Deep sleep filled the dark room beyond. It was so dark Sirius stood motionless just inside for a minute or two, slowly letting his eyes adjust to the faint moonlight leaking through the slit in the curtains. The black forms gradually took shape, silhouetting beds and trunks and desks – five sets of them, ringing the room.
But which one did Peter belong to? It was still too dim to read the names on the trunks, and he'd only get one opportunity to pounce. What he wouldn't give for his wand right now, the ability to grow a light at will.
Easier to strike.
He waited a minute more to see if the darkness would sharpen, but it didn't. Only one option then.
He padded silently to the window and eased the curtain open. The moonlight poured in, molten silver.
None of the boys stirred.
Sirius's heart was thrumming in his chest like paws beating against the ground in a full run. Find the Weasley boy's bed, he thought. Find the bed, and then he'd find Peter, and it'd all be over.
Moving even quieter than before, he began inspecting the trunks, reading the embossed names one by one. Thomas, Finnegan, Longbottom… His attention snapped on the next trunk.
Potter.
He turned, but James was gone, the only reminder of him left his son. Asleep. In the same dormitory as Peter.
It had never occurred to him until this very moment that Harry shared a room with Peter, which was incredibly stupid of him now that he thought of it. He knew Harry was thirteen. He had used Harry's age to measure the passage of time, and he knew the Weasley boy who owned the rat that was actually Peter was in Harry's year, but for some reason this had never connected that it meant they lived in the same space. And now here Sirius was, here to destroy Peter, and he was in Harry's dorm.
A vision played across his brain, and it was different than his usual hallucinations – not a replay of happy memories, but a nightmare panning out in front of him. Peter, transformed from rat to man on a deep night much like this, stealing across the shadow-striped dormitory to Harry's bed, weapon in hand. What would it be? A knife, like Sirius's? Something heavy, like a candelabra from the common room? Would Peter pick up Harry's own wand to end him? Sirius was sure the only reason Peter hadn't done it yet was because Peter was a coward. He wouldn't make a move until he was sure it would benefit him.
Sirius wasn't going to let that time come.
Just like the Peter in his vision, he stole across the room, equally silent and deadly. Only his his trajectory was different, the inverse of the imaginary Peter's. Sirius traced the path from Harry's bed to the Weasley boy's.
The hangings were drawn but light snoring exhaled out and rippled the fabric.
Sirius still had the knife, stashed deep in his pocket. He drew it out now. His hand trembled.
"Last chance, Padfoot."
Sirius whirled, the blade arcing wide. James watched it pass harmlessly through his chest. Then he met Sirius's wild gaze, one eyebrow cocked. "After me now, too?"
Sirius let the knife dip. His heart beat so hard in his throat his entire skull pulsed. His ears filled with the frantic drumming. "Damn it, James! Can't you leave me alone?"
"No," James said, shaking his head. He looked sad, but resolute. "I don't think that'd be for the best."
"Don't you know what I'm doing?" Sirius hissed.
There'd been a time when James and Sirius got away with everything. One of them would get some mad, impossible, incredible idea, and together the two of them would find a way to make it happen. It was how they'd had a picnic on the roof. It was how there'd been a whole week no one in the castle had been able to address each other without a 'Cheerio, top of the morning to you,' like someone's overly-cheeky great-grandfather. It was how they'd been there for Remus.
Of course, after the debacle the first half of their sixth year had been, they'd mellowed out considerably, reining each other in when the other went too far. Mostly it was James pulling Sirius back, his Head Boy duties and Lily influencing him to get his act together, but Sirius had his moments, too. They were a team, and they still had fun. So much bloody fun.
Never had James so completely opposed him.
And never had there been a time when Sirius most needed James to understand.
"That is your son!" Sirius whisper-shouted, jabbing a finger at Harry's bed. "Your son, in here, with your murderer."
"Peter didn't kill me, Sirius," James said. The moonlight washed him as pale and white as the ghost he was.
"He as good as," Sirius growled. I as good as.
"You didn't kill me either," James said softly.
Sirius looked away. He didn't know if that was true. It had been his idea, his mad, impossible, stupid idea that ended with Lily and James cold and dead in the ground.
Sirius might as well have said the fatal incantation himself.
"I'm sorry," Sirius whispered.
But James didn't answer.
When Sirius could stomach looking at James again, he found James's attention diverted. He was staring past Sirius at the closed hangings around a bed.
The bed marked Potter.
"Have… have you seen him?" James asked, and for a moment nothing else mattered except the high quiver in his voice and the anguish in his eyes. Nothing else mattered, not even Peter.
"Yes," Sirius whispered. He closed his eyes, remembering the Quidditch match weeks ago. He couldn't believe it, but a smile ghosted across his face. "He's just like you, Prongs." The smile solidified. "Maybe even better. You'd be so proud."
James swallowed, and his hand went to his hair, pushing it back and up so that it stuck up and out of his face. The movement was so achingly, endearingly familiar, Sirius had to look away again.
"I wish…" James said, trailing off as he took a single step toward Harry's bed.
"I know," Sirius said. He put a hand on James's shoulder. It should have been alarmingly how real James felt now. "But you can't."
James turned to look back at Sirius. His face was drawn in lines of longing and pain and loss. "I can't," he whispered. The words were as fragile and small as newborn fawn, unable to stand on its own. Shaky. Helpless.
"You can't," Sirius repeated. He could help. "You can't, because you aren't here. You aren't real. Because of Peter."
"Right," James said. His voice was still so vulnerable.
They both stared at Harry's bed a moment longer. Then, ever so slowly, Sirius shifted his gaze back to the Weasley boy's.
"His fault," James's voice cracked.
"Yes," Sirius whispered. His fault, and Peter's, and the whole damn Wizarding world's. Sirius had paid for it. For years and years, alone in a dark cell, with only the dementors and his own destructive thoughts for company, Sirius had paid for it. His fault, his fault, my fault. They'd catch him again, and he'd pay for it some more. I deserve it. But this time, it'd be worth it, because this time, he was bringing Peter down with him.
In one, two, three quick strides, Sirius was at the bedside. He wrenched the curtains aside. Lying in the bed was a sleeping red-headed boy, but Sirius barely registered him, not even when the boy stirred at the sound of the opening hangings.
Where was Peter? Sirius could no longer tell if the words were James's or his own. His eyes darted frantically as the boy started to wake, the moonlight from the uncovered window an assault on his sleep. Sirius kept the knife aloft, the tension strung tight through his whole body. He wanted to throw aside the boy's bed covers, rummage under the pillows.
Find Peter, find Peter, FIND PETER.
The boy rubbed his eyes.
No time.
He sat up.
Peter was here, Sirius knew it, so close he could feel the knife slashing down as vividly as he could see James standing at the other side of the bed.
But it wasn't enough.
Sirius had failed again.
The boy's eyes widened as he took in Sirius: the tattered robes, the tangled, matted hair, the mad glint in his eye. The knife.
And then the boy screamed.
No.
Sirius froze. In seconds, the room would swarm with the other third years. The common room would fill, the whole Tower concerned for their Housemate. If Sirius stayed even a heartbeat longer, he'd have to duel them all.
No.
There was only one casualty Sirius was going to go back to Azkaban for, and it wasn't this red-haired boy, or any of the other Gryffindors. He met James's eyes over the screaming Weasley boy.
"Go," James whispered, and Sirius ran.