Chapter Forty

A sort of silence had settled over Grimmauld Place, save for Kreacher's flitting about, and the intermittent screams of Walburga Black's portrait in the corridor. The Order came and went for briefings, but did not speak apart from that for two days.

Two days it had been since Severus Snape had handed Sirius Black the Pocket Pensieve, and two days it had since they had last seen Davina Maddux. Sirius Black insisted that it was of no consequence to him what happened to her, and that her betrayal was unforgivable. He had instead taken to drinking constantly; there was not a point in those two days, in fact, that he was not inebriated.

Needless to say, Remus Lupin had had quite enough - Severus Snape was in the decrepit study of Grimmauld Place at this particular time, going through Muggle newspapers to sift through possible evidence of any strange happenings. It was late in the evening while the students of Hogwarts would be in bed, and he would only remain there for short while before returning to the school. Remus Lupin opened the door without awaiting any invitation and stood stiffly at the other side of the desk.

"No word from Davie, as I'm sure you're aware," Lupin said with a false sense of calm in his voice. "Severus, you did not need to -"

"Are you going to lecture me? At the risk of angering a man who brews a potion upon which your life depends?" Snape sneered, not looking up from the desk. "One mistake while brewing your Wolfsbane and I could kill you -"

"Then I will have died in defense of a good friend," Remus replied stoically, a response which finally moved Snape to look up. "Davina was never anything less to you. You never considered her more than some sort of pawn in your absurd plot for revenge against James and Sirius. You only thought to claim her because you knew how much she meant to Sirius."

For a moment, Snape was silent - his face paled, his nostrils flared. He was, unbeknownst to Remus, not at all surprised that they were all so ignorant. He had never intimated his true feelings, his true motivations behind his pursuit of Davie all those years ago. "You have no idea," he began stonily, "how little I care about Black. You've changed your tune a great deal. You had no qualms about manipulating her when you thought she was insane. Where was your friendship then?"

He, still seated, stared icily at Remus, who stared back in confusion. This continued for a few brief but tense moments until Severus spoke three very simple words.

"You may go."

Remus resisted the urge to sneer, or to grimace, or to show any sort of reaction whatsoever - emotional appeals would do no good with Severus Snape. Without another word, he turned on his heel and walked out of the room - the only evidence of his frustration was his slamming of the door behind him. He tromped down the hallway and moved toward the receiving room, which was completely dark. He expected Sirius to be locked in his room as usual, only to hear his best friend's voice, coming from one of the armchairs.

"I thought it was you, Moony," he laughed drunkenly, his voice lacking any sort of genuine humor. "If it'd been you getting cozy with my fiancee, I may not have cared! If not me, then it could have at least been you! I thought -"

"Padfoot -"

"But Snape!" Sirius continued, his voice rising in volume, accompanied with a loud clatter - he had dropped the bottle of whatever he was drinking. Remus deduced that it was firewhiskey by the scent before he even lifted his wand to light a lamp in the room. "D'you reckon they shagged?"

"Padfoot!" Remus said in an outraged tone. "How could you even think -"

"THINK?" Sirius bellowed angrily, not bothering to restrain the volume of his voice. He laughed a loud, harsh, barking laugh. "I'm drunk, Moony! I'm not thinking! If I was thinking, I'd think about- about Snape's slimy, disgusting paws on my fiance while I was rotting in prison and it makes me sick, I want to vomit -"

"It's the firewhiskey, not your thoughts," Remus interrupted, glaring slightly at his best friend for this display. "I know they didn't go that far. I know better than anyone. It wasn't a secret to anyone but you -"

"That makes me feel tons better, Moony. Thank you -"

"Black."

Remus and Sirius both looked up when Snape entered the room, stalking menacingly towards the chair where Sirius was situated. Perceiving it to be a challenge, Sirius moved to stand up and face Snape, only to find himself pushed back down in the chair by Remus. Snape, meanwhile, stalked over and dropped something into the Sirius' lap before striding the remainder of the length of the room, and out the door to return to Hogwarts.

Sirius glanced down into his lap and saw the Pocket Pensieve again. Momentarily, he considered chucking it across the room, screaming to Snivellus precisely what he thought of him despite the fact that he was already gone, and demanding to be left to his misery. However, in his mind, nothing he saw would cause him any more pain. Nothing could deepen Davie's betrayal more than his own suspicions now, and so, there could be no hurt in knowing precisely what he hated her for. He fumbled with it for a moment before opening it and finding himself pulled into another one of Snape's memories…

Sirius found himself in the memory, following Severus Snape down a corridor of the empty Maddux home - a glance at a nearby calendar showed that it still a year after Sirius had been in jail. Sirius felt his blood boil yet again, seeing Severus Snape in Davie's home - what was this memory meant to show? Was Snape going to seal his victory over Sirius by sleeping with Davie? Had Remus been wrong about the extent of this relationship? Sirius Black was no longer quite so adamant that he wanted to know.

However, he was here, and as was the restriction in being present in a memory, he was limited to staying near Severus Snape, who continued wordlessly down the hallway. They passed the closed door closest to the stairs - Davie's bedroom where Sirius could remember being just days before. She had told the truth about never returning there, at the very least. He could not bear the thought of having slept in a bed that had last been laid in by Snape. Instead, Snape entered the study - the lights were out, but the window was open, and illuminated with a light blue tinge by the moonlight was Davie, turned and facing outside. Snape took a few stalking steps and stood behind her but did not speak. Sirius took a brief glance and saw a large canvas traveling bag on the floor near Davie.

This, he thought to himself, his mind suddenly feeling a considerable bit more sober, did not seem to be the way that lovers approached one another.

"Thank you for coming," Davie said, turning around slowly and facing Snape - this jolted Sirius even more because the expression on her face was intense and determined. It meant she was going to do - something, Sirius knew simply by looking at her. "Severus…"

Davie let out a small breath, looking him right in the eyes and reaching out for his hand. Davie had always been a very tactile sort of person, even when they were in school, and yet he slight contact seemed to surprise Snape. His eyebrows raised slightly and he nodded in gesture for Davie to continue with what she'd meant to say.

"What we've been doing for the past month, Severus - whatever we have right now," Davie said, letting go of his hand and dropping her own hand stoically to her side. "Severus, it's been wrong."

"It very well has," Severus agreed, and surprise registered on Davie's thin face. She had been seeing Severus Snape for a month now, and yet she did not look any better than she had in the previous memory. "But you and I both know that nothing will be right for either of us henceforth, Maddux."

"No good can come of trying to fill your own emptiness by taking advantage of the emptiness of someone else," Davie continued, shaking her head. "Severus, I came to say goodbye."

"Clearly."

Davie eyes filled with disappointment. In any case, she had thought that perhaps there would be some emotion, something encouraging to depart with, and yet, Severus Snape appeared as though he were simply dismissing her from a lesson. However, this too, was evidence of the fact that despite their icy manner toward one another, Davie and Severus knew one another quite well. They never required explanations from one another.

"Alright then," Davie said, picking up the sack from the ground and nodding. "Lock the doors after you leave, Severus. I'll not be returning."

Davie took her bag and walked out of the door, while for a reason he could not understand, Sirius remained in the room and looked at Snape. He sat silently on the seat near the window, his jaw set, his fists clenched. If this had not been Snivellus, Sirius may have felt some sort of sympathy for him. However, he had no time to dwell on it before he heard Davie's voice outside.

"Remus?"

"You're leaving?"

Sirius turned and took a few steps towards the open door, which was still in Snape's line of sight, and saw Davie and Remus standing at the top of the stairs, staring one another down.

"Where are you going?" Remus asked, his forehead wrinkled questioningly.

"Far away from here. You don't need to know any more, I don't want you to." Davie said simply, her voice stony and frigid as though she were not talking to one of her dearest friends. "I want to be far away from everyone here -"

"Because we've all tried to help you, Davie?" Remus said, attempting to reach out and pull Davie's traveling bag away from her. "Because we've tried to help you get the idea into you head that you've been throwing your life away trying to help Sirius get off on his crimes because you think -"

"I never only thought, I knew!" Davie said shrilly, her voice shaking with fury, and Sirius felt his stomach jolt, seeing Remus and Davie angry at one another again because of him. "Do you think I've bloody enjoyed one moment of what I've been doing? What kind of friend are you? I tried! I tried for as long as I could to have faith in him -"

"Because you've gone mad! You've only done all of this because you love him and refuse to admit that perhaps you were wrong in thinking he could be trusted!" Remus said - it was one of the few instances in which Remus raised his voice to anyone, and this was in fact worse than any instance in which Sirius had ever seen him. "Why do you think I bothered to interfere in your life? We've all come to terms with it, you're the only one being stupid enough -"

Sirius tensed when he saw Davie reach out and slap Remus hard across the face, her breaths coming loud and ragged out of fury.

"I am going to Bulgaria to work as an Auror." Davie said through clenched teeth. "I will never contact any of you ever again. I will never see any of you ever again. I want to forget any of you were ever a part of my life. Truth be told, you want nothing to do with a lunatic, do you?"

When Sirius left the view of the Pensieve and found himself back in the chair, he looked up at Remus questioningly - the feeling of alcohol in his system was still present, but now drowned out with a very surreal lucidity.

"What happened next?" Sirius asked lamely. "After she left for Bulgaria. She said she never wanted to hear from you again, but you wrote her when I escaped."

"Of course, time passed. We all missed her," Remus explained. "We all tried writing her - I must have tried at least once a month. Sometimes the letter came back to me. Sometimes, I assume, she actually read them - but she never wrote back."

"What else?" Sirius asked gravely, his forehead tense as he stared hard at Remus, knowing for sure from the context of the memory that there must have been a piece missing from the puzzle. "What made her so angry with you? What else do I need to know?"

"You should know that I held stake in keeping this secret from you. I didn't only do it for Davie's sake. None of us did," Remus said, and there was a pained expression on his face, the same expression he always bore when Sirius had accused him in their youth of being the spy among them. Sirius leaned forward and eyed his friend suspiciously. "Davie didn't find out about this until - until the night before she left, I think it was."

At this, Remus pulled out his wand and touched it to his temple. When he pulled it away, it drew with it a long, silver tendril that appeared as though it were made from a shimmering sort of liquid - another memory. He directed it into the Pocket Pensieve and directed Sirius to look at it, and this time, Sirius did not hesitate.

Remus Lupin was not sure why he had asked Severus Snape to accompany him to check on Davie on this particular day - perhaps it was because by now, she had been acting strangely for an entire year. On this particular day, they had just received the news that she had taken another trip to the island of Azkaban to attempt to get a different story from Sirius Black.

"We need to see what she's been up to," Remus explained stoically as he and Snape walked up the stairs of the Maddux home and into the study; Sirius noted from his vantage point of the scene that the study appeared to be the scene for many particularly traumatic memories for Davie. Remus and Snape began moving papers around the desk until they found a newspaper clipping of the scene of Sirius' arrest, the photograph circled in red ink. Magically bound to it was a piece of parchment on which was drawn a makeshift floor plan of Azkaban prison, and two words:

Escape. Together.

A look of panic crossed Lupin's face, and briefly, Snape seemed to pale in concern for her too. Remus, however, wasted no time before addressing Snape, the expression on his face shifting to something that Sirius did not recognize.

"It's obvious she's gone over the edge, we need to take desperate measures before she does something that might ruin her life," Remus stated flatly. "But she wants nothing to do with any of us anymore, you included. But you have something we don't, Severus. She can relate to how much we distrusted you."

"What are you asking, Lupin?"

"I'm not asking anything of you. I'm making a demand of you." Lupin said stonily. "Davie needs something to make her forget about Sirius. She's driving herself mad, carrying on this way. I don't care if you don't care for her in the least. I don't care if you need to pretend. It needs to be you. Molly and Arthur suggested that I do it, it would be more believable that way - but she is, as we all know, aware of my opinion regarding her choices. She'd see through me in a heartbeat."

"You want to lie to your friend?" Snape sneered. "You want me to distract her from her insane obsession with Black by lying to her?"

"You needn't pretend she was not a friend to you once. I've heard more than anyone," Remus said vaguely, thinking back to the conversation he had overheard between the pair, the night Lily's parents were killed. "It hardly ought to be a stretch. You ruined the lives of the rest of my friends, but Davie may still be able to be saved before she destroys herself."

"She didn't choose Snape over you. Padfoot, never think that she failed you," Remus said unsurely. "She did what she did because we all failed her. We were her friends, and yet we never had faith in her. We all failed you both."

Sirius felt his stomach churn almost painfully, and this time, it was not because of the copious amounts of firewhiskey in his system. Davie had cared deeply for everyone in the Order, he knew for sure. They had been her new family - and they had treated her like an outcast because she tried so long to save him from Azkaban. Even Remus, whom she had trusted most among all those left with her, had lost faith in her. She had left because she had found out they were all manipulating her in order to force her to 'move on' the way they had.

"The letter I sent about you escaping from Azkaban was one of the few she kept," Remus added, interrupting Sirius' thoughts. He looked up at his friend, the wheels in his head turning a bit slower than her would have liked due to his current state. He did realize, however, that this was what Davie had been trying to tell him, more than once - she had not wanted to keep it a secret from him forever. He'd never given her a chance.

"Remus," he groaned, clapping a hand to his forehead which quite suddenly started to ache. He was not angry with his friend - he ought to have been, he thought, but he had long come to terms with the fact that there was a time where everyone had believed he was guilty. "Moony, you need to find her. I can't let her believe that I hate her. You need to find her."

Davina Maddux stirred slowly, and the first thing her eyes were exposed to, even through her closed eyelids, was sunlight - it was morning.

Morning? Davie mused, raising her arms shakily to rub her eyes. She wasn't sure what had happened. It took her brief moment to gather her thoughts and piece together the last thing she remembered.

She had run out of the house at Grimmauld Place out of her shame and anger, and run for a good while until she thought to Apparate to an alley across the way from the entrance to Diagon Alley. She was not thinking about where she would go, where she would end up, or what she would say when people saw her. She just wanted to get away. She stepped into the street in order to cross, and the last thing she saw was a pair of headlights attached a Muggle car.

And now, here she was, sitting in a cot - the posters on the walls informed her that she was, in fact, at St. Mungo's. Someone had clearly been kind enough to bring her here, and the tender feeling on her head and up and down her limbs was the trademark of having been tended to by a healer. She felt strangely calm - they must have given her a potion to cause that as well. No potion, however, was enough to dull Davie's intense sense of curiosity regarding her surroundings.

She felt well enough to stand - she looked down to see she was still dressed in the same clothes, which by now were rumpled beyond any state of propriety. Smoothing out the front of her clothes briefly, she stepped out of her room and realized, thanks to her familiarity with St. Mungo's, that she was close to the Memory Ward, where victims of Memory Modification were kept. That meant she could find one person for sure.

"Excuse me," she said, reaching out gently to hail one of the passing Healers. "Where can I see Mr. Digby?"

"Ah, Miss Maddux, you're up. Very good to see you," the middle-aged woman said warmly. "Romnic's right this way, I'll take you."

Davie thanked the woman quietly and followed her down perhaps a dozen doors in the long corridor before the Healer opened a door for her and nodded inside, where a man with chestnut brown hair sat at the foot of his bed, staring at his hands and mumbling to himself.

"There's - there's been no improvement, then?" Davie asked quietly. She had been one of the Aurors involved in his rescue from a Bulgarian holding house seven years prior, and they had all assumed he'd only been Confunded until he showed no recollection whatsoever of recent years. Davie had never taken it upon herself to return and to visit him since then.

"I'm afraid not. It's a very sad story, isn't it?" the Healer asked, clucking her tongue and shaking her head sadly. "Shall I give you a moment with him?"

"Yes. Yes, I would appreciate that," Davie nodded quietly. With a smile, the Healer obliged and bowed out of the room, closing the door behind her. Romnic Digby was still, Davie noted as she approached him, as handsome as ever. He still had the same boyish face, and despite the fact that he looked rather disoriented, he looked quite well. "Rom?" she said quietly. He looked up and immediately, his face burst into a wide, child-like grin.

"Little Lady! You've come to see me," he said in a elated yet strange voice, as though his mind were somewhere far, far away.

"Yes," she said, smiling weakly and nodding, though when his attention wandered, her expression immediately fell. "You know," she said sadly, letting out a heaving sigh, "this is all your fault. If it hadn't been you they'd spotted - if I'd never met you - I wouldn't have left Sirius alone the night Lily and James died. I would have been there with him and - and none of this -"

"We're going to the ball, aren't we?" Romnic piped in without provocation, without even looking up, and Davie, who was beginning to tear up, let out another sigh. His memories stopped when they were still in school. That was all that he had been left with.

"Some friend you are," Davie said, her tone sounding regretful and crushed, and yet somehow enlightened at the same time. "I wish I'd never gone after you. I wish I'd never met you."

Romnic looked up at this, and Davie felt a jolt when for a brief moment, something like lucidity flashed through Rom's eyes. He opened his mouth, and Davie leaned forward anxiously - but what he would have said, Davie did not know, because at the moment, the door swung open. Romnic and Davie looked up to find Remus Lupin standing in the doorway.

"Davie," he said hesitantly, noticing how the woman recoiled at the sight of him. "I'm here to bring you home. Padfoot asked -"

"Asked! Oh, Remus - why would he ask me to come back?" Davie retorted, laughing coldly. "So he can kill me himself? I'd rather stay here and chat with Rom, and he doesn't even have a bloody clue that he's almost forty -"

"Severus and I showed him," Remus interrupted quickly, effectively silencing the dark-haired woman. "We showed him what happened, why you and Severus - oh, Davie. Just please, come back. He needs you."

"Why are you going to the dance with me anyway, Little Lady?" Romnic interrupted with a distant, good-humored chuckle. "Everyone in our year knows Sirius Black is arse-over-elbows in love with you."

Davie felt as though she'd just been doused with cold water - Romnic had known all those years ago that Sirius had loved her. All the signs pointed in the same direction, and that direction was clearly back towards Grimmauld Place.

Davie was not sure where exactly her mind was while she followed Remus back to Grimmauld Place, but she simply allowed herself to be led until she was brought back to the front door, the same door that she had run out of days earlier. She held her breath as she crossed the threshold, and felt her heart nearly palpitate at the sight of Sirius Black, drunk on the floor, leaning lazily against the leg of a table. He was, however, lucid enough to look up and notice Davie enter, and he blinked, rubbing his eyes incredulously.

"You're drunk," she said dolefully, hurrying over to him, and Lupin smiled upon seeing that Davie couldn't resist the urge to take care of him. "You're completely sloshed, aren't you? You're unbelievable -"

"Is that what you came here to say?" Sirius drawled, swatting Davie's hand away gently as she attempted to pull him to better posture. She huffed, a sad expression crossing her face.

"Well, I would've liked to say this to you with some assurance that you'd be sober enough to remember it tomorrow - but I'm sorry, Sirius," she said gently, reaching out and hesitantly touching her fingertips to his forearm. "I tried to tell you -"

"Davie, if you ever run away like that again I'm going to - to run out after you no matter who sees - and get sent to Azkaban all over again and we'll see how you f-feel -" Sirius drawled, squinting slightly, though he was slowly starting to grow more focused. Apparently, he had at least stopped drinking a good while earlier, and the effect was finally starting to wear off.

"Don't say that," Davie said stonily, pulling back and grimacing. "I never -"

"I don't care about anything I saw," Sirius said with surprising clarity. "But I'm - I'm going to ask you for one th-thing and we can consider it all forgotten. Admit I was right," he drawled, pointing his finger lazily. Davie's brow furrowed, not quite understanding what he meant. "You didn't want to marry me fifteen years ago because you wanted to wait until the war was over, well it's not over -"

"Sirius, what are -"

"All this has happened and it's still not over!" he said, flailing his arm emphatically. "How much longer are you going to ask me to wait?"

Davie fell silent, blinking incredulously, her mouth hanging open slightly. "Sirius," she said slowly, making sure he didn't complete steamroll over her again. "What are you trying to say?"

"Davie - I told you before," he said, now speaking quite lucidly. "You wanted to wait until it was all over before you started a life with me, and it's still not over. We've lost our best friends, we've lost our freedom, we've lost almost everything, and it's still not over. It may never be over -"

"Sirius, don't talk like -"

"So say 'yes' now," Sirius said simply, grasping Davie's forearm and pulling her closer so that she was forced to look him in the eye. "Now that I know everything, and everything's on the table, I'm going to ask you again. Marry me."

Davie tensed; she could not believe what Sirius was saying. She could not believe that Severus Snape had been willing to repair what had been broken despite the fact that he quite obviously enjoyed seeing Sirius Black completely destroyed. Why, Davie wondered, was the universe still conspiring to keep her and Sirius together after all these years, after all Davie had done just for the sake of forgetting? More importantly, why was Sirius forgiving her so quickly when it had been over a decade without her forgiving herself? How did things seem to want to repair themselves so easily when Davie had long believed that they were beyond all fixing?

"I will," Davie replied before she could even stop herself or develop some sort of reason to refuse. Her hands gripped tightly on his sleeves, her voice quavering as it suddenly dawned on her what she'd just said. "Sirius, I never meant for it to be like this - never. All these years, I never loved anyone else but you -"

"Nor did I," Sirius said slowly, but suddenly, an impish grin dawned upon his face as he tipped Davie's chin upward with his fingertips. "But then again, the pickings have been a bit slim where I'd been for most of the - oof!"

Sirius was interrupted by a small throw cushion colliding with his face, followed by the sight of Davina Maddux, looking torn between laughing hysterically and bawling.

"I'm trying to have a moment, you prat, do you mind?"

"We're getting married," Sirius chuckled with an extremely satisfied grin on his face. "We'll have the rest of our lives to have moments if you so choose, though I can't say I'd -"

And again he was interrupted, this time by Davie pressing her lips eagerly to his - and it suddenly did not matter that Molly and Arthur Weasley were arriving in from the kitchen, or that Remus had been in the room the entire time. Suddenly, things seemed at least a little bit more like how they were supposed to be.

A/N's

Hello everyone, if you're still out there!

I know I have been on hiatus for a long time, and I'm partially still in the same boat, but I did want to at least give you guys what I could. I feel like I need to explain my absence, so here it goes.

On August fifth, my grandma and I were crossing the street in front of the elementary school near my house when I was hit by a car - long story short, I suffered from a few injuries and a long-lasting concussion, and I'm still dealing with the medical issues that have come up as a result. I also need to manage going to school full time, along with legal stuff and my recovery. But I will come back to this story, and I will still be posting updates whenever possible. I just hope you guys can all be patient with me while I work on getting back to normal.

I want to keep this quick so I can post the chapter already, so - thank you to everyone who provided feedback and subscribed since my last update, and a special shout out to AddictedToPotter for my hundredth review!

In the next chapter, we will see more memories, and in upcoming chapters we will see how these new circumstances change the atmosphere in Grimmauld Place. We are going to get a couple of happy chapters, but I am going to remind everyone that this does take place in Order of the Phoenix. Until next time, everyone! Cheers!