minnow // sirius black

thirty-three

33 : wedding

Lily and James were in their cottage in Godric's Hollow by New Years, which we then spent at there.

I was nervous, the entire time, since their home wasn't under the Fidelius charm, and anyone could look into the living room window and see me.

So, Lily and James put up the darkest curtains they could, putting as many silencing charms as they could around the entire place, and we sat in the living room, drinking sparkling apple cider while we waited for midnight.

Sirius, Esme and I stayed the night there, the door locked against any kind of physical or magical attempts to open it - tested by James. I didn't sleep well, fearing that anyone could come in the house looking for me. James hadn't been too secretive while getting a large sum of money out of Gringott's, and he signed his real name on the deed. If someone was looking hard enough, they could find Lily and James.

They promised me that they were safe, that they had charmed the hell out of the cottage, redoing them everytime they came home. They never left the house without a small glamour spell, and they never left and came back as the same person.

I pointed out that the neighbors were probably concerned as to why they never saw the same people coming in or out of the cottage, but James assured me that the neighbors weren't watching.

The longer that my parents were dead, the more difficult it was realizing that they were gone.

Esme stood on her own in late February, taking a few steps by Remus' birthday, and by James and I's birthday, she was walking in small strides. Lily and James were overjoyed, happy that she would be able to stand and walk at their wedding, which they scheduled for late April.

She started speaking too, little words here and there. Her first word was, "Bis," as in Biscuit. Esme loved that snake, and the only reason we knew that it was him she meant was because she'd scream it while pointing at his tank.

When she first stood, I had immediately went to write to my parents. I grinned, hugged Esme and told her I loved her, before I went to my room and grabbed a piece of parchment and a quill. I wrote 'Dear Mum' before I remembered, and practically fell to the floor, my heart in pieces all over again.

I scratched Mum out, and wrote to Lily and James instead. I then wrote to Remus, who sent back a letter that his Mum was getting worse.

Remus came to visit a few weeks later, in early April, and when he left, Sirius asked why he didn't come around often. When I told him that his mother was dying, Sirius deflated. I didn't mention it, but we both knew that his own father's health was declining - Regulus wrote to Sirius often, even if Sirius never replied.

Regulus' first letter was quite a terrifying shock. James and Lily had received it, inclosing it in a letter of their own, promising that they had checked it for tracking spells and other things of that sort.

Sirius opened it, reading it aloud to me, his voice strained.

Regulus wrote about how tense Hogwarts had become - without the Marauder's (a stupid name the boys had started calling us when we were young teenagers, we guessed the school caught on), life was boring. He congratulated us on Esme, admitting that he had heard that I was pregnant through eavesdropping on a conversation between Dumbledore and McGonagall, but that he had not told anyone he knew was involved with Voldemort. He wrote about how Orion had gotten even more ill, and that they didn't think he had much longer. He wrote that he would keep Esme a secret from the Death Eaters, just as Walburga was keeping her a secret from Orion, and any other visitors that might be interested in the birth of a new Black.