The Lost Generation (1975-1982)

The Lost Generation

(1975-1982)

Chapter Seventeen

Destiny


Thursday, 8 October, 1981

Remus growled, his mouth on her throat. Her mouth was on his shoulder, and he thought he felt her teeth break skin. And then they were just panting, trying to get their breaths back. Remus kissed the skin he’d come very close to marking with his teeth, as she’d marked him. He withdrew from her, rolling over on his back, staring up at the dirty ceiling over the bed (he didn’t want to know why it looked like some Bertie Botts beans were embedded in the plaster) feeling calm and relaxed now that his body was no longer completely ruling him.

He now had the freedom to gaze up at the ceiling, thinking about his life and how utterly cocked-up it was. He didn’t have a steady job, only worked sporadically at a Muggle warehouse in Manchester. His parents worried about him, but he felt that there was almost nothing about his life that he could reveal to them. The previous month he’d gone all the way up to Hogwarts to spend the full moon in the Shrieking Shack, rather than the Ministry lock-up or Ascog Castle (where he probably would have been alone anyway). It was the eve of the full moon once more and even though he’d started seeing a slightly mysterious young man from Dublin, Padraig, he was back at the werewolf pub, where he’d been unable to resist the advances of a particularly fetching red-haired woman who was probably about ten years older than him. She gave her name as Mona, although he wasn’t convinced that he should believe that, and he’d given his name as Moony, which had made her laugh (at least she wasn’t laughing at his given name, though). He’d explained that it was a nickname from school, which was the truth.

Mona lay beside him, also staring up at the filthy ceiling. “Whew!” she said, still breathing hard. “I’m so glad those sodding Ministry of Magic wankers haven’t managed to get this place closed down. I heard they were threatening to after that wizard was killed in that London pub. Did you hear about that? If it was a normal person, do you think they’d have been half so concerned? I just can’t abide wizards...”

Remus cleared his throat and sat up on his elbows. “Er--why?” he ventured. He’d become accustomed to hearing anti-wizard and anti-Ministry talk in the bar downstairs, but he’d never really dared to ask any of the Muggle werewolves he’d met why they felt that way.

She sat up, looking amazed. “Oh, come on! Why? Try because they tell us what to do and where to go, but we’ve got no say in their laws and government unless we’re witches or wizards, and have you ever met one of them who was one of us?”

“Erm--” Remus said awkwardly, but she wasn’t really listening to him, just hurtling on. It was obviously a pet topic with her.

“I mean, it’s bad enough that I was bitten to start with, and that I lost my best friend the same night,” she said, a choke in her throat, “but then her brother hauls me off to this Werewolf Registry, and--”

“Her brother? What?” Remus was confused; he thought she didn’t like witches and wizards.

“Oh, my best friend wasn’t a witch,” she said, realizing why he was confused. “Her brother was what they call a Muggle-born wizard. Is. Whatever. I didn’t know about that until after I was bitten, of course.”

“Of course,” he said quickly. “What--what happened? Unless you’d rather not--”

“No, it’s okay. I don’t mind telling other werewolves. I was on a camping outing with some school friends. We were all getting ready to go off to university in a fortnight and wanted to have some time together before we went our separate ways. It was only supposed to be four of us: me, my boyfriend, Clive, Amy--my best friend--and her boyfriend, Luke. Then our parents decided they didn’t want the ‘risk’ of our having two ‘shacking-up’ tents, as my dad put it, rather than a boys’ tent and a girls’ tent. So Amy’s brother Edwin was supposed to come along as a chaperone. He’s about five years older than Amy. Or was,” she said with a catch in her voice. “That meant that we had to have three in one tent. No ‘funny business.’ So we were all asleep after spending the day hiking. Amy and I were in our tent, Clive, Luke and Edwin were in theirs, and we heard this--this weird noise...”

Remus swallowed, beginning to shake. He’d lived with being a werewolf for as long as he could remember; he couldn’t imagine going from living a normal life, thinking you had a world of possibilities ahead of you, and then having all of that change in a moment. He’d never felt that freedom, that anything was possible for him. His life had always been about limitations.

“What happened?” he said hoarsely, unable to stop himself.

She swallowed, drawing her knees up to her chest. Remus was suddenly aware that she was naked in more than one sense. “It attacked Amy’s side of the tent first,” she whispered, staring at the wall. “I screamed and ran, just mindlessly ran. The wolf ran after me; it was too fast and got me on the ankle. But then--Edwin did something. I didn’t realize until later that he’d cast some kind of spell, using a wand. I thought it was a weapon of some sort that he was holding. The werewolf released my ankle. I was able to run back to the boys and the three of us tried to get Amy out of the tent and into the car.”

She put her head down on her knees. “So much blood...so much.” Remus thought she might be crying, but he couldn’t see her face. “And then, just as we’d got her into the car, the werewolf sort of shook off the spell Edwin had put on him--which I hadn’t realized was a spell, since I didn’t know about magic yet--and it started to come at us. There was no way we could have all climbed into the car and shut the doors quickly enough. Luckily, Clive pulled out the flare gun we had for emergencies...”

Remus frowned. “Flare gun? But surely you didn’t have time to wait for help.”

She lifted her face and laughed ruefully. “He didn’t shoot it into the air. As the werewolf was coming at us, he shot it in the face, point blank.”

Remus winced instinctively. “Still--that wouldn’t kill a werewolf.”

“No, but it stopped him long enough for us to get into the car and drive off. We didn’t know that Amy had had her neck snapped. We thought bleeding was what we had to worry about. We drove to the nearest hospital...”

Remus’s instinct was to put his arm around her, but he didn’t know her at all, even though they’d just had sex. He remained where he was, not touching her.

“And then--” She ground the words out angrily, lifting her head. He could see that her eyes were blazing. “Then after we’d taken Amy to hospital and found out that she was dead, my bite was treated, and almost immediately after, Edwin threw me into the car, leaving Clive and Luke stranded. He basically kidnapped me. He was babbling things at me about his being a wizard and my having been bitten by a werewolf, and all I could think was that because of his grief over Amy he was barking mad, you know? I mean--nothing he was saying was making any sense. Wizards? Werewolves? I was starting to quite panic. I was in this car with a complete nutter who was mad with grief and I didn’t know where he was taking me--”

“Where did he take you?” Remus dared to ask.

“To a pub. Except that I couldn’t actually see it until he was opening the door. I can’t really explain it. It’s like I knew there was something there, I could sort of see it out of the corner of my eye, but as soon as I looked right at it, there was nothing there...”

Remus nodded. “Muggle-repelling charm,” he said without thinking. She also nodded.

“Right. Thanks. I can never keep their idiotic terminology straight. Don’t know how you do. So we went into the pub, and that was full of more nutters! People wearing purple or green cloaks and pointed hats; you should have seen it. I turned around to leave and he took out this stick, pointed it at the door and said something that didn’t sound like English. I couldn’t get the door open--and then I realized that I was pulling at a doorknob that was just mounted in a solid wall. There was no door there anymore. It had vanished.”

Remus coughed suddenly, trying to pretend that he was just clearing his throat. “Erm, I’ve heard ‘they’ can do things like that...”

“Well, I didn’t even know there was a ‘they.’ I mean--I didn’t believe in magic or werewolves or vampires or any of that. It was fantasy! And then he dragged me to a huge fireplace and threw some dirt into it. The flames turned green and he pulled me toward it. Well, then I was certain he was mad. He was trying to kill himself and take me with him! I pulled back. It worked. I was able to keep him from the flames. I felt--strong. Stronger than I’d ever been. But he pulled out the stick again and shouted something. Pet-something. And I couldn’t move after that! I felt him sort of pick me up like a large doll and step into the fire, and I thought I was going to die, of course. I kept waiting for a burning sensation, but instead we were whirling around and I just remember it being warm...” She shrugged. “And from then on I’ve been owned body and soul by the bloody Ministry of Magic. You?” she added conversationally.

He swallowed. “I--I was very young when I was bitten. Don’t actually remember anything about it.” Which was true; everything he knew was from what his mother had told him.

She grimaced. “Poor kid. You want to do something now? There are a lot of us who are going to hear this bloke speak. But we could go have dinner first...” She rose and began to dress, evidently feeling quite refreshed. He shook his head.

“No--I’m meeting someone. He’ll be waiting.”

She nodded. “Right. Does he know--?” She waggled her eyebrows suggestively. He shook his head.

“We’re not there yet.”

He wasn’t anywhere with Padraig. He’d even denied to Lily that he had a new boyfriend--of sorts--so that she wouldn’t pump him for information about him, especially for information about how close they were. He’d had to lie to Sirius and James and Peter as well (when he’d seen them at all, which was as little as possible, to avoid having to tell too many lies), as he still hadn’t told them that he was attracted to both men and women. And he didn’t know quite how to approach the werewolf subject with Padraig, let alone the issue of his being a wizard. He only knew that sleeping with Mona had calmed him enough that he stood a chance of controlling himself when he saw him later.

A chance.

He’d immediately been seduced by Padraig’s voice, and was embarrassed to have admitted to him, within a few minutes of meeting him, that his Irish accent made him go weak at the knees. Oh, yes, he’d thought after the words had escaped his lips; just start swooning over him, why don’t you? It didn’t help that he was about ten years older than Remus, with a world-weary smirk and light blue eyes which seemed to be glittering at him constantly. He had a heavy brow line, just stopping short of being one continuous stretch of hair, but somehow this was actually one of his most attractive features, rather than a drawback. His brows were very expressive, and in fact, Remus felt like Padraig was constantly smirking at him with his full lips and one raised eyebrow, which simply made Remus long to kiss him senseless, wipe the smugness off his face once and for all. He had a day-laborer’s large strong hands, which Remus found it very difficult not to look at (they had, actually, met while working at the warehouse in Manchester). When Remus had seen him without his shirt he thought he’d attack him then and there, in front of all of the other blokes who also worked at the warehouse.

He thought about the fact that he hadn’t been in touch with his friends for quite some time, not even Lily, but surely if something was wrong they would tell him....

“Are you sure you won’t come?” Mona persisted. “He’s supposed to be quite something. It’s this wizard who thinks we werewolves have been screwed over by the sodding Ministry of Magic. He says we’re powerful magical creatures and should command a lot more respect. Haven’t you seen the notices down in the bar? Maybe with his help we can stop being second-class citizens. Make those other wizards and witches sit up and take notice.”

Remus paled, holding onto the bed for support; he’d been in the middle of putting his trousers on and nearly fell over. “What? You--you don’t want to go to something like that. Trust me. I--I thought you didn’t trust wizards?”

She finished buttoning her blouse and pulled a jumper over her head. “Not generally, no. But he sounds like he’s on our side. I rather like that. Powerful magical creatures. It’s true. We’re magical, we’re powerful, and it’s about time we stopped letting the effing Ministry walk all over us. Just because we’re not wizards doesn’t mean we’re not human.”

Remus tried to control his shaking. “Well, maybe I will come...” he said uncertainly. He’d find a way to tell Padraig he had to cancel. No one had asked him to be a spy, but he felt that he couldn’t not go to the werewolf meeting; he had to know what Voldemort was going to say to the werewolves. Hopefully no one there would recognize him for a wizard. He hadn’t come to the pub in his robes, just the shabby Muggle jeans, jumper and coat he’d worn to his job earlier. No one must know that I’m a wizard. Maybe he could give some information to Lily after going to the meeting....

“On second thought,” he said to Mona, nodding, “I think I’ll call my friend and cancel. Why don’t we find somewhere to have our tea--the food here is dreadful--and then go to this meeting?”

She grinned at him. “Now you’re talking! I don’t know when I’ve been so excited; for the first time I’m almost glad to be a werewolf...”

Remus followed her from the room, thinking ruefully, I wish I could say the same...

* * * * *

Saturday, 17 October, 1981

Mother Crispin sighed, looking out her office window at the children playing in the yard. It was a beautiful autumn day, still warm, but with that bite in the air which required wool socks instead of cotton, jackets instead of cardigans. Some of the children--girls, for the most part--were shuffling through a pile of flame-colored leaves, laughing, tossing armfuls of dry, papery remnants of summer at each other and squealing with delight. Others were jumping rope or playing statues. The boys were on the front lawn, playing rounders. The boys and Anna, she reminded herself.

She could see Anna Burroughs--she’d chosen her own surname--standing in the distance, bent over, her hands on her knees, watching intently. The boy she was watching was standing uncertainly with the wooden bat on his left shoulder, waiting for the ball. When it was finally released, Mother Crispin felt like she was watching a meticulously choreographed dance. The ball hurtled toward the waiting boy, who started moving the bat at just the right moment to strike the ball with a sharp crack! He dropped the bat after a split second of taking in the fact that he’d actually managed to hit it, then began pumping his thin arms and legs, running flat-out with all his might.

In the meantime, the ball was arcing up, up, up. The boys were trying to move into position to catch it, shifting about on the grass rather uncertainly, squinting up into the painfully blue sky. The ball seemed to hang in mid-air for an eternity; all eyes were on the tiny spinning sphere. Finally, it was falling, falling...right toward Anna. Mother Crispin held her breath as Anna caught it. She laughed with glee, a sound the old nun heard far too seldom from her, and then Mother Crispin found that she was also laughing. The boys on Anna’s side rushed her, lifting her to their shoulders, cheering. Her catch had won the game.

Mother Crispin could not help grinning; Anna had been especially morose since September. She had told Mother Crispin, the first summer that she’d been living at the orphanage, that she seemed to remember having a birthday party in August when she was younger, so Mother Crispin chose a birthday for her: the twenty-seventh of August. Anna had accepted it without comment.

She also seemed to have no opinion of her new school, which was the local comprehensive high school. The younger children at the orphanage were all educated at St. Columba’s parish school, but now that Anna had turned eleven, she was too old for that. The orphanage could not bear the cost of older children attending St. Mark’s Academy, which was very highly regarded but not cheap.

Anna had always done well in her studies, often coming top of the year. (She’d sulked if someone else had top marks), but she was also frequently reprimanded for being cheeky to the teachers (in the calmest, no-I’m-not-trying-to-be-cheeky way that there was). And sometimes, when other children did not observe the warning signs that she wanted to be left alone, odd things happened. A number of children, for instance, had decided to pull her plaits on the first day of school. They had all experienced violent shocks. Her hair simply seemed to be crackling with electricity. One boy who tried it twice found himself hurtling backwards across the room on his second try, his hands blackened and burnt and his shoes still standing where he’d been the moment that he’d tried to pull her hair. Little wisps of smoke were still emerging from the forlorn-looking shoes.

Anna had reportedly smiled sweetly at the teacher and said, “I’m sorry. I must have scuffed my feet a bit on a carpet somewhere. Perhaps it was back at the orphanage. I don’t think anyone had better touch me for a while.” She smiled again and the flustered teacher had agreed, although he’d regarded her with a great deal of suspicion and had spoken to Mother Crispin about it afterward. (The headmistress reportedly refused to go near the orphanage; it was rumored that Mother Crispin had put her in her place years ago, but no one knew more than that about the enmity between them.)

The hair-pulling incident had occurred during the French lesson, and Mother Crispin was not feeling very sympathetic toward Mr. Linden for allowing his students to pull Anna’s hair and then responding as though the entire thing was Anna’s fault.

“I don’t see the point of belaboring this after the fact, as it is a fait accompli,” she said to him impatiently. “After all--”

“A what?” the frail-looking man said in bewilderment, his watery blue eyes squinting at her in confusion.

She closed her own eyes, partly so she couldn’t be distracted by his dreadful black wig, which she suspected he’d put on sideways, and counted to ten inside her head. When she dared open her eyes again she said, “I thought you were the French teacher?”

He nodded. “Yes, yes. I am. But you said something about ‘fate,’ I believe.” She looked blankly at him.

One, two, three, four, five, six, she counted silently again, focusing this time on Mr. Linden’s rather ugly red and orange plaid bow-tie. “At any rate,” she said briskly, knowing now that she shouldn’t try to use French with the French teacher, “I will see to it that Anna does not scuff her shoes upon the carpet before going to school in the morning if you will see to it that your students are paying attention to the lesson instead of messing about and pulling her hair. Good day,” she added, dismissing him from her office as though he was one of her charges, although she was usually far less terse with the children; adults tried her patience in a way that children never did.

After she’d seen the French teacher out of the orphanage, stepping carefully around the girl who was diligently mopping the intricately patterned tile floor in the hall, Mother Crispin had stopped to watch the mopping process with keen interest. She’d never really considered how the building was kept clean; she knew that she paid a cleaning staff, but it was her assistant’s job to hire and schedule such people. Sister Martha did an exemplary job of seeing to it that Mother Crispin never had to think about this and, as a result, she’d never thought about it.

She feared that she was unnerving the girl doing the mopping, especially as she kept watching Mother Crispin out of the corner of her eye, while simultaneously trying to appear to be utterly fascinated by her task. Not wanting to prolong the poor girl’s discomfort, she cleared her throat and said, “Quite a job that is, I imagine.”

The girl looked up in mid-swab and seemed like she was trying to pretend not to be startled. “Er, yes ma’am,” she said uncertainly, returning to her work after a moment’s hesitation.

Now Mother Crispin was trying to work out how to get out of the increasingly-uncomfortable situation. The girl was still eyeing her furtively as she worked. Mother Crispin was starting to fear that the unfortunate girl was expecting to get the sack.

“So,” she said brightly, her voice sounding absurdly loud; there was a slight echo in the hall. “After the floor is dry, you put the carpets down again? Do you have someone to help you with that? Are they heavy?”

Now the girl straightened up and stared at Mother Crispin. “We--we don’t have no carpets, ma’am,” she said cautiously, in case, perhaps, Mother Crispin should suddenly accuse her of having stolen them. “We never have done,” she added a little more stoutly. Mother Crispin frowned, staring at the floor; the pattern was a perfectly familiar repetition of ecru octagons and brown diamonds. That was the field design; centered before the door was a diamond of maroon, ochre, blue and white tiles, with a large tile in the center of the diamond bearing a cross design. This tile floor, as far as Mother Crispin could remember, had never been obscured by a floor covering of any kind.

“Not even a small one, here, by the door?” she persisted, even though she could see that there was no light rectangle of tiles near the entrance, as there should be if there had been even a small mat.

The girl looked somewhat defiant now; she had ceased her mopping. “Nuffin’, ma’am. Not even a hanky-sized one.” Mother Crispin felt like the girl was being fresh now and sniffed.

“Well, we probably should have something just inside the door, to catch the dirt and mud, especially when the weather is poor. I’ll authorize Sister Martha to purchase something appropriate.”

The girl hesitated before saying, “Yes, ma’am,” more deferentially now, returning to her work.

Mother Crispin sighed as she watched the children carry Anna on their shoulders, saw the light in her eyes as she laughed. If only the girl could have a nice home, with a loving mother and father, maybe a pet...But none of Anna’s placements had worked out, and some of the prospective parents had reported some quite odd occurrences in an effort to pull back from appearing to be interested in her.

She was startled by the sound of screeching tires and a soft thud, followed by a surprised-sounding yelp, and then silence. Most of the children seemed to be paralyzed, but suddenly, Anna jumped down from her victorious perch and raced for the gate that let out onto the street. Mother Crispin pressed her hand against the glass, straining to see; there was a small brown figure in the street, the car that had struck it long gone. As Anna bent over it, she realized that it was a dog, very likely dead. She drew her lips into a line, striding purposefully from her office, out of the building and out to the street. Being concerned about a dog was all very well and good, she thought, but at this rate Anna would be the next one to be struck by a car, just sitting there in the road like that!

As she approached Anna and the dog, surrounded now by the boys with whom she’d been playing rounders, Mother Crispin saw that someone else was there as well. A very pale blond man, his face a bit pinched-looking, as though he’d smelled something bad, was crouching by Anna’s side, his hand stroking the dog’s flank. Next to him was a thin, anxious-looking woman with darker blonde hair. She seemed to be looking at the children wistfully, especially Anna. They both appeared to be around thirty years old. The dog was utterly still, Anna’s hands on its head and leg, which was bent in an awkward fashion. Anna had her eyes closed and appeared to be moving her lips.

Was she praying over the poor thing? Mother Crispin wondered. She’d never known the girl to have any religious impulses. All of the children went to mass on Sunday, but Mother Crispin didn’t require any of them to be Catholics. A few older children had asked to be baptized, had learned their catechism and taken their first communion, but Anna wasn’t one of them. Mother Crispin was of the opinion that, Catholic or not, hearing Father Morton’s homily would do them all some good. She was also of the opinion that if the orphans were forced to convert, it wouldn’t be a true conversion. All she was doing was asking the children to listen to what amounted to a lecture and learn to behave in a church. If they went to weddings and funerals as adults at the very least they would need to know how to behave in a house of worship. Mother Crispin counted church attendance toward etiquette training. It was how you learned good form, regardless of your beliefs.

Anna opened her eyes, gazing intently down at the dog. Mother Crispin hadn’t wanted to speak when she thought the girl might be praying, but she could stay silent no longer. Just as she was about to open her mouth to ask the blond man and woman who they might be, the dog’s eyes opened, as though it had been shocked, and it struggled to stand. It was a bit wobbly on its feet at first, especially reluctant to put its weight on its left forepaw. As it tried out the idea of walking, it was growing in confidence, finally bounding back to Anna and licking her face, making her laugh again. It wasn’t much bigger than a puppy. Overgrown puppy, really. The blonde woman was looking at Anna with a glow in her blue eyes, a hungry look that immediately put Mother Crispin on her guard.

“Is this your dog?” she said to the woman suddenly, her voice a bit more terse than she’d intended.

The man stood and held out his hand to her. “Yes, he is. I’m--”

“Well, you should keep him on a lead. Gracious! We all could have been killed, standing here in the road all this time.”

“Why--why are all of these children here?” the woman asked uncertainly. The man looked around, frowning.

“I didn’t think the Ministry had established another hospital here,” he said in confusion. “And the children don’t appear to be ill...”

Mother Crispin looked at him as though he was mad. “Ministry? I don’t know what you are going on about. This is an orphanage,” she explained, as though he was a simpleton. “I am Mother Crispin, the director.”

The man’s frown deepened. “So--you’re not a nurse, then?” he fumbled awkwardly. “Then why are you dressed--like that?”

She was perplexed by this slightly imperious man, who was regarding her as though she was the oddity. In Mother Crispin’s opinion, she looked exactly as she should. She was not accustomed to anyone regarding her in the unflattering, slightly leering manner of this young man.

“It so happens that I am a nurse,” she said, her voice as taut as a bow; “it also happens that I am a nun. Surely you’re heard of nuns?” she snapped, quickly losing what little patience she had left.

“Oh, oh yes. I’ve heard of them. Er, you. I mean--well. Well, that makes perfect sense, of course. A nun. An orphanage. I see. So many children. All very logical, yes, yes...”

He was positively babbling now. The woman, whom Mother Crispin took to be his wife, had crouched down and was speaking to Anna, who was eyeing the woman with trepidation. The dog was still very excited, but most of the other children had returned to the grounds of the orphanage, bored with the conversation between the adults.

A lead seemed to appear out of nowhere, and the man clipped it onto the dog’s collar. Mother Crispin noticed for the first time how odd their clothes looked; they both seemed to be wearing long, dark raincoats, although there wasn’t a cloud in the sky. The man straightened up again, mumbling apologetically, “The clip on the lead is faulty, I expect. We’ll get a new one.”

“See that you do,” she sniffed. Anna stood uncertainly and Mother Crispin put her arm around the girl’s shoulders; she was quite tall now that she was eleven. She’d been arguing with her teachers about what was written on the blackboard, and it turned out that she needed glasses. She hadn’t had them for very long and Mother Crispin was still getting used to seeing her wear the spectacles; she seemed to be quite another person with them on.

The blond couple nodded to them, the woman giving Anna a piercing look. As they walked back to the orphanage, Mother Crispin had the peculiar sensation that eyes were boring into the back of her head, but she did not give in to temptation and look. Anna seemed to feel it too, but she could not resist looking over her shoulder. Her gasp finally made Mother Crispin whirl about, but there was absolutely nothing extraordinary to be seen. In fact, it seemed to her that she should still be able to see the blond couple, but they were nowhere in sight. It was as though they’d vanished into thin air.

* * * * *

The Leaky Cauldron was dark and noisy. Nils Anderssen tapped his fingers together as he waited for Old Tom to bring their tea. This visit to England had not gone as he’d expected. They’d gone to Exeter to visit one of his old school friends and had needed to walk Napoleon, their chocolate Labrador retriever, who was still enough of a puppy to need frequent ‘walkies’ as his wife put it. For some reason that utterly escaped Nils, Philip Ramsay had chosen to live in a Muggle section of Exeter, and thus they had to go to a public park to walk the dog. Nils did not know how he could bear to live so close to Muggles, but there was nothing to be done for it. His wife was a bit stupid about the dog, in his opinion, as though it would replace the children they could never have.

Muggle butchers he thought, not for the first--or probably last--time. If she hadn’t been hit by an automobile in London--when she had attempted to run away from her parents at fifteen, while on holiday--and been found by Muggles, she might have been able to have children. However, they had sliced her open and determined that if she didn’t have a radical hysterectomy, as his wife called it (he trusted her--she had obsessed over this for years and he knew she probably had the right term), she would die.

They had always known that they wouldn’t have children and it hadn’t deterred him from marrying her. He had made trip after trip to Sweden to woo her, after meeting her at the Annual Broom Race. He had even moved to Sweden after they married, so that she wouldn’t have to be far from her family. He loved her dearly and wanted her to be happy. And yet, on this first visit from Sweden to visit his sister Narcissa since she’d become a mother over a year before, his wife had repeatedly been reluctant to give up the baby when she’d been holding him for any length of time. His brother-in-law had become somewhat irrational about it, screaming at her for mollycoddling the boy. Frankly, it appeared to Nils that his sister would have liked to ‘mollycoddle’ her own son more than she was permitted.

Not that there was much holding of the boy now that he was an active toddler. Nils could see the wonder in his wife’s face when she was watching little Draco weave about the drawing room at Malfoy Manor, holding onto things more for reassurance than support now that he could walk. She’d cried in her husband’s arms that night, as she hadn’t done for a long time, and he could practically feel her ache in his chest, the longing to be a parent. He knew that it didn’t matter if he became a father, that he loved her regardless, but there were times when he had to admit to feeling a little twinge himself when he saw other parents with their children, and to see his nephew for the first time introduced a new brand of pain into his life. It had been so easy for Narcissa and Lucius. And Lucius seemed to take his son for granted. It seemed utterly unfair.

Napoleon slumbered peacefully under the table; he’d been rather bouncy still, when they’d entered the pub, but a quick sleeping charm had solved that problem. As they waited for the tea, his wife’s face was animated as he’d never seen it; he worried that she was far too excited. When reality dawned on her, he knew, she would come crashing down again.

“You saw it!” she whispered fervently to him. “She healed that dog! She’s a witch! She has to be! And living at a Muggle orphanage, poor thing...” She shuddered. “Lucius said that’s how the Dark Lord grew up, in a Muggle orphanage.”

Nils drew his lips into a line. He was more than a little nervous about the way his brother-in-law went on about the glorious Dark Lord, as though assuming that everyone around him agreed with all of his opinions. Narcissa, of course, didn’t dare contradict her husband, although he hadn’t had the impression that she particularly wanted to. His own wife was far more easily influenced in this regard than he would have liked. On the other hand, he had to admit that finally getting Muggle-borns out of the wizarding world had its merits. He’d heard that a wizard who was in training at the Swedish wizarding hospital had suggested trying to do surgery on injured patients. Thankfully, he’d been drummed out of the training program. Of course, he’d been Muggle-born. Typical.

“Yes, I saw it, darling. It’s possible that she’s a witch. But I asked her how old she is, and she said she’s eleven. If she was a witch she’d be at Hogwarts already. Even the Dark Lord got his Hogwarts letter,” he added, trying not to smirk.

She raised her eyebrow at his tone. “Don’t patronize me, Nils. Maybe the Muggles kept her from going....”

He frowned. “How? And let’s say that is what happened; she can’t be a pureblood. If both of her parents died, there’d be someone in the wizarding community to take her, relatives, friends...At best she might be half-blood. She could even be Muggle-born,” he added, making a face. He wasn’t certain that his wife was listening. She had a faraway look in her eye.

“What we need to do is pretend that we want to adopt her. Pose as Muggles. We’ll have to disguise ourselves so that nun doesn’t recognize us. And then we’ll be able to find out why she didn’t go to Hogwarts, and about her parentage.”

His jaw dropped. “Are you mad? Are you saying you--that you--”

His wife leaned forward avid, a light in her eyes he hadn’t seen in a very long time. “I want her!” she said, bursting with excitement.

“And if she turns out to be Muggle-born?” he said slowly. She shrugged.

“We just won’t tell your sister and her husband. She’s a witch! She--she doesn’t belong with them. She probably doesn’t even know what she is...”

He sat back and thought. “Oh, I don’t know. She seemed to know what she was doing when she was healing the dog...”

His wife sat up again. “Wasn’t she wonderful?” she gushed. “How many witches her age can do that? Who are any age? She’s obviously very, very powerful. She must be at least a half-blood. Lucius said that the Dark Lord himself is a half-blood,” she said, her mouth twisting mischievously.

Nils rolled his eyes and laughed. “So he did.” He looked at her lovingly and took her hands in his. “You really want this, don’t you?”

She squeezed his hands. “She needs us, Nils. I can feel it. We need to bring her back to the wizarding world. She can come back to Sweden with us, go to Durmstrang, a proper school--” Nils harrumphed, although he didn’t argue with her; he knew what she thought of Hogwarts. Her eyes were shining now as she gazed into space. He squeezed her hands right back.

“I love you, Anna. You know that.”

It would be odd, he thought, if the girl came to live with them; he’d heard the old nun calling the girl by the same name as his wife. Perhaps that was a kind of sign?

She looked at him affectionately. “I know, darling, I know,” she answered; clearly he was saying that he would do anything necessary to make this happen. She had never felt more excited in her entire life. This day she had met a miracle, the girl who could be her daughter.

She was going to be a mother.

* * * * *

Saturday, 24 October, 1981

Lily and James sat side-by-side on the sofa, looking at their friends in the armchairs on the other side of the hearth. They had explained the Fidelius Charm to them both. Now came the hard part. Lily knew she had to do it; she was closer to Peter than James was. He would probably take it hard, but a decision had to be made. She tried not to think of the Muggle photograph Alastor had shown her, tried not to hear Remus’ voice as he lied to her about why he’d been there with the other werewolves...

“Peter,” she said softly, going to sit on the ottoman that separated the sofa from the armchairs. She reached for both of his hands and held them firmly in hers. “You’ve been such a dear,” she said sincerely, looking into his small eyes. They gazed back at her, never wavering. “And we do appreciate everything you’ve done to help us. I--I don’t want to worry about you, and if--if you were the Secret Keeper I know I should be very worried. Please understand. It’s not that--that--”

“I understand,” he said softly, looking intently at Lily. “Sirius is--he can take care of himself...”

“Oh, Peter!” Lily said quickly. “It’s not as though you can’t take care of yourself...It’s just that James and I have gone over and over this...The Secret Keeper--if that person’s identity were to come out--he would be a target. A target...” she repeated in a whisper. Peter nodded, swallowing.

It was better this way, he decided. He’d been having more and more nightmares about Lily dying, and James too, although that wasn’t what bothered him when he awoke, sweating and screaming.

Lily. He just couldn’t give up Lily....

Peter tore his eyes away from Lily and looked at Sirius. You’d just damn well better be stronger than I was if you get tortured by Death Eaters, he thought, trying not to glower at his friend. Sirius didn’t know. When the Cruciatus had taken over your body, you would do anything to avoid experiencing that again....

But Sirius was staring into space; he seemed to be thinking very hard, his eyes narrowed as though he had in his sights some distant target. Lily and James noticed now, and James waved his hand in front of Sirius’ face, saying, “Hello! Sirius! Padfoot! Come back!”

Sirius shook himself and blinked. “Sorry. Just thinking. Something Pete said earlier, in fact, when we stopped off for some petrol on the way here...”

James snorted. “What, you couldn’t charm that bike of yours to work without petrol?”

“And why didn’t you Apparate?” Lily added, frowning.

Sirius reddened slightly. “Well, we both agreed that we felt a bit--distracted. Didn’t want to splinch ourselves.” He turned back to James. “It’s charmed to make do with just a little over a long distance, but it still needs a drop or two. Gives it that good authentic smell of burning oil,” Sirius said, inhaling deeply as though he were taking a whiff of a fine perfume. Lily wrinkled her nose; as far as she was concerned, his clothes reeked of oil. “Anyway, Pete was saying that it might be just a bit obvious for me to be the Secret Keeper. I mean, I’m your best mate, James. I was best man at your wedding,” he said, nodding at both of them, “and I have to admit, I tend to drop your name quite a bit at work,” he added, smiling sheepishly at James. “Best Chaser the Magpies have had for years, after all. Sorry I’m such a prat about that, but at a broom company, everyone is rather understandably obsessed with Quidditch.”

Peter swallowed. No, Sirius. Don’t, he thought desperately. Yes, he’d still been intending to try to be the Secret Keeper and give up Lily and James to the Dark Lord when they’d been flying over the Welsh countryside, but he finally had come to the realization that if he just plain didn’t know, he couldn’t tell. It would be easy. He could just explain that they were under the Fidelius Charm, that someone else was the Secret Keeper, and there you had it. He was off the hook.

And now Sirius was going to ruin everything. Why did he have to pick now, of all times, to start listening to Peter Pettigrew?

“See, this is how it could work,” Sirius said, sitting forward excitedly. “We’ll make out that I’m the Secret Keeper, at least that’s what we’ll tell people. With some people we pretend that we didn’t mean to tell them, as though it just slipped out. But I won’t be the Secret Keeper--it’ll be Peter,” he said, nodding at him. “And then, if anyone comes after me, I can’t tell them anything, no matter what they do to me. And who would suspect--” He stopped himself, for once seeming to realize that he was being incredibly tactless.

Sirius reddened a bit and Peter said, somewhat against his will, “That’s okay, mate. I know just what you mean.” His voice was very soft. Sirius nodded gratefully at him.

“Right. And Pete can hide just about anywhere, even if it does come out that he’s the Secret Keeper. He can just hole up somewhere in his rat form if things look very bad. It’s not as though anyone could tell him apart from any of the other rats in Britain.”

“Just don’t hang about with too many rats,” James said, as though it was all decided. “Don’t want to find yourself someplace were someone has a mind to call the local rat-catcher. Can’t have our Secret Keeper exterminated.”

Peter smiled ruefully, thinking of the Weasleys’ messy garden. “Oh, don’t worry. I have my hiding places,” he said, his voice shaking a little. He thought of the Prophecy again, of how he’d tried to outrun his fate. It was clearly no good; this was what his life had been leading up to. This was his life. He looked desperately at Lily, trying to imprint her face on his memory, hoping against hope that he could keep his lip from shaking. Oh, Lily, he thought, swallowing a sob in his throat. But suddenly all he could see was the face of Dead Lily, from his dreams, pointing her finger at Peter and asking Why why why why why?

But now Lily was the one who appeared to be miles away. He didn’t know that she was seeing the photograph again in her mind’s eye. Alastor had brought her a Muggle photograph. He had taken it from a distance, over a fortnight earlier, at a gathering of werewolves. Voldemort was speaking to them. If he’d been any closer, the werewolves would have been able to smell him, Invisibility Cloak or no Invisibility Cloak. And a still photograph was more useful for this sort of thing than a wizarding one; you could really see the moment in time, frozen, instead of having the people in the photo moving about confusingly, or deceptively (hiding behind each other).

There he’d been, right in the middle of the crowd of werewolves who were eagerly hanging on every word coming from Voldemort:

Remus.

And less than an hour after Alastor had brought the photo to her, she’d looked up to see Remus’s head in the fire, telling her that he’d learned some fascinating things while at a rally at which Voldemort had spoken to hundreds of werewolves. He said that he felt he ought to go, to find out what was going on, so he could tell her about it. But she’d sat there, thinking, Is it really coincidence? Are you worried that you were seen? She’d tried to be friendly and conversational, but when his head was gone again, she’d paced the floor, wondering whether she should believe him. He'd been so distant, and then, out of the blue, he suddenly contacted her to tell her he was at a werewolf rally. Had she been wrong about him? She felt so confused...

She hadn’t shown James the photo. But she had stopped defending Remus; she just couldn't muster the same enthusiasm for it. Something at the back of her mind kept saying, What if it's him? What if he's the spy? All of James's accusations against Remus took on fresh relevance, and she was hard-put to brush her doubts aside. On top of that, it didn't help that she’d had nightmares, nightmares in which she was a girl again, and she was with Remus in the dungeons, but then she blinked and it wasn’t Remus coming toward her, it was a ravenous wolf, jaws dripping with blood....

She’d awoken screaming, refusing to tell James why. She shuddered to think of Remus touching her, when he might be the one who had turned spy. What’s wrong with me? she wondered. Remus is attending rallies held by Voldemort; Severus is a Death Eater. Is it me? Did I somehow drive them to it?

She shook herself. Don’t be stupid, she scolded herself. Remus is over you, he said so at the wedding, and he was dreadfully broken up about that poor boy being killed...

She stopped and drew in her breath suddenly, wondering whether she’d been incredibly stupid to have believed everything he’d said about that, and about being over her as well. The other three stared at her.

“Is everything all right, love?” James asked, rubbing her back gently. She turned to look at him. No, she thought. Everything is decidedly not all right. If it were we wouldn’t be planning to put one of our friends in danger to protect us from one of our other friends...

Sirius cleared his throat. “So--why do you think Remus is the spy?” he said quietly, as though he’d read Lily’s mind. Neither she nor James had said it outright, but Remus's absence spoke volumes. He clearly hadn't been invited. She looked guiltily at James.

“We have our reasons,” she said, almost inaudibly. She and James hadn’t really discussed it. He looked at her now, surprised; this was the first time she’d said anything that overtly suggested that she thought Remus might be the one. He continued to rub her back and she was grateful for the comforting physical contact; maybe she could stop feeling like the stupidest person on the planet for having slept with a werewolf, for having trusted him without question.

Her head ached; in the previous months she felt as though she’d gone round and round, thinking Sirius was the spy, worried that Severus was going to lead Voldemort to Godric’s Hollow, worried about going to see her own dying mother, in case she was followed and her mother or sister were hurt by someone who wanted to strike at her by doing so. (She didn’t get on with her sister, but she certainly didn’t want her killed.)

She looked at Peter again, worried for him now. Even though the plan included carefully leaking to the world the ‘fact’ that Sirius was the Secret Keeper, what if something went wrong? What if poor Peter found himself confronted with having to choose between torture or giving up their secret?

“You’re sure about this, Peter?” she said softly, remembering Professor McGonagall being somewhat hard on him in school. Was it really fair for them to ask this of him? Then again, was any of this fair?

But he looked back at her unwaveringly. “Yes,” he said firmly. The least he could do was try to give her a sense of security, of safety, so that she wouldn’t be worrying all of the time. Even if it was a false sense of security. She nodded grimly and leaned forward quickly, giving him a kiss on the cheek that was over in a blink.

“Thank you,” she said hoarsely. Peter didn’t know what to say or do. Everything was completely unreal.

“So,” Peter said, feeling a bit dazed after the kiss; “I’m--I’m going to be the Secret Keeper?”

Lily and James looked at each other with trepidation. They both nodded at him. Sirius clapped him on the shoulder.

“It’s all down to you, mate,” he said with a forced joviality. Sirius looked almost as nervous as if he were going to be the actual Secret Keeper; after all, it was quite possible that he would be facing torture, and he wouldn’t be able to put a stop to it, as he wouldn’t have the information that was being sought. He was agreeing to put himself in a very tight spot.

Peter gave a feeble smile to the other three.

Yes, he thought. It’s all down to me.

* * * * *

Saturday, 31 October, 1981

Peter peered in the kitchen window. It was as he remembered it, a golden glow from the lamps on the dresser bathing the entire room. Washed dishes were drying in a rack next to the sink; the blue and white plates glinted on the wooden dresser, the teacups hanging on their hooks. Cookbooks were also on the dresser, stacked neatly, as well as framed photographs, next to the lamps. A wooden high chair was at the end of the table instead of a regular chair. A teapot was sitting on the table, the lid off, steam rising from it. They were waiting for the tea to steep. Peter remembered that Lily preferred doing it this way, instead of with magic. She said it tasted better. No one was in the kitchen save for Lily’s owl, Calliope, in a large cage that hung near the stove. The bird was preening. The cage door was open and the window next to the stove was also open, so that the bird could come and go at will. It would probably leave soon to do its nightly hunting.

He backed away from the window, his heart was like a hammer in his chest. He had asked the Dark Lord to meet him in a nearby spinney, across a field from the cottage. To his consternation, his Master had told others about it as well. Peter sincerely hoped that they wouldn’t show up until later. As it was, he hadn’t wanted to tell the Dark Lord about Lily and James, but he’d had very little choice....

He’d gone to hide in the Weasleys’ garden in his rat form. Percy had been very pleased that he was back. The boy was five years old now and no less awkward then he’d been when younger. Peter hadn’t seen the family for months, not since the little girl had been born and he’d carefully altered her birth certificate, as well as the memories of her parents, so that she wouldn’t be considered a candidate for the Daughter of War. Now that autumn had come she was inside much of the time, but he had had a chance to see the new baby again when her mother had brought her into the garden on an unseasonably warm day. She and her year-old brother Ron had rolled around on a blanket near Mrs. Weasley while their mother had pulled weeds. Percy had sat with them, playing with Ginny sometimes (Ron didn’t seem to want anything to do with him). When Mrs. Weasley had gone inside to see what Mr. Weasley wanted (they could hear his voice calling from the kitchen fire) Peter had crept out and Percy had introduced “Twitchers” to Ginny and Ron. Ron had petted his back tentatively, then shrugged, toddling off to find the twins, who were three years old now and far more interesting than a stupid rat.

Ginny had clapped her hands and squealed when Percy picked up “Twitchers” and lightly let her trace her finger down his back, but a moment later the twins had come running from the other side of the garden, knocking Ron over on the way. They’d been doing their twinly duty of getting as much dirt ground into their clothes as possible. Peter had squirmed out of Percy’s grasp and fled back into the gnome holes, causing Percy to complain loudly of the twins, probably in hopes that his mother would hear him in the house.

The twins were not Peter’s favorite people. If he’d thought about it in cold blood, he would probably have preferred for Voldemort to get his hands on him. Voldemort he could reason with, to a certain extent. Not so with the twins.

And so he lived (somewhat) peacefully in the Weasleys’ garden.

Until this morning.

About an hour before dawn, Peter had been snoring in a gnome hole near the door that let out onto the garden from the Weasleys’ kitchen. He slept a little better when in his rat form; his brain wasn’t quite as complex as when he was a human. It was more given over to pure instinct. He had to watch out for gnomes who rolled him out of the hole, where he’d be in plain sight of hunting owls, although the owls he feared most were the ones delivering messages to the Weasleys, rather than their ancient retainer, Errol.

He wasn’t at all prepared for his Dark Mark to start hurting.

First the pain woke him, his small, dark, beady eyes opening wide with shock. He felt his body trembling, and knew that if he lost control and became human again while still underground, it would be very painful indeed. (It was a mystery to him how the gnomes fit their rather lumpy, awkward heads into their own small abodes, but he reckoned that it might be a form of gnome-magic.)

Peter scrambled for the exit as fast as he could, feeling an excruciating pain go through his paw again; the second he was out in the open, he couldn’t take it any longer and changed back to his human form, panting as though he’d been running for miles. He stared up at the starless sky, biting his lip to keep from screaming in agony, so the slumbering residents of the Burrow wouldn’t hear him.

He was being summoned by the Dark Lord. It wasn’t as bad as being put under Cruciatus, but it came very close. He closed his eyes again; once more, he could hear his Master’s voice in his head, summoning him to the house near Little Hangleton. He had been out of communication with his Master for a fortnight. He was a bad Death Eater. Peter tasted blood from biting his lip. He pulled out his wand, taking a last look at the homely Burrow, thinking how he would miss it, even though he was seldom inside the house. (He didn’t like to chance it, as Mrs. Weasley had very keen eyesight, unlike her husband.)

Mudblood.

Peter managed to get the hated word out, thinking of Lily while he did so.

He had not been doing any additional work concerning the Prophecy; he had no names of potential victims. He had simply been hiding and biding his time. But he could hide no longer; no matter where he ran, he would feel the Dark Lord summoning him. He’d thought of killing himself more than once, but he couldn’t bring himself to do it. Somehow a primitive survival instinct balked whenever the subject appeared in his mind. Added to that was the memory of the centaur calling him the Moon Child. He was needed. He was a necessary ingredient of the Dark Lord’s fall.

Peter ascended the stairs slowly, his arm still throbbing, his Dark Mark black as ebony, as though it had been freshly burned into his flesh. He heard the hypnotic voice behind a partially-open door and pushed it, finding the Dark Lord standing with his back to the fire, which limned his tall figure from behind and made him appear to be even more formidable than usual. Standing to his right was the Death Eater who had recruited Peter (he always wore the same distinctive clothes, as well as the same slightly dented mask under his hood) and to his left was a taller Death Eater who somehow projected a quite regal bearing, despite the fact that his robes, mask and hood very effectively concealed his identity.

Peter started shaking. He did not have a good feeling about this.

“Wormtail!” said the seductive voice, dripping with honey. Peter started to feel himself weaken with just the sound of his name, his alter-ego. “Wormtail,” the Dark Lord said again, “I have been looking forward to hearing of the fruits of your labors, but you have not delivered. Why is that?” he asked in the mellifluous voice. Peter trembled, looking into those reddish eyes, hearing nothing else, not the crackling of the fire or the wind outside.

“I--I have been unable to find out what you require, M’Lord,” he said haltingly, hating the quaver in his voice.

A slow smile spread across Voldemort’s face. He turned to the Death Eater on his right, Peter’s recruiter, and said simply, “He lies.”

The Death Eater nodded, and, without a prelude of any sort, pulled out his wand and pointed it at Peter, crying, “Crucio!”

A scream that seemed to come from somewhere else entirely erupted from Peter as he writhed on the floor, knowing nothing but pain, fire and knives and pain pain pain. He didn’t even remember falling to the floor, but then he also didn’t remember a time in his life when he wasn’t made entirely of pain....

The Death Eater lifted his wand abruptly and, again without warning, the pain was gone. Peter would almost rather it would start and end gradually, so that he could get used both to its presence and its absence. His heart seemed to be galloping along uncertainly, almost as though it didn’t dare to beat normally again, should the pain come back.

“You were saying?” the Dark Lord said sweetly, as though they’d been having tea and he’d interrupted Peter to fetch some more crumpets.

Peter swallowed. He’d thought he couldn’t do it, but he had to. Maybe if he did, Lily would be safe. He’d saved the older Weasley girls; it was foolish to think he could also save the younger one. Trying to banish the image of the seven-month-old baby from his mind, he staggered to his feet and said, “I--I know where the Daughter of War is...”

The Dark Lord’s eerie red eyes narrowed. “I thought you had disposed of those girls. Those Wee--Wheel--”

“Weasley,” said the Death Eater on his left, as though he were uttering a name of utter filth.

“Yes, those Weasley girls.”

“I--I have. I did. But--but it wasn’t either of them. I think,” he went on breathlessly, “it’s--it’s possible that the parents might agree to raise her to be your servant,” he added, although what he’d seen of the Weasleys actually made him very doubtful of this. “But--but Lily has refused to agree to raise Harry as your servant, and now they’re in hiding and I don’t know where...”

The Dark Lord turned again to the Death Eater on his left. “Would you care to have the pleasure this time?” he said conversationally, as though discussing something eminently civilized. The Death Eater nodded and pointed his wand at Peter, who braced himself for the worst.

But instead of the Cruciatus Curse, the Death Eater repeatedly put the Passus Curse on Peter, naming, in Latin, the specific parts of the body that he was attacking. Peter felt pain pierce his arms, his legs, his stomach, he held his throat, his head....It wasn’t like the Cruciatus, an overall pain. In its way it was worse, for just when he had convinced himself that he could take the pain in his foot, it was in his arm, and then his shoulder, his thighs, then the excruciating sensation of being kicked in the kidneys repeatedly, first the one and then the other....

He was on the floor again, taking deep breaths, waiting for the Death Eater to attack his lungs so that he couldn’t breathe, so that he would be put out of his misery. I know that voice, he thought. He had known it as soon as he had said, Weasley.

“While it may be true, Wormtail, that you do not know the whereabouts of the Potters, I believe you know who does know. I have heard rumors of their using the Fidelius Charm to protect themselves. It sounds like the sort of thing Dumbledore would have recommended to them,” he spat contemptuously. “I have also heard that Sirius Black is their Secret Keeper. However, I have had some people observing Mr. Black, and he does not seem especially interested in this being a secret for some reason. He seems interested in telling quite a lot of people, as a matter of fact. Now why should that be? Does that strike you as very--clever? And my little birds tell me that Mr. Black is nothing if not clever, very clever indeed.” He stepped toward Peter and held out his hand to him; Peter didn’t dare refuse to take it. The Dark Lord pulled him to his feet but did not release his hand; Peter felt as though an electric current were connecting the two of them.

“So, why would a clever man like Sirius Black be so free with the information that he is the Potters’ Secret Keeper if he truly wishes to keep his friends safe?” Voldemort asked with a whimsical lilt to his voice.

Peter swallowed. “I--I don’t know, M’Lord.”

The nod that the Dark Lord directed at the Death Eater on his right had barely registered on Peter before he was on his knees, still clutching Voldemort’s claw-like hand, writhing and screaming with pain. He vaguely remembered the Death Eater actually uttering the incantation, but already that seemed years in the past, the very distant past when Peter’s entire existence wasn’t one of complete and utter agony....

And then, it was again abruptly gone, and the only sounds Peter could hear were his own labored breaths echoing in the otherwise still room. Even the fire didn’t seem to be making any noise now as it silently burned. Everything else paled in comparison. The world without pain was almost like a dream to Peter; his suffering seemed like the only real thing to which he could relate now.

“Now then, let us try again,” Voldemort said, a slight edge to the honeyed voice this time as he pulled Peter roughly to his feet once more. “Why would Sirius Black be so careless about telling the world at large that he is the Secret Keeper?”

“Because he’s not,” Peter said promptly, almost before the Dark Lord had finished speaking.

A slow smile crept across the Dark Lord’s face, a most terrible sight; not because it was inherently ugly (although there was that) but because one knew that it meant that something dreadful was going to befall someone.

“Is it the werewolf?” Voldemort demanded sharply.

Peter swallowed, shaking his head.

“I can tell you where to find them.”

Peter heard his own words echoing in his head as he changed into his rat form and crept under the kitchen door, scuttling quietly across the stone flags toward the living room, where Lily and James were relaxing, having put Harry in his cot for the night. The nursery door was closed and Peter tried not to think of little Harry sleeping there, the boy whom he’d fed and burped, whose nappies he’d changed, whom he’d taken for walks in his pram through the parks of Cardiff...

Peter took a deep breath, looking around at the familiar room. It felt comfortable and safe, but Peter knew better. There was a cozy fire in the grate and golden pools of light from the lamps. He gazed at Lily from the shadow under a table. She and James were sitting opposite each other, Lily stretched out on the couch, reading a book, her hand laid protectively on her slightly rounded belly. Peter swallowed; he hadn’t seen her wearing anything but billowing robes for some time, and hadn’t expected this. Lily was pregnant again. She hadn’t told him.

He felt a hot resentment burning in him for a moment, but then he thought, No. That’s perfect. The Dark Lord wanted to kill Harry, and would. But Lily would still have her new baby, a new life. If Peter could have grinned, he would have. And I’ll be there for her, he thought. To comfort her and to help her with the new baby...

She was wearing her nightdress without a dressing gown and Peter’s mouth went dry as he noticed that her breasts were already larger than usual, because of the baby. Her red hair looked very dark in the firelight and lamplight. James sat in an armchair with his feet in slippers, propped up on the ottoman, the firelight glinting off his glasses. His hair stuck up at the back of his head as always, and Peter felt a seething hatred of James Potter roil through him as he wondered how on earth Lily could ever have wasted herself on the likes of him. He was holding a copy of the Daily Prophet and writing with a quill. Must be doing the crossword, Peter thought. James appeared to be writing rather fast. Show off, he thought resentfully, as though James had expected to have an audience for this.

Peter had seen enough. They were not suspecting anything; as far as they knew he was hiding somewhere obscure, their secret safe with him. Of course, he thought, afterward I’ll need to memory charm Lily, and Sirius too, so they both believe that Sirius was in fact the Secret Keeper....

He’d thought it all out. The fact that Sirius had been telling everyone he could that he was their Secret Keeper would work in his favor. After a few memory charms, there would be no one left who didn’t believe that. Added to that was the fact that they’d altered the Fidelius Charm slightly so that anyone who had previously known the location of the Potters’ house would forget it with the casting of the charm, and if the charm was broken, the memories would come flooding back. As soon as Peter told Voldemort where Lily and James were, Sirius would remember also, and he would know to come to Godric’s Hollow.

Peter quietly scuttled into the kitchen again, across the flags and under the door. He ran across the moon-dappled field behind the house to a spinney on a slight hill. Once there, he changed into his human form again, then began pacing, waiting, waiting...

He screamed for a moment, then clapped his own hand over his mouth when the Dark Lord Apparated silently before him. Voldemort’s eyes bore into his.

“A bit--jumpy are we, Wormtail?”

Peter tried to control his breathing. “Just a bit, M’Lord,” he admitted. It was safer to be honest about little things like this. “I--I wanted to ask you for a--a favor, M’Lord,” Peter said, his voice shaking. Voldemort raised one eyebrow in amusement.

“A favor? Really?” Peter thought it marginally possible that the great wizard might begin to laugh.

“Y--yes, M’Lord. If you--if you could spare Lily, I--I would be eternally grateful, M’Lord...”

Now the Dark Lord did indeed laugh, but it was a high, cold, cruel laughter that sent shivers up Peter’s spine.

“And how grateful would you be if I spared you, my loyal Moon Child?” Peter gasped and then felt incapable of closing his shocked mouth. “Yes, Moon Child. I told you that I had been consulting Seers after your many botched attempts to find those named in the Prophecy,” he said contemptuously. “I knew the Weasley girl was the second Daughter of War before you told me and I knew that your friend Sirius Black was the Lion. How very clever it was for him to try to make himself a target by calling himself the Potters’ Secret Keeper, which made me think that he couldn’t possibly be the Secret Keeper. However, he was something far more important. The first Lion. Talk about hiding in plain sight!” he added, chuckling gruesomely. Peter found himself unable to do anything but frown in confusion.

“But--but James--his birthday is the fifth of August, nineteen-sixty. His number is eleven. And he’s an Animagus, which fits the beast-and-man part. And the Potters used to be called Pitter. They were coal miners, Muggle coal miners....It all fits,” Peter trailed off in confusion. But many of those things are true of Sirius as well, he reminded himself. Sirius is also an Animagus.

Voldemort shook his head. “James Potter’s birthdate does give him the correct number, and his sign--Leo--and status as a former Gryffindor would seem to make him a candidate for the first Lion, but according to my Seers, it is Sirius Black, whose birthdate also gives the correct results. He is also a former Gryffindor. And I understand that there is a collier background in his family as well, which led to the family name of ‘Black.’ But--I admit, there was something that baffled the Seers. They did not understand the ‘beast and man’ requirement. Finally, they put it down to his having a name which is the same as the Dog Star. They had also thought that there should be one more way in which he is a Lion, and have been unable to find out what it is...”

Peter frowned; he hadn’t realized that Sirius’s ancestors had also been miners, but it fit. Sirius’s ancestors. Peter’s eyes opened wide.

“I know what it is, M’Lord,” he said breathlessly. “When I’ve been at the Black home--in the kitchen, they have a tapestry with their clan’s shield. It’s silver and blue, with a rampant lion. And--and he is an Animagus.”

Voldemort nodded, his eyes narrowed. “So. Both Potter and Black can make themselves into animals at will. There you go. I knew there had to be something. The Seers were finding something wrong with almost everyone, but that clears up quite a lot. There was no problem with working out that you were the Moon Child, you know,” he said silkily. “While you were off, busily pointing the finger at other people, my Seers told me about your parentage. Why,” he said softly, “you are more pureblooded than I am, Wormtail. They told me your birthday very early on....they did readings on your behalf and saw your destiny...”

Peter swallowed. Damn! They must have looked up his birthday before he’d had a chance to change it in the Ministry archives! He had to say something to deflect Voldemort. At this point he was probably only keeping Peter alive until he could get the information from him about the Potter house, and then he’d be dead....

“But I’m not a pureblood!” Peter said quickly. Voldemort glared at him.

“Of course you are. You are descended from three of the four Founders of Hogwarts. All but Slytherin. I am descended from him, the greatest of the Hogwarts Four.”

“But there’s something you don’t know!” Peter cried. “My mother--she isn’t my mother!” He knew he was grasping at straws; Voldemort waited, but he didn’t appear to have a limitless supply of patience so Peter hurtled on. “I’ve kept this quiet for years--my dad had an affair with a Muggle girl. She was only sixteen when I was born. Her family didn’t want her to keep me. My dad agreed to raise me. He married an old friend to provide me with a mother. They altered my birth certificate so her name was on it. My dad didn’t have any Founders’ blood, the woman who’s raised me was descended from families with Gryffindor, Hufflepuff and Ravenclaw blood. When I went off to school my real mother decided that she wanted to be a part of my life after all, and I started going to see her during my holidays....” He swallowed. Would his Master be able to tell this time that he was lying?

Voldemort’s eyes narrowed as he regarded Peter. “Why did you never correct me then, Wormtail, when I called you pureblooded?” Peter tried to calm his breathing; he was trying to catch him out. He knew Peter was lying, yet he continued to play with him. Or did he know? Peter couldn't afford to let his guard down.

Peter worried his robes between his fingers. “I--I wanted you to think I was pureblooded, M’Lord. Not just a half-blood...”

Voldemort drew himself up. “I am a half-blood, Wormtail, or have you forgotten?”

“Oh, no, M’Lord,” Peter said quickly. “But--erm, you also have said repeatedly how you hated your Muggle father...”

A slow, eerie smile crept across Voldemort’s face. “That is true,” he admitted. With a nod he said, “Very well. You are pardoned for lying to me about your heritage. You were abandoned by your mother in much the same way that my mother and I were abandoned by my father. I will ask the Seers to check their work again...” Peter shook with fright; was his tale really being believed? He could never tell with his Master.

“Yes, M’Lord,” Peter rushed to say.

“But--there is still the matter of the first Daughter of War. As far as my Seers can tell, they know her identity, and yet--her birthday does not work....” He looked piercingly at Peter. “You know who it is, don’t you?” he said slyly. “That is why you have asked me to spare her...”

He knew it was Lily.

“You only need to get rid of one person in each Triangle!” Peter said quickly. “If you just get rid of Sirius Black and the child--”

Voldemort nodded, still smiling that eerie smile. He held his hand up to stop Peter. “I have in you a servant who is always at my beck and call,” he said, tapping Peter’s Dark Mark with his long, thin finger. “I can find you anytime I want. That is no small thing to me, Wormtail. And if one way I can reward my servant is to deliver a former Auror to him for--his amusement,” Voldemort said, his mouth twisting unpleasantly, “then--if it is convenient to me, that is--I am happy to do so. So, then. You would need for me to get rid of her husband, I assume? A pity that he isn’t the Lion after all; the bulk of my work would be done this night,” he said with a sigh, as though being an evil Dark Wizard was just work, work, work.

Peter swallowed. “Yes, M’Lord,” Peter said softly, sentencing his friend to death. He tried not to remember that James was the one who had always insisted upon including Peter in their schemes, that he might have spent seven lonely years at Hogwarts with no friends if it hadn’t been for James...But James had Lily and Peter wanted her for himself...

“Very well, then, Wormtail. Tell me--why are we in this spinney, with no houses for miles around? Where may I find the Potters?”

“I--I could not give you an address, M’Lord, because, well--it’s right there,” he said feebly, pointing at the cottage across the field. Voldemort squinted, then opened his eyes wide.

“I can see it now,” he whispered in wonder. Another shiver went up Peter’s spine.

“Are there wards on the house?” he barked tersely.

“N--no, M’Lord. Because of--of the Fidelius Charm.”

He nodded, all business now. “Right.” He raised his wand and, without a word of thanks, Disapparated. Peter clutched at a tree and stared at the house.

In a moment he heard a scream and his heart leapt into his throat.

Lily.

* * * * *

James looked over his newspaper at Lily, who was unconsciously rubbing her rounded belly. He smiled at the sight of her before going back to his crossword puzzle. It was such a relief to be able to live with a feeling of utter safety. Dumbledore had been right; the Fidelius Charm was the way to go. James hadn’t thought that anything could give him such peace of mind short of the Dark Lord being killed, but knowing that no one could find them without Peter giving away his secret had made it possible for them to return to a kind of normal life, without all of the alternating bickering and tense silences that had marked their marriage in recent months.

When a tall wizard with eerie blood-red eyes suddenly and silently Apparated into their living room, grinning a ghastly death’s-head grin, James thought he was dreaming for a moment. But the second that the wand was pointed at him, he leapt out of the way, his armchair now a blackened and burnt lump of coal. He was vaguely aware that Lily had screamed the moment he’d appeared.

“Lily!” he cried. “Take Harry and go! It’s Him!” he added, feeling rather stupid for doing so. Of course it was him. Don't fall apart now, James, he commanded himself. He thought of his parents standing up to Voldemort. I'll make you proud, Mum and Dad, he thought.

He fired off a curse at the unnatural-looking man standing before him, but the wizard easily deflected it, stepping toward James, who was up against the fireplace; James could feel the hot flames behind him. He saw Lily hesitate; she needed to get Harry and herself (and the baby) to safety. This was no time for her to start acting like an Auror.

“Go! Run!” he shouted at her. “I’ll hold him off--”

He realized how stupid that sounded as Voldemort drew nearer to him; James just knew that those eyes were boring into his, those odd red eyes, and he was only vaguely aware now of Lily stumbling from the room. James tried to draw him off and ran for the bedroom, but a split second before he got there, Voldemort had sent a beam of crackling red light at the door; it burst open violently, and where the spell had hit it a hole had been burned through the wood, ringed with fire. Voldemort seemed to be enjoying himself; he broke into a cackle of high-pitched laughter.

James swallowed, abruptly changing into a stag, which he could tell shocked Voldemort; he leapt over the furniture in a single bound, fleeing back toward the kitchen, distracting him, so that Lily could get out with Harry. He wasn’t certain, but he thought he might have knocked over a lamp. When he’d reached the kitchen doorway he immediately changed back and fired curses at him, but they all went wild. He couldn’t think. Flames were licking at the sofa; he had knocked over a lamp.

Voldemort turned his attention on him more thoroughly now, and James saw, beyond him, that Lily had dashed from the nursery and out the front door, past the fire that James had started accidentally. She was barefoot and still without a dressing gown, although the autumn night was very cold. He could hear Harry crying, woken abruptly as he was. But suddenly, he could no longer pay attention to his wife and child; Voldemort was pointing his wand at him and saying the word that James had never though to hear directed at him:

“Crucio!”

He howled in pain, falling backwards, tripping over a chair. He lay on his back on the flags of the kitchen floor, his leg bent under him awkwardly, while it felt like he was being flayed alive, like every nerve ending he had was being slit apart by hot knives...

Lily stopped, clutching Harry to her breast, hearing James’s cry. She stumbled on the path and fell, feeling the baby move within her. No, no, no, she thought desperately. I can’t just run and leave him....

But a split second later the front window of the house was filled with a blindingly bright green light, Lily heard the familiar sound of speeding death (she’d been trained to perform the curse during her Auror training, although not on human subjects).

She knew that sound.

Tears flowed from her eyes, blinding her. She choked on her sobs, feeling unable to go on. What had happened? her brain cried out. How did this happen?

She ducked her head and instinctively covered Harry with her body as a deafening explosion rocked the ground beneath her feet and when she dared to stand again and lift her face to the sky she actually saw her own roof flying into the air, along with something large and green. Then she ducked once more as she heard stones and glass being expelled from the house, although a moment later she was aware of the fact that it wasn’t coming from the front of the house. The front façade was still intact for some reason.

But even as she stood and looked in wonder at her house, no eyes for anything else, Voldemort appeared at the door, not the least bit slowed down, flames behind him. James she thought stupidly, having no thought for herself or Harry. James was dead and now he would burn...

As he advanced on her she finally came to her senses; there was no point in running, not now. She was shivering with cold and Harry was howling and squirming in her arms, trying to get down; she couldn’t have gone more than a dozen feet at best. Instead she gazed up at the merciless face, hoping against hope. “Not Harry, not Harry, please not Harry!” she cried as her husband’s murderer approached her menacingly. Does he have any mercy in him at all? she wondered.

Voldemort regarded her contemptuously. She’d had her chance to save the child; it was too late now. “Stand aside, you silly girl,” he spat at her. “Stand aside now...”

She sank to her knees and shook her head, clutching Harry. She no longer cared whether she lived or died. She wasn’t meant to have this baby. She had to do whatever she could to save Harry....

“Not Harry,” she pleaded with him. “Please no, take me, kill me instead--”

She wasn’t sure where the words came from. She’d been prepared to throw herself between a curse and a colleague. She’d been prepared to die for Sam on more than one occasion. But--would this insane man do that? she wondered. Would he kill her in Harry’s place? Would that satisfy him? It seemed to be the only path she had before her at the moment...

“Not Harry--” she repeated tearfully. But then the wand was pointing at her and she heard the incantation, heard the sound of speeding death, saw the green flash rushing toward her...

Peter huddled by a tree. He’d heard James scream in agony, seen the flash of green light at the kitchen window. He’d seen the roof fly into the air as the Dark Mark was fired over the house. Now he heard the second incantation and saw the flash of green light in the sky over the house, reflecting from the scattered clouds. Harry is dead, he thought, feeling numb. Little Harry is dead.

Voldemort looked down at the baby, sitting next to his mother, seeming stunned. The child looked down at her fallen form, then up at the tall figure before him. The stupid girl, Voldemort thought. Ah, well. A small thing, in the grander scheme of things. He was waiting for the child to cry, but he did not; he calmly regarded his parents’ murderer.

Peter froze in the act of leaving the spinney when he heard the ringing voice saying the incantation for the third time. Nooo! he thought. He wasn’t supposed to kill Lily!

And he wasn’t planning to kill Peter, either. Or so he’d said.

Peter immediately changed into his rat form and ran back into the trees, his small rat-heart beating rapidly, the sound filling his ears. But where, behind him, he expected to hear the rush of death, of Lily’s death, he heard instead a far worse sound. An other-worldly scream cut through the night, the sound going on and on.

Curiosity got the better of Peter, and although his first instinct was to run away from that sound, he ran toward it, across the field and around the cottage to a vantage point where he could see the front garden. Voldemort was pointing his wand at Harry, who sat on the ground beside Lily.

Lily was dead!

But he couldn’t dwell on this; a glow was emanating from Harry, a glow so bright it was almost blinding; The baby’s body seemed to be absorbing the curse and assimilating it, then drawing on some core of power in him, altering it and sending it back along the crackling green arc of light connecting Voldemort’s wand to him. Peter had no idea what was happening. The Dark Lord’s tall, thin body seemed to lose corporeal mass and his wand dropped to the ground. Peter could see through him now, and while he seemed at first to be a grey ghost of the same size and shape as his Master, he very quickly dwindled down to a cat-sized cloud of smoke which flew up into the air, then blew over the trees, still crying out dreadfully, but finally receding with distance.

All was still.

Peter ran back to the spinney, his heart in his throat; as soon as he was safe within the trees, he changed back into his human form and Disapparated, planning to return to the Weasleys’ garden. The Burrow wavered before his vision for only a moment before he thought of something, and he raised his wand again, Disapparating once more.

He landed in the road about thirty feet away from the garden gate, then began to run frantically toward the cottage. He ran awkwardly, stumbling up the garden path and coming to stand next to Harry; he stared at Lily’s body, his Lily. What had happened? He’d killed her before Harry!

Harry was crying, a thin ribbon of blood dripping onto his nose, looking up at Peter expectantly. He knew Peter; Peter would make everything all right. But Peter felt utterly winded and also as though he were watching someone else, as though he weren’t performing these acts but witnessing them. He stooped, staring at where the abandoned piece of wood lay. Without a body, the Dark Lord had been unable to continue holding it.

The wand.

Peter reached for it, placing it in his pocket, his heart thudding painfully. Then he realized that he was hearing thudding footsteps, and he quickly changed into his rat form again without any thought for the small child who had been his charge. He ran toward the spinney once more, thinking desperately, I’ll need some way to convince the others that I didn’t lead the Dark Lord to his death. How the wand would accomplish this he didn’t know, but it was all he had. And then there was Sirius. He knew who the real Secret Keeper was....

But above all, what mattered most of all was that Lily was dead. Dead. Peter sat amongst the trees, a small figure huddled under the dead leaves of autumn, watching and waiting. He knew that Sirius would come eventually, and he needed him, needed him to chase him and yet think it was his idea. He knew Sirius would want revenge, for he would be as grief-stricken over Lily as Peter felt. He also knew that he might need to wait for a while, as he had arranged for Sirius to check on him at Hagrid’s hut that evening, on the Hogwarts grounds. Sirius would probably go there first. As time stretched on, he was repeatedly tempted to change into a man again while he waited, and every time he had to remind himself of one important fact:

Rats can’t cry.

* * * * *

Severus blinked, looking around in confusion. Barty was standing on the crest of the hill, his arms crossed, looking completely in charge. Severus didn’t like that look one bit.

“Why did you have us Apparate here?” he asked Barty, who smiled sunnily.

“So we could watch the show. Any minute now, right over there.” He pointed down into the valley at a clump of trees that had smoke emerging from them as though there was a house in their midst. He felt Barty looking at him. “Oh, hadn’t you heard? The Potters tried to hide using the Fidelius Charm, but it turned out their Secret Keeper was a Death Eater! How’s that for luck? Plus, I heard that the same Death Eater got this Centaur to figure out who the girl in the prophecy is; you know, the ‘Daughter of War.’”

This didn’t gibe with what Severus knew, information that he’d gleaned while under James Potter’s Invisibility Cloak, but he kept his mouth shut. He couldn’t reveal that he’d been spying. He’d heard that some Seers had learned about the girl. Perhaps the Seers were also Centaurs? Lucius Malfoy had come to another Death Eater with a report, and that Death Eater had gone off to Voldemort, leaving Malfoy fuming in the corridor. Severus had been unable to see the other man’s face; he remained masked. It had been very difficult to restrain himself from cursing Malfoy then and there, to remain under the cloak, merely observing. He wasn’t surprised, though, that misinformation was being given to some of the Death Eaters. It actually wasn’t desirable for everyone to be able to tell the Ministry the same story, if they were caught.

Barty was still talking, and Severus tried to focus. “So she’ll be next. Just wait for it; should be any time now.”

Just wait for it? What was he talking about? But then he realized where he was, whose house was down in the hollow, although he couldn’t actually see anything. The Dark Lord must have told Barty the general area to which he was traveling. Since the Secret Keeper hadn’t told them where to find the house, they couldn’t see it. In fact, Severus tried to picture the house in his mind’s eye and realized that he couldn’t. He had no idea what it looked like or where it was, not really. But Voldemort would, in a minute, and then Lily, James and Harry would be killed...

He whirled on Barty with wild eyes. “You mean, they didn’t move? They just used the charm?” He remembered Dumbledore telling him about the charm, in the Leaky Cauldron, and indicating that Sirius Black would be their Secret Keeper. He wondered whether what Barty was saying was true. Was Black also a Death Eater? Had he given his friends to Voldemort? Severus remembered the way Black used to respond to his relationship with Lily. Had he been hiding his jealousy from his own best friend, James Potter, for years? Had he betrayed his best friend? Severus had always hated Black, but even he hadn’t suspected that Black was capable of this.

“Damn!” he spat. “I told her to run, to go into hiding...” He had forgotten to whom he was speaking and wanted to bite his tongue as soon as the words escaped his lips.

Crouch eyed him suspiciously. “What are you saying? You tried to tip them off? They refused to capitulate! They still don’t have to die, if they agree to the Dark Lord’s demands! But they’ll probably be stupid and fight...”

Snape wasn’t going to listen to this any longer. He began to run down the moor toward the hollow, even knowing that he wouldn’t be able to find the house without being told about it by the Secret Keeper. Suddenly from behind them, he heard Barty cry, “CRUCIO!”

The curse hit him full force from behind, sending him down onto the ground. Severus flipped over, pain flowing through him as it hadn’t since his initiation, a scream torn from deep within him...

Barty approached Severus, still holding his wand on him. Finally, he flipped it up, breaking the spell, and Severus struggled to prop himself up on his elbows, panting, hatred for the boy he’d recruited possessing every cell of his body as he worked to get his breath back. In a split second, he relived every harrowing moment when he stood by and watched Barty Crouch kill someone, every time he’d turned a Muggle into a ferret for sport. As fast as he could, he whipped out his own wand and pointing it at Crouch, crying, “Expelliarmus!” causing Crouch to fly backwards, striking a large boulder, while his wand went flying into the air and into Severus’s waiting hand. Barty lay on the boulder, inert. He seemed to be knocked out.

But then suddenly, something different went roaring through his brain; suddenly, he remembered where the house was. He could picture it again, the neat little garden in front, the window boxes, Lily standing in the doorway, holding Harry on her hip...

He could only think of one reason for him to know these things: the charm had been broken. Black had told Voldemort the Secret. That was have been why it had left his mind in the first place, he realized. The charm had done it.

He rose a little shakily, still feeling the aftershocks of the curse. He’d mercifully forgotten just how bad that could be. He ran more slowly than before down into Godric’s Hollow. But before he had gone twenty more feet, there was an explosion. It alarmed Severus and he twisted his ankle on the hill, falling. On the ground again, he raised his eyes to the heavens in horror.

The Dark Mark hovered over the hollow. Severus stayed where he was on the ground, feeling paralyzed; then another explosion was heard from the hollow, and an unearthly cry. What in blazes could that be? he wondered. He’d never heard anything like it, not even when he’d witnessed others being put under the Cruciatus Curse. It didn’t sound even remotely human.

Severus forced himself to stand again, and once more he was running, operating on pure adrenaline. He went down into the valley, seeing the cottage now. He ran through the garden gate; it seemed to take forever. Lily lay across the flower beds before the cottage in her nightgown, the same look on her face that he’d seen on other faces, people Barty Crouch had killed. He didn’t see James Potter, but he hardly cared about that. It was probably Potter’s fault that this had happened, Potter and his arrogance! Potter who trusted Sirius Black beyond all reason, when at sixteen Black had been capable of murder! Sirius Black who had betrayed his best friend to the Dark Lord...

The baby was wandering around the garden, his finger in his mouth, crying piteously. There was a wound on his forehead and it was bleeding, dripping down onto his nose. Severus felt that he should have been shocked that Harry was alive, but he could not think about that now. He cared for one thing only. He sank to his knees beside Lily, gathering her still-warm body to him, cradling her, his anguished sobs combining with the baby’s cries in the cold autumn night.

But in the midst of his sorrow, another thought was now fighting for space in his brain.

Sirius Black is dead.

* * * * *

Please be a responsible reader and review.

Thanks to Emily and SadieSue for the beta reading and to all of the folks who commented on Chapter 16.

A note about Annie and the Anderssens: The events described in this chapter are NOT those described in Chapter 8 of the Triangle Prophecy, although a dog is healed in both cases. The last chapter of this fic will make everything clear, and there will be information about this in the Triangle Prophecy as well. (I just thought I'd say something before all of you alert readers informed me that Annie healed the dog when she was twelve, not eleven.)