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

Custom

It is time I learned the custom of my husband's people. - Robert Aspirin

That week, his first week in this strange, inverted world, Sirius began to fall into a pattern. Lily would wake him in the morning with a kiss. As much as he hated romantic contact with the woman he still saw as his best friend's wife, it was better than other amorous interaction of which he could think. He would eat his breakfast, always-damnable eggs, as quickly as he could and then head off for work at the Black Family Funeral Home. Everyday he quietly thanked the powers that be for placing the mortuary close to his flat so Muggle money, trains, buses, or automobiles would not confuse him. Sirius shuddered at the thought of his regrettable attempts to drive a Muggle automobile. He would then spend his full day at work. Severus would be proud, he reflected on Wednesday, as he worked skillfully at the computer. Well, a critical voice at the back of his mind amended, more skillfully than his original Sunday endeavor. After work, though he would always work later than Regulus, he would return straight home. Lily often tried to amuse him with her television and videos, but they confused him and he felt that he should understand them.

Sirius was trying his best to acclimate himself. He really was. On Tuesday morning, though, Lily caught him crying in the shower. Regulus often asked him why he was working long hours, were he and Lily having problems. Once he got lost on his way home, taking Benson Road instead of Saxon Lane. When Peter visited, to return Lily's Tupperware, Sirius hid himself in the bedroom for an hour, not trusting himself to act properly around the traitor's counterpart. The worst thing was that he could see the suspicion and confusion in Lily's eyes, the same confusion that marred them back in 1980. But this time he could not have James soothe away her fears, explain that Sirius was not the traitor. Because this time, Sirius did not know what she feared.

He dutifully avoided Sasha, his brother's wife, after she told Lily she knew about Azkaban. There were several possibilities that lay in that direction. One was that Severus told Sasha about Sirius. He doubted that the greasy-haired doctor would do so, and he really did not want to think of his ally and friend as a person who would so easily betray his trust. Uneasy thoughts also came as to why Severus would tell Sasha such a thing. A second possibility was that Sasha had come through the Veil, herself. That would make his sister-in-law a traitor of the highest order - but not a murderer. It would make sense, though, that such a woman would attach herself to the House of Black in this new world she called home. Sirius did not remember any traitors by the name of Sasha, but he did not know her maiden name, and, in any case, she could easily have changed her name after passing through the Veil. The third case was that Sasha was simply mad and came up with the name out of thin air. In short, that it was a coincidence. Sirius had had a great deal of experience with madness and coincidences and this smelled of neither. The final chance, in Sirius' mind, was that Sasha had somehow met a traitor who had been pushed through the Veil.

Sirius tried to remember the men and women who had been pushed through the Veil in the '70's. For the Archway and Veil, as the newspapers had so pompously called it, were a favored form of 'execution' for traitors during Voldemort's first rise to power. Remus, who had studied the Veil until werewolves and other nonhumans were removed from Ministry payroll, claimed that the Veil did not kill its victims. Yes, he had agreed that he never saw the traitors again, but there was no evidence for their supposed deaths. Shortly after voicing his opinions, Remus had been fired. If a man or woman openly or secretly betrayed the Light, but had not cast an Unforgivable, they had been pushed through the Veil. Sirius recalled the names that had been listed in the Daily Prophet, some while he had still been at school. David O'Brien, whose entire family had been killed in a battle, was pushed through during their sixth year. Elizabeth Jamison was condemned after a Ministry official found a Dark Mark on her arm. She had been in Sirius' year at Hogwarts. Dana Lawrence had gone half-mad and told everyone the details of initiation into Death Eater ranks. Wolfgang Sullivan had been like Peter, betraying a family he had formally sworn to protect. Remus had personally executed, with two team members, Patrick Finnegan, cousin to the Finnegan boy in Harry's class. The only other person who had shared their fate was Gita Chatterjee, an Indian immigrant found nursing known Death Eaters after a major battle.

He shivered, despite the warm air in the flat, realizing that the only people who understood his troubles were crazed, Pureblood manic Dark witches and wizards. It was not a comfortable spot to be in and suddenly his book on a detective by the name of Sherlock Holmes did seem so interesting.

"Oh, there you are, Sirius!" Lily cried as she bustled into the apartment, coming in from whatever charity group she had been working with that day.

Sirius smiled weakly, still thinking about the fallen Death Eaters. "Yep, right where I always am, eh?"

Lily nodded. "And what book are you reading today, dear?"

"Er," Sirius quickly looked to the spine of his thin book. "The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes...Sir Arthur Conan Doyle."

"One of Harry's books? Why on Earth are you reading that?"

"Well, it looked interesting."

Lily shook her head. "What about that one on Winston Churchill you were reading the other night? You've been raving about it for weeks. I can't imagine you've finished it already."

Sirius shrugged and did not try to argue with her. He remembered the first time she 'caught' him reading one of Harry's books.

Sirius lay back, relaxed in bed, with a book he had found in Harry's room resting on his lap. It was a companion to the mythology book Harry had been reading on Saturday night and Sirius, having been utterly confused by the mythology itself, was reading it in the hopes of understanding any of it. Lily was in the living room, watching a favorite television program.

"Siri, I thought you would be asleep by now," Lily said as she walked into the room, her auburn hair swinging behind her.

Sirius glanced at the digital clock next to the bed. "I guess I lost track of the time."

"Is your book really that engrossing?" Lily teased. "There's only so much of dead statesmen and century-old wars a person can take."

His brows creased. "What?"

"Well, you're reading one of your books, aren't you?"

"One of my - Oh, no. I found this one in Harry's room." He lifted the book so that Lily could read the cover.

Lily frowned. "Why are you reading that?"

"I tried to read one of Harry's mythology books yesterday, but I didn't understand any of it so I figured that this might help. Can't hurt, in any case."

His wife only pursed her lips and pulled her hair into a loose braid. Then she quietly climbed into bed next to him, without trying to seduce him or even give a standard 'goodnight.'

Somehow, for Sirius, the silence was worse than an argument. He had never seen Lily, in his world, not make a comment on something that was bothering her. In their seventh year, James-Lily fights in the Gryffindor common room were legendary. If either of them were seen angry with the other, the entire common room emptied out, the other students heading to the library, the Quidditch pitch, or other places to talk and study. What on Earth had happened to Lily's fiery temper?

Since that particular incident, Sirius had made a point of reading Harry's books, as a way to provoke Lily's temper. He really found some of the books to be ridiculous; Harry seemed to be enamored with a genre known as "fantasy" and the authors were continually wrong about magic and magical beings. For Merlin's sake, he had even read a story about a friendly Basilisk! Yet any of these fairy-tale type novels were better than the books that lined the shelves in his bedroom. He had tried to read them, but the authors would make allusions to stories of which he had never even heard and required a basic understanding of modern British politics. Sirius knew the goings-on in the Ministry of Magic from the past four centuries, but was hard-pressed to name the monarch that currently ruled over him.

"Sirius?" Lily asked nervously, poking at her beef nervously.

Her husband, who still had not gotten over his time as a starving convict, psychologically, at least, swallowed his mouthful of potato. "Yes?"

"Well..." she trailed off, taking a sudden interest in pouring herself a glass of wine.

Sirius only raised his eyebrows and shoved some more beef into his mouth.

"It's just that I promised Sasha that the four of us would go out to dinner tomorrow night."

He sighed inwardly, having made a point to avoid human contact, if possible, for the week, but he had known, in the back of his mind, that he would have to face the music, so to speak, by Sunday, at the latest. "I don't see why that would be a problem." So that Lily would not see the lie in his eyes, he concentrated on forcing as much food into his mouth as was possible.

"It's just that..." Lily did not finish her sentence, but her emerald eyes silently pleaded with her husband; if only Sirius knew what she wanted.

"What?" Sirius asked, still not meeting his wife's gaze.

"Well, you've been acting odd all week, dear," she replied, almost wincing as she did.

Sirius snorted and sipped his wine. He would try his best to win this particular battle. He only hoped that Sasha had not said anything important to Lily.

"You have," Lily repeated, more firmly this time. "Regulus has noticed it, too."

"And Sasha, has Sasha noticed?"

Lily bit her lip. "If she has, she hasn't mentioned it. In fact, she pointedly avoids you as a topic of conversation, after that call on Monday night."

"Have you considered that it might all be in your imagination?" Sirius held his breath. This argument had worked for Remus when he was hiding his lycanthropy and it had covered the goings-on of the Black family for centuries, but he was not sure if it would work with Lily.

He immediately knew it did not when she slammed her wine glass down on the table. "It is not our imagination, Sirius! We've both noticed it! Remus and Peter did, too!"

Why did I want her to have her temper? Sirius thought desperately. An angry Lily was a dangerous Lily.

"I want to know what's going on in my husband's life! Who is Azkavan and what does Sasha know? What does Snape have to do with all of this?"

"Azkaban, Lily. The word is Azkaban."

"I don't care! Who is she? Are you having an affair?"

Sirius frowned at his wife. He sure hoped he was not having an affair; his life was complicated enough without adding a mistress to the mix.

"Don't look at me like that, Sirius. After what James did, I have to know. Are you having an affair with Azkaban?"

It may have been inappropriate, but Sirius burst out laughing. From the look on Lily's face, she did not see what was so amusing about her question, but Sirius found it hilarious. If you looked at it from one perspective, he thought, he really had had an affair with Azkaban, a twelve- year long grueling affair. And Azkaban was not a mistress who let her lovers go free.

"I'll take that as a 'yes,' then," Lily growled.

Shit.

"No, Lily, please," he begged. "I'm not having an affair. It's only... well, your question was rather amusing."

She lifted one auburn eyebrow. Sirius wished he could do that. Whenever he tried to raise only one eyebrow, though, both went up.

"Azkaban is a place... honey." Sirius really did not want to give her such a term of endearment, but perhaps it would help to calm her down.

"I've never heard of it."

"It's an island, a very small island."

"Where?" Lily obviously did not believe him.

Sirius tried to remember. He had never actually looked for it on a map. "It's in the North Sea, off the coast of Scotland. It isn't really anything more than windswept rock; cold, miserable, and uninviting all around."

"Then why did Sasha say she knows it?"

Shrugging, Sirius honestly replied, "I'm not sure. Really, I don't know what she meant by it."

"Very well," Lily sighed, gathering the dishes together.

"Lily," he whispered softly, wondering why she had such a broken spirit.

"Remus and Peter will be over for lunch in the afternoon tomorrow, since we'll be out with your brother for dinner."

Sirius blinked at the rapid change of subject. "Sounds wonderful," he said slowly. "I'll invite Severus to come as well?"

Lily visibly bristled at the sound of the man's name, but calmly answered, "Very well. Tell him we'll be having some soup for luncheon."

While his wife cleaned the dishes, Sirius made the telephone call to Severus. He only reached the man's answering machine and simply left a message asking him to the flat. Sirius desperately wanted to talk to him about the situation with Sasha. Thoughts had been bouncing around his head for almost a week now and he was no closer to a solution than he had been on Monday night. Perhaps Severus knew Sasha or knew what she meant when she said she knew about Azkaban.

That night, as he and his wife settled into bed, not even the gripping tale entitled, "A Study in Scarlet" could wrench his mind from the upcoming meeting with a potential Death Eater. When he was sure that Lily was asleep, Sirius checked to see that his wand was securely in the drawer of his bedside table, ready to be used in an instant. Even with that reassurance, it took him hours to fall asleep.