Candle in a Dark Place (1/2)
HP Trianglefest has its reveals up, so I think I can post this here now.
Title: Candle in a Dark Place
Characters: Sirius, Lily, James
Rating: light R
Words: 6000
Summary: Sirius has mixed feelings about his best friend's engagement to Lily, but he'll do his best to keep her safe because that's what James wants. Things become complicated.
Warnings: mentions of smoking and alcohol, swearing, use of cruciatus curse, slightly non-canon timeline. It was for trianglefest, but it's definitely "triangle" as opposed to "threesome".
Author's Note: Thank you for the beta read, phoenixtorte ! :) You're wonderful. As ever.
All characters and the HP universe belong to J.K. Rowling
Posted in two parts because it's too long for one.
Candle in a Dark Place
It doesn’t fit. Sirius has turned it around in his head a million times and he can’t make it fit.
It’s noisy in the flat. His flat-shared between him and James, although apparently not for long. Right now it’s crowded with the guests-now he knows why James insisted on having them all over-and he can’t breathe, so he ducks out onto the balcony.
Lily’s pretty. More than pretty, with long red hair and longer legs. She fills out her sweater quite nicely-even more so of late, if he’s not mistaken, and he’s never mistaken in these matters. He considers himself something of a connoisseur.
But engagement? Engagement is for grown-ups. Surely it doesn’t apply to them.
He takes another gulp of his firewhisky.
“Sirius?” It’s James. “You all right?”
“Cheers. Never better.” It’s a good excuse for another gulp. Too bad Remus made him give up the cigarettes again.
“Look, I’m sorry I didn’t tell you first. Lily wanted it to be a surprise,” James says.
Ah. So that’s how it’s going to be. “Must do what Lily wants, mustn’t we?”
“Don’t be a bastard.”
Deep breath, Sirius. Don’t bollocks this up. “You love it when I’m a bastard.”
It has the intended effect. James cracks a smile. “Fair enough.”
He has to try. He knows what he’s supposed to say. “So. Evans, eh? You could do worse, I suppose,” Sirius continues. “Frankly, mate, she’s too good for you. Don’t know what she’s thinking.”
“Confundus charm on the ring,” James says. He’s playing along, but his eyes are still too dark. It’s his Head Boy look-the way he looks when he’s going to insist that Sirius do something that’s no fun at all.
“Ah. That’s the secret.” Unexpectedly, all too soon, he’s found the bottom of his glass.
“Look, Lily’s tired. I’m going to take her home,” James says. “Try not to get too trashed, all right? I want to talk to you when I get back.”
Sirius shrugs. “I’ll see what I can do.” He knows he’s done drinking, regardless. It hasn’t improved his mood any.
James hesitates, then turns to go.
“I’m happy for you,” Sirius says, leaning over the balcony. He’s not sure if James heard him, or if he’s already gone inside.
They’re five stories up. He can see the entrance to Diagon Alley from here. He drops his glass just so he can hear the crash when it shatters on the pavement.
* * *
Lily’s inside, reading a book on the couch. Sirius is on the balcony again. He’s always on the balcony. Fucking lives there, these days, even though it’s early January and bloody cold outside.
After all, James won’t let him smoke in the flat.
Lily’s spending as many nights at their place as not. She’s nearly always there when, as tonight, James is away on a mission.
Sirius flicks his ash over the balcony. It falls slowly, the glow fading out before it hits the ground.
James is working with Peter tonight; James for strength, Peter for stealth. Not a bad team, and Sirius doesn’t worry too much about James when he’s with Peter. Peter has a great instinct for safety, and he knows that protecting his own arse means protecting James’s.
So he’s not worried. He’s not, even though they’re three hours late getting back. Three hours isn’t so bad, really. Not in the grand scheme of things.
At four hours, he’ll worry.
It’s no accident that Lily’s here. She’s Sirius’s responsibility, much as she would tear a strip off both him and James for suggesting it. The first time, it was a quiet request, made well out of Lily’s hearing. By now, it’s just understood-Sirius looks after Lily when James is away.
It’ll be more difficult, he thinks, when James and Lily move into their own place after the wedding. More difficult, but not impossible, not by a long stretch. Surely Lily must know that in marrying James, she’s marrying the rest of them, too? He feels his mouth crease up into a smirk. He has couch-crashing privileges, and he fully intends to use them.
He is, after all, their Best Man.
He jumps when he hears a thud inside the flat. “Fuck!” He’s inside, wand brandished, before he can think.
It’s nothing. Lily’s fallen asleep on the couch; her hand is outstretched and empty, the book is on the floor. He picks it up and jams her bookmark in at random, muttering under his breath. She doesn’t move. Eyes closed, mouth partly open-she has a way of sleeping that makes it look like it’s hard work.
He should wake her up and send her to bed. Even he’s noticed that she’s been under the weather lately-she seems to sleep all the time, and there are still circles under her eyes. She hasn’t looked this tired since NEWTs. James is solicitous and Lily is irritable and it makes them just a bloody picnic to be around.
James would make her go to bed. He’s not James, though, and he thinks sometimes things are better left alone. He Summons a blanket from James’s room (more likely to be clean) and tucks it over her, then drapes himself across the armchair opposite. He puts one foot on the coffee table just because he can, because no one’s there to stop him.
He casts a Tempus charm and waits.
* * *
“Sirius! Sirius, wake up!”
He jumps. Lily must have been leaning over him, though, because his head crashes into hers. It hurts. “Ow! What the fuck, Evans?” he growls, rubbing his forehead.
She’s doing the same, where she managed to stagger back onto the couch. “They’re not back yet.” She glares.
His head is still throbbing-should have known she’d have a thick skull-but he focuses on the Tempus charm still hovering in the air. Six hours.
Six hours late. He’s officially worried.
So, apparently, is Lily. “I already checked in with Moody. They haven’t heard anything. He wants us to sit tight until morning. Too many out right now, he says. Doesn’t have the resources.”
It’s his job to protect her. But he knows what she’s going to say before she says it, and he knows he’ll agree.
“I’m going,” Lily says. There’s something bright and fierce in her eyes. It’s easy to see why James loves her. “I just want to know if I need to deal with you first.”
“You know where they went?”
She nods. It’s confidential information, but James has never been good with confidential. He’s not surprised that Lily would know details of the mission.
“Better with two than one, then, don’t you think?”
“Agreed.” She offers him a hand up. He takes it.
* * *
They’re in, of course, a graveyard. What is it with Voldemort and fucking graveyards? This one’s old and overgrown and damned creepy. Sirius shivers-and it’s not just because of the chill.
“What do you think?” he whispers.
She’s staring at the church in the distance. It’s pretty enough, with the stained glass lit softly from inside. Muggle stained glass doesn’t move, though, so Sirius had lost interest in it within seconds. “I think it’s strange to have that many lights on in a Muggle church at night,” she says.
Sirius shrugs. “You’d know better than I.” Black family religious observations, such as they were, often took place at night. He’d long ago accepted that he shouldn’t use his family as a benchmark for these things-or for anything, really.
“Let’s go.”
They cast Disillusionment charms and he follows her, wondering exactly when she got to be the one in charge. He suspects that it was when she whacked him in the head. He has a brief flash of what married life will be like for James and decides that he might almost feel sorry for the git if he didn’t seem so damned happy all the time.
They pass under a willow tree. Something whispery and soft brushes against his skin. “Gah. Spiders.”
“Shh!” She glares at him over her shoulder.
He hears a shriek of laughter from above as the freezing charm takes him.
“Spiders! Spiders! Creeping where they shouldn’t be!” Unable to move anything but his eyeballs, he looks up into the tree, into the lovely but undeniably insane face of his cousin, Bellatrix.
Bugger, he thinks, and falls.
* * *
He wakes up lying on something hard and cold, his head pillowed on warmth and softness. Everything that doesn’t ache, burns. There’s a harsh, rasping sound and a feeling of something grating his left ear raw. It takes him a moment to recognize Lily’s scent and to understand that she’s running her thumb over his ear.
“Don’t,” he groans. It hurts to speak. “Stop.”
Her hand stills. “Sirius?” She’s above and behind him. The pieces slowly click together and he realizes that he’s lying with his head in her lap.
He tries to sit up, but sharp pain shoots through him, leaving his muscles shaking.
“Don’t move yet,” she says.
Thanks for the warning. He tries to form words again. “What?”
“You don’t remember? Cruciatus,” she says. Her voice is tight. “Mostly from your cousin, I believe.”
Bella. The graveyard. “James?” he tries.
“Not here. I don’t-I don’t know where they are.” Something wet and hot splashes onto his face. She wipes it away. Her touch grates. Everything is oversensitive, as though his skin has been flayed away. It’ll fade, he knows. Bella must have really outdone herself, for his nerves to be this raw.
He drifts until she rubs at his ear again. It’s not so bad this time. He wonders if it’s a habit she has, wonders if, with James-no. He doesn’t wonder about any of that. Never has, never does, never will.
“Sorry,” she says, stopping.
“S’okay,” he says. “Better now.” It’s a lot of words all at once. He takes a breath. “Like it.” Cleary they’ve unhinged his mind as well as his body.
“Oh.” He feels her hand hesitate before it starts to move again, her thumb running over his ear, her fingers tangling in his hair. He closes his eyes and concentrates on the sensation as his body fades back to normal.
Later, when he can stand up, he takes stock of their situation. They’re in a dungeon of some kind-which, unless his understanding of Muggle traditions is hazier than he thought, means they’re probably not in the church any longer. There’s no bed, no furniture at all, just a hole in one corner. Lovely.
Their wands, naturally, have been taken from them. There’s no window, just stone walls and the iron bars that are de rigueur in these places. No manacles, which is something of a relief, though not much-it’s not so terribly hard to conjure these things when needed. “Well, it’s not fancy, but it’s home,” he says.
Lily sniffs and wipes at her face with the back of her hand, turning away. She’s clearly embarrassed to be caught crying, so he pretends he didn’t see, just continues to survey their cell. “Are you all right?” he asks, keeping his tone casual. “Did they hurt you?”
“Not badly,” she says. “Not after they figured out-”
She stopped too quickly. “Figured out what?”
She starts to laugh, then, and it’s not a healthy sort of laugh. It reminds him a little of Bella, actually, which is unnerving.
“Lily?”
“You are slow on the uptake, aren’t you? I felt sure you’d have figured it out by now.” She’s still laughing, but she’s crying at the same time, and wiping her eyes with the back of her hand and her nose on the robes.
He takes a step back. It’s not that he thinks insanity is catching, but he’s found it to his benefit not to stand close to crazy people. Bellatrix is a good example, actually. “Calm down,” he tries, raising his hands as though she had him at wand point. “It’s all right, whatever it is. We’ll sort it out.”
“You can’t ‘sort it out’, you daft bugger, I’m pregnant.” She’s laughing and crying in earnest now, and it’s messy and bloody frightening, and he can’t help staring at her abdomen and imagining Little Jamie in there, ready to pop out at any moment. “You needn’t look so scared, I’m not so far along as all that. Just shy of three months,” she says.
Three months. So… November. His eyes drift to her left hand, but the ring isn’t there. No surprise, really, that it was taken. The Death Eaters have no class. Thugs, the lot of them.
“Pregnant?” He sounds like he has about three brain cells left.
She nods. “It’s due at the end of July.” She sniffs again.
“A baby.”
“Well yes, that’s generally the outcome,” she snaps. On the plus side, she seems to have decided that she needs to be the one to hold it together, since manifestly he is unable to do so.
“Huh. I’ll be damned.” Something in his brain switches back on and he rushes into action. “Can I get you anything? What do you need? Should you sit down?”
“Don’t be an idiot, Sirius, I’m pregnant, not sick. Besides, we’re in a dungeon, had you forgotten?”
He had. Just for a second.
“How-how did they know?” She still looks normal enough to him. She lacks that waddling pumpkin look that he’s come to associate with, say, Molly Weasley over the years.
She rolls her eyes. “The question isn’t how did they know, Sirius, it’s why do they care? They’ll kill women. They’ll kill children. What does it matter to them if I’m pregnant?”
He’s a Black. His mind supplies an answer to that readily enough, but it’s not a pleasant one. Childbirth is a powerful thing, pregnancy equally so. There are spells, rituals, all of them Dark. It’s actually a wonder dear old Bella hasn’t been ordered to get herself knocked up for the cause… though he supposes her particular brand of insane enthusiasm is too valuable to lose. None of the rituals end well for the mother in question. “No idea,” he says.
She narrows her eyes, but if there’s one thing Sirius excels at, it’s lying. “So what do we do now?” she asks.
He glances around their cell again, but no avenue of escape presents itself. “We wait,” he says. “We pay attention. We survive.”
She shudders. He puts an arm around her shoulder and lowers them both to sit against the wall. She curls into him; it’s cold in the cell, and he’s happy to lend her what warmth he can. He’s just debating the merits of changing into Padfoot when she laughs.
“What?” He can’t see anything funny about their situation.
“I have to pee,” she says. “Fifteen times a day, I swear. And they say it’ll only get worse.”
“Too much information, Evans.” He eyes the small hole in the corner of the cell with distaste.
* * *
At night, she shivers. “Lily? Are you all right?”
“Cold.” Her teeth chatter.
“Come here, then. Don’t be stupid.” It’s just body heat. That’s all it is. And she’s his best friend’s fiancée.
So as she lies down beside him and rests her head on his shoulder, he’s not noticing the way her curves press against him. He’s not noticing how good she smells, or the way they fit together, because none of that has any bearing on their current situation.
“Does that help?” He shifts away. There are… circumstances, which he would prefer she didn’t notice. Because if she did, she’d likely knee him in the groin.
“Mm-hmm,” she says. He closes a hand around hers, checking. Her skin feels as cold as the stones they’re lying on.
“I’ll do you one better,” he says. “Give me a moment. Not allergic to dogs, are you?”
She sits up as he rolls away. Changing into Padfoot is as easy as breathing, now, although he generally doesn’t do it in front of an audience. He doesn’t know, but he suspects that there are some stages in between man and dog that are rather odd looking. He’s seen the others change, after all; James with antlers is not a sight easily forgotten.
Ah, well. Best make it fast.
She laughs, but it’s a delighted sound. He wags his tail. She scratches him behind the ears, and it’s brilliant.
He licks her face. James would kick his arse for it, but Lily doesn’t know how much Sirius is left when he changes, and who can resist a dog kiss?
She curls up around him and sighs happily. Padfoot is several degrees warmer than Sirius, and there’s all that warm, soft fur to boot. No need to worry about… circumstances, either. It’s a good arrangement all around.
“I think I prefer you like this,” she says, but she’s rubbing his ear between her fingers, so he really doesn’t mind.
* * *
Days pass. Another questioning session leaves him weak and trembling again. Lily holds him until he can sit up and then, by mutual agreement, they don’t speak of it.
He knows nothing of value to the Death Eaters, nothing they don’t already know; the trick is to start off saying that, so that they don’t believe him. Of course, the instant they bring in a Legilimens, his game’s up, but he’s relatively certain they won’t do that anytime soon. He’s a low priority-a member of the Order mostly by association, stumbling near greatness because of who his friends are. He’s never been happier to be unimportant.
Besides, he suspects that Bella’s having too much fun with him to want to see it end anytime soon.
He worries about Lily. He doesn’t think the cold is good for her. She sleeps a lot, even more than before, and sometimes she feels hot to the touch. She has a cough that he doesn’t like the sound of. She won’t say anything about it, though. Stubborn.
Just now, she’s gone into herself. She does that sometimes-goes so far inside that she’s barely there. It unnerves him, so he generally does what he can to disrupt it.
“So,” he says conversationally. “No white wedding then, Evans?”
Her eyes slowly find him. “What?”
“The wedding. Muggle custom, I hear. Do I have it wrong? This is a… rifle wedding, isn’t that the term? So no white dress. What colour do you wear?”
“Rifle wedding?” She blinks, frowning. “Shotgun? Is that what you mean? Because I’m pregnant?”
“Isn’t that the way it works?”
“You bastard! James loves me.” She’s Lily again, snapping fire and ready to twist his head off. It’s an improvement, he thinks.
He shrugs. “Well, obviously. I was just asking about the dress.”
“You-” She stops and presses a hand to her abdomen.
“What? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. I-I thought I felt something.”
The baby? “Is it all right?” Please Godric, don’t let anything be going wrong. He’s exactly the wrong person to help her if something’s going wrong. He has a passing familiarity with the equipment, but it’s hardly from a professional perspective. “Lily?”
She looks up, smiling, and she’s so beautiful that his throat catches. “It moved. I think… it felt like bubbles. Tiny bubbles.”
He can’t help staring.
She slides a hand under her shirt, pressing it against her abdomen. He can see now that it’s not as flat as he’d thought-there’s a bump, the slightest promise of changes to come. She closes her eyes, and it’s as if she’s trying to touch the baby through her own pale skin.
He swallows. “Bubbles, eh? You’re sure it wasn’t gas?”
“Sirius? Could you do me a favour? Just for a moment, could you pretend you’re not here?”
* * *
It’s late. They’re leaning together against the wall, in their accustomed place. Why always this wall, Sirius wonders, and not one of the others? It’s not like the view is any different.
She turns to face him and tucks her chin over his shoulder; he’s seen her do the same with James, so he wraps his arms around her the way James does. Maybe she’s pretending. Would it be such a bad thing, really? Whatever keeps them sane, right?
“We’re going to die here, aren’t we?” she says.
Yes. “Why would you say that?”
“I can’t think why they haven’t killed us already.” She loops her arms around his waist.
He turns his head slightly, presses against her hair. They’ve been here for nearly a week, and he suspects that neither of them smells as fresh as they once did. It doesn’t bother him. He spends much of his time as a dog, for Godric’s sake.
“I expect it’s due to my charm,” he says.
She swats at him.
“Well it’s certainly not due to yours,” he continues.
She laughs, and then she’s quiet, resting against him. “Could you turn into Padfoot? Please?”
He’s not sure whether to be offended. “Why?”
“There’s something I need to say.”
“Say it to me. You know I can understand you anyhow, right? Even as Padfoot?”
“Please, Sirius.”
He holds her at arms’ length so he can look at her. She’s pale. The bulge in her middle is more visible now, but he suspects that it’s only because she’s lost weight. Her skin seems fragile, almost translucent. Easily bruised. She coughs at night, now, all night, every night, and has the marks under her eyes to prove it.
“All right,” he says, and transforms.
She wraps her arms around him, threading her fingers into his shaggy fur, and presses her head against his. “Thank you,” she says.
He whines.
“You teased me… about a shotgun wedding,” Lily says.
He licks her face in apology.
“No. I know. It’s not that. It’s just… we’re not getting married because of the baby. But sometimes I wonder if we’re getting married because of the war.”
He knows enough not to interrupt.
“I love James, I do. He’s a good person. It’s just… we’re still so young. To be having a baby, to be getting married. I wonder if part of it is just another stupid act of defiance, you know? Proving that we’ll go on as normal, no matter what. Only it’s not as normal, is it? Because we probably would have waited, and… and made sure.”
She’s rubbing his ear absently again. He wonders if she’s really speaking to him, or more to herself.
“Things are different when there’s a war on. They just are. How are you supposed to know?”
Padfoot can’t answer. That’s probably why she wanted him to change.
* * *
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