Consuming Shadows

Chapter 23

Lily accepted the cup of tea Sirius passed her, fingers curling around the warm china and holding the steaming beverage just below her chin.

Sirius was seated across from her – not in the leather chair, he could still feel the phantom touch of the restraints – with his hands resting on his knees. He studied the woman quietly, familiarising himself with her features again.

He had no idea what to say.

He had so many questions, so many things that needed to be discussed. But now that the moment was here, he found himself unable to voice any of them.

The silence between them had a physical weight, and Sirius wondered if he had ever felt so alienated from one of his friends before.

He rubbed at his thighs, unbearably uncomfortable.

Lily took a delicate sip of her tea, eyes fluttering closed. She sighed once, and dropped her head in what Sirius could only classify as defeat. "Just ask, Sirius. I swear I will answer what I'm able."

And just like that, his mouth opened.

"How are you? And Harry, the both of you – are you...are you okay?"

She did not look at him as she placed her cup on the saucer and sat back, hands folded in her lap. "We are as well as we can be, I suppose."

That was not the comforting answer he had been hoping for, and he frowned. "No, Lily. How are you? You've been gone for so long."

Her face was infuriatingly calm. "We were, and we're fine, Sirius. We're alive, and that's all the matters."

He strangled back the response to that, because 'alive' and 'okay' were too completely different things. There was a hardness to Lily's eyes though, that warned him off pushing further. He swiftly changed routes.

"Why did you run?" It was, perhaps, the question he should have started with, but Sirius was honestly still overwhelmed with the knowledge that Harry and Lily were within touching distance to really care about the hows and whys. He knew that Dumbledore would want to know though.

"I've already told you," Lily looked away from him, jaw tight. "I didn't know who I could trust. Peter had sold us out, James was dead or dying for all I knew. I had no way of knowing who I could turn to."

"But why not just come to Dumbledore? If there was anyone you could be sure of-"

"Dumbledore is a complex man, Sirius. He had built a web around himself, filled it with lies and misinformation and traps. I couldn't go to him for the same reason I couldn't go to you, or Remus, or any of the Order. His suggestion to settle and use the Fidelius Charm lost me my husband. How could I know it wasn't planned? How do I know he didn't want us to be in the one place, to make it easier to find us if the secret did break?"

"Dumbledore would never have done that." The mere thought that the former headmaster was capable of such a thing was sickening.

But Lily only shook her head slowly. "I couldn't know that. I was scared, Sirius. I was absolutely certain I was going to die, that my baby would be killed, that James would have died for nothing. I could only trust my instincts, and they told me I was better on my own."

Sirius closed his eyes, anger and sympathy warring inside him. He could imagine the feeling of loss Lily had experienced, mirrored from when he had renounced his own family. That uncertainty and fear of what lay ahead had been near consuming. It was only through James that he had managed to survive, to beat back the shadows of his past.