Three O'clock in the Morning

Three O'clock in the Morning

In the real dark night of the soul it is always three o'clock in the morning. - F. Scott Fitzgerald

The Only Animal

Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature. - Samuel Butler

Sirius stared blankly at his wife as she left the kitchenette, heading for the bedroom. This was not a good thing. He hoped - oh sweet Circe, save me! No, this was not going to happen. He would not let it happen. Lily belonged to James, not him. Not that that fact should really present a problem as Sirius felt only friendship for the attractive redhead. But Lily undoubtedly had other plans. He had seen that same smirk play on those lips before, but then the smirk, the mischief, the seduction had been for an all- too-willing James. Lily should not look at him like that.

Moony should look at him like that, not his best friend's dead wife. Sirius decided that he definitely disliked the Veil and, when he got back home, Bellatrix would pay dearly for her crimes. No, he was not going to have sex with Lily. Even if she was his wife. Oh, no. That would never happen, not in a million years. Never. No. But where would he sleep if she kicked him out of bed? The couch was uncomfortable even for one night. Maybe he could sleep as a dog. No, then someone would see him and his secret would be in the open.

"Sirius," Lily called softly from the bedroom.

Sirius silently swore. He briefly wondered what Harry would think about all of this. He wondered what he thought of all of this. This was not Hell - that was a title reserved for Azkaban alone - but it was stretching his sanity in ways the past fourteen years had never done. At least people had expected him to grieve and go mad back then. Here, he was a normal man who 'punched numbers,' whatever that meant. He was sane. He was married. He was happy. He had a family. He could not deal with this.

After shaking himself like a wet dog, the wizard walked purposefully into the bedroom. Lily was standing in front of a vanity mirror, taking down her hair. She smiled brightly when she saw her husband enter the room.

"Erm." Sirius began intelligently.

Lily spun around and removed her bathrobe, revealing a thin, pink, semitransparent nightgown. She smiled shyly at her husband.

Sirius took a quick step back toward the door. He did not like where this was going.

Lily, in her heart, knew something was wrong, but decided to ignore that nagging little voice named intuition. This was only Sirius Black, her husband, her lover, her protector. But, for the life of her, she could not figure out why he was acting like a caged animal. She reached out to grab his arm and he flinched as if it burned.

Gods above, Lily, do you know what you're doing to me? Sirius was ashamed at his reaction to being touched. In fifteen years only Moony and Harry felt safe enough to do anything more than shake hands with him. When Moony had embraced him in the Shrieking Shack, he could have wept. That was how starving he was for human contact. And, now, when a beautiful woman tried to seduce him, he did not know what to do. When he was in school - or even afterward - he could have made a joke about it. Here, though, here it felt wrong. Maybe it was because she belonged to James. Maybe it was because he felt responsible for her death. Maybe it was because he did not like women. It could have been for a hundred different reasons, and he was shamed that such a little thing could upset him.

"Sirius?" Lily asked tentatively, all playfulness gone as if it had never been.

The dark haired man just looked down at his wife, unable to do or say anything.

"What's wrong?"

Sirius only shook his head. She could not know what was wrong. It was bad enough that Snape and Harry knew. Lily could never know. Never.

Lily pulled her husband into her arms, no small feat for someone as small and slightly built as the redhead, and pulled him onto the bed beside her. Sirius had tensed when she first laid her arms around him, but forced himself to relax. He did not lean into Lily, the way her husband before they were married and grieving over James. He did not whisper his secret into her ear like he did when they courted. He did not yell at her as he did when he was angry. This silent, frozen, and very distant man seemed to be only a shell of her husband. And she did not know why.

"Honey," Lily murmured into his ear. "What's wrong? Did something happen at Hogwarts today? Is that why you invited Snape for dinner?"

Registering her voice, Sirius looked sadly on the beauty who sat beside him. "I'm only feeling ill." Well, that wasn't quite a lie. I am feeling ill, he thought to himself, just not in the way she thinks I am.

Lily knew her husband was lying. Ill or no, he had never not come to bed before. Yet, she knew better than to mention it. She knew that as soon as she said it, both of them would regret it. With a small sigh, nearly inaudible, she slipped herself into bed and Sirius followed suit. She, having had a hard day arguing with the Headmistress, felt asleep nearly immediately. Sirius, on the other hand, lay awake almost the whole night; overly conscious that James' wife lay beside him. It was not right that Lily was warming his bed. With a mental shrug, he dismissed that particular thought. Nothing in this strange new world, it seemed, was right. When he finally fell into Morpheus' loving grip, his head was full of nightmares of a furious James, a frightened Harry, and a suspicious Remus, three things he never wanted to see.

*

Lily awoke early that morning and made breakfast for her small family. She nearly had a heart attack when Sirius groggily sat down at the table in his sleep-clothes. That was something he had never even let Harry do! When she rose to get his breakfast, though, he waved her off, explaining that he could get the eggs by himself. Oddity of oddities.

When Harry finally came to the table, his emerald eyes widened for a moment, but then he remembered that this really was not his stepfather. At that thought, he smiled. This Sirius seemed to be nice - and very casual - but he would not to anything to make him angry. An angry Sirius - nice or not - was not a pleasant person to be around.

By the time they reached the church, a cathedral named St. Mungo's, Sirius was fully awake and he stared in awe at the building. He had not known that Muggles could create anything like this. When he had lived with James as a teenager, he had seen the church in the village near Godric's Hollow, but that white clapboard building was nothing compared with this. St. Mungo's looked like it belonged at Hogwarts - his Hogwarts, mind, not the red brick one in this world. Lily had to pull on Sirius' hand to get him to stop staring at the architecture.

"You'd think you'd never seen a church!" she muttered.

Sirius did not say anything. He only followed Lily to their pew and watched the people around him. When he had taken Muggle Studies (mostly to enrage his family, not because he had been particularly interested in non-magical life) there had been pictures of churches and choirs in the textbook. He had written more rolls of parchment on Christian persecution of witches and wizards than he really wanted to think about. The Potters' funeral had been in the church at Godric's Hollow, but he had only seen the pictures in the Daily Prophet. None of that had prepared him for St. Mungo's.

They had a full choir and the building was larger than the Great Hall at Hogwarts. The sun was shining through the stained glass on the eastern side of the church, creating multicolored patterns on the floor. A simple black cross decorated the altar. But what interested him most was the people. People of all ages were here - old, young, teenagers, babies, parents, young couples. At any semi-religious event in the magical world, people were segregated by gender, age, and purity of blood. Apparently they had none of that here.

After a few minutes, Remus joined them in the pew, explaining that Peter was sitting with his girlfriend somewhere else. Sirius only smiled when the man sat next to him. Remus was quite glad that he played poker. The shock of seeing Sirius Black in a church, when it was not for a wedding or funeral, was tremendous. The last time Sirius had come to St. Mungo's was for his marriage to Lily. Yet, here he sat, oblivious to the strange looks he was receiving, apparently fascinated by the stained glass window of St. Columba to his left.

Then the service began. Remus almost laughed when he saw the enraptured look on his friend's face. One would think that his parents had never taken him to this very church every Sunday until he was 17! One thing that remained normal, though, was Sirius' horrible singing voice. He sounded like an injured bull moose. Remus amended his opinion; usually injured bull moose were not quite that enthusiastic about singing. Sirius was acting like a kid in a candy store, something that amused Remus and Lily more than it should have and frightened Harry far more.

After the service ended, the Black family and Remus rose to greet the minister before leaving to go to the Black flat with Peter. Still grinning - he had finally been in a church and it was something like a museum - Sirius followed Lily and Harry to the wide, carved doors of the sanctuary. Remus had slipped off somewhere to find Peter.

"Mister Black!" the minister cried with a smile. "It is so good to see you here."

Sirius took a slow step back; never in his life had anyone greeted him with such an open smile and kindly surprised words, with the exception of the day he ran away to live with James.

The minister, a fair-haired and dark-eyed man with a kind face, only offered Sirius his hand, not commenting on the look of fear in the man's eyes.

"Er... Call me Sirius, okay?"

"Sirius it is then! Did you enjoy the service?" The minister, with the twinkle in his eye, reminded Sirius of Dumbledore.

"Yes," Sirius replied with a small smile. "The church is quite beautiful. The stained glass. Amazing."

"Well, you haven't been here for a while," the dark-eyed man excused him. "It is good to see one of the original Blacks back at St. Mungo's. We haven't seen the whole brood of you since, oh, since the seventies! I can't believe it's been that long!"

"Er, yeah."

"How is your mother doing? Is she still running her sister's farm?"

"Er..." Sirius was at a loss. His mother ran a farm? Surely not.

Before he had to answer, the minister turned to help one of the elderly parishioners down the steps of the church. Between her over-sized knitting bag, walker, and long skirt, the woman was having trouble. The minister slowly helped her out, with the aid of a young man not much older than Harry.

"Have a nice talk with Reverend Perkins, Sirius?" Peter asked, popping up mysteriously beside him.

Sirius blinked and tried to avoid looking at the traitor's counterpart. "Yeah. Nice man, Reverend Perkins."

Peter scrutinized his friend with his small watery eyes. "Nice man? I suppose he's changed since you married Lily then?"

"Er." Sirius was at a loss. He tried to remind himself of why he came to church and create a good reason not to strangle Peter with his bare hands.

"I mean, you nearly killed him when he said your marriage to Lily wasn't right."

"Oh, yeah. He said that, didn't he?" Man had a good point, Sirius thought. Why didn't he stick to it?

"Yep. And then he told you you should let Harry take your name, or at least let him participate in the ceremony?"

"Uh-huh."

"And you nearly killed him," Peter reiterated.

"I know that."

"He said he'd only marry you because you were a Black and Lily was an Evans."

"Stupid reason," Sirius replied through gritted teeth. At least in his universe, the rat had known when to shut up.

"But now he's a nice man?"

"Of course, he is! What's with all the questions, Peter?" Sirius snapped.

Peter shrugged. "Lily left with Remus and Harry. She said to expect brunch when we get home."

"What? Why'd she leave without me?" Sirius asked, wondering how to get home.

"She was quite pleased to see you talking to Perkins. Said she thought you two might patch things up. You know the reverend's daughter, Sally Ann, used to go to school with Harry?"

"Used to?" Sirius followed Peter down the winding streets of the city, hopefully heading back to the flat.

Peter nodded, watching his old friend out of the corner of his eye. "Yeah, don't you remember how he sent Sally-Ann to that French school, Beauxbatons?"

"Sure."

Peter spent the remainder of their walk chattering aimlessly about this and that, asked how was Harry doing with school, how was he feeling after that nasty cold he had last week, and, oh, by the way, was he really as drunk as Remus said on Friday night? Sirius answered monosyllabically and tried to refrain from cursing, killing, maiming, or otherwise mortally wounding his friend. He was really quite proud of himself when they reached the door to the flat and Peter did not bear a mark of violence on his person.

"Sirius!" Lily cried, enveloping her husband in a hug.

The three other men - Peter, Remus, and Harry - standing in the room were shocked. Sirius usually despised open affection, especially in front of other people, and waited for him to yell at Lily, or, at the very least, to put her down sharply.

In the end, Sirius only mumbled, "Nice to see you, too. Lily," as his body stiffened and he winced when Lily pressed against his shoulder where a Death Eater's curse had hit it, only two nights prior.

When they sat down to eat their Sunday brunch, only Harry saw that Sirius had a smaller appetite than he usually did. Only Peter and Remus noticed the downcast look on Lily's face, one that was worse than any insult Sirius could have given her. And only Sirius saw that everyone was suspicious. He was eerily reminded of meals not so many years ago, when the Marauders and Lily sat around a similar table in Godric's Hollow, wondering and fearing who the traitor might be. Since there did not seem to be a war occurring now, subvert or overt, he could not guess why these people, these friends, might be suspicious of one another.

Then there was a light knock on the door, interrupting the dying conversation.

"I wonder who that could be?" Lily asked lightly.

Oh shit.

"I'll get it," Sirius said quickly.

"Very well," Lily demurred.

"Why does he always have to be the man of the house?" Remus muttered to Peter, intending the comment to be too low for Sirius to hear, but Sirius was used to straining his ears for the slightest sound of an attacker and heard the insult. He also saw Peter's benign shrug.

"Hello, Sirius," Severus greeted when Sirius opened the door. "I hope I am not interrupting anything?"

"Nothing important, Snape," Remus replied. "Only a meal and quality time."

Sirius was shocked. His Moony was always almost nice to Snape, had always been a kind and forgiving soul. Perhaps his lycanthropy had actually given him something nice. "We were just finishing brunch. Severus. Perhaps you would like to join us for tea?" It strained him to be nice to Severus and Peter at the same time, but at least Severus was being nice to him, too. That made it easier than it had ever been back at Grimmauld Place.

"I would not impose."

Lily graciously rose and took another teacup from the cabinet. "It's no imposition, really, Dr. Snape. Harry tells us so much about you."

"No. I would not like some tea," Severus replied. "Sirius, you wanted to show me something with the computer?"

"Com-pu-ter?" Sirius was perplexed for a moment. "Oh, the computer! Of course! Come on."

Remus watched the two men disappear into the bedroom/study and Harry retreat into his own room, probably to bury himself in another book. He then turned to Peter and Lily. "So, what do you think is really going on?"

His two companions only looked at each other and shook their heads. Sirius Orion Black would always be a mystery. Now, he was even more so. And dear Dr. Severus Snape was involved.