A/N: Sirius's POV, this chapter is also dedicated to my incredibly faithful reader/reviewer saramichellegellarfan1. Thanks for your faithful reading! I really do enjoy reading every review; they brighten my day!
-C
I had expected fatherhood to be terrifying, but I was actually enjoying it immensely. Aludra was a fairly easy child, which Amy was thankful for, and even at two months she was delighted by me constantly.
It was nice to have someone who was constantly delighted by me, especially as work in the Order was so depressing and difficult and dark. I loved Amy, I needed Amy. Amy was my rock, but Aludra was the light of my life.
Amy accused me of spoiling our daughter rotten, and I had to admit that she was probably very right about that. But how could I not? She was perfect, her tiny little hands always curling around my fingers, gripping at my shirt or hair. She was already looking like her mother more every day, and she'd grown so big, so strong.
Just thinking of how small she had been when she was born brought tears to my eyes as I watched her puzzle over the doll I had handed her.
"You bought her another one?" Amy said with a laugh.
Of course I bought her another one. She hadn't had a blonde one yet, and I'd seen the prettiest doll on my way through the shopping.
"But she likes it," I said, pouting slightly at my beautiful wife as she watched our daughter grip the doll's hair. "If she were old enough, she would have named it by now."
"She has," Amy said with an amused smile as Aludra began to gurgle happily at the doll.
Aludra was a strange and wonderful thing to me. She couldn't really roll onto her stomach yet, but she could roll onto her back, and if we put her on her stomach she could lift her own head and push herself up with her arms. If I put her in a sitting position, she could lean on her hands, but otherwise she couldn't really sit without my support, and she couldn't stand unless I helped her.
Well, Amy supported her sometimes, too, but I didn't let her very often. This was my child, and I wanted to be the one supporting her every bit of the way.
She began to recognize my voice, and I knew it because when she cried and I would speak to her, she would begin to calm instantly, before I'd even picked her up. She was always interested when we introduced her to a new Order member, and would stop everything when she heard a new voice.
"Did my clever girl name her doll?" I said, scooping both child and doll onto my lap, and Aludra giggled happily.
Her bright green eyes looked just like her mother and she smiled at me.
I had known I was in big trouble when Aludra first smiled at me, because every bit of me literally melted and I began to think of ways to make her look at me like that again. She was just the most beautiful thing….
"Sirius?" Amy said gently, sitting beside me and petting Aludra's head. "Don't you have a meeting to get ready for?"
"Yeah," I sighed, pouting and kissing Aludra's cheek as she grasped the doll's hair. "But I don't want to go. Can I call in sick?"
"You did that last time," Amy teased kissing the back of my neck. "I reckon she won't be offended if you leave for an hour or two. And you said it was supposed to be important. You heard Caradoc."
"I know," I whined, already regretting letting her kiss me like that.
The other thing about having a small child was that our sex life was sporadic at best. Amy didn't want to have sex while Aludra was awake, for obvious reasons, and she was nervous about it when Aludra was asleep, because what if we woke the baby? Silencing charms wouldn't do because we wouldn't hear her if she cried.
And so I settled for getting each other off in the shower most of the time. It was good, it was nice, and the occasional quickie right after we put Aludra down to sleep was even better, but it was never enough, and I found that my usual burning for my wife was raging constantly under the surface, just waiting for her to do something innocent that would make me snap.
"Fine," I sighed, not wanting to snap and try to seduce my wife in front of our innocent young daughter. "You take our princess, then, and I'll go shave."
"It's amazing she doesn't mind your stubble," Amy teased as she took Aludra, who looked confused to be transferred over to her mother, but she did not cry as she had done while she was younger.
"You don't mind my stubble," I said. "It's Lily who minds."
I could hear Amy laughing as I stood in front of the mirror, smiling as I smoothed shaving cream over my face.
"Have you been kissing Lily? Is that what you do at these meetings?"
I laughed, waiting for my laughter to steady before bringing the razor to my face, carefully shaving off my stubble.
There was no need to respond to the joking accusation. I would have to lose my mind before I even thought of kissing Lily. Sure, she was pretty, but not only was she my best friend's wife, but she was my wife's best friend, and a bit bossy for my tastes. As I had told my friends many times, I didn't date prefects.
As soon as I'd finished shaving I rushed out to kiss both of my girls goodbye, pulled on a jacket, and took the bike to the meeting.
Amy had been furious when I bought the motorbike, but I swore that neither she nor Aludra would ever have to ride it, and she saw how happy it made me and she capitulated. I landed at the safe house designated for the meeting and parked the bike, hiding it from passersby, and letting myself in with the code.
I sat down at the meeting between James and Remus, and they were both looking a bit pale.
"How's Aludra?" Remus asked softly.
"Missing her Uncle Remus," I teased. It was true, that after perhaps Amy and me, that Remus was easily Aludra's favorite person. She was far more excited to see him than she was with any of our other friends, and thankfully no one took it personally. Amy suspected it was because his body temperature was warmer and his heartbeat was louder and it reminded her of the womb.
I thought that was a bit creepy, and cautioned her not to tell Remus her suspicions. Maybe Remus would be pleased that his "condition" had a positive side, but it would likely also remind him that he couldn't have children of his own to delight with this particular upside.
"And Amy?" Lily asked. "Is she getting enough sleep? She was looking a bit peaky when I last dropped by…"
"She's sleeping fine," I said with a sigh. "I'm making her sleep. She says that I need more sleep than her, but I agree, she was looking awful and I've insisted. As long as Aludra doesn't need feeding, I can do everything she does."
There was terse laughter, and I was really getting concerned about what was going to be told to us at this meeting.
There was obviously a death. Caradoc wouldn't have said the things he said to tell me to come if there hadn't been someone who died, and after Marlene's death nobody was really particularly comfortable thinking about who it might be.
At least I knew it wasn't Caradoc or a Marauder, or…
Wait, where was Peter?
Just then, Peter walked through the door with Doge and I breathed a sigh of relief.
Dumbledore then cleared his throat and said, "Now that we are assembled it is with great regret that I inform you that Dorcas Meadowes is no longer with us."
I gripped the arms of my chair anxiously.
Dorcas had been one of the most spectacular people I had ever met. Just the week before she'd killed four Death Eaters single-handedly and saved my life. The idea that she could be dead was just unfathomable.
"What happened?" Lily asked softly.
I wasn't sure I wanted to know, but I had to know if I was going to be effective in this war, in keeping Amy and Aludra safe.
"From what we know from eyewitnesses and a little bit of connecting dots," Dumbledore said in his measured way, "we suspect that she was caught in a particularly tight spot on her most recent solo mission, and when the Death Eaters knew it was her they had, they called Voldemort and he came to kill her personally."
Lily gasped.
I felt sick to my stomach. That would explain why Dorcas had been killed. I couldn't possibly imagine her being killed by anyone less than Voldemort himself, except for perhaps Bellatrix on one of her particularly lethal days. But to be targeted so specifically….
I shivered slightly. What sort of danger was I putting myself in by distinguishing myself, by doing my job well? What sort of danger was I putting my family in? I didn't even have to close my eyes to draw Aludra's beautiful little smiling face to the forefront of my mind. She consumed my thoughts most of the time, when I wasn't thinking of her mother. Being pureblooded wouldn't protect them, not with their blood traitor connections. And Bellatrix in particular would love to use them to hurt me.
I looked across the table at Caradoc and he just looked at me darkly, circles under his eyes.
He was the eyewitness. He had been there to see Dorcas being murdered, knowing there was nothing he could do, probably barely escaping with his own life. What did it mean that he had no one left he loved? Caradoc was nearly on Dorcas's level for being a thorn in Voldemort's side. What would they do to him if they caught him?
Knowing what I knew about the war, everything looked a lot less like "if" and a lot more like "when." I went home to Amy that night to find both her and Aludra passed out on the couch from exhaustion and I smiled instinctively, kissing Amy's forehead before taking Aludra gently from her arms. Aludra thankfully did not wake as I carried her to her cot, placing her in it with all the care I possessed and tucking her in. My fingers brushed her sweet little head of growing, soft hair before I returned to the sofa to find Amy lying there, dead to the world.
I knelt beside her, pressing her fingers to my lips and just watching her sleep for the longest time. She looked so beautiful sleeping, and I recalled her sleeping in my bed at school when she'd been ill, in the earlier days of her illness when she still looked something like herself. When she'd asked me to hold her that first night I'd sat up all night just watching her sleep and thinking of was to make her feel better in the morning. Even then, even before I realized how much I loved her, I thought she was the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen as I watched her sleep in my arms.
Carefully and a bit reluctantly, I lifted her sleeping form into my arms, allowing her head to rest on my shoulder as I carried her to our room and laid her down in our bed, kissing her forehead as I kicked off my shoes. I was just settling into bed, wondering if maybe I should wake her with kisses and try to seduce her while Aludra was fast asleep when I heard our beautiful little girl begin to cry and I sighed, shaking my head and smiling.
It was like she could sense how frustrated her father was.
"Coming, princess," I muttered to myself, making my way to her room to calm her down.
The following week found me right back at another Order Meeting, and Lily had begged me to come, in spite of the fact that Amy had her hand's full with a sick child.
"If she wants you there, it's important," Amy had told me. "Just go. I'll be fine for an hour or two. She doesn't sick up as much as a grown person, and I used to take care of siblings."
I hadn't wanted to leave her, but she all but threatened to castrate me if I stayed in spite of Lily's request, so I went to the meeting, sitting anxiously between Remus and Caradoc, fidgeting.
"Are you okay?" Caradoc asked. "You look a bit pale."
"Aludra's ill," Remus explained, patting my shoulder comfortingly. "He didn't want to leave, but Amy made him. She's fine, Sirius. Amy's very good at dealing with this sort of thing."
"But what if something's really wrong with her?" I sighed, rubbing my temples. "What if she's seriously sick? I'm sitting here while-"
"While your daughter goes through a stomach bug," Caradoc said with a small smile. "Sirius, think of how much you were probably ill as a child. Amy's a better mother than yours. Your child will be fine."
Well, he certainly had a point there. Just about anything would be better than my mother, and there I was, still alive and breathing. Still, I couldn't help but think of Amy, ill in my bed and nothing I could do about it. I was also thinking of her regular morning sickness, not knowing what was wrong and being absolutely helpless to make her well again.
It was so much worse with my daughter, her tiny little body vomiting, tears streaming down her sweet little face.
"I guess you're right," I muttered, "but it's hard."
Caradoc and Remus just nodded, but the meeting was called to order, so we couldn't continue the discussion.
I looked over at Lily and James, who were sitting across from us, and I noticed that Lily was even paler than usual. James was clutching her hand, which was actually white as it grasped back at his.
Something had them very, very shaken.
"Obviously," Dumbledore said from the head of the table, "we knew that fighting would be part of the job. Fighting, recruiting, deliveries, and the like." We all nodded. It wasn't that any of us knew exactly what we were signing up for, but we'd all had a decent idea just from reading the watered-down version that made it into the paper. "Lily, James, would you care to share your recent experience with the others, please?"
The two of them looked at each other slowly, then James cleared his throat and said, "Voldemort tried to recruit us to be Death Eaters."
A bustle of sound rose through the room as people whispered to the people around them, but my eyes were fixed on Lily.
"Why?" I said softly. I hadn't expected anyone to hear me over the din, but the room went quiet at once. I didn't take my eyes from Lily as I said, "I can understand recruiting James, but Lily is Muggleborn. Why would he even bother?"
"I wondered about that, too," James said, his voice tight and strained. "The only thing I could think of was that he would lure us in with promises of protection, and then kill Lily if I did something wrong, when it was too late for me to get out."
I nodded, but something didn't feel right.
If it had been me, if Voldemort had offered protection for Amy and Aludra, it wouldn't have shocked anyone in the room. We were about as pure of blood as you could get. In fact, such an offer would be tempting, as much as I hated to admit it to myself. My morals weren't that weak and I wouldn't turn just to keep Amy and Aludra alive, but I did think about their safety every day. It was a struggle, knowing what the right thing was when you weren't just thinking for yourself.
I knew how James felt in that moment.
Sitting through the rest of the meeting, talking about increased safety for the Potters, about who we thought would likely be targeted in this way and how to protect them…I wasn't listening.
I was thinking about my little girl vomiting in her mother's arms, thinking about how I was going to keep them safe. Of course we'd been the first ones mentioned when they speculated on who else would be targeted, followed by Frank and Alice.
What had I done?
When it was just me, or even just me and Amy that was one thing. She might not have wanted to fight, but I had no doubt in her ability to defend herself as well or better than anyone in the Order. But our child, she was a helpless being. She needed constant attention and protection.
As soon as the meeting was over I rushed home, not even thinking of saying any pleasantries to anyone at the meeting.
When I got home, I found Amy holding and soothing Aludra, who was sobbing on her mother's shoulder.
"Oh, princess," I sighed, taking my little girl in my arms and holding her tightly as she cried.
"What was the meeting about?" Amy asked, smiling at me.
"Just new contact with Voldemort, that's all," I said, trying not to sound afraid. I couldn't let Amy see me even a little bit afraid. I leaned forward and kissed her lips softly. "How's our little girl been?"
"She started vomiting and screaming the moment you left," Amy said wryly. "I think she knew you were gone and it was her way of demanding your presence."
"Aw, did you miss me?" he said, shifting Aludra so he could make a wacky grin at her red face. "Did princess miss Daddy?"
She just looked up at him with those green eyes and he knew that she was a weakness he was going to have to contend with someday.