The Marauders - Order of the Phoenix - Part Two

Time is Flying

"Yeah, Moony, wouldn't want me not to have anything to hold onto."

Remus muttered something about their being plenty for Sirius to hold onto, but never loud enough for Dora to hear him - just enough that Sirius's grin would twist into a terribly naughty smirk and he'd say, "Ain't that the truth?"

Remus blushed crimson at that.

"Alright you lot.." James shook his head.

But James couldn't say too much. Him and Lily were keeping quite busy themselves with their plans of adding to the world population well underway. Honestly, two weeks in and James was getting a bit exhausted. Just the night before he'd tried at begging off and Lily had teased him for being a lightweight.

"Evans, even the greatest race horses are given days off, bleeding hell," he muttered. But he'd somehow gathered up the strength, hadn't he?

Meanwhile, as James was focused on the process of the job, Lily was becoming steadily obsessed with the results of the work. She'd been dawdling about the neighborhood during her free period at uni one day and found a tiny boutique baby shop in London near to Paddington and she'd found herself looking at all the little shoes and clothes, tiny chewable toys and blankets. She'd even bought a tiny pair of blue booties and a tiny blue blanket that she hugged to her chest. She used her wand to embroider an H on the corner.

The H was for Harry.

She was sure - just sure - she would need the booties and blanket soon... any day now, she expected she'd find herself pregnant... any day...

Lily didn't show James the booties or the blanket. She didn't know why, but both things felt very private and she snuck them into the house in her book satchel and slipped them into her Hogwarts trunk in her bathroom. But she did spend a good deal of time holding them in her hand during the nights when she would wake up and go in and sit on the floor by the trunk, just holding the blanket in her arms, imagining what it would be like when it had something small and wriggling wrapped up inside of it.

Ever since Regulus Black had passed, she'd felt incredibly empty. It was a strange feeling, one that she couldn't shake, as though she were a jar and the contents had been removed and there was just an empty space. She reckoned it had something to do with the love magic, but she wasn't entirely sure what, and intended to talk to Professor Laurie about it when she had a chance to.

The hardest part, Lily reckoned, about Regulus's death was just how incredibly meaningless it seemed.

Lily and James had discussed at length the entire situation with Regulus and come to the conclusion that it must have been suicide which led Regulus to go to Fingal's Cave at last, and Lily sobbed late into the night wishing she could've done more to show Regulus how much he was loved and cared for, to show him that even Sirius hadn't meant the cold words he'd last spoken. She felt supremely guilty for everything that had - and had not - happened with Regulus, and she could only imagine the way Remus and Sirius were likely suffering. She could feel it from them both, and feel the tension between them as neither wanted to burden the other and how Sirius could feel it from Remus and the compounding of all that guilty making his dementor, Achlys, rise up inside of him like black smoke in his veins.

"You need to see Dorcas Meadows," Lily whispered to Sirius one night as he helped her with washing the dishes. He was drying while she washed, going about it the muggle way, rather than by magic, which was something Lily enjoyed doing now and then because it was just such a domestic and comforting sort of task.

Sirius was leaning against the counter, wiping a platter with a dish towel printed with chickens and eggs. He stared at the towel. "I know." He hesitated, "I don't really want to talk about it all, though, and she'll make me talk about it." He looked at Lily. "Am I bothering you with all the feeling?"

Lily answered, "I just want you to feel better, Sirius. Not for my sake. For yours."

He put the dish away in the cupboard and stood facing the cupboard for a long moment, staring into all the neatly stacked dishes and cups, a mixture of her own china pattern and James's.

Sirius had been dealing with things all wrong, he knew that, he was aware, but he didn't know what else to do. He didn't want to talk about Regulus, he didn't want to think about Regulus. He knew what he'd done was wrong, that the words he'd said to Regulus had been wrong, that the way he'd felt about his brother all along had been wrong-wrong-wrong. He'd messed up being a big brother and he didn't want to think about it because no matter how long he thought about it, or what words he said on the topic of it, no matter who he apologized to or cried to, it wouldn't change the fact that all he had left of Regulus was a digital watch and the promise of a letter that he didn't dare to go and get.

Once he read the letter, the last of Regulus would be completely gone... and Sirius couldn't handle the thought of that. With the idea of the letter still out there, of final words still available to him to read, the idea of Regulus having something to say to him lingered and therefore, in a way, Regulus himself lingered, too, and Sirius could pretend there was some hope of forgivness being written on the pages.

He didn't think his heart would take it if he found the letter and opened it only to find it was a letter of good-bye, a letter of apology, a letter where Regulus accepted the thought that Sirius had meant the words he'd said to him. He didn't want to know it if Regulus had said goodbye to a brother who didn't love him.

So instead of going and getting the letter, instead of going and talking to Dorcas Meadows, instead of getting better and healing and moving on like a proper person should, Sirius had made many bad choices throughout the month of April. The worst of them involving going out nearly every evening after degnoming with Bilius Weasley. This was in poor choice because not only was he drinking a lot more than he knew he should be, it also involved lying to Remus about what he'd been off doing, and also in spending a good portion of his income at the pub to do the drinking he was lying about...

What Sirius didn't realize was that Remus knew exactly what he was doing. Sirius thought he was some great pretender, hiding the smell and the effects of the alcohol from Remus but Remus knew the moment Sirius walked in the door from the very first time exactly what had been going on and who Sirius had been hanging about with... but Remus was so busy feeling guilty for his hand in Regulus's death and the weight of those harsh final words on him that he simply accepted Sirius's lame excuses for being tired and kissed him good night, ignoring the taste of firewhiskey on his breath and the way he walked unevenly down the hallway to bed.

The happiest they were lately was at the Potter's house gathered around the dinner table, which even that had it's sad connotations, with Dora's diagnosis and the feeling of hiding things from James and Lily. Remus hated that. He hated hiding from Sirius, too, that he knew and hated hiding that he was going to see Doug Melachor more often, extending his hours out of the flat the same as Sirius was -- at least his therapy was actual, formal therapy and not self medication...

The only one in the flat that didn't seem to be completely out of their minds with troublesome emotions lately was Peter, who was just exceptionally busy doing his job as a freehand delivery boy. He rushed about from Diagon Alley to a variety of muggle shops and restaurants, picking up and running the items to the purchaser, and always doing it cheerfully as he could. There were afternoons when he spent some extra time with old witches or wizards who seemed lonely. These afternoons were his very favorite, and the thing which kept him most busy.

There was one woman whom he went and visited several times throughout April, bringing his lunch and sitting with her on her porch and listening to her talk about her memories, and the ups and downs of the wizarding world over the past century. A historian of eloquence, Peter found himself caught up in the stories she had to tell about the history of the wizarding world far more than he'd ever been during classes with Binns. It had been her books that he'd shirked off reading all those years, based purely on Binns's teaching being so boring in fact for her name was Bathilda Bagshot. She lived in the very same town as James and Lily, and often after leaving her house at the end of his shift of deliveries, Peter would simply walk over to join the others for dinner at the Potter house.

Which was precisely what he was doing that evening - the first of May - when he knocked on the door and James came to let him in carrying that Quality Quidditch Supplies order form in his hand.