Secrets Kept

The doorframe felt so cool and soothing against his cheek that he could almost imagine it was horizontal, and then it only took a little more imagining for it to be a pillow instead of a wooden doorframe, and then he could just imagine that he was sleeping...

Sirius had just Flooed in from one of the endless reconnaissance missions Mad-Eye Moody sent him on for the Order. After a twelve week crash course three years ago--and the two months of Auror training that Sirius had made it through a year before that, before he quit the day they taught him how to hunt and kill werewolves--Moody had thrown Sirius out into the world as one of the members of the secret Order of the Phoenix: founded by Albus Dumbledore as a counter to Voldemort's Death Eaters, more effective and faster acting than the Ministry's host of Aurors, and with better intelligence. The Ministry had rejected the Order's unorthodox methods, such as employing former Death Eaters and Dark Creatures, and as a result was often at a loss, information-wise.

Sirius's work with the Order entailed doing many things that training had never taught him to do. He was not called on to wait in silence and watch, because Moody understood that one of the few things Sirius could never learn was patience; instead, he answered alerts and solved crises. Voldemort was based in London, because it was the only logical place to hide so much Dark activity, and so Sirius spent half his life chasing Death Eaters down alleyways and casting tracking spells; on occasion they got into duels, but for the most part their numbers were too few on both sides to waste on battles that would obviously be fatal to at least half the parties involved, so the appearance of a member of the Order would send the Death Eaters running. And Sirius would chase them, or pick up the scattered correspondence they left behind, or fight those who made the foolish choice to stay. He had a near-fatal incident once a week, and he knew his luck was running out. He could almost hear the clock ticking inside his head, counting down the days until he tripped over a loose floorboard and his shield charm went awry, or he fell down a set of stairs--he had fallen down stairs at Hogwarts all the time, attempting to flee from James's hexes--and someone's Avada Kedavra hit him square in the face. Or the Cruciatus Curse. Moody had taught him how to throw off the Imperius Curse, so he wasn't worried about that, but sometimes he thought it would be so relaxing to be under its effects that he wouldn't want to throw it off.

When he wasn't answering alerts, when he wasn't Apparating somewhere at top speed, he was either helping Remus work on cracking the Death Eaters' cryptographic communications or sleeping. Very recently, when they'd realized that there was a spy amongst the Order, he'd removed sleeping from his activities and started trying to discern the spy's identity. As soon as Remus fell asleep, slumped over the table or on the couch or, once or twice a week, somewhere in the vicinity of their bedroom, Sirius took out parchment and made a list of the members of the Order, and then he systematically crossed them off and wrote out explanations for why each of them could not be the spy. Remus's name was always crossed off third, after James and Lily but before Peter, because while Peter could not be the spy it was very likely that Remus could be, and Sirius couldn't bring himself to admit it. Up until a few months ago, Remus had had a secret mission from Dumbledore (all the Order's missions were secret, and only Dumbledore knew what they all were, in case anyone else was captured and tortured for information) that had taken him away for long periods of time, or so he said; all Sirius knew was that Remus would have to leave, often in the middle of the night, and would reappear in a few hours, or a few days, and once after two weeks, with new cuts and bruises. Once he returned with such deep gashes down his right forearm that they had left permanent scars, even though Sirius had sat up all night murmuring healing charms and rubbing potions on them. Remus could not speak of what he did and Sirius learned not to ask.

In the past six months, as the brutality of the war intensified, Sirius had become a man of desperations: desperately worried, desperately weary, desperately in love with Remus. Now, he stood in the doorway of their bedroom and watched Remus, who was currently balanced on the edge of the bed as he argued with the laces on his ancient, knee-high black leather Docs.

"Going to a show tonight?" Sirius asked. He scratched a hand across his face and felt a few days worth of stubble scratch back.

Remus glanced up and then returned to the laces. "You look exhausted. I didn't expect you home or I would have told you about it."

"Moody let me off patrol early," Sirius said. He couldn't for the life of him remember why.

"Why?" Remus asked.

"Not a clue."

"Do you want to come to the show with me?" Remus asked, very shy, as if they were going on their first date. Come to think of it, Sirius thought, we've never really had a first date. We were too busy fighting.

"Yeah, all right," Sirius responded. He still desperately needed to sleep, but more than that he was desperately in love with Remus Lupin, and he could survive anything if it meant a few hours beside him. And he'd fallen in love with Remus at their first punk gig, when they were sixteen, and sometimes Sirius needed a heavy dose of nostalgia just to keep him going. "I think Moody might have let me off because I was falling asleep."

Remus finished lacing up and stood. He was wearing a pair of Sirius's pants, which hung loose around his hips, and an Oxford with ragged sleeves and collar. He was not a very convincing punk, but Sirius wasn't entirely certain that Remus had even noticed there was an alternate dress code for the shows they attended. It wasn't the sort of thing he ever noticed. "Padfoot, don't go if you're too tired," Remus said, stepping forward and putting a hand gently on Sirius's face. "You look exhausted."

"So do you," Sirius mumbled, turning his face into the hand and licking the palm.

"Werewolf," Remus reminded.

"I won't go if you don't want me to," Sirius said, suddenly petulant and not sure why.

But Remus knew just how to counter a moody Sirius, which was to lean in and kiss his neck. "I want you to come, but I don't want you to fall down dead of sleep deprivation."

"M'not going to," Sirius replied. He forced his hand to lift from his side and hooked his fingers through the belt loop on the back of Remus's pants. "Who is it?"

"Somebody new. I've heard a lot of good things about them though. I have it on good authority that they're just like the Clash."

Remus was a sucker for anything just like the Clash, because the Clash was his favorite band. When he bought London Calling, he wore out the record on "Death or Glory," and Sirius had to buy him a new copy for his birthday. Which he'd promptly worn out.

"We'd better go see them, then," Sirius said. Anything to make Remus happy. They broke apart just a fraction so Remus could bring his head up, and then their mouths met and they kissed one another with the promise of something more, later. Remus helped Sirius out of his robe and into a leather jacket covered in safety pins and they walked out and Remus forgot to lock the door to the flat but Sirius did it for him and didn't say a word.

At the show, Sirius watched Remus watch the lead singer. The band was something like the Clash, had some little spark of musical magic, and Remus was entranced by it. His mouth was slightly open, his fists clenched, and he was barely moving or breathing that Sirius could see. In this dive bar in one of the darkest, dingiest corners of London, a band played and a crowd of angry young men and women churned beneath them, but Remus was somewhere far away, alight on the music. Sirius knew that beneath Remus's calm exterior there were forces churning too--dark forces, light forces, all the alchemy of a complex and intense man mixed in with feral and ancient wolf-magic--and in the dark and smoke of the underground pit where this second-rate punk band was thrashing onstage, those forces grabbed onto something in Sirius's soul and tugged, yanked, until he was intoxicated by them and aroused and forsaking any dog instincts of domesticity for the infinitely more powerful call of the wolf ancestor within him. Before the last chord had faded into distortion, Sirius grabbed Remus's arm and led him out into the night to do he didn't know what with him, but he was sure it couldn't be done in public without landing them both in jail.

Outside, he calmed down a little, enough to know that he could wait until they were back to their flat. Humidity made Sirius's skin crawl and Remus's hair plaster to his forehead and cheeks, dark with sweat. The rest of the punks poured out onto the street like a flash flood behind them. Sirius listened to them as they shouted; someone threw a bottle and suddenly it was a fight. He instinctively moved to protect Remus and nearly ran into him as he did the same to Sirius; their eyes met.

"Home?" Remus suggested in his ear.

They Apparated to the flat and were on each other before the magic had finished tingling in their veins. Remus's shirt clung to the curves of his body with sweat and Sirius's fingers scrabbled along it until all the buttons were scattered somewhere in the dark corners and the collar was torn, but that didn't matter because Remus was pressed into a wall and his head was thrown back. His neck gleamed white and Sirius chewed and sucked on it until it turned purple in the space where his collarbones met. Remus's hands descended on Sirius's hips and jerked him forward, ground them together, so hard, everything so hard it almost hurt before the hands traveled up Sirius's sides and onto his shoulders and guided him to his knees.

With his teeth Sirius tore open Remus's pants.

Remus made a little choking noise in the back of his throat and grabbed Sirius's shoulders.

Using his tongue, Sirius marked his territory in a florid trail from jutting hip bone to burning groin.

Remus whined and squeezed Sirius's shoulders so that they hurt.

Sirius stood abruptly and pulled off his own pants. Remus watched through fluttering eyelids as Sirius took his hands gently and tugged him back onto the couch where they curled around each other.

That is how it was with them, Sirius knew: rough and tender at the same time, often in the same moment. He adored the scars Remus had made in his skin. He secretly loved the way that something of his, something so fragile and pale was so easily pierced and owned by the man he more-than-loved.

The next morning, Sirius woke up before Remus did and rolled onto his side to watch him sleep. Remus lay on his stomach, his face distorted by the pillow and his hands curled up under his chest. A trail of drool ran from his mouth to the damp pillow and Sirius grinned in spite of himself. How a man so graceful in his waking moments could look so utterly inelegant in sleep, Sirius didn't know, but it made him inexplicably happy.

An owl hooted in the room, and Sirius realized why he'd awakened. He rolled back over and untied the letter. It was Lily's owl, and Sirius's stomach lurched at the sight: good news or bad? He unfolded the letter as the owl flew away and read: "Pads, Come when you get this. Just you. - Prongs"

Fifteen minutes later, freshly showered and somewhat more awake, Sirius left their flat without waking Remus and walked through the frigid morning air toward their local tube stop. Dumbledore had warned them against Apparating to Lily and James's place, because Death Eaters could sense when too much magic was used around a location and track them, so Sirius bought a ticket to the underground with Muggle money (which he was getting better at using all the time, although he could never quite understand why they bothered with notes) and trotted down the stairs to stand on the platform with sleepy commuters.

It was very early in the morning, late in October. Sirius did not remember the date. He stared blankly at the end of the tunnel that the train would come from and thought about Remus. Once on the train, he managed to get a seat and settled back against the meager cushion; there, staring up at adverts for home mortgages and getting green cards to the US, he imagined he could see Remus's face. He kept one hand on his wand through his leather jacket and thought about the curves of Remus's back and arms and thighs, and then he thought, Could he be the spy? He ran his free hand through his hair and wondered if it was possible to love someone too much: to love someone so much that he was blind to their betrayal. The train stopped and Sirius started to get off, then realized he'd daydreamed too long and missed his station. He crossed the platform and waited for a train back into the city.

James opened the door of the flat. He looked terrible, as if he had aged twenty years in a day. He ushered Sirius in and Sirius saw Lily sitting at the table, cradling Harry. Her eyes were very red. Sirius felt the first stirrings of panic in his stomach.

"Dumbledore was just here," James said, without preamble. "He said we had to go into hiding as soon as possible."

Sirius reached out and touched James's arm. "Did he say why?"

James sat down heavily and pulled out a chair for Sirius. "We can't talk about it," he said shortly. "Dumbledore said--"

"Right," Sirius sighed, sitting down. "Secret, in case one of us is captured, right."

James gave him an odd look. Lily sniffled. "We want to go into hiding by Halloween," James said.

"What's it today?" Sirius asked.

"The 27^th."

"Of October?" Sirius asked, and when they both stared at him he mumbled, "Just checking."

"Yes, of October," Lily said.

"Right, so where are you going?" Sirius asked. "Where will you be safe?" James looked more worried than Sirius had ever seen him, after seven years of taking tests and three years of war. He kept his hand on James's arm, trying to provide a comforting weight.

"We're going to Godric's Hollow," James said. "The magic there will be protective..."

"But it seems too predictable," Sirius began.

Lily cut him off. "He advised that we use the Fidelius Charm."

Sirius frowned. "What's that entail?"

"The secret of our location will be embedded in one person, and no one else will be able to find out that secret unless they give it up."

Sirius continued to frown. "So you have to have someone do it."

"Dumbledore wanted it to be him," James said. "We told him no, it would be your or Remus or Peter."

Sirius's heart started beating faster. What if Remus is the spy? he asked himself for the thousandth time. "Who are you...?"

"We don't know," James said. "You're the... the obvious choice. Too obvious maybe." James looked up at him and Sirius saw that his eyes were definitely bloodshot. "And if something happens to us, you're Harry's godfather. You and Moony will be the ones raising him."

Sirius tried to make it a joke, tried to stop James from being so deadly serious. "That'll go over great when he starts school. The teacher will ask who his parents are..."

James smiled, but did not laugh. Sirius supposed that it didn't really warrant laughter. He swallowed and said, "Listen, Prongs, if this charm is performed, you'll be perfectly safe then, right?"

Lily said, "Dumbledore told us that Voldemort could press his face to the windows of our house and never know we were inside with this Charm."

"So that's good then," Sirius said. Neither of them spoke, and Sirius knew there was something they weren't telling him. "Look, whatever Dumbledore said..."

"We can't talk about it," James repeated dully. He looked up, past Sirius's shoulder to Lily and Harry. Sirius saw James's eyes linger on his son, and suddenly they were wet. Sirius could not imagine what Dumbledore could have told them, and he watched James until he looked up.

"Sirius," James said quietly. "We can't... there's a prophecy. About Harry." He put a hand over his eyes. "Or, we think so. Dumbledore thinks so. And it means that we have to hide from Voldemort. For a long time."

"A prophecy?" Sirius repeated. "Like, Divination? Tea leaves, ball-gazing--"

"No," James said. "Not like that." He did not elaborate, but with his eyes he was begging Sirius to understand. "Please. I can't... I don't even think I could begin to explain it to you. Not even if I was allowed to."

Sirius turned around to look at Lily. She hadn't liked him for the first seven years that they knew each other; she hadn't come around until he had quit Auror training because of Remus. He did not know how he had become godfather to their son, but now she was staring at him like he was their last hope. He still had no idea what Dumbledore had told them to cause this reaction. "We have to trust Dumbledore," he said, heartily, falsely. He wouldn't have blamed James for punching him in the face after hearing that voice, but he couldn't think of anything else to say and James did not move. The silence dragged on until Lily said, "We need to talk, James and I do. About whom we're going to choose to be our Secret Keeper."

James and Sirius stared at each other and then James nodded, and Sirius thought, Please God let them choose Peter because if it's Remus--if it's me--I can't--

"We'll owl you later, ok?" James said.

Sirius fled.

"The Guns of Brixton" was blaring through the flat door when Sirius arrived. Sirius stopped in the hallway to catch his breath and listened, and there, under the guitars and Joe and Mick and Paul and that other one Sirius could never remember, he could hear Remus singing, "When they kick down your front door, how're you going to come?"

Sirius kicked open the front door, partly because he thought it would be funny and partly because he was pissed off at James for not telling him whatever Dumbledore had said and mostly because he hated Remus for making him doubt.

"Good morning, Padfoot," Remus said sardonically, and Sirius looked up from the new gouge in the sad wooden door to see him sitting at the kitchen table, drinking tea and looking thoroughly composed. "My choice was with my hands on the trigger of my gun, by the way. Hands on the head seems terribly... unattractive."

"What's a gun?" Sirius asked. "Muggle weapon, right?"

"Right," Remus said absently. Sirius stepped closer and saw the Daily Prophet spread out before him. Remus had cut out half the adverts and laid them end to end across one edge of the table and had circled several letters in each, seemingly at random. Sirius bent over and examined them, and Remus said, "Prime numbers. It works in books."

Sirius raised his head and saw Remus watching him, the scissors still in his hand. "Prime numbers?" he repeated, feeling stupid.

Remus nodded. "In case it's a code or something."

"In the Daily Prophet adverts?" Sirius asked.

"Just a thought," Remus said with a little smile. "I mean, we've read their letters so many times and figured nothing out... I thought there might be a missing component. And the Daily Prophet is something that could be controlled, and is widely read by the wizarding community... they could have put the Imperius on whoever runs the adverts and..." His voice trailed off and he sighed, dropping all illusion of charm. "Fuck, Sirius, I don't know. I just thought--"

"No," Sirius lied, "it's a good idea." He paused and added, truthfully, "It's a good last resort thing to try, at any rate." Remus stared at him, green eyes inscrutable and beautiful, and Sirius felt like the earth was tilting on its axis and sending him reeling towards Remus's arms. He stepped around the table and sat down on the cold floor next to Remus's chair, laying his head on Remus's leg. Remus's hand descended and ran through his hair rhythmically.

"I'm going a bit crazy here, Padfoot," Remus said. "To tell you the truth, I've been staring at these goddamn letters so much... when I shut my eyes, I can see some of them. I think I'm hallucinating." He did not sound scared. He did not sound desperate, as Sirius would have sounded. He sounded pleasant and kind and very distant. Sirius tipped his head and buried his face in the fabric of Remus's pants. Remus is not the spy.

"Why don't you ever have to go out on missions for the Order anymore?" he asked. He hoped he didn't sound like he was prying, like he was checking up.

"Oh," Remus said, a note of surprise and, Sirius thought, innocence. Maybe feigned. "Oh, I don't have to do that anymore. Dumbledore decided that what I was doing was... not working out."

"Oh," Sirius replied. He hated himself, just then, for asking. How could he not trust Remus, the most wonderful man alive? How could he even imagine that Remus could betray him? All of them? "I'm glad," he announced.

"Why?" Remus asked.

Sirius paused. Why was he glad? He knew there was a reason, but it was obscured by suspicion and what James and Lily had said. "I..."

"You were worried about me?" Remus asked softly. He sounded touched. Sirius nodded into his leg, that was the reason, yes, I was so worried about you, Remus, but now I worry even more...

"Oh, Padfoot," Remus sighed. Sirius kept his head where it was and drifted in and out of sleep while Remus cut out more adverts from the paper and used a thick quill to circle things, chanting numbers like a prayer. A cabalistic sorcerer, is my love, Sirius thought in the half world between dreams and wakefulness, and he worships numbers...

Peter sent the next owl, and it said that James and Lily wanted them to come over once they got it. Remus woke Sirius to tell him that, roused him from his place on the floor; Sirius's neck was very stiff and as soon as he was awake Remus ran off to take a shower; it seemed that he had waited to move until Sirius was awake. Sirius examined the table, now laid with adverts and pictures from the Prophet, and in the center, a lot of letters. Remus had laid down an enchantment that drew lines between all of them, a faint gold web of interconnection. In the background, the splashing of the shower mixed in with the scratching of the end of the record, and Sirius plunged his fingers down to the table. Some of the lines smudged, others darted away from his hands, but two tenuous ones moved forward and encircled his wrists, caressing the skin. Sirius followed their strings down: one to a letter written in code over which Remus had written "Spy?" in his meticulous script, and the other to an article about how the Ministry of Magic had made the decision to send some criminals to Azkaban without a trial. Sirius stared between the two and then the lines started to creep up his arm, as if drawing him down into the web.

"Where do those lead?" Remus asked sharply from the door.

Sirius jerked his head around to see Remus toweling his hair off and wearing only Sirius's old pants. "What is this thing?" he demanded, equally sharp.

"A Web of Connection," Remus said, stalking across the room. "Advanced Arithmancy. It draws connections that the eye can't normally see."

Sirius wrenched his wrist free of it and said, calmly, "I think it's not working."

"Why?" Remus asked. He stood before Sirius, eyes darting from his face to the table. "What connections did it make for you?"

Sirius paused, staring into Remus's eyes. They were the same height and Sirius knew that if he just tipped his head forward, his lips would brush against Remus's. He wanted to desperately, and even a month ago he would have, but in the rain-dark kitchen, with the crackling of the end of the record like electricity around them, he was terrified that Remus's mouth would be cold. Or was he terrified that Remus's mouth would be hot, would open under his like a rose and draw him in, until he couldn't remember what they were fighting about anymore?

"Sirius?" Remus asked, and it was no longer a challenge for dominance between two canines. Sirius unclenched his fists before he knew he'd been clenching them. "What connections did it make? If it went to one of the letters--I've got the handwriting down on some of them and can recognize when they're from the same person, but I don't know whose is who. Some of them might belong to your brother, and I think the Web would draw a connection there."

Sirius frowned. "You labeled it 'spy,'" he said.

"Oh," Remus said, "I've labeled half of them that. Just the ones that seem to have information pertaining to the Order... as far as I can tell. Which isn't very far." He reached around Sirius and picked up the letter that the line had led to and said, "Is this it?"

Bending over the letter, the fringes of their hair brushing together, Sirius nodded and then turned his head and kissed Remus gently. When he leaned back, Remus was smiling.

"What was that for?" he asked teasingly.

"I thought you were beautiful, just then."

"What, like a bloody girl?"

Sirius smiled and wrapped his arms around Remus's waist. "You are, after all, my girlfriend."

"I believe it's the other way around, my dear Mr. Padfoot," Remus replied, burying his face in Sirius's neck. He was still holding the letter; the metered curves of his handwriting still said, "Spy?" but very politely.

Sirius gnawed on Remus's neck and said, "The reason I didn't think it was working was because it took me to this article," he said, pointing out the piece on Azkaban.

Remus frowned at it and pulled away from Sirius. "That doesn't make much sense, does it?" he asked, that look of infinite Remus logic on his face. Sirius kept his hand on Remus's waist; he felt that if he held on tightly enough he could keep Remus by his side forever.

Another owl shot out of the fireplace. Sirius caught it and opened the letter.

"Are you coming or not? - Prongs"

"Right, we've got to go," he said to Remus, who was still staring at the Web. Remus glanced over his shoulder, a flash of annoyance at being interrupted in his thinking, then picked up his quill, crossed out "Spy?" and wrote "Regulus Black?" on the letter.

"All right," he said, all cool composition again. He broke away from Sirius to pull on his cloak.

Sirius traced his hands along the stone and brick walls of the buildings as they walked to see Lily and James. They all felt ancient, like if he dug his fingers into them he would find an encampment of Celtic warriors lurking in the masonry. Sirius thought, not for the first time, that he might be going crazy. That the stress might be driving him off the cliffs of sanity, which was, when he thought about it more, a fantastic metaphor. He laughed and told it to Remus, who made a face at him and said, "You've been sailing away from those cliffs since I met you. I'd imagine you're out at sea now."

"You know," Sirius said conversationally, "the Blacks used to have one of those big palaces alongside the Thames, back before the Fire."

Remus kicked a stone out of the path and looked over at him. "As in, the Fire of 1666?"

"Yeah," Sirius said. "It would have been quite suspicious if they'd used freezing charms on the palace and it was the only thing left untouched by the fire, but they did manage to send everything inside off to somewhere else."

"And then...?"

"Well they tried living out in the countryside for a while. They had a manor in Oxfordshire. But it was less fun to oppress their tenants and more fun to return to London and mess about in politics, so they moved back shortly and bought a square. And that, of course, is where their current seat of power resides."

Remus was watching him out of the corner of his eyes. Ever since Regulus's death, Sirius would catch Remus staring at him like that whenever he brought up his family, like he was scared Sirius was going to snap. And certainly the knowledge that his only brother, who he'd been very close to until he went to Hogwarts, had been murdered, was an upsetting thing--but Sirius hadn't even had time to wrap his mind around the concept that Regulus was well and truly dead, let alone to mourn. He'd accepted the news numbly and carried on, and if sometimes when Remus slept beside him he laid awake prodding at the dark edges of his mind and came across his brother's name, he quickly pushed it even further into the dark.

"Are they really so powerful, anymore?" Remus asked suddenly. "Are any of the old families?"

"Don't know," Sirius said. "They put up a good illusion while I was there, but they wouldn't be so desperate for Voldemort to take over if they were, I don't think."

"No," Remus said thoughtfully, and then he lapsed into silence until they reached their destination.

Peter opened the door, and his wand was drawn. "Took you lot long enough to get here," he said, by way of greeting.

Sirius grasped his wand and shook it vigorously, then said, "We got hung up."

James appeared over Peter's shoulder, looking slightly better than he had that morning. "Should I make the requisite naughty joke or should you, Wormtail?"

"There's no need," Remus said with a smile, "as it only reveals your envy."

Lily slid into the doorway as well, holding Harry on her hip. "Hello Remus, Sirius. Do come in, don't let them intimidate you."

Sirius mustered a grin, because everyone else was, and wondered why the hell they were all pretending that things were fine. He supposed that they were just used to it. He followed Remus inside and then James put his hand on his arm and said, "Padfoot, a word?"

Sirius nodded and broke away from the other three. He and James went into the kitchen and James shut the door and cast a Deafening Charm. His hands shook on his wand.

"Prongs," Sirius started, but James held up his hand.

"Haven't got much time to talk," he said, stepping forward and leaning close to Sirius. "This is what Dumbledore told us. There's a prophecy that says that Voldemort will go after the child of those who have defied him three times and escaped--that's Lils and me, or the Longbottoms--and that whomever he chooses--either Harry or their son, Neville--well, he'll have the power to defeat Voldemort." James licked his lips and Sirius stared back at him, stunned.

"There's more," James said. He ran his hand through his hair, tugged at it, took off his glasses and wiped them clean on his hanging shirttails. "God, Padfoot... I can hardly believe this is happening. Dumbledore just told us this morning."

"What's the rest of it?" Sirius asked. He didn't know what else to say.

James took a deep breath and tugged at his hair again. "That either Voldemort will kill Harry, or Harry will kill him. That's the only way. Either my son's life ends in murder or it ends in him being murdered. That's what the prophecy says." The words seemed to take something out of James, and he collapsed against the wall and slid down it, tearing off a strip of wallpaper with his wedding ring as he went.

Sirius dropped down to the floor in front of him, kneeling and pushing James's fringe out of his eyes. He felt like he might be ill at any moment. "Fuck that. Prophecies are wrong. Divination is a lot of bullshit. We used to make all those jokes about it--remember, Remus used to say it was just a good excuse to drink tea in the afternoons and it didn't mean anything, we didn't even get OWLs in it," he babbled, trying to comfort James. If Dumbledore believed it enough to have told James and Lily... With shaking hands, he kept smoothing James's fringe back until James reached up and grabbed his wrists.

Their eyes met, and Sirius knew that they were going to collapse together. They always did. James said, "You know that's not true, Padfoot. You know that if Dumbledore..."

"Then how the fuck are we supposed to fight Voldemort?" Sirius demanded, suddenly immeasurably angry. "And for what, eighteen more years? And then Harry, or the other one, they'll be grown up enough to try to murder Voldemort? And if they fail, game over? Is that it?" He shook James, hard, and said, "We've got to fight this war for eighteen more fucking years and never have any hope of winning?"

James went white. "I didn't think of that..." he whispered. "Do you think... will it take eighteen years... to teach him how to..." James leaned forward and pressed his forehead into Sirius's arm. "We have to teach my son how to kill," he whispered. "We should never have started a family. We should have waited until..."

Sirius's arm was wet where James's face met it, and Sirius said, "You'll have to hide until he's ready." He tried to think about it the way Remus would have, he tried to put all his emotions aside and focus on logistics. "How old do you think he'll need to be? Eighteen? Sixteen? I think I could have killed someone younger than that. I used to imagine how I would murder my mother years before that--"

"Stop it," James said, voice rising. "Stop it, Padfoot, stop it. This is Harry we're talking about. My son. He's as good as your son. We can't..." James's voice cracked. Sirius hadn't heard it do that in years. "We can't talk about him like this. He's not even walking yet!"

And suddenly Sirius realized that James needed him. James had called him into the kitchen and told him what he was not supposed to because he trusted Sirius more than he trusted himself with the responsibility, and because he could not contain a secret like that. He needed Sirius to keep it for him. Sirius took a deep breath and wrapped his arms messily around James, pulling him against his shoulder. He could feel James gasping wetly against the cloth of his shirt and he rubbed James's back in circles with one hand. Then he took another deep breath and took charge.

"We'll think about... how best to raise Harry later. For now, we've got to get you three into hiding. We've got to perform this Fidelius Charm. We need to pick someone to be..."

"The Secret Keeper," James whispered. "Remus. That's who Lily and I decided."

Mouth suddenly dry and stomach falling away like he falling from the back of a broomstick, Sirius sank back onto his heels and stared at James. "Remus? Why Remus?"

"You're too obvious," James said, staring back at Sirius from his bloodshot eyes. "Peter's not a talented enough wizard."

"Not Remus," Sirius said, almost automatically. "Not Remus."

"Why not?" James asked.

"The Secret Keeper is going to be in terrible danger--Remus can't--"

"Remus is a fantastic wizard," James said quietly. "He was top of our class in Defence. You've seen him duel. You've seen him in a fight."

"So?" Sirius asked, aghast. Not Remus, not Remus, what if he's the spy? What if he gets hurt? "I'm a fantastic wizard too. I--"

"Goddammit, Sirius, you're not thinking with your head--"

"I don't value Remus over you," Sirius snapped. "I don't love him more."

"Just differently," James said, his voice still soft. "You love him like I love Lily, and you can't help but be worried about him."

Sirius jumped up and stared down at James. "So what? I can get past my personal feelings." James snorted and Sirius raised his voice more. "That's not what's going on, James. I just don't think that Remus is a good idea--"

"Then who? You, Sirius? You for Secret Keeper? You're Harry's godfather. You've got to take care of him when Voldemort comes for Lily and me." James was talking so quietly, so patiently. Like all this was matter of fact.

"Voldemort is not going to come for you!" Sirius yelled. "Stop fucking accepting this, James--"

James stood up too and grabbed Sirius's shoulders. "I'm not accepting anything. I'm just telling you the inevitable." His voice was low and intense, but he had a faraway look in his eyes. "Having a child changes you, Sirius. I'd give my life for you, Sirius, if I was asked. But I would give my life without being asked for Harry. If I thought it would give him just a few more minutes of happiness, I'd give it willingly."

Sirius didn't know what to say to that, so he repeated, "Not Remus, please, James, not Remus."

"Not you," James replied, starting to get angry back. "Remus is the best choice."

James's anger put Sirius on a better footing; he was used to angry James from eleven years of being his best friend, and he yelled, "I'll do it!" And then, because when one of them got emotional the other couldn't help it, he added, "What, you don't trust me?"

"That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard you say," James snarled. "Of course I trust you. I just told you why you can't--"

Sirius cut him off. "You're not going to fucking die, James. Stop fucking saying that, you're not going to--"

"We can't change the future," James whispered. "The prophecy says it. It's out of our hands, Sirius. We can just wait, and hope. I'm going to ask Remus. It's out of our hands."

Sirius spun and kicked the door so hard it snapped off one hinge and flew back and smashed the doorknob through the opposite wall. Peter, standing in front of the mantle and holding Harry, jumped, and Lily jerked around and stared at the wall, but Remus just raised his head slowly and watched Sirius with those infinite green eyes. Sirius stalked towards Harry, but James followed him so Sirius switched paths halfway across the room and moved instinctively towards comfort, Remus. He sat down beside him and stared at the wall, stomach churning. He did not listen to James ask Remus if he would be Secret Keeper, although he did reach out and clutch at Remus's hand after a few minutes. Only when Remus stood and started towards the door, saying he needed to think about it and would be back in the morning, did Sirius break out of his stupor.

Sirius vaulted off the couch and followed Remus into the hall. Remus's back was to him as he took down his cloak, and Sirius could see his fingers shaking. He reached out to touch Remus, his hand settling on the sharp outline of Remus's collarbone.

"Sirius," Remus said, not turning. Sirius hated to see Remus's back and he put his other hand on Remus's waist and tugged him against his body.

"Sirius," Remus said again, and his slightly smaller hand slid over Sirius's. "I've got to go. I've got to think about this."

Sirius had to say something; he couldn't just let Remus leave. He wanted to snap Remus and see him break. He wanted to snap that composed face in half and find the shards within it that made up the raw essence of Remus. He wanted Remus to be just as upset as he was. "Moony," he whispered.

And Remus turned around, his hair falling in front of his eyes and his face the picture of calm that made Sirius want to be held by him until he made everything better, because that was what Remus was to Sirius: the answer to every problem, the keeper of his heart and the master of his soul. Sirius could no more break him than he could murder Harry. "I love you. Just... Moony, I love you." And implicit in those words was, Don't betray me. Us. Don't betray this.

Remus tipped his head forward, a gesture of ultimate trust as he exposed the back of his neck to Sirius. Sirius stroked his hand up through Remus's soft hair as Remus said, "I love you too, Sirius." And then he repeated it: "I just need some time to think." Doubt fell into Sirius's stomach like a stone into a pond, and as the ripples fluttered out, he stepped away from Remus but kept his hand tangled in his hair. Remus looked up and they stared at one another for a long, drawn out second, and Sirius thought he could see calculations flickering behind Remus's eyes. Then Remus jerked away from him and flung the door open; Sirius heard the crack of him Apparating and winced at the magical use so near to the Potters.

Peter entered the hallway and said, "Sirius...?" but Sirius did not want to talk. He stalked out the door into Remus's afterimage.

Sirius walked the long way back to the flat, thinking he would give Remus plenty of time to think and then return so they could have a nice chat about why exactly Remus should not be the Potters' Secret Keeper. The problem was that Sirius did not have any points to justify the chat, because James and Lily were right, and Remus was the best choice if he isn't the spy.

Past tube stations, buses and taxis and cars spraying dirty gutter water onto Sirius's legs as the sky opened up and rain began to fall in earnest. Sirius was miserable and he loved London for knowing how he felt and responding in kind; he loved London for being so large and so full of ancient magic that he could almost hear the cobblestones breathing. He went the tourist route, past Westminster Abbey and its rain-stained stone walls and Parliament, the hideous ornamentation of the Victorian addition contrasting in the rain with the smoother stone of the original Hall. The old things fascinated him the way Remus fascinated him: old souls, ancient magic, allusions to more of the same written in their figures. Big Ben above him, reminding him of reading Peter Pan for the first time when he was a first year at Hogwarts; his mother had never allowed him to read Muggle books, but Remus had happily lent him any that he wanted. Feeling rather soppy, he thought, Remus has been the catalyst for everything that is good in my life; Remus has taught me how not to be selfish and how to be worthy of love.

And he did love James, and Harry, and Lily and Peter so dearly that the knowledge that their fate lay in his hands made him want to walk straight down the stairs into the tube station and throw himself onto the tracks. He'd had responsibility thrust on him from an early age but it had never mattered like it did now. He'd never held someone's life in his hands for longer than a few seconds, and those seconds had generally been action-filled as he uttered a shield charm or deflected a curse. He'd never had to decide if someone was betraying him and he couldn't stop thinking about how Remus could shut himself off completely from emotions. Was that how Remus decided between life and death? Was that how he could...

Sirius stopped walking because he was in the square. The grass was dead and the trees hung down low around familiar rusted benches. Sirius put his hands on the gate that led into it and didn't remember opening it. He stepped onto the cracked sidewalk and saw the house, between Numbers 11 and 13: Georgian construction, all shuttered windows and dingy walls that would never be free of soot, hadn't been white or red or whatever color they'd been whenever the first Black had decided to buy the place since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution. It looked like something out of Dickens. Sirius stared into the curtains, which he knew were black silk in the summer and black velvet in the winter and enchanted to stay closed at all times. His grandmother had bought them in the Blitz and they'd been such a hit with everyone else in the family that they'd kept them long after the war was over.

He thought he saw a shadow moving inside Number 12 Grimmauld Place, and he Apparated so fast and so far that any wizard who hadn't spent the last four years being trained to do magic by instinct rather than intellect would have splinched himself. Instead he landed inside the flat and collapsed onto the couch.

"Remus?" he called. "Moony?"

The flat was silent except for the gurgle of pipes. Remus had cast a Silencing Charm over the windows and outside walls the first night he'd moved in so they couldn't hear the traffic rushing by in the street outside. Sirius prowled through the tiny spaces of the flat, from the cramped room that comprised their kitchen and library and into their bedroom. He opened the door to the toilet and the closets, feeling slightly ridiculous, and then opened the window and stuck his head out into the rain to stare up at the rushing gutter. He wasn't sure what he expected to find: a note, maybe, or a talisman. Something to indicate where Remus had gone and what he was doing. For the thousandth time he pondered going to Knockturn Alley and buying a book that would teach him how to create a blood-binding spell so he would always know where Remus was and what he was doing.

The sun set behind the dirty red brick buildings across the street, and Sirius sat at the table staring at the Web of Connection but not really trying to make sense of it. The tendrils were fading, but they kept trying to creep up his arm and tie his name to various letters and articles. He didn't bother to follow them after the fourth one led him to the Azkaban article. Instead he turned his head to the fireplace and waited for a sign.

But waiting did not suit Sirius. He eventually banished the Web and laid his head down on the table, eyes open. His watch counted down the hours until the tube closed, and then the hands started around the chipped face again with no sign of Remus. Sirius stopped thinking about everything but Remus and moved on to thinking of everything about Remus: his absences, his logic, his intellect, the scars on his arms, the way he sounded when he said, "I love you."

At two, Sirius pulled out a quill and ink and unrolled a piece of parchment. He wrote down the names again--every name in the Order--and then methodically crossed them off: James. Peter. Lily. Dumbledore. Down the list, marking off those it could not be because they didn't know enough or hadn't been in the right place at the right time to give away information that he knew had been given away. He listed all his evidence for each and every one of them and checked and re-checked it. At the very top, written in bold letters: Remus. He was the only one who knew enough, who was a good enough wizard--and, whispered an insidious corner of Sirius's mind, he's got a motive: he's a werewolf and Voldemort's turned all the rest of them to his side. The Ministry offers them nothing but contempt. He wrote a tiny question mark next to Remus's name and then, disgusted with himself, crumpled up the parchment and moved to fling it into the fireplace. The flames licked up around the ancient grate and Sirius stared into them for several minutes, twisting the parchment between his fingers. He was disgusted with himself but couldn't make himself throw it in; instead, he shoved it deep into his pocket and snatched his robe from the wall. Turning the collar up against the night chill, he sprinted out the door.

By the time he reached James and Lily's flat, he'd shoved his mutinous thoughts to the edge of his mind and had drawn up a list of possible places for Remus to be: the Potters', Peter's place, with someone else, or dead in an alley from a Death Eater's spell. When a very tired-looking James appeared at the door, wand drawn and his clothing rumpled as if he'd fallen asleep in it, and said that he hadn't seen Remus since he'd left that afternoon, Sirius must have looked so bereft that James pulled the door open and beckoned him inside.

"Don't know where he could be, mate," James said, putting on a good show of sympathy despite his exhausted look. "He said he had to think, remember? Maybe he decided to go to Peter's."

Sirius dispatched an owl to Peter and then lit a fire in the grate and threw himself onto the Potters' floor. James hovered over him awkwardly for a minute before saying, "We do have chairs, you know."

"I like the floor better," Sirius mumbled. He had his legs crossed and his elbows on his knees; his face was in his hands. A sharp, panicky feeling was making his fingertips tingle.

"Right," James said, throwing himself down as well. He stuck out his hand to Sirius, who shook it immediately. "We square, Pads?"

"Sure," Sirius replied. He'd forgotten that they'd fought earlier in all his worry over Remus and spies; he'd barely thought about the prophecy. Now that crowded into his mind alongside everything else and he was reminded vividly of the sound his motorcycle made when he shifted it too soon and the engine whined with pain.

Lily emerged from Harry's bedroom and both men looked up at her. Her eyes were very red. Without hesitation she sat down beside Sirius so that the three of them formed a triangle and said, "Looking for Remus?"

"Yeah," Sirius said.

There were several minutes of silence as they stared into the flames. Sirius could see James's eyelids drooping and his head jerking every few minutes, but Lily never moved. Finally, Sirius voiced his fears: "Do you think he might have been ambushed?"

"We'd know," Lily said shortly. "We'd have had a signal by now."

"Maybe he had no time to send it out before they were on him," Sirius said. He could almost see the scene in his mind's eye: Remus, walking alone down an alley. Hooded figures appearing. A whispered phrase, a jet of green light--

"Then we'd know he was dead, there are signals for that too," Lily said reasonably.

"He's probably at Peter's, anyway," James said.

"What if the signal failed?" Sirius persisted.

"It never has before," Lily said. "When the Prewetts... when they died, despite everything, their signal still appeared."

Sirius buried his face in his hands again and listened to the quiet sounds of the flat. The owl returned, tapping on the window, and James stood and took the note from it. Remus wasn't at Peter's, but Peter was coming over.

Sirius now had no good place that Remus could possibly be that wasn't suspicious, and nothing to stop him from pondering that. The scenes now playing behind his eyelids involved Remus speaking to the hooded figures in a low whisper, involved him pulling on a hood himself--

"What if he's the spy?" Sirius asked the silent room. James, who had sat back down and was leaning his head against one hand, jerked awake. Lily spun around to stare directly into his eyes.

"You think Remus is the spy?" she demanded.

Sirius reached inside his robe pocket and drew out the parchment. "Look," he said, and James bent over to read it while Lily glared at them both.

"Remus?" she repeated.

James was frowning at the list. "When did you make this?" he asked.

"Earlier tonight," Sirius said.

"Don't you think you might have been a little... emotional at the time?"

"Maybe," Sirius snapped, "but you can see my logic. It's all written out."

"I see it," James said slowly, "but I disagree. Remus is--he's one of us, Sirius. He's not the spy. We've been best friends forever--"

"The perfect cover," Sirius whispered with a kind of horrible triumph.

"No," James said flatly. "You're wrong, Sirius."

"How can you even think that?" Lily asked. "Think about Remus. Why would he ever turn to Voldemort?"

"The Ministry gives werewolves nothing," Sirius began. "They discriminate against them at every turn. Voldemort offered them rights when--if--and you know that most of them are with him--"

"Remus isn't like that," James repeated. He was staring at Sirius.

Sirius swallowed hard around the lump in his throat. "Remus is so smart--he could easily have fooled us--and of course we'd never suspect him, that could be what he was counting on--"

"Shut up," Lily snapped. "You're the one who's supposedly in love with him--"

"You know I'm in love with him," Sirius snapped back, his voice rising. "And maybe that's why I haven't seen it sooner."

"Well, you're wrong," James said, angry as well. "Remus isn't the spy. Neither is Peter, neither are Lils or I or you."

"Then who is it?" Sirius demanded.

"I don't know!" James almost yelled. "It's driving all of us crazy, it's driving us apart, and we have to stick together, we can't start suspecting each other!"

"Shh, Harry," Lily said, laying a hand on James's knee. She looked into James's eyes as she said, "We all just need some sleep."

"How am I supposed to sleep when I've got all this to think about?" James asked, but all the anger had drained from his voice and he just sounded despairing. "When I've got to worry about us going into hiding, and about Harry--" He stopped talking and twisted his head to stare into the flames just as they heard a knock on the door. Lily stood up, wrapped in her dressing gown and pulled out her wand before she opened it.

"Hello," Peter said, staring into the room. Lily stepped aside and Peter entered, looking around and frowning. "So you haven't seen Remus?"

"No," Sirius said shortly.

Peter squinted at him and then said, "I saw him earlier. We talked for a while, but then I had to go to a meeting at 11:30."

"Did he say where he was going?" James asked, the picture of reasonableness.

"No, he was just riding around on the tube and thinking," Peter said. He paused and then added, "He hangs out there a lot. I think he told me that's where a lot of London's werewolves go."

Sirius looked darkly at James, who sighed and said, "Right, well, I'm sure he'll be here at half eight, like he said he would be."

"What if he's not?" Sirius demanded. "What if he's dead in a gutter? What if he's--"

Lily quelled that statement with a look of pure anger and Sirius lapsed into silence.

Peter looked very alarmed. "Do you think he's been attacked?"

"No," James said shortly.

"He never came home last night," Sirius said. "Haven't seen him since he left here--"

"Well," Peter said reasonably, "he was thinking about his decision. He didn't want you influencing him. He wants to do it, I think. He said he'd be good at being the Secret Keeper."

"Did he?" Sirius asked. "Of course he did." Everything Peter said was like pouring salt into a wound and rubbing, and Sirius took savage delight in doing it.

As the sun rose, Sirius got more and more upset and James, Peter, and Lily tried unsuccessfully to calm him. At exactly half eight, the buzzer rang on the lower level, and Lily sprinted out of the flat. They had moved into the kitchen after Harry awoke, but Sirius did not sit. He stood behind Peter and Harry, fists clenched to stop his hands from shaking.

"Stop it, Sirius, you're making me nervous," Peter said. "Just sit down."

Sirius ignored him.

After a few moments they heard two sets of footsteps on the stairs, and then the door swung open and Remus entered. Sirius, who had been staring intensely at the door for the better part of two hours, raised his eyes to meet Remus's and saw his lover unharmed; relief raced through him like adrenaline. A second later, as Remus crossed the room and threw his arms around Sirius, he felt such a powerful sense of reprieve that he almost gave in; then he thought, Of course Remus would put on a show of being excited to see me. He never would have shown it like this if he was sincere.

Sirius shoved Remus away harder than he meant to and his hand flew to his wand instinctively. He forced himself to be cruel as he asked, "Where the hell have you been?"

Remus reeled back and Sirius imagined he could see him making up a lie. Then: "I went for a walk to think."

"All night?" Sirius knew he could show no mercy, no matter how he much it hurt him to be cruel to Remus.

"Mostly," Remus said. "I went--"

Sirius didn't want to hear excuses. He felt sick. "Where did you sleep?"

Remus blinked. "What do you mean?"

Sirius couldn't stop his voice from rising. "What the hell do you think I mean?"

"I came back to our flat and--"

Sirius carried on, relentless. "No you didn't."

Remus's voice sounded annoyed. "After you'd gone. Lily said you'd been here since four--"

"Convenient, that," Sirius snapped. "No one to tell for sure. You could have been anywhere."

"What exactly are you saying?" Remus asked very quietly. "You don't believe me?"

Sirius lurched on, unable to stop now that he'd begun. All manner of terrible thoughts paraded through his head and he threw out the least plausible. "You could have been at someone else's place, you could have been--"

"Are you accusing me of--"

And it hurt so much to even think it, but Sirius had too much momentum-- "You could have been with someone else--"

Harry screamed and Sirius realized that they were shouting. He lowered his hand to his wand again as James snapped, "Shut up, both of you," and took Harry from Peter. "They didn't mean it, they're just upset," he crooned. "Don't cry."

Sirius had always had a problem with self-control, and now, so exhausted and frayed and distraught, he knew he was going to go on saying things until he said something he really, truly regretted. He didn't want James to stop him; he just wanted it all out of the dark corners of his mind and into the open. He couldn't keep it a secret any longer. Quietly, furiously, he said, "Don't you tell me to shut up. I want to know where Remus has been."

"I told you where I was," Remus said with an exaggerated politeness that infuriated Sirius even more. "If you don't believe me, ask Peter. He saw me--"

"Not all night. He told me already, he left you at 11:30. That leaves a lot of time unaccounted for."

"I'm sorry," Remus said, still so cold and calm. "I didn't know I had to check in with you for all activities."

"Its common courtesy to the one you love, I'd think," Sirius said. He hadn't meant to say that, and the words felt ripped from his heart. "To tell me where you're going. So I won't worry that some Death Eater's cornered you in an alley."

"Is that it? I'm sorry, Sirius, I will next time."

Sirius thought, There's Remus, pretending to be sorry. He lies so easily, he's been doing it his whole life. "I don't believe you."

"What?" Remus demanded.

Sirius felt like he had run a race; like he was hunting a wounded animal. "I don't believe you. About where you've been. I don't believe that you really were just wandering around the streets of London. I don't know where the hell you have been--"

"Why would I lie to you?" Remus asked. His voice was very quiet.

"Think about it," Sirius pleaded. He couldn't say it. "Think about it. Just think, you think about everything else, so think about this."

"What the hell--" Remus began, and Sirius broke in: "You used to go off to all these secretive meetings. You used to do things that no one else in the Order could do, you said. You used to be the one who was always gone, and I just let you go, because I trusted you. You'd come back with injuries, you wouldn't tell me what happened--you'd try to hide them from me--you wouldn't tell me anything--" Sirius felt the lump in his throat as a sharp pain, and he started to beg. "I trusted you, I love you, I'd let you get away with anything. And then suddenly you were around all the time, your job had ended and you had something to do that kept you close to home so you could--you could--" He stopped. I can't say it.

"Say it," Remus said, his voice harsh, his eyes very green. "Say what you want to say. Accuse me."

"No," Sirius whispered. "I can't." I can't, I can't, I can't.

"Do it. Don't be a coward. Say what you want to say." Even furious, Remus turned his words into a taunt rather than a yell. He knew exactly how to slice open Sirius's veins.

"You never would tell any of us what your mysterious work was--" Sirius tried.

Remus's nostrils flared and for a minute Sirius thought he was going to be punched. Part of him wished he had been. Then Remus said, very quickly, "I was liaison to the Dark creatures. Dumbledore wanted me to persuade them to join our side rather than Voldemort's." He paused and took a deep breath. "It didn't work though, because the Ministry won't offer them anything except discrimination. It didn't work at all. And sometimes I would go to meet with them and they would--they would do these tests to see if I was--to see if they could trust me. They would make me slit my wrist and see how fast it would heal, that sort of thing. And I didn't want you to know because I knew you would worry, and I knew you had enough to worry about without that too. I met with vampires, with goblins, with hags and--and others--and that's what I did."

Sirius stared at him and wanted to wound him. He didn't know if Remus was the spy or not anymore, but he could tell that Remus had all the power in the situation, that he had chosen the perfect moment to make his confession and now had the upper hand. Sirius was angrier with Remus than he ever had been in his entire life; he hated him for his control and his politeness and the way that the clothing he borrowed from Sirius hung too loosely on him. He hated him for the way he made Sirius feel: raw and wildly off center and too large for the room. He hated Remus for making him fall in love so deeply that he couldn't tell friend from foe anymore.

"No," Sirius whispered, "the Ministry never offered Dark Creatures anything. Any reason not to fight against Voldemort. And so you met with them--the ones you won't even name, because you are one." Sirius paused for the full effect of the next word: "Werewolf."

For a second, there was complete silence in the room, and then Remus's face seemed to crumple and as he flailed out for a chair and collapsed into it, Sirius remembered that it was his mother who had taught him how to cut down a man with words alone. Instead of triumph, he felt sick.

Lily said, "Get out."

Sirius released his wand and stretched out his fingers towards Remus, suddenly needing to hold him as Lily said something else that he heard only distantly. Then Peter's hand was on his arm and Peter said, "Come on. You've done enough damage for one day, don't you think?"

Sirius allowed Peter to lead him from the kitchen and into the living room, where they stood together in front of the couch for a few terrible, aimless moments. Sirius could not believe what he'd just said, and all his anger had evaporated and left a frozen, empty thing in its place.

"How could you say that?" Peter asked suddenly. Sirius looked up from his contemplation of the tattered Persian rug to see Peter staring at him with wide eyes.

"I don't know," he said helplessly. "I didn't--I just wanted to hurt him. Because he's always so... calm. Nothing upsets him. And I wanted to break that and make him..." Sirius ran his hand over his face and felt the stubble on his jaw line. "I shouldn't have said it. If I could take it back, I would."

Peter sighed. "You can't, Sirius."

"I know that."

There was another silence, and then Peter said, "Well you achieved your goal, anyway. I don't think I've ever seen Remus cry. I hope you're happy."

"You know I'm not," Sirius snapped.

"Well," Peter said, "you're not the only one of us who's been upset and worried. You don't have to lash out at Remus--"

"I fucking know," Sirius snarled, anger rising in him again. "You don't have to tell me--"

"If I didn't have to tell you, you wouldn't have done it." Peter paused. He looked very fierce. "I'm just as worried about James and Lily and Harry as you are, and you've got no right to take things out on any of us."

"I know--"

"But listen," Peter said, his voice dropping so low that Sirius had to lean closer to hear. "I think you might be right about Remus."

"What?" Sirius asked, startled.

"I think he might be the spy," Peter continued, his voice thrumming with intensity. "I don't know if I agree with your motives, but he's the only one it could be. He's the only wizard powerful enough, he's--"

Red sparks shot out of the end of Sirius's wand and he gripped it to steady himself. "Stop it," he gasped. "Stop it, stop it."

"But Sirius, you said it--"

"I want to see him," Sirius said. Peter thinks so too, he thought. We can't both be wrong. He wanted to run out of the flat and into the street and not stop until he came to the sea. He wanted to go to Remus and cling to him. "I need Remus." He started for the door to the kitchen.

"No," Peter said, looking alarmed. "No, you can't go back in there, not after what you just said."

Sirius spun around and grabbed the vase full of roses from the mantle. He squeezed the thin stem of it until it broke, the glass exploding into his hand, and flung it across the room at the kitchen door. Peter yelled as it narrowly missed his head.

Sirius said, "I'm seeing Remus. Now."

He flung the door open. James and Lily were seated with Remus at the kitchen table. Lily came half out of her chair and demanded, "What did you just throw?"

Behind him, Peter entered, holding the remains of the roses and the vase. The roses were very red against his white hands and reminded Sirius of blood. "God, Sirius, you could have taken my head off. It's not my fault you're such a--"

Remus stood up and said, "Don't. Just don't." He took the broken glass from Peter, throwing it methodically into the rubbish bin and vanishing it as Lily took the roses and put them in a milk bottle full of water.

It actually hurt Sirius to watch. "Remus--" he began.

Remus shook his head. "Don't." Gently, he took Sirius's bleeding hand and whispered healing words over it. Sirius squeezed their fingers together.

"Can we just have a minute?" Remus asked. James gave Sirius a look that said, Make things better and then led the other two out of the room with Harry in his arms.

Sirius began, "I didn't--"

Remus interrupted. "Mean it, I know, I know, Padfoot. You never do."

Something gave a twinge in the region of Sirius's ribs and he remembered all the little petty cruelties he'd inflicted over the years. Not to mention... "But I didn't mean it. And I'm so sorry."

"There are some things," Remus said quietly, "that you can't take back."

"But Remus--" Sirius was terrified. Remus had said that to him once before, after he'd told Severus Snape that Remus was a werewolf. That had been right before he'd told Sirius that he wasn't in love with him anymore, and it had taken four months to put things back together.

"I know you're sorry," Remus said. He sounded as tired as Sirius felt. "You're always sorry." He sat down on the floor, and Sirius clutched at his hand and sat down too. "And I know that, and it's all right. We're all at our breaking points."

Sirius didn't know how Remus did it, but he always knew just what to say. "We are," he whispered.

Remus's free hand settled on Sirius's leg and he felt the warmth of it seeping through his pants. He left it there as he said, "When I said that werewolves have no reason to join the Ministry, I was right. I have no love for the Ministry myself. But we're not fighting for or against the Ministry." Sirius frowned at that, but Remus didn't notice and plowed on, "We're not even fighting for or against Dumbledore, or Voldemort." Sirius opened his mouth to protest and Remus rushed on, "I'm not, at any rate. I'm fighting for the people I love--" Sirius's heart contracted painfully--"and I'm fighting because I do love them, and that's how I can keep doing these things, can keep secrets from you and can see people die and do hopeless tasks, because I know that there is such a thing as love." Remus paused and seemed to consider, then continued, "I love you so much, Sirius." If it was possible, Sirius's heart contracted even more. "I love all of you so much, James and Peter and Lily and Harry, but you most of all. And Voldemort stands for the... the forces of darkness, I suppose you could say, even though it sounds so simplistic. He stands for things which deny that a love like this exists. And that's what I'm fighting against, and why I'm fighting: because I know it does exist. And because it deserves to continue existing, because it's the most powerful force I know of."

Sirius had expected a reprimand and had gotten something like poetry, and more than that he'd finally seen Remus cracked open and exposed like the inside of an egg. "Moony," he whispered, reaching out with his free hand to touch his mouth. He loved him so much that it had become physically painful. "Oh, Moony."

Remus kissed his fingertips, each in turn, and Sirius started to cry.

Two days later, Sirius was asleep on the couch in the flat he and Remus had shared for four years when the tapping of an owl on the window awoke him. He sat up, groggy, and saw Remus slumped over the table sound asleep. With a wave of his wand, the window opened with a hideous creak and the owl flew inside to drop off its letter, but Remus did not stir.

The letter was from James, saying that he needed to see Sirius, and Sirius alone, immediately. Sirius unwrapped himself from the blanket and pulled on his robes, watching Remus sleep as he did so. Then he went to the bookcase and pulled out a row of old Quidditch magazines; he'd hidden Remus's birthday present behind them. He opened the box of Fortnum and Mason chocolates and pulled out three of the most appealing, leaving them on a plate beside Remus's head. He would buy Remus something better later; for now, he wanted to give him a quick, small happiness to wake up to. He scribbled a note that said, "I hope you slept well. Urgent business. Don't know when I'll be back. I love you. Pads," and pulled his blanket over Remus's shoulders.

It was very early in the morning of October 30^th, and Sirius took the tube to James and Lily's along with a lot of tired, disgruntled office workers. Rain poured bitterly from a leaden sky as he trudged up the grey street to the door leading up to their flat, and when James answered the door he looked just as grey as the day.

"Hey, Pads," he said, not even mustering a smile. "Thanks for coming."

"Of course," Sirius said automatically. He didn't think he could take any more bad news.

Once inside, he drank the too-hot tea that Lily made him and listened to them both as they said they had to go into hiding that night. Dumbledore had come and said that the situation was truly dire, that more threats had been made, and they had to go.

"You decide," James said, finally, exhausted. "Who will be the Secret Keeper?"

And Sirius, ever dramatic, wondered who would pay him his thirty pieces of silver. He said, "Peter."

By the next afternoon, all the arrangements had been made. James and Lily were somewhere in Godric's Hollow and Peter was their Secret Keeper; the perfect foil, Sirius thought. He'd performed the incantations of the Fidelius Charm in a trance and he missed Remus terribly as he spent that last night on James and Lily's couch in their deserted London flat, too tired to make it home.

He checked on Peter when he woke in the afternoon and promised to come back later that night, then he Apparated into the dark hallway in front of their flat. He inserted the key into the door and walked inside; he could hear Remus's slow breathing from the bedroom and feel the warmth of the fire, seeping through his wet robes. He shut the door behind him and took off the robes, laying them in front of the hearth and hoping they'd be dry before he had to go out again.

There were more Death Eater letters on the kitchen table, and Remus was asleep on the comfortable mattress they called a bed, Bleak House clutched to his chest. Sirius woke him with a hand on his face and when Remus asked questions Sirius couldn't answer he silenced him with kisses; they made love slowly and fiercely, half on the mattress and half on the floor. Sirius felt his betrayal and mistrust of Remus in their every movement, every thrust of their hips and every kiss; every time he bit into Remus's collarbone and every time Remus's fingers tugged on his hair. When they had finished, Sirius collapsing boneless into Remus's arms and both of them gasping, Sirius couldn't bear the weight of Remus holding him. He stood up and started to pull on his clothes.

Remus, always so meticulously proud, begged Sirius to stay.

"Just stay until I have to go on patrol," he said. "That's only six hours. We can just sleep here, together." Sirius shook his head, tight-lipped, and Remus continued, "How can you leave right after... after... we make love? How can I even call it that if you just walk out the door right after--"

That hurt Sirius badly, and he knew that Remus held the power again, but he couldn't resent him for it. He sank down and buried his face in the warmth of Remus's naked thigh, whispering, "Moony. Moony, please. I'm sorry. I have to do what I have to do."

Remus stroked his hair and said, "Then go. Do what you have to do."

Sirius couldn't live with himself for not trusting Remus so he stood and kissed him, a goodbye kiss. He had to check up on Peter. As he walked out the door, he heard Remus punch the wall in anger.

He whispered, "I'll love you forever, Remus, no matter what," into the brittle air before walking down the stairs to the street and swinging his leg over the seat of his black motorcycle.

Peter was gone.

The flat was empty, but there was no sign of a struggle. It looked like any other day, like Peter had just gone out for a pint or to buy a new robe. Sirius stood in the center of the flat and spun in a complete circle, staring at the intact furniture and the empty teacups in the sink. He felt wrong, sick, terrified; he did not know where Peter had gone but he knew that something had happened. He transformed into Padfoot and the feeling of wrongness intensified; he transformed back and did another circuit around the room. Fear made him cold, and he half-ran, half-tripped down the stairs to the motorcycle. He kicked it off the ground and flew with the freezing wind all the way to a stand of trees outside of Godric's Hollow. He needed to see James and Lily and to hold Harry. He needed to know they were safe.

An acrid smell rose from the ground as he landed, and he hit the ground running. He did not transform into Padfoot because he was afraid that he would be able to tell what that smell was, and when he staggered and started to run more slowly he didn't try to speed up because he sensed what was coming.

The house was gone, and the spell to conceal it was gone as well. Shards remained: splintered and burnt wooden walls, like matchsticks stuck into sand; one half of the wrought iron garden gate; clumps of thatch roof. Sirius stopped running at the remains of the garden and doubled over, hands on his knees, trying to catch his breath. He seemed to be sobbing but he could not remember when he'd begun. He could not think of much, until he heard Harry scream.

Shoving off from his knees, Sirius forced himself over the shattered fragments of the flagstone walk and through the hole where the door had once been. Overhead, he could see all the constellations of the northern sky in winter; there was no more roof. Sirius kept his eyes straight ahead until he heard a crunch, and then he looked down and saw that he'd stepped on James's glasses. They were lying in a pool of blood. Gingerly, he lifted his foot and raised his eyes from James's staring, blank face. They were at another doorway, and James's arm was flung across it, as if he had died trying to stop someone from entering.

The charred white bits of a burned child's crib lay just inside, and Sirius forced himself to move forward, beyond James. Lily was slumped against what little remained of the crib. Dark, noxious blood oozed from a deep cut below her open left eye; it was her only sign of injury, but she was clearly just as dead as James.

Harry screamed again, very close, and Sirius bent over and shifted aside the pieces of the crib with shaking hands until he found the baby. He lifted Harry up and cradled him in his arms, crooning meaningless words.

"Who's there?" someone yelled. Sirius smoothed his hand across Harry's bleeding forehead and saw a lightning bolt-shaped scar there, beneath his fingers. He could feel the magic tingling in the air; it was earthy and almost magnetic in its power. He was unafraid as he put his hand on his wand and waited for what would come; vaguely, he knew that the dark corners of his mind had been unlocked and all the horrors he'd been pushing into them were going to come rushing out soon, but he felt like he was trapped in a nightmare and unable to run fast enough as a giant came through the broken doorway. James's glasses crunched again.

"Sirius? Tha' you?"

It was Hagrid. Sirius sighed and took the hand from his wand and hugged Harry more tightly against his chest. "Yes, it's me."

"Wha' happened?" Hagrid asked, his voice tinged with awe and fear.

"I don't know," Sirius said, and he didn't. He couldn't begin to imagine how Harry could be alive and screaming amidst this wreckage, or where Voldemort or whatever Death Eaters he'd sent to the do the job could have gone. All he knew was that somewhere, a rat had jumped ship. The thought made him want to giggle, but he repressed it.

"Dumbledore tol' me ter get Harry," Hagrid said, reaching out to Sirius like he was contagious. "He's supposed ter go ter his aunt and uncle now."

Sirius shook his head. He was shaking violently and might have been squeezing Harry a little too hard. "No, I'm his godfather. He needs to stay with me."

"Dumbledore said he was goin' ter them, and I'm goin' ter follow his orders," Hagrid said. He wouldn't step forward, over James's body, and enter what had been the nursery.

"No, please," Sirius said. "Please, let him stay with me."

Hagrid said, more gently, "He'll be safer there than here."

And Sirius knew that Hagrid was right. He left the nursery behind and led Hagrid to his motorcycle. "Take him on this," he said. "It's the fastest way to get him to safety."

Hagrid stared at the motorcycle, and then back at Sirius. "Are yeh sure?" he asked, and Sirius nodded. He had no need for it anymore. His life had condensed down to one purpose, and that was revenge. He would murder Peter Pettigrew if that was the last thing he did. Dumbledore would make sure Harry was safe; Remus would make sure he was raised well. Sirius raised the sleeve of his robe and wiped the blood from Harry's scar as gently as he could. Then he tipped his head down and kissed the baby's warm forehead, whispering, "I love you, Harry." He handed him to Hagrid and walked away from Godric's Hollow without looking back. He thought that if he did, he wouldn't be able to move forward again.

It took a night's dedicated searching, the laying down of tracking spells and the chanting of various incantations, but Sirius was still surprised that he found Peter so quickly. As if they'd been drawn by magnets, they met in a crowded London street. Peter squared off with his back to a red Royal Mail truck and Sirius stood ten feet away from him, exactly where he'd apparated to, in front of an Indian restaurant. There were Muggles everywhere, cars and buses rushing by in the morning hours, an airplane slicing through the suddenly blue sky.

Peter screamed, "James and Lily, Sirius! How could you?" as Sirius drew his wand, but Peter must have had his wand clenched behind his back because before Sirius could utter the killing spell, Peter had screamed in pain and the entire street erupted in chaos. Sirius walked through the crowds of Muggles trying to flee, through the smoke and the sudden rush of water from the water main broken open in the middle of the street, past bloodied bodies, until he came to a pile of bloody robes and saw the finger lying there. Not two feet away was a sewer grate, and as Sirius stared from the finger to the grate he knew exactly what had happened. He started to laugh, a terrible, broken sound, like a dog barking in pain and fear, as he stood beside the gaping crater of the street and imagined the rats scuttling through the pipes.

He was still laughing like that when the Aurors came and took him to Azkaban.