Thicker than Water (Marauders Era) PART II

25 June, 1995 - Calm

Sirius didn't say anything to Lavinia as she crept down the hall from her room and out the front door. Maybe he should have. Or maybe he should have just followed her. Should have tried to come up with some way to pretend that everything would be alright, to wrap her in his arms and comfort her as he had so many times before.

But he didn't know how to.

Part of it was that he didn't know how to convince her that they would be fine because he himself wasn't at all convinced. Had they had Ministry support, he would have been completely and utterly sure of it. They would fight and fight hard and they would win and with the Ministry behind them and having learned from their mistakes... they would have won. But now... now he was a lot less sure.

The other half of it, however, was that Sirius simply wasn't sure he knew how to comfort Lavinia at all anymore. It had been so very long since he'd done so and from what he knew of her now, both from his admittedly brief time with her and from what Remus had said in conversation and in letters, she didn't need a hell of a lot of comforting these days. Some, yes, because, he supposed, everyone did. But not like she used to. Because she had grown up . She was more confident. Stronger. Braver.

He'd seen plenty of it today in case he hadn't already known. Years and years ago he had watched her fall to pieces at the death of a stranger. He had held her through it. And yet she had guessed correctly about the death of a seventeen year old with hardly a waver in her voice. Not that she had sounded remotely okay with it, but... but she had kept calm. She had handled it with a maturity he hadn't entirely expected. With the sort of level head and even temper he usually associated with Remus.

It was so different from how she had been all those years ago.

And that wasn't all he had seen change this night. In the last war, he had watched Lavinia's building stress during the worst of it and had assured her at every turn that they would be fine. That they would come home. He had seen her cry and breakdown and panic when things went wrong and the news was bad. And yet today, faced with the knowledge that the ministry wouldn't help, that their cause was half defeated before the fight had even started... her words had been simple. Bitter, yes, but... not panicked. Not desperate or fearful or... or much of anything really other than something like resigned.

And that along had said so much. Both her tone and her words.

Of course we are.

So the panic he would have expected was absent, but that pessimism, the easy belief that the world would always hand her the worst situation, always deal her the worst cards... well that was the same. Though this time, a part of Sirius thought she might be right about it. Not that he was pleased by that, but... but it was rather hard to imagine how this could possibly go well when there were simply so few who would be fighting in the first place.

Without the Ministry, they had only the scattered remains of the first Order of the Phoenix. And they were too few and too far between. Too many had been lost in the war and in the months that had followed. Too many were gone. Their only saving grace right now, he supposed, was that the Death Eaters faced many of the same problems. Their members were locked in Azkaban, sealed off from their master. Whether or not they would stay there for long... well. The Order could only hope those walls held firm and that the loyalties of the dementors didn't waver. It felt, Sirius knew, like rather too many chances to be taking. But it wasn't like they had a choice.

Sighing Sirius rolled onto his back on the couch, staring up at the ceiling and frowning at it. He knew he should be sleeping. His body was plenty tired for rest. But his mind kept reeling, kept trying to find a way out of this madness. Kept trying to find things to do. Ways out. Anything that might help.