A/N: Sirius's POV. Firstly, let me apologize for the ridiculously long gap. STILL haven't gotten my old chapters back, but I've got a job now so I'm saving up to get that flash drive fixed. In the meantime, I'll try to be better about updating this.

-C

Order meetings always had a tense air about them, but this one seemed to be especially tense. For once, I didn't want to be there. It was bad enough that I had a mission that night, I didn't need to spend hours and hours away from my wife and children on top of it.

On the other hand, when I was away from the Order I felt that I needed to be doing more. I glanced around the table at all of the familiar faces, even Lily, who looked exhausted. Urgent calls to headquarters were not my idea of a good time, and I had even thought about not going, but Amy insisted that urgent meant urgent, and if something had happened to one of our friends and I decided to play with our twins instead, she would not be pleased.

And I hated it when Amy wasn't pleased.

I could already safely report that all of our friends appeared to be alive and well, however. It seemed to me in that moment that whatever the purpose for calling us to the meeting couldn't possibly be that bad, considering.

But the look on Dumbledore's face as he stared out at all of us – the whole of the Order, in one room – was so serious, so anti-twinkle, that my stomach literally dropped inside of me as he cleared his throat. Whatever I had mentally envisioned, this was bound to be worse.

"I have some very difficult news," he said, his eyes resting on each of us in turn as he spoke, as if searching for something. "You will all react to this news in different ways, and that is understandable, but I want to be certain that none of you miss the importance of what I am about to tell you." The silence that filled his pause was thick and seemed to expand as we sat there, waiting. His sad blue eyes fell on me for a moment as he said, "We have a spy in the Order."

His eyes moved on to the next person, Remus, but I felt everything inside me come over with a wave of nausea I barely held down. I half-expected him to look at one of us longer than the others, to expose whomever it was. Because it was obvious what he was saying: someone sitting there, someone at that table, was working for Voldemort, betraying us all, and managing to somehow sit there innocently.

"Who?" Lily asked in a small voice.

Every eye was on Dumbledore, and he continued to look at each of us in turn, weighing our responses. He was brilliant, but I knew his answer before he opened his mouth.

"I do not know," he admitted softly. A shiver ran through the room. "It is the only possible explanation, however, for the knowledge of the Death Eaters of certain things."

The spy was only passing on basic, general knowledge from the sound of things, something that did not narrow possibilities down from any of us. I looked around at the faces sitting around that table, wondering who could possibly be the one lying to us, lying to all of us. Was it someone I trusted? Someone I had let into my home? Someone who had, Merlin forbid, played with my daughters?

All of the possibilities ran through my mind, ways they might have told the Death Eaters to get to Amy and the girls, things to offer me or threaten in order to make me turn, even ways of trying to get Amy onto their side. I knew better than most just how valuable she would be to either side of the war, if she wasn't so busy with being a mother, and so afraid of the whole mess.

Not that I could blame her for that. The war wasn't a comfortable place. I certainly didn't want her fighting, not with what I knew.

I sat in that meeting, listening to other people discuss less-important news, but I listened no more than anyone else. We all knew perfectly well that everyone at that table could only think of one thing: Who was the spy? It seemed unfathomable that it should be anyone at that table, but it had to be someone. James and I had begun to suspect as much, anyway.

When everyone was dismissed, I sat in my seat a bit longer, knowing that it would be not too long before James and Peter and I had to leave on our mission. As much as I wanted to, there was no sense in going home first.

"Any ideas?" James asked, sitting down beside me.

He had that pale, tired look of early fatherhood that I had never gotten this badly. He must have seen Lily home and returned.

"On the spy?" I sighed. "Not yet, no. Mostly I don't want to think about it. The Order, they're like family. That's not the sort of people you want to mistrust."

Although most of the people I had become the closest to – apart from Mad-Eye, who was incapable of being the spy – were already gone. The Prewetts, Caradoc.

"Peter's just grabbing us lunch to go," James said softly, "and then we can leave. Are you sure you still want to do this? Are you sure you don't want-"

"No," I said sharply, cutting him off. "Not yet. I won't talk going into hiding yet. I need to be out there, James. I need to…fight. I need to do something. I can't just be idle while people like that tear the world apart."

James's hazel eyes were sad, but he understood, I knew he did. It would have been hard for him, too, in my place.

Peter poked his head in minutes later and said, "I've got corned beef sandwiches and chips. Is that alright?"

We took our lunch and went to the seaside, as ordered, watching the Muggle beach, trying to look like holiday-goers, munching on our sandwiches.

"What do holiday-goers do?" James asked, peering around at people on the beach through his spectacles. "No one seems to be swimming."

"Bit chilly for that, mate."

"Thank Merlin," Peter grumbled.

I did sympathize with him a bit there. He didn't look very appealing in a bathing suit, and as much as he didn't want to wear one, I wanted to see him in one even less.

I licked my lips, spotting some teenage girls a bit down the beach, obviously trying to catch our attention. Well, probably James and mine. I wondered what they would say if they knew we were married with kids. I looked away and laughed to myself.

"What's so funny?" James asked through a mouthful of corned beef. I just shook my head.

It had been a long time since I even saw a bird but Amy. What did it matter if someone was pretty if she wasn't Amy? And I didn't think James had ever seen a bird but Lily. If the girls had been a bit older I might have tried to devise some way to get Peter a girlfriend, or at least a shag, but I wasn't interested in illegal sex for a friend with underage Muggles.

"D'you think it's safe to talk here?" James asked when the sandwiches were gone and we started in on the chips. I wished Peter had thought to salt them, but I supposed he had to get something wrong.

Peter shrugged and said, "Safe as anywhere else, I imagine."

I wasn't so sure about that, but I shrugged, glancing up toward the car park, where a few men who might be in robes were growing from specs on the horizon as they approached the beach. The three of us weren't exactly up on Muggle beach fashion, but I was pretty sure that wasn't it.

I nudged James, and he glanced over toward the car park and nodded, slipping his wand into his hand and glancing at the waves as I nudged Peter, who looked confused. Hard to tell, though, really, because he almost always looked confused. I couldn't be sure he knew what I was doing until he glanced up at the car park as well.

The question on what to do was one I faced every time I found myself in a situation with Death Eaters. If I wanted to save the most lives, I would have to do decidedly unsavory and illegal things to do it. If I wanted to be noble about things, I had to accept the fact that innocent lives and friends could be sacrificed in the process. But if we sank to the methods of the Death Eaters, were we really any better than them? Was it motive or means that gave us the moral high ground?

Things had seemed so black and white when I was younger, but now that I had seen so much death it was harder to wade through the shades of gray.

Still, when fighting broke out I always did things that I might regret someday, somewhere later in life. I had killed, I had used the Imperius Curse to protect innocents, as I did with several Muggles near to us on the beach in that moment with the hope that protecting just the few I could reach would help cleanse what I was about to do to the Death Eaters.

"Sirius," James said in a warning tone, hand on his own wand as he watched the Muggles nearest to us walking up the beach, but he knew there was no stopping me once I had begun, and I was only getting started.

With a little help from James, I was able to generate a shield charm powerful enough to cover most of the beach. Then I turned my attention to the Death Eaters, who were nearing, looking right at us, obviously aware of some of what we had done. I didn't recognize any of them, but there was not a doubt in my mind that they recognized me, and probably James. We weren't exactly unknown in the wizarding world, our families being what they were.

"Sirius," James said again as one began to make a motion that was very obviously drawing his wand.

I didn't hesitate. Before my name had even left James's lips, I used a spell I had only seen once before, at Benjy Fenwick's death. It wasn't the sort of thing one used because if you hadn't shielded the area a lot more could be lost than your target.

I blew up the Death Eaters.

James grabbed my wand as Muggles began to scream at the sight, taking us back to Headquarters with a turn on his heel. Peter was crying when we arrived and James took me by the shoulders, shaking me hard.

"What the hell was that?" he yelled. "What have you done?"

"The Muggles are safe," I said hollowly. "And we're alive, unhurt. I can see my girls and you have Lily and Harry and everything's fine."

James didn't look convinced, and he muttered something about no buildings to blame a gas leak on like they did with Benjy's case.

"I imagine you'll be giving the report," I said, not really caring what the Ministry decided to say to the Muggles. They'd sort it out. They always did. "Pete, you should Floo home. Wouldn't want to splinch yourself."

Peter squeaked something unintelligible, but I wasn't listening to him. All that mattered was that I would be going home to my safe wife and children without any physical blood on my hands. Who cared how many deaths I was responsible for if Amy was safe and ignorant of the horrors I had seen?

I certainly didn't.

Amy was certainly pleased when I arrived home safe and uninjured. She didn't say awake long to appreciate it, though, because the girls had worn her out. She had only just put the twins down for their nap just before I came in, and she left me with Aludra not long after.

"Nearly time for your nap, princess," I sighed, petting my daughter's soft brown hair as she blinked droopy green eyes.

I held Aludra as she fell asleep in my arms, having petulantly refused to go to her nap while still awake. My little girl was like her father, not wanting to miss a thing.

When she finally closed her eyes and began to breathe the steady breath of sleep, I carried her in to her bedroom and tucked her in. I was just beginning to think of how peaceful and perfect this was, and trying to decide which of my beautiful girls I would watch sleep, one of the twins began to cry.

The thing about twins, of course, is that once one of them starts to cry, the other one naturally has to start crying moments later. Instead of being frustrated about this, as Amy often was on lack of sleep, I actually smiled and hurried into their room. I did a quick charm to quiet their cries so that they didn't wake their mother or sister, and then I began to rock their cots gently as I sat between the cots.

"Hello my beautiful girls," I said softly, trying to soothe the girls. They shouldn't be hungry yet, and their diapers were not in need of being changed, so maybe one of them had a nightmare. Did babies have nightmares? I hoped not, but it wouldn't surprise me. Very little would surprise me at this point.

Lyra, obviously the second to wake, was already yawning and blinking at me sleepily, but Arista was very clearly upset. I licked my lips, trying to think of how to get them to sleep once more. Stories made children sleep. I wasn't very good at stories without a book to read from, but I didn't want to leave them alone to start crying again as I looked for a book, so I decided to improvise.

"Once upon a time," I said softly, "a very handsome boy named Sirius met a very pretty, very sweet girl named Amy."

Because why shouldn't they hear the story of how their parents met? The romantic and intimate part of our story was so far down the road that I didn't see any harm in it.

"There was a probably some part of Sirius that fell in love with Amy," I said. "She was pretty, after all, and kind, and treated others with such respect. And she had beautiful, gentle green eyes." My lips twitched as I looked down at my girls with their soft black hair. My hair.

I told my daughters about how Amy and I met at a pureblood event and I stopped the Selwyn boy from pulling her hair. That had been a proud day in my life, saving the nicest girl at the parties from that toad of a boy, the first toad of a boy I saved Amy from in a long line before I fully realized I was in love with her.

I told them about encounters with Amy, how we would try to learn to dance while the adults laughed at us, how one year when the events were at her place Amy and I snuck out to the field behind the gardens and played in the heather bushes looking for gnomes to throw. I told them about how we fell asleep in that heather and curled up together.

I smiled to myself as I thought about how year after year she and I would curl up in the heather, and how the smell of her lotion and perfume mixed with the beautiful smell of heather in the hours spent napping together. I glanced down and saw that the twins had fallen back asleep and I closed my eyes form a moment, breathing in and recalling the way it felt to have those hours of sleepy freedom.

Satisfied that we still had another hour of the girls sleeping, I went back to the bed I shared with Amy to see her curled up with my pillow. I smiled, stopping to pull out a bottle of her perfume. I didn't have time to search a spellbook for some way to summon the smell of heather, but I spritzed the perfume over the bed and watched her nose twitch.

"Sirius?" she muttered, frowning as she sat up a bit.

I crawled onto the bed and smiled down at her. I kissed her nose and said, "Hello, beautiful. Don't let me wake you. Just wanted to hold my beautiful wife."

She quirked an eyebrow as I wrapped my arms around her, kissing the side of her face as her fingertips traced my chest. I closed my eyes and I could almost bring back that field, the heather-filled field of our childhood.

I swore to myself in that moment that someday I would get us a house in the countryside and fill all the land around us with heather, and we would conceive at least three children on that field. I grinned at the thought against her neck and she murmured something sleepily, unintelligibly.

My nostrils still full of her perfect scent, I opened my eyes to see her own closed, her breathing smooth and shallow with sleep. She was a beautiful, perfect angel when she slept, the Amy so sweet and perfect I recalled from childhood, so perfect that no one deserved to touch her. Not even me. Perhaps, in a way, especially not me.

I thought of the things I had done to protect her, to stay alive for her…the things I would keep doing just to keep her and our daughters safe and alive and perfect. Maybe I should have, but I felt absolutely no guilt. I would have done literally anything to protect them.