All in the Family

Chapter 190: The Final Hiding Place

There was nobody to catch Regulus this time as he tumbled through the air without support. There was one single moment of the world rushing past him in the dying sun to see the solid block of water they were about to impact, the fear that gripped him tight flashing a green light in his eyes before wosh!

It clogged his nose and filled his clothes, impact knocked the scream out of him and smothered his air long before the first bubbles began escaping his lips and the water was everywhere. Pulling him down, grabbing and reaching with too many hands impossible to break, there was no fire, nobody coming to his rescue as his hair distorted the world of murky lake that would be his end.

The horcrux, his last frantic thought, had he still managed to fail this time, was he dragging it to the bottom to be held by an inferius forever...wait...he couldn't breathe...

Air rushed into his face like a physical punch, his hair was wrapped around his throat like a collar still choking him, he coughed and sputtered and was still trying to pull desperately away, "Reg! Stop, fighting!" His hair tightened around him, constricting his windpipe, but the grip was too strong, choking him in a headlock-

"Sirius! You're just making it worse!"

"Swim Peter, I've got him!"

His body gave out on him as his tunnel vision began to narrow, but he was still moving, his useless muscles batting feebly as Sirius's voice finally registered, "almost there Reg, stay lax, I got it."

The rocky shore jabbed unpleasantly against every bruised bit of skin, another pair of hands were trying to grab at him as his fluttering eyes still couldn't see past the dripping murderous water and his own hair, but he knew that voice, "will you let go of him now!"

"He was going to drown you he was fighting back so hard!" Flump, his neck was finally released as he was dropped with a noisy clatter on land. "You're welcome!"

Sirius watched in legitimate concern as Peter rolled Regulus onto his side, but the kid was already coughing up water and rubbing at his throat, so he'd feel bad for the way he'd rescued him later as he sloshed back into the water.

Frank was encouraging Lily and Alice to swim with complete confidence on his part, while the girls were handling themselves well enough on his instructions and instinct to stay afloat. He was already slogging back in waist deep by the time they were stumbling around on the scattered mess of pebbles promising dry land, eyes scanning desperately as he rushed past. "Remus! James!"

Moony had told him to go grab Reg, his little brother was about to drown himself along with Peter he'd been panicking so hard fighting against Wormtail, while Remus had swam confidently to where James had impacted and still not resurfaced. "Prongs! Moony!" He was drawing his wand with half a mind to summon them from the depths and still get there in time! It had gone against his first instinct, but dammit he'd forced himself to go grab the kid and now, now-

Remus kicked himself to the surface not a foot in front of him, gasping and coughing, a bubble head charm on James who was trembling but breathing in his arms. Sirius made an inhuman noise of relief as he grabbed his brother's other arm while Remus kept his hold struggling to get his feet under them both.

"Tell me you didn't do anything stupid back in Gringotts," Remus rasped, but he was smiling of all damn things as they began dragging Prongs's scrawny ass to shore.

"You didn't do anything stupid," Sirius parroted with the most relieved smile on his face imaginable.

"If he hadn't just almost drowned you I would be right now," Remus spat a bit of water out and dropped James unceremoniously, falling to his own knees and still coughing.

"Promises, promises," Sirius smirked as he squatted beside him, rubbing his back and still watching James as he finally began to uncurl from his position, but his wand hand was shaking too bad, he couldn't get the goldfish bowl off his head because his other hand was still stubbornly clutching onto Hufflepuff's cup.

Sirius reached over and pulled it off with a pop. "Quick thinking," Sirius congratulated as he fell back on his own butt.

"Knew I'd panic the second I saw the water," he muttered, eyes shut and still trembling. "Got lucky getting the incantation right on the first try." He used his hands in a desperate claw like motion to continue dragging himself farther to shore then, but he wasn't making much progress with both hands full. His instinct to get away from the water was clearly not abated as it lapped at his shoes. He wished he'd thought of the hover charm first to not make contact at all, but his first instinct had been to fear his air being deprived again.

Sirius got his arms under him and half lugged him as far inland as he could before finally sitting back as well, while Remus flopped down beside them already wringing out his yellow robes in protest.

"You listened to me," Moony said in something close to awe as he pushed his sopping hair out of his face to really look at him. "Glory Padfoot, you actually trusted me to grab him."

"How many times I got to tell you I trust you," he whispered, his heart hammering nearly as hard as it had moments ago as he watched him, hoping, waiting...

Remus smiled, he relaxed and even blew him a kiss, the ruddy sap, but then he summoned the book which came shooting out of the water and taped it to be dry like nothing had happened. Sirius swallowed his disappointment and rubbed his knuckles against James's chest to keep him muttering curses and refusing to look at the dragon on the opposite shore for his own sanity.

Lily came stumbling over then, her eyes on James and looking back at the lake as she softly asked if there was anything she could do.

James heard that though and sat up, as dramatic as the git could be he apparently wasn't going to play up this sob fest as he immediately began bragging to her he'd got the bubble head charm right before her, and that old argument bubbled up between them once more as they spared and laughed.

Frank was holding Alice, the two laughing softly about his many years of his mother's paranoia making him an excellent enough swimmer he could have rescued all seven of them without catching a breath, it was a Birmingham moment right there for only them.

Regulus and Peter were snickering to themselves about crossing something off a list of places, Sirius didn't listen in long enough to follow. He sat on the shore in the dying sun and tried to tell himself he wasn't being a coward for still wanting to break up with him. It wasn't really working.

The last time Remus and James had agreed on something, he had most definitely been the one in the wrong.

Maybe he did have intimacy issues, maybe he was looking for a reason to leave rather than trying to work it out with Remus. Was it unrealistic to expect a compromise in every disagreement they had? Was this even a disagreement and he was still trying to change Moony too?

Breaking up with him would probably even make it worse, if he broke this off with Remus than what was that telling him? He refused to stay for a just in case, when that was the exact opposite of what he wanted Moony to not keep thinking about himself!

What if he did figure that out with someone, it just wasn't him?

The smile that had been on Remus' face when he heard of Teddy had shattered him. The excitement, the joy Harry had not seen in his teacher during the entirety of these books for that one moment was like nothing Sirius could ever hope to give him.