Hi all, so I am back to this wonderful fandom with a new story! I am taking a delve into a fandom, an era and a couple that has always fascinated me and it's the James/Lily era.
This is the second part of the story that started in the Beginning of the End and these are the moments in the first Wizarding War and the build up to Harry.
This story will be twenty chapters long and some events/events that do take place might be missed.
Also spelling/grammar...not my best thing. Again keep that in mind when you read...please.
Disclaimer-Nothing here is mine.
Please Read and Review.
And on a side note, I like so many other Fanfiction Authors no longer receive notifications via email about reviews/PMs etc. So if you do send any it might be a while, if ever before I get back to you. Please keep that in mind for it is not intentional-If anyone has a fix please let me know
I do not receive PMs anymore, if you have a question stick it in a review and I will answer it in the chapter notes.
We are now over halfway!
Also I really wanted this chapter to highlight the beginning of the end so to speak for the Marauders. I get that Dumbledore had Remus on secret missions but this to me was the ending of them as a group of friends because James and Sirius suspected him for no other reason than he was a werewolf. I do hate how Remus forgave them both for it so quickly however one can argue that for their unconscious bias towards their friend (and that was what it was in my book), James and Sirius did both pay the ultimate price.
The Beginning Of The End
Chapter 11-He Knows His Brother
James comes back from his honeymoon and Sirius shares his suspicions, they both don't like the obvious conclusion they come to which makes them wonder about their unconscious bias.
Two weeks. That was how much he was granted. Two weeks. In the South of France.
Veela Country.
Hey he was a man he could acknowledge that much couldn't he?
But then he had come home.
Two weeks of Lily, Lily and her mind blowing world and her mind blowing body and her mind blowing mouth and he had come home and he had been able to put one foot in front of the other, pack up their shit and move to Godric's Hollow as if nothing had ever happened and life had been good.
Life had been very, very good.
And then he had come home.
And it had all fallen to shit the second that he had got back home in one piece.
It had been…well it had been hard to tell but it had been difficult to be in France and to not acknowledge the horrendous sacrifices that everyone had been making. He had been a British wizarding solider at war and he was who he was and he was not going to change that because other men and woman, wizards and witches had wanted that. He was who he was, regardless of any consequences.
And there had been Lily.
It was a heady thing for James. Whatever you thought of him or his actions he had fallen in love at the age of eleven and he had not stopped. He was a one woman man and that one woman man had managed to get the woman that had always proved elusive.
And then he had come home.
And then he had come home to Sirius.
And what Sirius had told him.
The Bones had been an agonising shock, a painful shock that had got him at his worse moment. Lily had heard about it and had cried all night. It had been more the children than it had been anything else. Why after Marlene and her family it was the children that got to them James didn't know but for James and Lily it was the Bones children above all else.
And they were now after years, and years, and years, of pining, now they were James and Lily.
And that was a heady feeling. To get the prize after so long it was an impressive feat to be here after so long. Not that Lily was a prize mind you. To call Lily such (ring on her finger or not) was to seek out certain death) but the truth was they came back from their honeymoon happy.
They came back from their honeymoon alive, whole, wholesome.
And that was enough.
At least he had thought it was enough. He had thought it was enough when Sirius had pulled him aside. When Sirius had pulled him aside.
And then Sirius had dropped the bombshell on him.
He thought there was a spy in the Order.
And he thought the spy was Remus. Moony. They boy they had known for decades.
And why you ask? Well…James did not know why per say but he suspected. He did not dare say it because the inevitable was that he too had been wondering the same thing. Was it the fact that the werewolves were getting a better deal (or so was being advertised) with the other side. Was that being that, that took such a long time in getting people to trust them? Or was it something else? The truth was that he was struggling to believe and yet not struggling to believe all at once. He loved Remus, Moony, he did. But the truth of the matter was that he was a wizard and his critics (his son included) later on would look back at this moment as the moment that he fell down. Because of course he was a wizard who suspected a werewolf. Of course he was a wizard who thought that the werewolf was selling him out. It was a natural progression of things and it was a natural obsession. He had been the wizard who had made friends with the werewolf, he had been the Pureblood who had managed to put all of that aside and who had focused on the future and so when Sirius had come to him after his honeymoon and had told him that he had thought someone was selling out the Order was it not both tragic and yet predictable that Sirius and James thought that it was the Order that was selling them out?
And here it was.
And there it was.
Predictability.
Staring him in the face.
"Your sure?" he asked Sirius and Sirius nodded. "Neither one of them had dared to put a name to the unconscious biased they were speaking. Neither one of them had dared to put a name to it. That would be too easy. That would be far, far too easy on them. History would remember them as good men, heroes maybe but here in the kitchen of Godric's Hollow the dust on James's jeans, Lily upstairs humming away and the ghost of too many dead friends before and after them they were unable to shy away from the truth.
There was a spy in their camp.
And they, the two men who had called Remus brother, the two men who had been his friends for years, who had loved him as a brother, who had called him a brother, were sure that he was the spy, they were sure of this without proof, without real and proper proof and the only proof that they clung to was a bite mark on the upper leg that had condemned their friend to the side lines of society for life (or at least until the Ministry got their shit together).
"We know Remus" he said though it was like a broken record in it's habit, how much he clung to the safety of the world gone by, the written word gone by. "We know Remus"
"I know"
"We know Moony"
"I know we think we do"
Here James shot a look to Sirius who shrugged.
"Shit James, you think I want to be sat here wondering if he is the guy who sold us up the river without a paddle? You think I want to be the bastard who falls into every stereotype and every trope and every pothole along the way? You think I want to be that guy who writes off the werewolf? This is Remus, this is my friend, this is the man that Marlene thought was a brother to her no matter what? But I don't…it all falls in his lap, it all looks easy and simple and predictable. And I don't know who else would do it James. I don't know who else has the time to sell us out. Tell me it's not him, please I want you to tell me that I am scum of the Earth in thinking that it's him. I need you to tell me that I am scum of the Earth in thinking that it is him. I don't want to be the guy who…James look me in the eye and tell me that I am getting this wrong and I swear to Merlin, my mother and all the angels and demons in between that I will drop this forevermore."
James opened his mouth to tell Sirius that, he wanted to scream and shout and shake his best friend because James was still in honeymoon mode. He was still in the mode of a man who had won himself the greatest prize on Earth. He was still the guy who had made it back home again with the woman who loved him regardless, no matter what and the thought of taking the idea that Remus was a spy for Voldemort, to Lily…
Well…that was one sure fire way of getting their marriage off to a bad start was it? A way of ending the bloody thing before it had even gotten off the ground.
Lily loved Remus as a brother.
He loved Remus as a brother.
No…no…No. NO. He was not listening to this, he was not…not listening to this.
And yet…
"You don't think that it might be someone else?"
Sirius shrugged. "You tell me who has the time"
"He doesn't have time though does he, he works for the Order"
"Does he?"
"You think Dumbledore has him on a false assignment, you think he makes up these assignments that has him coming back, black and blue? You think this is a new thing for him? A thing he can make up no matter what? Come on Padfoot. He comes back black and blue from these things and we can only press our hands on the wound and try to heal him. How many times have we tried our best to knit the skin back together and how many times have we sat up and made sure that he was still breathing because we were not sure if he was going to make it through the night? We've been his friends for seven…no…nearly eight years Padfoot, you think there is way that we can get past this? That we can forget this if we put it to words and ask him? No…I don't choose to believe—"
"James do you honestly wish that I was right? Do you think I wish to be the guy who thinks…well…damn I was right the werewolf is selling us out? Stop standing there on your high horse in your big happy mansion and pay attention to what I am telling you. Someone is selling us out. Werewolf or not, Remus or not, I am telling you someone is selling us out. I don't know who and I don't know why but I am telling you someone is selling us out and Remus is the prime candidate, it has nothing to do with him being a werewolf, in fact it has nothing to do with that, the truth of the matter is that he is the guy that is there when this shit happens, he comes back from missions and then two days ater there is a catastrophe. Werewolf or not I would be looking at him sideways and thinking maybe…maybe. And I know that and I hate myself for it. But Marlene is dead. Her entire family is dead and there is nothing that you or I can do about it. Edgar Bones is dead and there is nothing that you or I can do about it. Caradoc Dearborn is missing, Benjy was found in pieces, the Prewitt brothers, Gideon and Fabien…well…we both know what happened there and there were people down the line, men and woman who gave us tip offs at great personal risk who suddenly ended up dead. You think I want to believe that it is Remus? No James, I would rather create a horcrux with my soul than believe that any of my friends are involved in this. I am telling you what I know to be true. Do what you want with it by all means, but it doesn't make me or it, any less true"
Sirius took a swig of his firewhiskey then and James took a sip of his and they sat on the back porch of the home that both of them had grown up with and looked out onto the back garden.
"I wished you hadn't had come here" James said suddenly. "I wish you had not come here and told me this, I wish that you had…I don't know but I wish that you had not come and told me this. I didn't want to know this. I didn't sign up to the Order of the Phoenix in order to look at my friends sideways. I didn't join up in order to suspect them. I don't believe anyone I know is prepared to sell me out to Voldemort"
He threw his whiskey to the ground and stood up. "Don't come here and tell me that shit" he said flatly and Sirius looked up at him with the same expression he had worn when James had seen him for the first time after Snape had discovered who Remus was.
"Don't come here with that, I don't want to know that"
Sirius laughed once without humour as he threw his whisky into the grass and James wished that he could not hear him. He wished that he could not hear him and his words and the meaning that they carried.
"Doesn't mean that I am not right" he said finally. "And you haven't said that it might not be true"
Damn him.
James had not.
James could not.
And what that said about him…he simply could not think.
And there you go, hope you enjoy and next chapter will be up soon.
Next Chapter-Lily contemplates pregnancy after a series of symptoms lead her to believe what Alice Longbottom is telling her to be true.
