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Harry sat on his bed, unmoving, for a long time. Eventually, he realized that the sun was now higher in the sky. He knew he should eat something to make sure that the Order stayed pacified.
Still, he didn't think he could move. He glanced out of the window once more and sighed heavily.
Grudgingly, he got to his feet and made his way out of the bedroom and back downstairs. He paused at the door to the kitchen.
He could no longer hear voices coming from the opposite side of the door, and he supposed their meeting was over. He took a deep breath before entering into the kitchen.
Ron, Hermione, Lupin, and Sirius were sitting at the table in silence.
"Harry," Sirius nodded to him as he entered, "What are you doing?"
"I just came to eat something," Harry said quickly before grabbing an apple from the fruit bowl. Harry took a bite out of it and hesitated a moment before turning to leave.
"Wait, Harry," Harry looked back at Ron. "You can-er-stay if you want."
Harry examined Ron's face for a moment before taking a seat at the table across from the small group. Harry took another bite of his apple and avoided all of their stares.
"I'm sorry for interrupting your meeting earlier," Harry said, trying to defuse the awkward tension in the air. His words seemed to snap everyone out of their stupor.
"It's fine," Lupin said quickly.
Harry snorted. "I doubt Severus would agree with you on that."
"He doesn't agree with us about anything." Ron said, "Slimy git."
Harry chuckled. "On your end, too?"
"I don't think it really matters who he works for; he is a slimy git either way," Ron said solemnly.
"Well, regardless, I shouldn't have even entered the kitchen. I just was quite shocked to see him."
"It doesn't matter," Hermione assured him, and the room lapsed into silence again.
"Harry," Sirius said, "Did you hear anything else that he said— after you left, I mean?"
Harry thought that he saw Lupin kick Sirius under the table, but he made no mention. He debated a moment before answering.
"Not purposely." Harry lied through his teeth, "Why?"
"It's nothing," Sirius said quickly, and Harry watched him glance over at Hermione and Ron and then look at Lupin, who was trying to be subtle with his glare.
"What is your question, Sirius?" Harry figured he already knew what was going to come, but he would not be the one to bring it up. He would force Sirius to say it.
"I don't have one. Forget I mentioned it." Sirius said, not meeting Harry's eyes.
"You," Harry said, "are a remarkably bad liar."
Harry took another bite out of his apple, waiting for Sirius to get up the courage to ask his question.
"How much did you hear?" Sirius asked at last. Harry saw Hermione look at briefly Sirius before fixing her eyes on Harry's face.
"I heard from the atrocities I committed against humanity all the way to my sheer audacity, accusing him of doing the unforgivable. Severus always was one for dramatics, though I have never heard him lose control of himself like that before."
Now, Harry thought, they were getting closer to the question that he knew Sirius was dying to ask. Ron and Hermione both looked exceedingly uncomfortable, and Lupin looked as if he wanted to hit Sirius.
Sirius, however, looked calm, if not a little awkward. "What did you think of his words?" Sirius pressed on.
Harry sighed and placed his half-eaten apple on the table. "Sirius, I do wish you would stop dodging the real question you want to ask."
"And what is that?"
Harry looked at him, the guilt starting to seep through the cracks of his indifferent mask.
"You want to know if what Severus said was true, correct?" Sirius paused a moment before nodding stiffly. Harry sighed heavily.
"Regrettably, yes, Severus was not exaggerating; in fact, what he said about me was a rather gross understatement." The room fell into an unbearable silence before Hermione finally broke it.
"No," She whispered. "No, you couldn't have."
"Why not Hermione?" Harry said, rather harsher than he meant to be, "Why couldn't I have? It seems you have yet to realize this, but I am a monster. I don't deserve to live, much less to be welcomed into my former enemy's home. I deserve to be tortured for the rest of eternity, not fed and sheltered.
"You don't know what it's like to look someone in the eye, knowing that you're about to kill them and their entire family, but I do. I have descended into the depths of wickedness, and I am still allowed to live! Not only live but live a rather sheltered life, considering everything. So, yeah, I can see how you wouldn't believe it, but I did everything Snape said, and much worse than even that."
Harry got abruptly to his feet. "I'm sorry, I can't do this right now." He quickly turned and exited the house before any of them could say anything.
The door slammed behind him, but he didn't look back. Instead, he broke into a run and headed towards the tree line. He tore through the brush, not watching where he was going. Something caught his foot, and he fell into the dirt.
"Harry!" Someone turned him over, and he saw the face of Draco looming over him. "What happened? What's wrong?" Harry sat up quickly and looked at his best friend for a minute.
"I can't do this anymore, Draco."
"Do what?" Draco asked patiently.
"Pretend everything is fine! I can't do it anymore!"
"Calm down, Harry," Draco looked sort of freaked out now, and Harry wasn't sure he blamed him. Harry NEVER lost control of himself, but right now, he felt like he was teetering on the edge.
"What happened?" Draco asked softly. Harry met his eyes for a moment before looking away.
"Please, Draco, I really don't want to talk about it right now."
"Okay," Draco said slowly, "Do you want me to leave?" Harry didn't say anything for a moment before nodding slowly.
"I'm sorry,"
"You have nothing to apologize for. Just… don't stay out too long; you have the Ministry in a while. Are you sure you'll be okay?"
"I'm fine, Draco; I just… I need to think." Harry watched as Draco nodded and stood, leaving the forest and Harry behind.
SPACE
Draco stood and left his friend sitting in the woods.
It was clear to him that Harry needed some time alone, and besides, he had to go to the house to see what had started this in the first place. He heard voices through the kitchen door and pushed it open.
"What should we do now?" Hermione was asking as he entered. He saw that Ron, Lupin, and Sirius, were with her, all of whom had strange looks on their faces.
"What happened?" Draco asked as they all turned to look at him.
"Draco, do you know where Harry went?" Lupin asked urgently.
"What did he do this time?" Draco asked, trying to lighten the mood.
"Draco, it was awful!" Hermione burst out. "We had an Order meeting, and Snape was here, and he and Harry got into a fight, and then Snape spat out all of this stuff that Harry did with Voldemort, and then Sirius just asked him if it was true, and Harry confirmed all of it and then said that he was a monster and left and now we don't know where he is!"
Hermione said it all without taking a breath, and Draco knew he had to defuse the situation before it got more out of hand.
"Calm down, Hermione; I know where Harry is."
"You do?" Sirius asked quickly, "Where?" Draco pointedly ignored him.
"Did you say something about Snape?" Draco asked Hermione.
"Yes, of course, he was a part of our meetings and—" She stopped short at the look on Draco's face.
"He works as a spy for the Order, doesn't he?" Draco asked quietly.
"Yes," Ron said, stepping closer to Hermione.
"All this time, I never knew." Draco shook his head. "It doesn't matter though. What did Snape say exactly?" Hermione was just about to start her explanation again, but Lupin cut her off.
"Draco, you're a Legilimens, right?" When Draco nodded, Lupin met his eyes. "Just look, it will be quicker."
Draco entered his mind without a moment's hesitation and watched everything that had happened, from Snape with Harry, to Snape's accusations, to Harry's confession and outburst, straight up to Harry leaving.
When Draco finally pulled back out of Lupin's mind, he was silent for a moment, debating what he should do next.
"I think," Draco said slowly, "that one of you should go and talk with him. I would, but he won't believe my words as much as he would yours."
"I'll go." Sirius offered at once. "It's my mess, I'll clean it up." Draco nodded.
"Harry's in the woods, not too far from the tree line." Sirius got up at once and walked to the door.
"Sirius," Draco said just before he left, "Try not to make things worse, okay?"
Sirius nodded and closed the kitchen door behind him.
SPACE
Harry was sitting with his back up against a tree, deeply ashamed of himself. How could he have overreacted like that?
He had told Draco to go away and said that he should just leave. Now Draco was going to know what happened, and he was going to come back to find Harry.
He was going to comfort him, try to make him feel better. Harry didn't want to feel better. He deserved every part of this guilt. He deserved much worse than the guilt.
All of a sudden, the forest felt too confining. Harry got to his feet and started to climb up into a nearby pine tree.
When he finally stopped climbing, he was high in the sky, overlooking the surrounding forest. He gulped down the fresh air as though he had never breathed before. The wind was slightly cool on his face, and the breeze made the trees whisper all around him. The forest felt like it was alive.
However, Harry's peace was short-lived.
"Harry," he heard Sirius call from somewhere far below him. He didn't move or make a sound.
He did not want to be with Sirius right now. He didn't want to hear the disappointment in his voice. He did not want to have to address the guilt which was burning with a powerful rage in his chest.
"Harry," Sirius called again. "Come on, Harry. I know you're there."
Still, Harry didn't move. He didn't want to talk with Sirius anymore. Now, he could see Sirius clearly through the trees. He passed directly under the tree Harry was hidden in. Harry saw him sit in the roots of the one next to his.
"Come on, Harry, this is silly. I just want to talk." Harry didn't want to talk. He wanted to be alone. He wished Sirius would just go away.
"Okay then, I will just talk."
He paused for a moment, giving Harry a chance to come out. When he didn't, Sirius began to speak.
"Harry, do you think I didn't already know about that— or some of it, at least? Did you really think we thought you did nothing before you came here? We already knew what you did, what you must have done, but we took you and Draco in any way. Why did you think we took your wands? It was because we knew what you were capable of. But we also gave them back because we saw that even though you were capable of great destruction, you no longer wanted to cause it.
"The thing you have to remember is that it was the old you doing that sort of thing. You changed. You are better than you once were. The fact you feel bad about it proves that. Harry, we all regret some things we did in the past. Unfortunately, we can't change the past.
"We can, however, control what we do in the future. I am not saying you should completely forget about everything you did, but you should try to learn from your mistakes. You should try to do the most amount of good you possibly can from now on. The rest will sort itself out; all you have to do is try to be better."
Sirius fell silent and just waited. Harry was not sure what to say. Sirius had known all along and still wanted to be friends with Harry.
Why would he ever have wanted that?
How could he just move on when this guilt was seeping into his chest, making it hard to breathe?
Sirius seemed to deflate the longer Harry took to respond.
Harry was not sure what to do. He wanted to talk to Sirius now, wanted to climb down from the tree, but how could he? He could not just jump down out of a tree right in front of Sirius.
However, the more Sirius deflated, the more Harry wanted to go to him until, eventually, he decided he didn't care how it would look. Harry unhooked his legs from the branch, and perhaps born of a desire to do something dangerous and risky, he jumped down from the branch, which was a good ten feet above the ground. He landed much softer than he should have, and his sudden appearance made Sirius jump.
"Harry," he said, surprised, "You startled me."
"Sorry," Harry said, not quite making eye contact with him.
"I am glad you came down." Sirius said. "How did you know I was up there?"
"Just a guess." Sirius replied. "Did you hear what I said?"
"Yes…" Harry said, sitting down with his back against the pine tree.
"It was true, Harry." He said, "We already knew you had done some stuff before you came here. Did you think Dumbledore wouldn't try to find out as much about your past as he could after knowing you were alive? We didn't care as long as you were willing to change."
"Why, though? Why don't you hate me? I even hate myself." Harry said.
"You changed. We all do some things we regret—"
"Did you ever kill anyone?" Harry interrupted, "Not just one person either, multiple, without mercy."
"Yes," Sirius said sadly, "I did."
"Really?" Harry asked, "I don't believe it. You are just trying to make me feel better."
"No, I'm serious. I killed two people, and it was the biggest regret of my life."
"Who was it?" Harry blurted before he could stop himself. "Sorry," He added quickly, "You don't have to answer if you don't want to."
"It's fine," Sirius said, "The two people I killed were named Lily and James Potter. Oh no," he added quickly at the look on Harry's face. "I didn't perform the curse or anything, but I as good as killed them. I convinced them to make their secret keeper Peter instead of me. I had no clue he was a traitor, but I should have just done it myself. I figured Voldemort would go after me and would never expect the secret keeper to be small, cowardly Peter. Biggest regret of my life…"
Sirius trailed off, and Harry said, "But that is different. You never actually killed anyone, never with your own wand. You never looked them in the eyes with the intent of killing them and their entire family."
"True, but it is similar. We both have blood on our hands, and there is nothing we can do but move on."
Harry sighed; he still hadn't looked at Sirius. He knew he was right, but still… the guilt pressed down on his body, making him feel heavy with regret.
"Harry, listen to me." Sirius started again, "You feel bad, don't you?"
"More than you could ever know." Harry said sincerely.
"I do know, though. Not a day has passed since your parent's death that I don't feel awful. I know I could have prevented it. I could have changed something, saved them. But, if you are always looking back at the things you could have done differently, you will never be able to live. You may think it is different for me, but it really isn't. We both regret stuff we did in the past, and we both have to move on. Remember, we have to let it go before it consumes us." Sirius' hand fell, and he sat down next to Harry.
"I know," Harry said, "You're right, of course, but how can I possibly move on? All of the faces, all of those families I tore apart for no reason; I know what it feels like to be on the other side of that, Sirius. They won't move on; I haven't."
"But you have Harry. You went on with your life; you are still trying to stop him. Of course, your parents will always be with you, but you have moved on with your life. That's what happens to everyone eventually. They move on."
Harry nodded. Sirius was right. The guilt on Harry's shoulders, though still there, felt much more bearable.
"Thanks," Harry said quietly. "That's what Godfathers are for," Sirius said, smiling.
"We should probably get back to the house." Harry said, looking down at his watch. "We are going to have to leave in an hour or so."
Sirius agreed and stood, following Harry back to the Burrow.