fatal love

chapter 175

12TH MARCH 1981

Sirius and Remus came home from the latest Order meeting, and Sirius glowered, going straight to the fridge and taking out a beer. Remus eyed him but said nothing, and they each moved through the house silently and separately.

Sirius took his drink to the sofa and sat down, leaving Remus in the kitchen.

"...What do you think about Dedalus?" he said, staring at his drink.

"Huh?" Remus poked his head through the door, looking weary.

"Dedalus," Sirius repeated. "He acts like a fool all the time, he's too happy. No one's that happy unless they know they're going to be fine."

Remus rolled his eyes. "Dedalus is just a cheery bloke," he said in a bored tone. He seemed to be getting fed up of Sirius' ideas recently, like he didn't want to find the spy at all. "He's as miserable as any of us underneath it all, that's just his way of coping."

"Sure," Sirius muttered, "or he's the spy..."

"For fucks sake, Sirius!" Remus snapped, glaring at him. "This week it's Dedalus, last week it was Elphias, the week before that it was it was Sturgis! Just suspecting people at random is pointless!"

Sirius ignored him, thinking. "I still think Sturgis is suspicious, actually. Maybe him losing his foot was just to throw us off his scent."

"Christ, you're fucking nuts," Remus sighed, shaking his head and leaving the room. Sirius let him go, weighing the arguments between Dedalus and Sturgis in his head.

He didn't see Remus again until that night, when they both went to bed wordlessly. Remus fell asleep almost at once, but Sirius didn't, his mind still alive and whirring. He was sure he could figure it out, he was sure all the evidence was in front of him, he just needed to put the pieces together.

It was hours later when something occurred to him, and he woke Remus up urgently.

"Remus!" he hissed. "Remus, stop sleeping!"

"Urghh," Remus groaned, cracking one eye open. "What?"

"What about Evans?"

Remus looked at him and laughed. "Now you really are being ridiculous."

"Maybe not," Sirius said, frowning. "What if she never actually fell out with Snape? What if it was all staged, to make us trust her, but they planned it all in secret? I mean, she was friends with him even before Hogwarts, it makes sense."

Remus sat up, looking at Sirius in disbelief. "No it doesn't!"

"It could happen!"

"Sirius, listen to yourself. You're seriously suggesting that, at sixteen years old, Lily not only decided to support the people who want to kill her, but went out of her way to become a double agent?! Working on the assumption that she would join a secret resistance army, fight in it for two years, and only then turn spy? And you genuinely think that makes sense?"

"I'm just looking for answers!"

"This isn't an answer! Sirius, this is crazy, you can't just come up with wild conspiracy theories and start accusing your friends of being traitors! Do you have any proof, at all?"

Sirius huffed, folding his arms over his chest protectively. "I don't want it to be her," he said, "but how do we know that it isn't?"

"Because it's Lily! You really think the person you've known since you were eleven, James' wife, Harry's mother, your friend, is the spy?"

Sirius wavered. "I... No," he admitted, "it's probably not her."

"Yeah, fucking obviously."

"Nevermind. Go back to sleep."