Thicker than Water (Marauders Era)

24 June, 1994 - Mistakes

This, Lavinia had decided, was a complete and utter disaster. For multiple reasons. Remus was looking at her like he wanted to demand answers she didn't have and Sirius... Well. Sirius being here was apparently enough to throw every scrap of reason right out of her head. She hadn't meant to be mean. She hadn't meant to snap or start so rudely. She hadn't meant to do any of this, actually, but there were too many parts of her, all screaming and clamoring to get their voices heard and none of them was winning and in the chaos the anger was all that was slipping through and she wasn't thinking before she spoke, she was just... just feeling. And what she felt was pain. It had started the moment he'd spoken those words.

I'm here to see you.

How many times had she wished and prayed and hoped and dreamed he would show up at her door and say those words? How many hours had she spent on that couch waiting for him to come home? And he hadn't. And as the years had worn on, she'd given up on it. Given up on him. And then he'd escaped and there had been a moment, a brief blip where she'd thought maybe, maybe he would come home, if just for a moment. Maybe. But he hadn't. He had once again put revenge first.

And now he sat there and those words had been full of hope and excitement and... and the presumption of it snapped something free and sent her spiraling back into those days when she had waited and waited and waited for him to come home. When she had given him more and more time and he had taken it all to hunt down a friend. When he had chosen not her and not Remus and not Harry, but rather the rage in his heart. When he had loved the dead more than the living.

And now he sat there in this house and said those words.

I'm here to see you.

Like she would want to see him. Like he had any right to waltz into her home just because he wanted to see her. He had left. He had chosen. He had wasted that chance she had given and he didn't get to undo it now. Even if she wished he could. Even if she wished she could absolve him of every fault and mistake. Wished she could forget those four long days when he had had a choice. But she couldn't forget. And she couldn't absolve him. Which, she realized, maybe meant that she had never forgiven him in the first place.

And in case that hadn't been enough, standing here in front of him and Remus, hot words rising from her throat and his... all those reasons she'd had for her anger and her silence and her secrets... they felt foolish and insignificant and selfish. Because they were. They always had been. Of course, it was easy now to say what she should have done. Easy to look back and say that she had been awful and self absorbed and blinded. Easy because it had been twelve years and in that time, the pain had faded even if it hadn't vanished. It had waned. And it was easy to forget exactly how much that hell had hurt. Exactly how hard it had been to breathe, much less fight for Sirius or Harry or anyone.

In addition to which, she had learned things as the time had passed that made hindsight all the clearer. Some of them over the years, about herself and her grief and about Sirius and his, and others... others just this afternoon.

Innocent.

Not just of the betrayal of but of those murders and Peter... Peter. Her small friend who had been so afraid in those days. So petrified of everything. Her friend who it had been all too easy to forgive because she had known, deep down, that she too would have thrown away the whole damn world to save the people she loved. Which didn't make it okay. Didn't make his actions anything other than awful, but... but it made them a little bit more understandable. Because as much as it killed her to know it, she didn't think James and Lily and Sirius and even Remus had been counted among Peter's friends at the end. Indeed, she rather thought he had seen them as little more than people who had given up on him. And that didn't make it their fault. Didn't make it anyone's fault but Peter's, but it did make her understand it, at least a little bit.