Thicker than Water (Marauders Era) PART II

31 August, 1995 - Unexpected

The silence this time was longer as Sirius and Lavinia both stood there in the attic, watching the sliver of sky that was all they could see through the window and listening to the rustle of feathers from behind them.

Sirius, for his part, was regretting saying anything at all about why he understood Lavinia's predicament so well. It did at least seem to have made her feel a little better but... Well. That didn't stop it from being awkward. And he really hadn't meant to make it about him. But in the same breath, it was the truth. He understood what she meant because he had been there. Had lived it. And had wanted so damn badly to just... make it work. Make it happen. Make her love him.

But he couldn't. So he had waited. Until the waiting had been too much and all of it had been too much and something had snapped. And yet... here she was. By his side. Just like always. Because even if she hadn't waited all those years he'd been away, when he'd come back... she'd been willing to try. Which still amazed him. More than he liked to admit, really. But she had been willing to try. She had always been willing to try to make it work. Because she had always been willing to care.

And that was another revelation this night had brought: just how much she cared.

Sirius had come running into the drawing room right behind Remus just in time to see his own dead eyes staring up at the ceiling. It had frozen him. Even as the crack sounded and his face turned into Remus's. Because it wasn't the sight of the body with his face on it that had surprised him so much. It was that that of all things, was her boggart. Of all the fears he had known Lavinia to have, all the horrors she had witnessed that could so easily sneak their way into a boggart, it was his death, his body, that had appeared on the drawing room floor.

He had realized two things as he had stood there, paralyzed in the doorway.

One: He had realized just how bad it must have been after James and Lily's death that this was what she most feared repeating. After everything she had been through, after the constant stress of the war, after the scars on her wrists and the night on the Astronomy tower and the bruises inflicted by her own mother, this was what she most feared reliving. The death of her friends. The aftermath of the war. And for this to top the list... Bad. It must have been really, really bad.

And Sirius was well aware of the fact that he should already have known that. He did know it, really. He knew it had been no picnic, obviously. He knew it had been hell but... But somehow this put it into perspective. Because he remembered Lavinia's other hells. Had been there through most of them. And if it had been worse than all of those... The thought made Sirius's blood run cold.

The second thing he had realized, however, was a far lighter thing. And also a far less easy thing to reconcile. Because he had realized just how much she still cared. For all that she probably should have hated him by now given the way he had treated her lately... she cared. A lot. Because his death, his body, had topped the list. Or had, at least, been among those top concerns. And he honestly hadn't expected that. Even setting aside the fact that he hadn't expected this to be her boggart in the first place, he wouldn't have expected to make this list. And certainly not the top of it because... well because he had been gone. For twelve years he had been gone. And there were other people now. People she had known longer. People he was sure she would miss more.

And maybe she would. Maybe she had only thought of him because he had been nearby at the time but... But he couldn't shake the feeling that it meant something. That it meant she cared. Perhaps more than he'd thought she had.

It shouldn't have really mattered, he was sure of that. It was a boggart. It was a fear. That was it. And it probably meant nothing but... but it might mean something. And though he knew it was selfish of him, he wanted to know. Wanted to ask outright if it meant anything at all or if he was a fool in love to even consider such a thing.