so proud and stubborn, and completely incapable of giving up and letting the other win. That was why it could never have worked.

But memories still pulled him away from accepting that time as gone, of the cold wind brushing her hair against his face as he kissed her on their walks around the grounds. Thinking about it and analyzing it had made some things more clear, but only time would heal everything.

When he didn't say anything more, James gave him a hearty pat on his back. "Come on, Padfoot. It's almost dinner time."

"Wait," Sirius said. "There's something else I do want to talk to you about."

James had been turning to go back inside, and he stopped still. "What's that?"

Sirius looked directly into his friend's face. "What do you think of this Order of the Phoenix business?"

"I knew you were going to bring that up sometime," James said with a small grin. "That's why I already talked to Professor Dumbledore."

Sirius returned the smile. "So did I. And I got the feeling you already had because of the way he smiled at me when I came into his office."

"Like he expected that if I wanted to join, you would have to as well?"

"Naturally."

There was a moment of silent understanding. Then James finally said, "When we tell the others, you know they'll want to follow us. They'll say so right away."

"Well, of course Lily will," Sirius said. "There's no way she would let you go out risking your life on dangerous missions without her getting to come along, too."

James didn't smile at that; instead he looked very serious. "Peter and Remus both will want to join, too."

"Do you think?" Sirius asked with the smallest tint of doubt.

But James sounded absolutely sure. "Yes. Just think of all we've been through together already, the five of us. And before last year, the four of us. You don't share things like that only to be separated in times when you should be holding together the most."

"Yes, I suppose not," Sirius agreed.

"Can you really see any of us doing anything else? We weren't even sure what we were going to do after school, right? But we've stuck with the general classes and Dumbledore says we're perfectly qualified to get Auror training, and even if we weren't they'll undoubtably be loosening the requirements right now. Even Peter will be fine if he wants to do it."

Sirius smiled. "Now that's something I never would have imagined happening. Peter, an Auror...So have you talked to Lily about these plans yet?"

An expression crossed James's face that gave the strong impression he had never thought to do so. "Not really. I don't think I really need to. She's already got the same thing on her mind."

"Yeah, I bet she does." Sirius paused, crossing his arms. "Let's give it a while before we start talking about this with them. I've been rather enjoying not thinking about it for the time being...It's a nice day, isn't it?"

James looked out at the sunny skies and just nodded his agreement before they went back into the castle together.