Thicker than Water (Marauders Era) PART II

31 October, 1995 - Graveyard (II)

Much of the autumn passed uneventfully for Lavinia, who was largely able to go about her life as she normally would have with a few notable exceptions. She had to be - and was - careful at work because though the inspectors had left, Lavinia wasn't at all foolish enough to believe that didn't mean eyes weren't still on her. And, for very similar reasons, she visited Sirius perhaps less often than she would have liked to in the name of safety. Because safety really did have to come first, as much as it so frequently rankled her and they simply couldn't afford to draw attention to themselves or Headquarters by constantly showing up at the place.

Another byproduct of this was that Dumbledore still wasn't holding proper meetings and as a result, it seemed that much of the Order had been reduced to passing information by word of mouth. Not that there was much information in the first place.

All anyone seemed to know for sure was that the Dark Lord was laying low and pulling strings as discreetly as he possibly could. Amassing armies, no doubt. Making sure each and every little tiny detail was as in place as it possibly could be before he broke into the open and started an all out war. But for now, with the Ministry so kindly looking the other way, the Dark Lord was doing his utmost to stay out of sight.

And this was the Order's current problem. Because they knew there were armies. They knew creatures and people being recruited or blackmailed to his cause. But they had no idea where those creatures or people were. And they couldn't do much in the way of finding them because most everyone in the Order had jobs they couldn't just up and leave. Besides which, with Ministry eyes on all of them, there was no sense in doing anything even remotely suspicious.

So they gathered what information they could and guessed at the rest, all of them all too aware of exactly how in the dark they really were.

It was, if Lavinia was honest, more terrifying than it had been last time when they had known if not exactly, then at least generally, what the Dark Lord was doing and planning. But now... now no one even knew when the war would start properly. No one knew how big it would be. No one knew anything, it seemed, beyond the fact that one day, something was going to happen. And they needed to be prepared when it did.

Of course, nothing about that knowledge was remotely comfortable so Lavinia spent plenty of time just trying to make herself less stressed. Less worried. Less panicked.

And Sirius was her go-to on that front.

Not that he himself wasn't stressed. He was. But it manifested mostly as restlessness and there was, quite frankly, nothing Lavinia could do about that. So she offered her company and found some small comfort in the knowledge that at least she wasn't alone. At least there was one person who was safe. At least there was some small bright spot in the world right now.

That bright spot wasn't Sirius, per se, because if Lavinia was honest, he was a bit sullen and down more often than not. No, the bright spot was in the way she saw him trying. Saw him doing his best not to complain. Not to wallow. The way she knew he tried. For her. Tried to smile. Tried to hope. Tried to enjoy what moments of distraction and freedom she could offer. Because it was all she could offer. And it meant more than she could say that even though she knew he would have wished for more, even though she knew it wasn't enough, he tried his best to make it enough.

Of course, there were days when the restlessness bled through. When Sirius was agitated and on edge and it showed. But she honestly didn't mind these days. Because she would never have asked him to shove it down and push it away. She would never have asked him to pretend for her or lie to her. She just asked that he did his best to work with the world as it was. That his best wasn't perfect was inevitable because of course, he was human. So loved him for trying. And she did her best to help in every small way she could. And on days when no matter how hard either of them fought, it just wasn't enough, she was simply there. And she hoped it helped.