Chapter Text
The house loomed over Sirius like an open wound, gutted open at the side (the side of the nursery) gaping like flesh freshly torn open.
He stopped at the edge of the wards, tilting his head back to stare at the sky with wide eyes. There, casting the cottage into eerie shadows with it's green glow, was the dark mark. Even from outside of the wards it was leeching a terrible feeling into the air, making his skin feel sticky with the potency of it. He couldn't see into the crumbled parts of the cottage, the shadows curling around the edges of the bricks and the lights blown out.
His gut clenched, something terrible had happened here. The air stank of dark magic and blood, so much so that he wouldn't be surprised if even a muggle could feel the wrongness moving against their skin like an eel.
With a shuddering breath Sirius stepped through the wards, realizing with a start that they had not been brought down. In fact, the Fidelius seemed as strong as the day it had been cast. He staggered, eyes wide as disbelief slowly gave way to a rising fury.
Peter. Peter had been caught then, they had gotten him and done such horrible things to him that he had given up the location of their most trusted secret.
If it had been him, oh if only it had been him. Sirius knew then, a certitude so rooted in his heart that it could not waver, that he would have died a thousand times over before breathing a word of Godric's Hollow. He would have ripped out his very heart and laid it, still pulsing, at Lily's feet before he had even thought of betraying them. They were his only family, the only thing that he had left in the world and so had been Peter, they had been blood bound for years!
He shook his head, there was no time to stand there and feel sorry for himself when there was barely enough time to rush into the house.
He took an unsteady step towards the front door, it was closed but it had been rammed open with enough force to make one of the hinges come off, the door hanging off the remaining one and a slanted sliver of light showing through. He pushed it open and it groaned, too loud in the oppressive silence of the night surrounding him.
The carpet that he had picked out was stained with soot and blood, muddying the maroon shade of it so much that it seemed brown. He could smell it even here, the sweet stench of death, and his heart broke a little right then and there.
And then he saw it, a shape crumpled at the bottom of the staircase, hair spread out on the carpet like a black halo. He didn't rush towards it, he knew even before he had looked that James had gone down. The carpet was spelled soundproof, making way to an almost reverent silence as he made his way to the corpse of his best friend.
His wand was still clenched in frozen hands, of course he had gone down fighting as hard as he could. There was a cut on his brow, hair matted where it had run down his forehead and into open eyes, staring blankly at Sirius. He felt frozen, like time had stopped going forwards too, like the universe itself was shaken by this event. Slowly, he ran his hands down the caramel skin of James's face, pressing his eyelids closed as gently as he could bear to.
He slid his hands under the body, rising to his feet with a smooth motion and a whispered spell. The sofa had survived the fierce fight that had ravaged most of the living room, coming out of it with only a torn cushion, and that's where he laid James out. He looked smaller there, laid out on the cushions like he was sleeping after a rough shift and would jolt awake at any moment. He wouldn't, Sirius knew that, but it was easier to turn away and go up the stairs knowing that.
In contrast to the living room the upstairs hallway was untouched, the only sign being a wall sconce shattered by whatever had gone down in the nursery. He placed his hand of the handle and recoiled instantly, the metal was scorching hot and burned his palm as if it was red hot. Dread wormed it's way into Sirius's heart and he pushed it open with his shoulder, rushing into the room with a panicked gasp.
And there, as if ripped straight out of his own nightmares, laid Lily's corpse.
Later he will only remember fragments of the following hour, wisps of memory as fragile as glass. He will think of Lily and see her hair, as red as blood pooling around his feet as he bends to kiss her cold cheek, will remember how his tears has rolled down her cheeks as is she was mourning herself.
"Oh Lily, what have you done..." he had whispered, but the reason for those words was lost to him in the abyss of his fractured memories, smashed into a thousand pieces by grief and pain. There had been some runes on the floor perhaps, or merely blood speckled in an eerie shape.
He doesn't remember digging Holly out of the crib either, only the way that she had screamed and shrieked as if to announce that she had survived it all, despite all odds. Her small face had been almost cleaved in two, the white fat of her cheek revealed by an almost obscene parting of the flesh, the wound running down the entire right side of her face. He remembers chanting healing spells for what felt like hours, the flesh too slow to knit itself back together as the exhausted toddler had almost no energy to accelerate the process. And even afterwards the wound had mocked his inability, standing red and weeping on her porcelain skin.
But most of all he remembers feeling numb and then raw all at once, as if a part of him had been torn away and he was wracked with phantom pains, the limb aching long after it was gone. The tears ran down his face unbidden but he couldn't fully comprehend what he had lost. Only that Holly still breathed, and that he would do anything to keep it that way.
So he laid her gently on his lap, her emerald eyes closed and her little fists clenched as she succumbed to an uneasy sleep. The evening had exhausted him just as much as it had exhausted the child, but there is still something that he has to do.
He cuts his finger on a bit of rubble, smearing it gently on the child's breastbone and then he starts singing. His voice is rough and broken from crying, and screaming maybe, but it doesn't matter. This is an old spell, older than the library it had been stored in, maybe even older than the first person that had recorded it, it would work as long as he had blood in his veins and the will to pledge his life for a cause.
So he sings, and the blood on her chest soaks through the flesh until all that remains is a small red mark, as small as a freckle and just as unnoticeable. The air shimmers for a moment, a crackle of electricity rings in his ears for a moment and that's all the warning he gets before the spell closes around his throat. He struggles not to drop Holly as his air supply is cut off, something intangible bruising his flesh and making him gasp and wheeze.
He puts her down as gently as he can before his body starts to seize as he knows it will, the spell tearing through his nervous system like a wildfire. He bucks, almost panicked through the fuzziness of his mind, as his body automatically starts to struggle against death, blackness creeping into the edges of his vision.
Then, something cold closes around his throat and he can breathe again. He gulps greedily, his throat burning fiercely but his mind blessedly clear again as he drops his head to the floor, allowing him one small moment of respite before he has to get moving again. Holly isn't safe here and neither is he, Peter could be anywhere in Britain and beyond and Voldemort was nowhere to be seen. If his years as an auror had taught him anything it was that an unseen enemy was the most dangerous kind.
There is no need to run as it turns out, Hagrid is there when he stumbles out of the door, the gentle hum of his motorcycle's engine in the background. And when the giant asks to take Holly away from the carnage and into Hogwarts for the night he hands her over easily enough. There's a nurse there, and wards strong enough to repel an army should they come for her.
Besides, he thinks as he presses a kiss to her forehead, carefully avoiding the wound, he still has a rat to hunt down.
Peter, as it turns out, is pathetically easy to find. A strand of hair plucked off of a shattered bathroom counter and a tracking spell later and he is apparating into a dark alley somewhere in London. The bastard wasn't even smart enough to flee the country, or perhaps he was hoping that he could lose himself in the extensive sewer system for a while.
Fat chance, a nasty smile was curling on his lips at the thought of what he would do to the one responsible for this mess.
He doesn't lose a moment, a nonverbal protego shimmering into existence around him as he hits the rat with a spell that has him squeaking in alarm, then crying out in pain as his body forcibly unfolds into human shape. His curse casts first, a nasty red light sailing out with the curse, but Peter is quicker to throw himself to the floor and fire back.
He's too slow to make quick work of this, exhaustion dragging his body down and making him sloppy, slower. But that's fine, a quick execution would be far better than what he deserves for his sins.
He can see Peter's hand twitch on the edges of his vision, half white with spellfire as it is. The fingers move frantically as his own tighten on his wand, his shield now nothing more than a spiderweb of blue around his body, looking breakable as glass. He fires another cutting curse, watching as the red light sails over Peter's shoulder, deflected by the traitor's wand. More noticeably, the fingers not holding a wand slow down, rolling a black item between sooty fingers. Almost distracted he ducks down under an entrail expelling curse, the kind of curse he hadn't even known Peter could cast. His shield cracks a little more, brittle despite the respite afforded by his acrobatics. The item in Peter's hand doesn't glint like stone of metal, instead it has the dull shine of something porous, cut though with a small patch of white.
It looks like bone he realizes.
A beat passes, he forgets to cast and pays the price in a pulse of shattered blue, leaving him slightly smoking and defenseless.
It doesn't matter.
Yes, he thinks, he knows what this is. Peter was always very good at runes.
The rat brandishes his wand again, but this time at himself, his lip is curled and there is a hint of red on his teeth, the sign of a magically exhausted wixen. But it looks like a smile, vicious and triumphant as Peter whispers a cutting curse and watches as his finger falls in a spray of red, painting his cheek.
Sirius is moving before he can even think about it, jumping over a cinder block and stretching desperate hands towards the other man. He knows what will happen if he doesn't, Holly, oh gods Holly is alone and waiting for him in those halls. He needs to get back to her more than he needs to breathe, needs to press her small body against his chest and listen as her heartbeat soothes his raw mind.
He cannot think about this, his feet seem so clumsy and slow as he desperately runs forwards, taking a blasting curse to the shoulder without even a sound. All he can see is Peter, his blue eyes wide and watery, his nose already twisting with magic as hair starts to fuzz his arms.
So he reaches deep inside of him and *pulls*, he is not fast enough but he can be, he can make himself better. His tendons tear as they reform, almost making him stumble, his whole body flooded with adrenalin as he rushes forwards in a burst of speed.
Peter is shrinking, so fast that it is almost untraceable to the naked eye. But Sirius can see him.
His fingers close around fur half a second before the change is complete. Somehow it is enough, and the world warps around them as he apparates without a thought.
They both tumble onto the grass of an unfamiliar forest, Peter half transformed and quickly changing back with an agonised shriek, his pants red with blood where skin was splinched. Sirius lost something too, his ear feels sticky and slick, and his shirt is soaked through at the shoulder where he took the earlier curse.
But he is quicker, and his hands close around Peter once again, one fisting viciously in thin hair as the other sharpens a nail with a whisper and starts carving. The rat wails in pain as his neck is gouged, the runes sloppy where his hands have slipped, leaving red and bloody streaks along the pale column on neck. They will work regardless, the aborted transformation fades into ordinary human features, even Peter's ears, always larger than normal, seem too small in their blonde nest of hair.
A horrible grin splits his face, he has him right where he wants him, and no one can run with a splinched calf after all.
"Sirius, please..." babbles the other man. His lips are tinged blue now, more red flecks dusting them as a tongue, strangely bloated, comes to lick them in a desperate attempt at moisture. He looks more exhausted than even before, his eyes red and weepy as he stares at Sirius with desperation.
Magical exhaustion he realizes, and his eyes flick down to Peter's left hand. The rune is still there, glowing faintly as the first threads of skin start to attach themselves to the carved knuckle bone. Only then does he realise the mistake he just made.
He has seconds, perhaps less than that, before the rune activates. And when it does he will be nothing more than a red mist of flesh and cartilage on the forest floor, vaporized so finely that every vein of the dead leaves will still be discernable. He doesn't have time to think, but he does have time to move and so he does.
His fingers curl around Peter's, a mockery of the affection they once shared, and he digs his fingers into the growth. It slides out with difficulty, newly created tendons ripping like red ribbon, but it comes loose none the less.
Peter's face twists with desperation, his fingers twitching towards it despite how his hand looks, bones dislocated by the rapid growth of flesh, purpled with dead cells and uncirculated blood. His mouth gapes open as he attempts to form words around his blackening tongue, but it lolls around uselessly, black and wet as a fish.
It's too late anyways, the rune stone burns through his fingers as he tosses it into the air, his shield flickering into existence a second later. Peter doesn't, or perhaps cannot summon one, and his eyes reflect the red hot gleam of the item like a lake reflects the sun. He looks like a child like that, wide eyed and scared as his toy comes crashing down and a shockwave rips through them both.
Peter dies without even a scream, little chunks of him littering the ground and blending in with the bloodstained ground. The strength of the spell doesn't fade, little cracks spreading through Sirius's shield as it chips away at it.
Holly will be alone, he will have failed all three of them after all. He can't even summon the energy to be scared as his shield fails, crumbling around him as heat singes his face and the world goes black.
Sirius black falls to the ground half a second before the aurors come.