Chapter Text
“Trick or treat–!”
“Smell my feet,” Sirius whispered, bored to tears. He lounged in the alcove of his apartment terrace, watching a little scatter of ghosts and goblins run a muck down at his building’s carport.
“Give me something good to— HELL’S BELLS! ”
Licorice spiders and green apple vipers burst out in a giant spray like loaded springs. The door’s rusty letter slot chomped hungrily with loud clacks that echoed up the cobbled drive. The costumed boys leapt back, each of their shrieks fighting harder than the next to escape.
“IT’S BLOODY GOT ME, LADS!”
“GERROFF ME—” one screamed, chucking himself onto the lawn to roll about.
They shimmied and shook, frantically dusting off licorice sticks from their shoulders and twirling green apple skins out of their hair.
“Amateurs…” Sirius sighed. He cast a summoning charm out at the various piles of lost and surrendered candy, sending them whizzing up through his window to collect bountifully on his lap.
“Black? Hellloooo….? SIRIUS BLACK?! No, darling… he’s not answering. Maybe he’s too busy looking at himself again—”
“Oh, don’t get yourself all randy, baby,” Sirius called lazily over his shoulder. He flicked his wand to reset his trickeries and traps for the next unsuspecting lot of children and watched as the last ones disappeared with fleeing urgency down the street. Their flailing arms and shrieking heads faded into the fog like fuzzy little cotton balls.
He stood with a satisfied groan and stretched with a long, sleepy cat yawn before crossing the room to snatch up the chattering two-way pocket-mirror that rested on an old coffee table.
“Miss me already, my love?”
“Hard enough to get rid of you, actually,” Lily sighed, poking out her tongue. “James – he’s on!” she hollered off in the distance, summoning her barreling husband. “Stealing candy from babes , he is—”
“Without me?!” James huffed hotly, his big stupid spectacles filling up the mirror as he came into frame.
“I’ve gone solo,” Sirius gloated, plopping himself atop the kitchen counter.
“You hear that, Lil? He’s… he’s breaking up the band.”
“IS HE REALLY?” Lily cried happily, now in the other room.
“That’s right. Lone Marauder… World Tour starts next week—”
“But you’re not even the likable one,” James complained.
“HE’S NOT EVEN THE LIKABLE ONE!” Lily agreed.
Sirius reddened, absolutely cross. “And I suppose you’d like to fancy yourself the fan fave?”
“I reckon, yeah,” James beamed handsomely, smooshing his palm against his cheek as he collapsed into bed.
They stared at each other dopily through their mirrors, snorting and howling and making ugly faces to dare the other to crack. Sirius shoved a wedge of chocolate orange in his gums like a pair of goofy teeth before pausing to grimace, disgusted at the state of muggle candies.
“Lil!” James called. “Come quick, he’s being a prat again.”
Harry giggled shrilly in the background as Lily wrestled him into a pair of fresh pajamas.
“Any funny business, then?” Sirius sighed, tossing the chocolate wedge into the fireplace to disintegrate it with a blaze. “The village wards have been going off all night. I must’ve checked ‘em a dozen times now. Spent my whole evening flying around out there. I’m getting right sick of babysitting you, Potter…”
“Obsessed with me, more like,” James chuffed. He’d gotten up to stride to the window, yawning and peering out at the courtyard to watch the little rumpled costumes of sleepy children stumbling by.
Sirius could see it. The gaunt shadow of sleepless sallow sinking in. Lines had begun etching themselves in James’s brow, aging him wickedly since the night Euphemia Potter died. He wasn’t the same anymore. None of them were.
“Wards are fine. Just muggles about,” James grumbled. “It’s near torture just watching them... No booby traps. No jelly legs. Not even a stink bomb in sight.”
“It’s why I’ve gone solo, obviously…”
“Yeah? Alright, tell me all about it then, Lone Marauder.”
“Tripwire,” Sirius explained coolly. “All simple muggle tricks. With… some glamour charms for embellishment. Not enough to trigger the trace, of course–”
“Tripwire? How… medieval .”
“JAMES, HARRY’S DOING THAT THING AGAIN.”
“BE RIGHT THERE. Right, talk tomorrow, then?”
“‘Course. Unless you’re too busy strutting about town.”
“Cruel. Y’know I hate this. Feel like a damned bludger in a trunk... Anyways, even if I could leave, I don’t strut, Black.”
“Mmhmm…”
“COMING, BABE! Yeah, okay. Tomorrow as usual.”
“Wait!”
“Hmm?”
“I didn’t even get to wish m’godson a Happy Halloween yet.”
“Ah, Pads…” James yawned again. “You’ll just get him all wiley. And then you’ll steal his candy, for all I know–”
“Fine, fine. Night, Prongs.”
“Cheers.”
They left their mirrors open.
They always did; that was protocol nowadays.
Sirius heard James bounce away and start whistling Harry lullaby tunes. Tonight, Both Sides Now . He’d been whistling that one a lot lately. “Not that one,” he heard Lily whisper sadly. “Do Diary , that’s my favorite.”
Sirius sighed and sank into the deflated sofa couch of the abandoned safehouse. He cracked his neck and felt his bones deflate. He thought about Remus. Thought about Mad-Eye’s mad eye. He thought about everything until it all buzzed into nothing at all.
Harry’s giggles had faded.
Lily’s slippers shuffled down the hall.
James cleared his throat, quietly turning the pages of something from somewhere.
Fire crackled warmly and Sirius felt as if he could melt away.
He’d spent the afternoon in Dartmoor hauling supplies along an old dragon’s pass at Moody’s behest. The Order wanted new safehouses by winter, small foxholes to be scattered throughout the countryside to serve as emergency medical shelters for their dwindling Auror fleet. Too many had floundered due to being entrapped and isolated within secret anti-apparition wards that Death Eaters had placed about during their ambushes. Alastor Moody was the grizzled and hobbling example of what surviving something like that entailed.
He had a leg missing.
An eye gone.
They’re calling him Mad-Eye now…
And then there was the matter of traces. It’s how they’d eventually found Caradoc Dearborn not too long ago. Ministry secretaries had been folding under anonymous threats and reinstating the trace on Aurors in secret, allowing infiltrating Death Eaters to track a witch or wizard with every notable spell-cast. Stronger spells signaled the trace the fastest, making them the most dangerous for Order members to use. Protocol lately was to reserve all magic for battle, if possible. Though Sirius had found small wandwork never seemed to be an issue, as far as he was getting away with.
“So… they get here, and say… they’re splinched to absolute ribbons — what’s next?” Sirius had groaned halfway through his haul this afternoon, stretching his shoulders to take a break and do some general complaining.
“There’s dittany in every Foxhole,” Moody growled, yanking the shovel from Sirius’s grasp. “And rations for a week. You ever lose anything while apparating before, Black?”
“No…”
“Not yer ear? Yer arm? Yer eyes–?”
“No!” Sirius furrowed his brow. He hated Moody’s terrible war stories now. He regretted ever asking him anything.
He stared at the constant whirring state of the auror’s new mechanical eye, picturing bits and pieces of Alastor Moody being torn off over the years. He shivered, glancing back at the dark safehouse on the side of the hill and pictured someone taking shelter in this miserable hole they were digging.
It could be Mad-Eye, one day. Could be Kingsley. Could be John Dawlish or Rufus Scrimgeour.
It could be Remus, Sirius realized, running from nothing other than the pale of the moon.
He inhaled sharply.
“That’s it then? How do they signal for help? Are the Healers meant to monitor–?”
“ Healers ,” Moody barked, shoving the cutting edge of the shovel’s head into Sirius’s gut, “are summoned after interrogation only, Black. I find out of anyone disclosing Foxhole location to a Healer and they’ll have more than splinching to mend.”
“Right…”
That was that. Sirius knew Moody’d been paranoid lately, and he supposed it was for good reason.
There weren’t enough Healers in the field anymore. Too many of them had been poisoned by Unforgiveables now. Spies riddled the halls of St. Mugo’s, all disguised beneath the silent veil of Imperio . Turning up to hospital as an Order member was as good as muttering Voldemort’s taboo itself.
The cruccio’d Healers prevented newcomers from wanting to pursue basic training at all anymore. Too dangerous. Too terrifying.
The rest, field Healers that often traveled with The Order, were left to be killed as sport by the Death Eaters.
And that’s just how it was. Day in. Day out.
Sirius trained his ears and listened to the locket for another hour or so, a comfort feeling as he confirmed that the Potter cottage had settled quietly each night.
He closed his eyes. He very badly wanted to sleep.
By 9:00, the streets had gone too cold for children to scuttle about. He heard the distant clangs of drunken teenagers smashing bottles in the alleys, and the soft buzzing voices of rambling tel-o-vizzies (or whatever they’re called) chattered through the muggle rooms next door.
Night was creeping on.
The security wards he’d set throughout Godric’s Hollow were quiet again.
I won’t sleep , Sirius thought. Just close my eyes .
James whistled in the distance again, quieter now. To himself.
“I found her diary underneath a tree…
And started reading about me…”
The explosion tore through the night.
Sirius shot up and threw himself at the locket. “Prongs!” he gasped, the mirror silent and black. “Prongs – can you hear me?!”
There was nothing.
James’s locket had closed tight.
His head swam painfully. A throbbing pulse raced to his heart like lightning. He cast a broad wave over the apartment with his wand, manifesting a ghostly map of the village wards to twist about.
But it was incomplete. Largely missing. The wards hadn’t only been broken without warning, they’d been destroyed almost completely.
As if they’d been disarmed silently before the blast.
“PETER!”
He’d apparated instantly to Pettigrew’s apartment, banging madly at the shuttering darkness of a shabby old door. “Wormtail, you fucking idiot , wake up!”
Sirius stood breathless, ears trained for the expected crash of the boy’s clumsy woken stupor. He banged again into the offensive silence. Again. And again. He banged until his fist ached.
“Fuck’s sake…” he whispered impatiently, casting alohomora at the handle.
The door creaked open loudly. Sirius stood at the threshold of the apartment and inhaled the stale stench of Peter’s pathetic little rat hole.
It was putrid. A sweet and rotted reek of molded fruit assaulted his nose. Mildewed furniture. Dirtied carpet. Sirius fought not to gag.
Peter hadn’t been here in weeks, he’d realized. The apartment had been abandoned likely months ago.
Blood ran cold. He hoisted his wand behind him and summoned his motorbike wordlessly, his wrist flicking quickly before jerking entirely into a disappearing pinhole.
He’d landed silently at what should have been the edge of the Godric’s Hollow anti-apparation ward. It was shattered. He could feel the quake of the blast’s continued rupture shake through him to near paralyzation.
“James,” he choked breathlessly, feeling his body wretch from the weight of dark magic pungent in the air.
Sirius lunged ahead, feet stumbling over the cobbled stone until he neared the corner of a quiet cathedral. He felt blinded momentarily, like his eyes were flooded with static. “James!” he croaked as loud as he could, pushing ahead to near the courtyard.
Overhead, he heard the distant rumble of his Triumph engine near, completing its destination from the summoning charm moments ago. It landed with a rattle in the dust plumes up ahead, its headlight blaring a long streak of yellow glow over the ruins.
There was hardly anything left of it.
The stoop Lily had decorated with marigolds.
The windows Harry had pressed his cheeks to.
It was torn wide. Black. Hollow as a tomb.
There was nothing he could do to breathe. It stole the air from his lungs. The heat from his blood. The panic from his heart.
His body stumbled ahead. The dust continued to settle.
Sirius Black stared at the corpse of James Potter and swayed.
Pale. Contorted. Crumpled into a heap.
He waited for him to smile.
He waited for him to wink and spring to life as a joke.
He waited. And he waited.
Until his lungs filled up again with a great, heaving shutter.
“Prongs.”
James
James felt the cold weight of night shift almost instantly.
It was as if Sirius had drank it all – the whole navy blanket of stars and autumn wind.
He’d ingested it. Consumed it. The dark tang of magic dissipated into oblivion.
“Miss me, Pads?” he wanted to tease. It hurt so terribly, that soldered latch in his throat burning bright again. “I missed you.”
It felt like forever since he’d seen Sirius in person. Wormtail always seemed to show up at odd times, but James had never minded, desperate for attention. But he had always missed Sirius most of all. Dumbledore locked the Potters away with no end in sight, and James spent many evenings mourning the company of his mates.
And now, here he was. His Padfoot. At last.
Sirius stepped mechanically through the crumbled foyer, leaning quickly down to rummage through James’s pocket. He thumbed around until his fingers wound about the brass chain of James’s mirror locket, casting it haphazardly over his head to hang about his neck.
Sirius was skinny now, skinnier than James had realized. He saw the golden blaze of Sirius’s cheeks from his Foxhole duties in the sun. Saw the unkempt stubble along his jaw that would’ve disgusted a polished, refined Black years ago.
Sirius’s eyes were unreadable, covered almost completely from an inky black veil of his outgrown hair. It fell over his brow in a silky sweep. James supposed he’d never see them again, his eyes.
“Don’t leave me here, Pads,” James croaked, but he knew there was nothing to be done.
Sirius was an iron man. Impenetrable. There was no legilemancy in the world that could break a Black. He wasn’t like Peter. There wouldn’t be a tether to cast.
The soft glimmer of James’s locket shone over Sirius’s chest. It swayed silently from the brass chain that’d once belonged to his grandfather and rested against the skin just above Sirius’s heart.
So close, James realized. He could reach for it, if he really tried…
Sirius stood up abruptly, wand extended at the ready, and turned to disappear silently down the hall.
“Don’t leave me here,” he willed again.
The rattle of the Triumph rumbled calmly outside. James couldn’t even hear Harry cry anymore. In fact, he felt so delirious that he almost thought he could see another shape stumble through the swirling fog outside…
“Oh,” the great gruff of a voice rumbled with a choke. Twinkling little beetle eyes emerged through the door, tears swelling instantaneously. “N-no–”
“STUPEFY–”
“BLEEDIN ‘ELL–!”
Hagrid stumbled back, gripping his head painfully as he chaotically swung around a rumpled pink umbrella. Sparks shot out of it like rockets, causing another beam to crash with a boom.
“1976 – the pines beyond the eastern lakeside – who met with Remus Lupin at your behest!?”
“GET YER TREACHEROUS LI’L FISTS OFF ME–”
Sirius roared, having now flown quickly back down the hall. He shoved his wand murderously into Hagrid’s neck, wrist shaking, ready to kill.
“R-RONAN–” the giant answered.
“And which ingredient was Remus Lupin looking to trade for–?”
“HE WAS ASKIN’ ABOUT OCCAMY EGGS – now get tha bloody ‘ell offer me, boy!”
Sirius exhaled deeply, his shoulders slumping as he stumbled back into the foyer.
“Sorry, Hagrid… Had to be sure it was you is all…”
Hagrid reached up and rubbed at his ruddy neck with a wince. The end of his umbrella sparked like a fuse and he steadied himself a moment before turning back to apprehensively stare down at James again.
“D-did you see it?”
“No.”
“How… how did he… You-Know-Who–”
“I don’t know.”
Harry began to cry again. Sirius disappeared at once to coddle him in the nursery.
Hagrid breathed heavily, his little black eyes shining sadly in the crinkled corners beneath his brow. He stared as if tremendously willing James back to life, the very same way Sirius had.
“I’m takin’ Harry,” Hagrid finally announced, eyes still trained on his corpse. The giant nodded, as if to reassure James of his intentions.
“He’s not going anywhere without me,” Sirius retorted.
Hagrid lifted his massive boots and stepped over James’s body with thunderous steps.
“Dumbledore’s orders, Black. I won’t be arguin’ with you, now give him ‘ere–”
Hagrid neared the nursery’s edge, umbrella still sparking gently before he fell silent at the sight of Lily’s discarded body.
“I can’t believe it–oh, I just… I can’t–”
“Hagrid,” Sirius reasoned, his voice shaking. “I’m taking Harry to Grimmauld Pla–”
“YER TO DO NO SUCH THING!” Hagrid wailed, fighting desperately for his composure. He shoved his face behind the honk of a spotted, soiled hankie. “IT’S DUMBLEDORE’S ORDERS–!”
“Then where is he, the old fool!” Sirius roared, causing Harry to jump with a fright and cry again. He hiccuped, growing tired of wailing.
“YOU MIND YER TONGUE–”
James listened to their row, Hagrid’s sobs rumbling over Harry’s cries like thunder. He could see Lily down the hall still, so small beneath the giant’s shadow.
“You take that babe and they’ll be comin’ fer you, Black!” Hagrid sniffled. “They’ll shoot yeh straight down – think yer workin’ to finish him off–”
“Fuck!” Sirius exhaled breathlessly, collapsing to crouch on the floor. He cradled Harry in his chest tightly, shielding him from the world as he worked every possibility through his mind. There was no alternative. Sirius knew Hagrid was right.
“Listen ter me,” Hagrid exhaled, crouching down now, too. He towered over Sirius so that James could no longer see them.
“The Headmaster’s got it figured out, and there ain’t but precious moments to spare. There’s nothin’ in the world that’ll get to him when he’s with me. I swear to yeh, Sirius.”
James could hear Sirius begin to breathe deeply. He was crying, shaking, though trying very hard not to break.
“Where?” Sirius grumbled.
“Strictly secret, Black. Yeh know I can’t–”
“How…?” Sirius’s jaw clenched, voice tight through gritted teeth.
“There’s a portkey ‘round the clearin’--”
“Portkey?!” Sirius roared. “Decapitate him, why don’t you–!”
“Stop yellin–!”
“Gods, Hagrid! You’re telling me that’s the best Albus Dumbledore’s got?”
“Well, under the circumstances, and mind yer tone —”
“My bike–”
“Hmm?”
Sirius stood up, hoisting Harry back on his hip. “You’ll take my bike, it’ll be safer for him than it would be to even apparate with me–”
“That ruddy ol’ Triumph out front?”
“Excuse me!” Sirius retorted, instantly offended. “That’s a Bonneville – best you’ll ever find!” He crossed Hagrid, sidestepping him to march back down the hall.
“Right,” Sirius paused, standing over James. Harry hiccuped again, looking sleepily down at his father. “S-so… So you’ll take Harry, then. And you’ll let me know when he’s safe.”
“I’ll write you ‘mediately,” Hagrid promised, walking back up the hall himself.
The two took one last look at James before crossing back out into the courtyard. Hagrid fashioned himself atop Sirius’s bike like a bear on a trike, nodding confidently as Sirius handed the little blanket over apprehensively.
“Hagrid,” Sirius said gravely. “I’ll find you, I swear I will. I’ll find you if anything fucking happens to him.”
Hagrid secured Harry with a sniffle, reaching up to swipe frustrated tears from his eyes.
“I’ve gotch’ye,” he cooed down at Harry softly, waving away Sirius with his palm as he kicked the bike to life. “He’ll be with Professor Dumbledore in no time, yeh ‘ave my word.”
And so away they went.
The sky echoed with the fading sound of Rubeus Hagrid taking away his son.
Sirius had disappeared, gone instantaneously without any glance back.
And from the silent shadows of the distance emerged Wormtail, shaking violently with Voldemort’s wand still grasped between bucked teeth. He slithered out from beneath the crib before apparating with a loud crack into nowhere.
James laid there quietly.
Lily stared back.