October 6th, 1982: Sirius Black

Something's different—something's wrong—with Remus. It feels stupid to even say so because of course there's something wrong: he's just spent a solid four months trapped in a prison full of dementors, and Sirius can only imagine what kind of mental anguish he went through in there. But the problem isn't just the vacant look in Remus's eye or the way he tosses in his sleep—it's how he seems utterly determined to cover up his own struggles by throwing himself into taking care of everybody else.

Like Alice, for example. It's been three days, and she's still not talking in full sentences, although she's at least graduated to three- or four-word phrases. It can't be necessary for Remus, Frank, and Kingsley to all be looking after her, but Remus keeps stealing away to help her get meals down and sit with her for hours in the living room, trying to get a few words out of her. Or Arabella Figg, whom Remus keeps getting out of bed to comfort whenever she wakes up screaming six times in a night.

After how badly he's missed Remus for the last four months and how concerned he's been for his welfare, Sirius just wants to spend some time with his boyfriend (or whatever Remus is)—see just how not okay he is and what he can do to help. But it's almost like Remus is deliberately avoiding him. Sirius has had quite his fill of that from Remus over the years, thank you very much, and whatever's going on with Remus or between them, he just wants to get past it.

He doesn't think Remus would take too kindly to a confrontation, however, so Sirius tries to get through to him in other ways—namely, asking for his help keeping the house running. When he found out from Reg that Mum had died, he was totally shocked that he was even able to get inside the place, let alone that Mum hadn't yet taken the time to write him out of her will—but as much as Sirius loathes being back in this place, he has to admit that it's an ideal headquarters for the Order. It has enough bedrooms that they've managed to fit everybody in by doubling up rooms, and with blasted Kreacher in Sirius's service, they have somebody who can go out into the world and get them ingredients for food and potions. More than that, it's secure, and it'll be even more secure once they're done setting up the Fidelius Charms.

Yes, charms—they've been keeping busy the last few days by organizing who's going to protect which secrets. In addition to Sirius acting as Secret-Keeper for the house being the location of Order headquarters (so that Death Eaters don't bomb the whole place like they did the house James inherited from his parents), they've all been pairing off so that each person is Secret-Keeper for another person who, in turn, protects them: that way, if somehow one Secret-Keeper is compromised, they can at most only give away the location of one other without the entire Order going down. (McGonagall will be protecting Hagrid and Arabella, who can't do the magic, and Peter, whom they frankly don't want to pair off with anybody. Meanwhile, Moody is Secret-Keeper to both McGonagall and his own Secret-Keeper, Kingsley.)

It's a damn complicated charm that involves a bunch of spellwork as well as a potion, and Lily's been busy brewing the thing in bulk while Sirius and Reg have worked on the spelling. Not everyone is all there enough to do much magic at the moment, but Sirius hopes that everyone will be operational and protected within a few weeks at most.

Right now, he's managed to drag Remus away from attending to Arthur Weasley by recruiting him to help cook lunch for the whole group. "This should really be Kreacher's job," Sirius grouses while he's directing his wand at several large pots full of curry, "but I really don't trust him not to poison all of us."

"You can't really mean that," says Remus. The corner of his mouth is twitching. "You can just forbid him to do anything shady, and anyway, he's not that bad."

"Yeah, but the elf is crafty—he could probably think up loopholes, and I don't know what all bases I would need to cover. You didn't grow up with him—you don't know what he's capable of."

"Harry seems to like him," Remus points out while he's directing his wand to chop up the chicken breasts. "He can't be all bad if he's friendly with kids."

"I wouldn't call Kreacher friendly," snorts Sirius. "Just because he's got a shadow doesn't mean that he's actually engaging with Harry. Harry just thinks the way he talks is funny—he's too young to understand what a bigot he is."

"Kreacher's only a bigot because your mum and dad were bigots, and they're the people who were kind to him. If you just tried softening up around him—"

"I'm not going to go soft on somebody who calls half my mates half-breeds. He's a bloody half-breed."

Remus rolls his eyes. "Don't let Lily catch you talking like that, especially not in front of Harry. Listen, Pads, I—I'm really glad you've been able to be there for him the last few months. It can't have been easy on him or Lily or you, losing Prongs, and…"

"I'm not so sure," says Sirius softly.

"What? Why would—"

"You know Harry called me 'Daddy' the other day? Lily wasn't in the room, thank god, and I sat him down and reminded him that Prongs will always be his dad, even if he's not here with him anymore. But I just…"

He doesn't want to feel like he's replacing James. James was the best friend and father Sirius knew, and it's not right that he's gone and Sirius is getting all the credit from Harry while he struggles to fill James's overlarge shoes. He loves Harry, of course he does, and Lily says he's doing a good job, but it's not just about diaper changes and story time—if he's going to help raise Harry, he wants to raise him to be a good man, and Sirius hasn't got the first idea how to do that. It's not like he can model his parenting style off of his parents'.

"Prongs would want Harry to have another adult figure to be close to," Remus reasons. "He wouldn't resent you for stepping in."

"It just isn't right, Moony. I don't… I don't know how to do this."

"You can ask for help, you know. Lily doesn't want to step back from Harry, and I can help, and Alice…"

"I'm not going to ask Alice to help raise Prongs's kid when she's missing Neville so badly," insists Sirius. "Besides, I can't give her that kind of responsibility when she's been surrounded by dementors for four months. Even you—I can't…"

Remus's face has gone very pale. "I'm fine, Padfoot."

"No, you're not. You're just trying to save everyone else so that you don't have to face your own demons. What… while you were in there, what did you…?"

This is not the direction Sirius wanted this conversation to go, and yet here he is, demanding the answers that he doesn't think Remus is even ready to share. He's convinced that Remus is going to deflect the question, but then Remus answers, "My pain isn't anything special, not compared to everybody else's. I kept seeing our mates who have died—all the times Lily tried to heal us and we thought she was going to fail. I'm sure it's the same as what half or more of us saw in there."

Not for the first time, Sirius feels a great chasm open up and separate him and Lily from Remus and everybody else who's had to endure Azkaban for the last four months. Remus has seen shit, and Sirius doesn't have a clue what that's like. He tries to imagine it sometimes—all the deaths and pain and shit from his childhood amplified a thousandfold in his mind for continuous months—but he doesn't think it's really possible to know what that feels like until you've been through it.

"Curry looks like it's done," he says quietly. "Can you round everybody up in the dining room? I'll go with Sturgis to take Pettigrew's serving up to him."

"You sure? You usually have Cattermole do it."

"You can call him Reg, you know," says Sirius. "I know it's weird, but he's one of us now."

In truth, he feels like he can't breathe knowing Peter is in the same house as him, just a few stories away, and he's starting to wonder if it'll serve him better to just rip off the bandage and face him already—maybe shout a little and get it out of his system.

Despite what Peter said about getting stuck in human form for months because he couldn't transform without a wand, Sirius doesn't trust the man for a second not to slip into rat form and scurry right through the door, if given half a chance—or, worse, steal somebody's wand like he stole Em's. So they've set up some safety measures, sealing off the only window and magically setting up a barricade between the door and the back of the room. Aiming his wand through the one-centimeter crack under the door, Sturgis only takes the brick barricade down from the outside after locking them both in.

And then Sirius is face to face with Peter, who's looking extra shifty today as he avoids Sirius's eyes. "Lunch," says Sirius tonelessly, setting Peter's tray on the ground and kicking it over to him.

Peter catches it and raises the fork to his lips. "Thanks," he says through a mouthful of curry. He chews, swallows, and then adds, "I'm surprised you came up here personally."

"And I'm surprised the dementors didn't turn you into a self-loathing, blubbering mess, but Reg said you were actually the most coherent of the lot, so I guess we don't always get what we expect, do we?"

"I'm not a bad person, Sirius," says Peter in a tone so totally inappropriately patronizing that Sirius actually laughs out loud.

"You fed the Death Eaters information for four years, got Marlene and a bunch of other people killed, stole Emmeline's wand, turned the entire Order over to the Death Eaters running the Ministry—and you want to convince me you're not a bad person? Very funny, Pettigrew."

"I wasn't thinking about what it would do to all of you when I turned myself in. I was just thinking about—about owning up to my shit like Em would have wanted me to."

"Don't talk about her like that," Sirius barks, "like you knew her, like you cared about her."

"Why not? I loved her more than anyone else did. I loved her more than you did. When I saw that she had died—"

"Please. You only turned yourself in to give yourself an excuse not to feel guilty anymore."

"Is that what you think? That I think I deserve happiness? I didn't bust myself out of that prison cell, Sirius—you did."

"Actually, Reginald Cattermole did, and I only let him because he insisted you go free in exchange for helping us. If I'd had any choice in the matter—"

"You would have what?" says Peter in a tired voice. He doesn't look at all fazed by the knowledge that Mary's widower wanted to help him for some godforsaken reason that Sirius still doesn't understand. "Kept me locked in there for the rest of my life? Killed me? Had me Kissed by dementors?"

"I would have saved you!" Sirius roars.

Peter shuts up at that. Apparently, he's as shocked by this as Sirius is.

The words continue to slip out without Sirius's forethought or permission. "If you had just come to us—if you were being blackmailed or threatened or whatever—I would have done everything in my power to protect you, to save you from this fate, Wormtail. I needed you to be my friend, to be honest with me, to not make up bullshit excuses to explain away all the deaths you probably caused singlehandedly and—and—honest to god, what happened to you? What did we ever do to you to make you hate us so much?"

"I don't hate you," Peter whispers.

"Well, now I hate you," says Sirius, "and there's not a damn thing you can ever do to change it."

He thinks he might scream if he stays in this room a second longer, but he hasn't brought a wand in here—he doesn't trust Peter around it. "You can let me out, Sturgis," he calls instead, rapping a couple of times on the door.

A few moments later, the brick barricade is back up, and the door unlatches. Sirius blows right past Sturgis without looking at him and hurries down the steps and into the dining room.

There are a few people who haven't progressed to eating on their own yet: Frank, Molly, and Remus are all helping to feed Alice, Hagrid, and Ted Tonks, respectively. Sirius slides into the free seat between Reg and Molly, who is spoon-feeding Hagrid out of an entire vat of curry of his own.

He can tell from the look in Lily's eyes that she's about to start asking him about the shouting she heard coming from Peter's room, so Sirius says quickly, "Since we're all here and all—managing—this is as good a time as any to have our first meeting, isn't it?"

All of the low chatter at the table goes hushed. Nobody says anything for a moment, and then Lily says, "We'd meant to do this sooner; we just… didn't want to overload anyone."

"I expect everyone here would rather know what's happening out there than not know," says Andromeda faintly, "even if some of us aren't all… ready to fight."

Sirius glances at Remus, then at Alice, who looks so absorbed in what they're saying that she's forgotten to keep chewing. "All right, then," says Sirius. "First of all—"

"I think I speak for all of us," McGonagall interrupts, "when I say thank you to Mister Cattermole for risking his life to join our ranks and break us free."

"And for wiping our arses when we couldn't all do it ourselves," Moody adds. A couple of people titter at this, and Sirius tries to imagine what that feels like—gratitude mixed with shame, maybe.

Reg bows his head. "But… I couldn't get Dumbledore. Besides, Lily's the one who learned the Portkey spell, and it was Sirius's idea to sneak them into the food."

"Yeah, and you're the one who insisted on getting Pettigrew out," growls Mundungus. "You realize that little weasel is going to sneak out of here and turn over all our secrets to the Death Eaters the second we give him half a chance, don't you?"

Arguing breaks out all around at once. From what Sirius can make out, the general sentiment is that people don't want Peter out of prison (and you can't fault them for that, can you? Sirius certainly doesn't). However, Reg is insisting that everyone ought to have a bit more sympathy for Peter when they know from experience how wretched it is to be in Azkaban, while Kingsley's saying something about how Peter didn't have it in him to turn in the Potters, how he could have tipped off the Ministry about the Order without turning himself in, too—that maybe he's changed. Meanwhile, Sturgis chuckles darkly, "He's more of a rat than a weasel, Dung. Get your Animagi straight."

"Tha's enough now," says Hagrid, but nobody pays him any mind.

"HEY!" yells Alice.

The whole table shuts up. She looks more cognizant than Sirius has seen her since before Azkaban, and there's a steel glint in her eyes. Harry starts to cry; Lily swears under her breath, pushes out her chair, and carries him off into the other room.

"Pettigrew… Peter… Emmeline would—have wanted us to forgive him."

It's clearly taking a lot out of her to string the sentence together, and Frank sidles over and lays his head on her shoulder. Sirius shakes his head—this is sixth year all over again. "Alice, I love you, but after he stole Em's wand and blamed her for his actions—"

"We shouldn't try to speak for the dead," says Arabella. "The fact is, we don't know what Emmeline would have wanted, and we're never going to figure it out by arguing the point. It's disrespectful to her memory to put words in her mouth."

Remus catches Sirius's eye but looks away quickly, saying, "Look, we have bigger things to worry about right now than Pettigrew. I know we all have learned by now that Lily killed Voldemort, but nobody out there knows it, and we have no way of getting the word out. We can't exactly go to the Prophet with this if we don't want to get turned back in, and even if we did—we know the Death Eaters are leaning on them, right? They probably wouldn't even report it."

"Well," comes Lily's voice from the back of the room, where she's standing in the doorway, "then I guess it's a good thing that I managed to take his body with me when I killed him."

"You what?"

She shrugs. "He mentioned, before I did it, that this might happen—that the Death Eaters might keep the war going—and I thought it might come in useful to have it, so I Vanished it before I Disapparated. I conjure it up every couple weeks to check on it—it doesn't seem to be decomposing when it's Vanished."

"Hold on," scowls Sturgis. "You have Voldemort's body, and you've just—hung onto it all this time?"

"Leave her alone," says Snape softly. "You know exactly why she hasn't gone out there and used it. There's a price on her head, and the Ministry would cover it up anyway."

"Thanks," remarks Lily dryly, "but I don't need your help here."

She gives him a positively loathing look, and Sirius realizes that he hasn't actually seen Lily and Snape speak to each other in all the days Snape has been here. "Look, the point is, we have his corpse," Sirius hastens to say. "We just don't have anyone to send it out into the world for us yet. We have to think of a place to put it where the Ministry won't just smuggle it off and cover it up, and we have to find somebody to—"

"To help us? Where?" Molly says. "Arthur and I can't even get a message to our children. Alice and Frank can't see their son, and Andromeda and Ted can't see their daughter. Where are we going to find somebody we can not only trust not to turn us all in, but entrust with Voldemort's body?"

"We're going to have to expand the Order," says Andromeda heavily. "We're going to have to break the Fidelius Charms, aren't we?"

"And tell who?" pipes up Kingsley. "Who can we trust who isn't in this room?"

"Well, there's my mum," Frank says after a pause. "She's always been very outspoken against the Death Eaters and against Malfoy's brood."

"My parents, too," suggests Arthur. "Dad's as big a blood traitor as Molly and I are, and Mum got burned off the Black family tree for marrying him."

"One or two Hogwarts professors might be willing to contribute," McGonagall says. "Vicky may not be one of us yet, but we can trust her."

"Vicky?" says Sirius.

"Septima Vector. She teaches Arithmancy," Lily answers. "But what makes you think—? I mean, just because you're friendly doesn't mean—"

McGonagall's lips are as thin as Sirius has ever seen them, but Hagrid, to Sirius's initial surprise, is smiling. "Yeh two've on'y b'in together for, what now, Minerva? Twen'y-eight years?"

"Twenty-nine," she says stiffly.

Sirius grins slyly. "That's brilliant. I never knew you had it in you."

"It's her personal life," Remus points out, "and given that people aren't always all that accepting, it makes sense that she'd keep it to herself at work."

"No, no, wait," Arabella interrupts. "If you two are so in love, then why haven't you looped her in already? Why hasn't she come to any meetings? Why wasn't she in an Azkaban cell right along with the rest of us?"

"I don't question Vicky's commitment to Muggle rights and the dismantling of the Death Eaters," says McGonagall thinly. "I just…" And she falters here, looking down. "I never wanted to involve her in this. I may have been too afraid to lose her."

"Okay, then," says Frank, nodding at her, "then we reach out to Mum and Arthur's parents and Professor Vector, and we—give them Voldemort's body? Ask them to scope out potential recruits to join us?"

"Both, I think," Moody says. "And if we don't want the Ministry to conceal the body just as soon as we reveal it, we'll need to find somewhere prominent to put it and use a Permanent Sticking Charm or something on the damn thing."

"We should take it to Diagon Alley," says Kingsley. "It'll get the most eyes on it there."

Sturgis grins. "Even if it pisses off the goblins when we permanently affix it to the front steps of Gringotts."

"We could also use a news outlet on our side, even if it's a small one," says Lily. "The Prophet sure as hell isn't going to be doing any unbiased reporting, and we need some way to counteract their propaganda."

"Okay, but how do we even get in touch with the people we want to contact?" Sirius points out. "Just because I'm Secret-Keeper for the whole house doesn't mean I can loop everybody in on my own—each one of us has their own personal Secret-Keeper, too. Either we have, what, seventeen different Secret-Keepers each send a letter—and we know that letters can be intercepted—or people have to leave this house, and if people leave this house…"

"Well," Sturgis reasons, "we don't need every person to be able to communicate with all of us, do we? At least, not at first. I know it's a little strange—it probably means that, when we have a visitor, the visitor will only be able to see and speak to the person whose secret they've been told—but that's all we really need, isn't it? Frank can liaise with his mum, and Arthur with his parents, and Professor McGonagall with Vector."

Andromeda frowns. "How is each Secret-Keeper supposed to reveal the secret of the person they're protecting if that person hasn't revealed their secret?"

"Yes, but all someone has to do is leave this house, and the secret isn't covering that person anymore—at least, not until they come back to the house," Arthur reminds her. "So that means—Molly has to talk to my mum and dad, and Sturgis needs to see Mrs. Longbottom, and Moody can contact Vector. Plus Sirius, of course, to tell them that this house is headquarters in general."

"How?" Snape whispers. "How do they get them alone somewhere that they won't be intercepted by—unfriendly figures?"

As much as Sirius wants to tell Snape to shut his skinny face, the man has a point: they've already established that including anybody's location in a letter is too dangerous. But then Molly suggests, "We could give each person coordinates of a different unpopulated place where we can meet."

"And what if those messages are intercepted, and each Secret-Keeper arrives to an ambush?"

"Mate, we don't even have an owl in this house," Sturgis points out.

"Well, we don't have to be the first ones on the scene," says Lily, smiling slyly, "and we don't even need to send the coordinates by owl. We're forgetting—there's somebody in this house who can come and go without fear of apprehension."

After a moment, it clicks. "No," he says emphatically. "I've told you a thousand times—we can't trust him."

"Can't trust who?"

"Kreacher," says Remus in an undertone. "Lily's right, Sirius. I think the Fidelius Charm still extends to nonhumans, and even if it didn't, he's bound by your commands."

It's no use: Sirius can tell from the looks on everyone's faces that he's going to get outvoted on this one, and besides, it's not like they have much of a choice. "Fine," he says. "Fine. We'll wait a couple weeks, until everyone has recovered enough to manage the Fidelius Charm. I'm going to need you all to tell me exactly when and where to send him, so that he can catch each person somewhere private."

Nobody really seems sure what to say after that, and after an awkward pause, Lily mumbles, "I'm going to go check on Harry."

"Neville—" says Alice emphatically "—I—"

"I'll go with Sturgis to the meeting point," says Remus gently, "and have Kreacher tell Frank's mum to bring him there, so that Sturgis and I can tell both of them where you and Frank both are. Arthur, you should do the same thing and go with Molly, so that you can both see your kids."

"I'll come with you, Remus," Lily says, "so that I can reveal Harry to the Longbottoms. Neville will be happy to play with Harry again, won't he?"

"Absolutely," says Frank. "It'll be okay, Alice. Just you wait."

Sirius doesn't think it's going to be okay—Sirius doesn't think anything's going to be okay ever again—but he holds his tongue. With so little hope to be found, he thinks the last thing anybody, especially Alice, needs right now is him trying to squash it.