It Meant Family

31st of October 1981 - part 2

"Even when survival feels like a performance, it is still an artform. Staying alive is a skill and you are so talented, girl." - Guilt Doesn't Live Here Anymore, Blythe Baird

Potter Residence, Godric's Hollow, Scotland

Harry had been crying for what it  felt like hours, he grew colder as the night fell deeper. There was no telling if anyone would ever find him. As he kept weeping and no one came to hug him into comfort, he felt utterly alone.

A loud thud caught his attention from the outside of the cottage, he heard footsteps approaching quickly. A grown man, not much younger than his own father, knelt beside his mother's body, sobbing. He tried to speak, but no words seemed to be formed properly; he held her torso in his arms and allowed his tears to fall into her clothes. The man was fairly pale and carried in the middle of his face a rather large and pointy nose, his hair was oddly straight and seemed to not have been washed in a long time, he wore black robes and carried a large tattoo on his forearm. Harry had never seen such devastation on someone's face.

The man didn't seem to notice him, having the sound of his own crying overpower Harry's, but when the boy let out a loud scream in between his tears, in something like a tantrum, Snape, the man, looked up in shock, he stood up and stumbled in his own feet as he took a step back, freezing himself against the bedroom wall, looking at Harry as something cursed that could kill in close proximity. After a few seconds of processing, he ran out as fast as he had run in.

It took another few moments until the sound of a deafening muggle engine and a blinding white light came through Harry's window. He heard a loud thud from outside just as the charmed muggle engine landed on the street.

"How dare you show up here?" A voice growled in a wolf-like manner. "This is your fault, you mutt." He spat. "I'll kill you, I will!" But he wouldn't, the voice sounded scared and unsure even if extremely angry.

"It wasn't me!" A second voice yelled, the first voice asked for clarification in tone of confusion, uncertainty and relief. "I wasn't the secret keeper," the voice explained, "it was Peter." He spewed out the words like poison, his voice filled with rage and disgust.

"I don't believe you, you're a liar." The first voice protested, it seemed unable to conceive that plans had been changed without his knowledge.

"Don't take it personally" the second voice gave a very dog-like bark "not even Dumbledore knew!"

After a few moments of uncertain silence the second voice screeched painfully like an injured animal and fell into hopeless tears. Harry noticed they were closer, no longer on the porch, but inside the house.

"Harry!" The first voice remembered and the boy seemed to find it familiar, he had heard it before, both of them, even the name they had mentioned, Peter, it belonged to a man, one with a forearm tattoo, to his parents the name had meant family.

Two men walked into the room uncertain, the first voice belonged to the taller one, he was fairly thin and his clothes were rather large to his body, he slouched compared to the other, he seemed older too, his face was scared, but he didn't look menacing. That was Remus, Harry thought, he was family. The other man was shorter, everything about him seemed perfect, his face symmetrical, his clothes clean and ironed, his posture flawless and even as he cried, from the loss of the man who was his brother through everything but blood, he looked confident. That was Sirius, he was the man-dog, he was family too.

The shorter man walked up to the boy's crib and held him in a hug of comfort. Remus knelt beside Lily's body and closed her glassy eyes with his delicate bony fingers, he got up and walked towards Sirius and Harry,