Chapter Text
Tell me how I'm supposed to breathe with no air
If I should die before I wake
It's 'cause you took my breath away
Losing you is like living in a world with no air
(No Air - Jordin Sparks)
May 19th, 1980
He reeked of firewhisky.
He always reeked of firewhisky these days.
Sirius sat in the back of the circular drawing room, half-lidded eyes set toward the front where Frank went over the details of an approaching mission. James stood beside him as the two took charge of the meeting while Moody and Dumbledore lingered in the other room, potentially discussing the most recent Death Eater attacks where Benjy Fenwick and Dorcas Meadowes had been murdered. Losing Dorcas was the reason that headquarters had been temporarily relocated to Potter Manor. Tuts Tower had been her home and, upon her death—and the death of Fenwick, her Secret-Keeper—the Fidelius Charm wore off, and the Order was forced back into hiding elsewhere.
James had stepped up, opening his childhood home.
Their childhood home.
Of course it now completely belonged to James, since Mia had been pronounced dead five months ago.
Following her disappearance at the end of September, the Order kept the search for Mia very hush-hush as per Dumbledore's request. Sirius and Remus were both questioned under Veritaserum, and Dumbledore insisted that he be the one to ask questions. James and Lily were summoned home early from their honeymoon, and James had gone into overdrive trying to find his missing sister. When no clues showed up, Sirius went behind Moody and Dumbledore's backs and started his own investigation into the disappearance of his witch.
Arthur Weasley was first on his list, knowing that the redhead and Mia had been friendly. Arthur was shocked to hear that she was missing, having been told through the rumour mill that she had been promoted to another department, though he was not quite sure which one or even from whom he had heard the rumour. Sirius suspected signs of Obliviation.
Laurel Greengrass had been next on his list, and the blonde heard a similar tale, only one that involved Mia and Sirius eloping in some romantic getaway. When he informed her that Mia was missing, Laurel did what most purebloods of her station did: she threw money at the problem. Unable to do much on her own, she hired multiple private investigators, including two Muggles, despite the disapproval of her husband.
When Laurel and Sirius caused enough of a stir, the Daily Prophet picked up the story. The copies of the one printing about Mia's disappearance all but vanished the following day. Immediately afterward, an Order meeting had been called where Moody announced the search was being called off, and that Mia was dead. No more information was given to them, just that she had been on a mission of her own decision that ended badly. Save for the few friends she had at the Ministry, the Order, and their pack, Mia Potter might as well have never existed in the memories of the Wizarding world. Her name became something almost forbidden during Order meetings, and anytime Sirius brought her up, he was asked to step outside or accused of selfishly forgetting that the war had not ended with his loss.
James was utterly devastated. Lily and Alice were heartbroken. Remus secluded himself in his room for weeks at a time, only coming out for the full moon or to occasionally eat and attend Order meetings.
Sirius had gone into a mad rage and attacked Alastor Moody in the middle of the Ministry Atrium, surrounded by hundreds of people. He very publicly quit his job as an Auror by threatening to shove his badge down Moody's throat and was subsequently arrested and detained by wizards who, up until moments before, had been his co-workers. Grief-stricken, Sirius spent three weeks in detainment, which was apparently how long it took for Moody to calm down and drop the charges against him.
After his release, Sirius did nothing but try to drain both his Gringotts vault and the United Kingdom's supply of firewhisky in order to bury his pain.
There had been only one small light in the darkness of Sirius's world.
"Calm down."
He felt a soft hand reach up and run fingers through his hair and he took a slow breath, realising that he had apparently been growling protectively while staring at the front of the room. The fingers in his hair helped to calm him somewhat, but they felt wrong. He wanted to lean over to the side and place his head in the witch's lap, but there were two large problems: one, the witch was not Mia; two, there was no lap to lie on.
Sirius smiled sadly at Lily, grateful for the attention she gave him considering he was always such a mess. No one else was willing to put up with him these days save for James, Remus, and Peter. But even then, his fellow Marauders did nothing but enable his drinking problem or scold him for it. On the other hand, Lily gave him a purpose for the life he was certain he had all but lost.
His focus drifted to his right hand resting protectively on her expanded abdomen, where his godson was furiously kicking from the inside.
"He's gonna be a Beater," Sirius said with a small smile.
Lily rolled her eyes. "God help me."
Five Months and One Week Earlier...
Despite it being close to Christmas, not a single decoration had been displayed at either the Diagon Alley flat or Potter Cottage. It was the first time that the family had not put any thought into the holiday, and most could understand why. Mia's disappearance created a standstill in their lives. Lily did her best to keep up strength for the rest of them, but taking care of James through his panic over his missing twin was hard enough, let alone dealing with a stressed out werewolf and an alcoholic Animagus.
She had been overjoyed when, after months of keeping to himself following Mary's death, Peter came back to the Marauders following Mia's disappearance. At the time, his presence seemed helpful, but in the end, all Peter had done was enable Sirius's drinking to even more unhealthy levels. Not only that, but without Mia there to temper Sirius's aggression, he was getting out of control, especially with his fellow Aurors and superiors, who were not putting enough effort into locating Mia.
Lily finally snapped that morning when, after being sick for over a week and waking up to find her husband missing from her bed once more, she Floo'd to Longbottom Keep to find Alice under the weather as well. It had not taken a N.E.W.T. in Charms—though Lily and Alice each had one—to find the particular diagnostic spell to discover what was wrong.
Alice had been thrilled, and Lily stood by with tears in her eyes as her friend related the news of their impending parenthood to Frank, who promptly fainted.
When Frank wrapped his arms around Alice, shouting gratitude to Merlin, Lily officially had enough. She stormed in a rage toward Alice and Frank's fireplace, her friends on her heels as she tossed powder into the grate and screamed, "Ninety-three, Diagon Alley!"
On the other end of the Floo, she found the small London flat in absolute disarray. She shook her head at the sight of the place that she knew would have sent Mia into a violent fit. Not a single Cleaning Charm had been cast in weeks, and the place absolutely reeked of liquor. Empty bottles littered the counters, and there were cigarette burns on the sofa and carpet.
Storming down the hallway, Lily stopped in front of Remus's bedroom knowing it was pointless to even check the back bedroom; Sirius had not slept there in weeks. Her temperamental magic blew the door off the hinges, and her angry gaze settled on the pile of wizards in the centre of the large four-poster bed.
Remus and James were leaning against one another near the headboard, Sirius draped across their laps. There was a witch-shaped gap between the three of them that made Lily clench her eyes tightly, forcing the sadness back down somewhere behind the nausea that was threatening to resurface.
Not a one of them had moved even when the door fell, telling her exactly how much they had been drinking the night before.
She stepped into the room and viciously kicked the leg that was peeking out from beneath the bed. "Get up!"
Peter crawled out from under the bed frame, wincing from the pain in his shin.
"You were supposed to be helping them, not making things worse!" she snapped and felt mildly victorious when Peter looked properly shamed.
"Aguamenti!" She aimed her wand at the bed and watched as the men jolted awake, coughing and squirming in a tangle of limbs as they fought against her attack. "Get up, all three of you!"
Sirius glared at her as he pushed his wet hair off of his face. "Go away, Evans."
"No." She approached the bed, smacking Sirius in the back of the head before turning her glare toward Remus and James, who both looked painfully hungover. "You are not the only ones who are sad, but you are the only ones drowning in it, and I will not let my family be destroyed like this!"
"Lils . . ." James groaned, rubbing his forehead. "Can you at least find us a Sober-Up Potion before you start screaming?"
"Sober-Up Potion?" she asked incredulously. "I'm pregnant, you idiot! How's that work for a Sober-Up Potion?"
As it turned out, it worked quite well.
"You're . . . You're . . ." James stared at her with wide, red-rimmed eyes. "You're pregnant? Are you . . . ? Are you sure?"
Lily nodded, her anger dissipating as tears filled her eyes. "Alice and I did the charm about an hour ago. She's pregnant, too." She stared at James, watching with butterflies in her stomach as she waited for any reaction. When he jumped up from the bed and pulled her into his arms, she let out the heaviest sigh of relief and then promptly began to cry.
"Not that I'm not thrilled, because I absolutely am," James said, smiling as he pulled away from her, "but I thought you were on the potion?"
"We thought so, too," Alice said with a chuckle from the doorway. "Lily made a three-month batch during her hen night. We must have had too much to drink and forgot an ingredient."
"You were both in the Slug Club, though," Remus said, finally speaking after the shock of Lily's news began to wear off. "I've seen Lily brew a Pepper-Up Potion in her sleep. Literally." He smiled at the memory. "Are you—Wait, did you say you brewed the potion at your hen night?"
"Yes. Why?" Alice asked.
Remus's eyes widened as he turned and stared at the witches' still-small stomachs. "Oh, shit." When everyone turned and stared at him, he fumbled over his words. "Oh, umm . . . just . . . wow . . . pregnant," he mumbled and then stood up, walking over and hugging Lily. "Congratulations, Lils."
James turned around, his face alight with happiness. "Did you hear, Pads?" he asked with a hearty laugh. "I'm going to be a father. What do you think about that?"
Silently, Sirius stared at Lily's abdomen. His emotions spun around inside of him, and he could not grasp any one at a time. Joy and fear seemed tied together, but it was devastation that felt most present. Despite knowing better, Sirius felt as though something else had been taken away from him.
"You want to give our kids my name?"
"Oh, it's our kids now?"
"'Course it's our kids. I'm an agreeable sort of man these days, kitten, but you're not having Remus's pups."
"As long as it's not a whole litter, I think I'll be fine with birthing your spawn."
"And they'll be Potters."
"They'll be Blacks."
"Pads?"
Pulled from his memories, Sirius looked up at James and blinked, swallowing back the emotions that were threatening to erupt from within him. Out of habit, he tugged on the silver chain around his neck. The action was caught immediately by everyone in the room, and their smiles faded into awkward looks of concern. Automatically, Sirius let go of the chain.
James leant forward and put a hand on Sirius's shoulder, a look in his eyes said that he was fighting through the conflicting emotions as well. James had lost too much in too few years. Both of his parents, too many friends, and now his sister. Then, somehow in the middle of all of this death and darkness, someone was giving him a light at the end of the tunnel.
"You'll be godfather, yes?" James asked with a crooked grin.
Sirius said nothing and instead jumped up, pulling James into a tight hug.
"You want to tell me why you're upset today?" Lily inquired quietly. She placed her hand on top of Sirius's as it rested on her stomach, smiling up from time to time at James, who was doing his best to be the leader that he had always been.
Sirius understood why Lily needed to be specific. Despite his future godson giving him a purpose in life through the shitstorm of war, he was unpredictable at best, reckless at worst. He had been arrested no fewer than three times since quitting the Ministry. Getting into pub brawls with random wizards had become a hobby—one that he had previously relished with great pride, especially considering he recently sent Lucius Malfoy to St Mungo's after running into the Death Eater at the Leaky.
Sirius had been there with Remus, stocking up their flat with what little food the two actually ate these days when they had spotted Lucius meeting with a table of associates. Remus had pleaded with Sirius to leave it alone, but when Malfoy loudly announced that after years of failing in her duties as a wife, Narcissa was finally providing him with the heir he deserved, Sirius lost it.
The man was married to his cousin, a witch plenty of wizards desired, and now had a son on the way. It was not fair, and Sirius held a bitterly jealous grudge against the man who did not appreciate the gifts he had been given.
He beat Malfoy unconscious, and it had taken three other pub patrons to pull him off before Aurors arrived. A week after Lucius had been released from St Mungo's, Benjy and Dorcas were murdered.
Sirius blamed himself for their deaths.
"Didn't sleep well last night," he lied to Lily. "Fucking cat woke me up before sunrise."
Most of Mia's things had been boxed up a month earlier, but the cat remained loose despite Sirius's desire to shove it in a box and owl it to Abu Dhabi. Even though he was the beast's primary caregiver now, the stupid cat still did not like him. Mia had been right; he should have bought her a fucking kneazle.
"You wouldn't want it, would you?"
Lily sighed and then nodded her head. "Bring Snuffles by tonight. But only once you've showered," she said with a stern glare. "You look like shit and smell worse."
Sirius smiled at her. Lily was never one for subtlety. "Still planning my intervention?"
He knew they had talked about it already. Once, shortly after Sirius's first arrest following his Auror resignation, and again after a drunken one-night stand where he tried to provoke Remus into beating the guilt out of him. Remus had not taken the bait, but instead dumped him on James and Lily's sofa and let Lily play Mind Healer as she tried to help Sirius work through his grief.
Remus seemed to move on the fastest from Mia's supposed death, though no one could really tell considering that he had always been good at keeping his emotions bottled up compared to the rest of them. James, thankfully, had fatherhood to look forward to as well as a cause in the war to keep his mind occupied so as not to dwell on Mia's disappearance.
Sirius, however, firmly walked the fine line between anger and denial.
When Moody and Dumbledore announced Mia's official death, Sirius had lodged an actual formal complaint after he had found an old copy of Nature's Nobility: A Wizarding Genealogy. The old book, given to only the oldest families, was magically spelled to update on its own. Births, marriages, and deaths were all automatically logged on the parchment. Sirius had opened it to the Potter Family Tree where Charlus and Dorea's births and deaths were listed. James and Lily's names were written down as well, marking their marriage. A floating light hovered beneath their names which Sirius had assumed was the magic waiting for their child to be born before it would write their name down in the timeworn text.
But there, next to the name Mia Potter, was no date of death. Strangely, in fact, Mia's birth date was not written down either, something Sirius assumed had to do with the fact that she was adopted. Stranger still, while the other names were written in dark black ink, Mia's faded in and out as though it had been improperly Disillusioned, or as though the book did not know where she fit: dead or alive.
It was just enough hope to drive his already unstable mind to the brink several times.
"I'll get you off the booze once I get this kid out of me," Lily declared with a bright smile and then winced when the baby kicked again.
"Maybe I was wrong," Sirius offered, rubbing her belly. "Maybe he's not a Beater. I think he might just be a Bludger," he teased.
Lily laughed and leant against him. "He or she will be a bloody Quaffle by the time I give birth to them. At which point I think I'll go back to hexing James. It's been a long time, and he's due for something particularly awful for allowing his child to give me seven months' worth of heartburn."
Sirius did not have a chance to say anything else to her as a collective gasp filled the room. All eyes turned toward the front where Dumbledore stood next to a familiar wizard in long black robes, with greasy hair and black eyes. Instinctively, everyone was on their feet, wands at the ready at the mere sight of Severus Snape. While most were firm in where they stood, James, Sirius, and Remus had created a semicircle around Lily as if to shield her from the Death Eater.
"Subtle," Snape said, sneering at the display.
"What the fuck is he doing here?" Sirius snapped and moved forward, the empty space next to Lily immediately filled by Peter.
Dumbledore stepped in front of Snape protectively and held a hand up to stop Sirius in his tracks. "He is here as my guest, and as a guest, he is under my protection. Though, as the newest member of the Order, I should hope that he would not need it."
The room erupted into screaming before Dumbledore once again called for silence.
"Sir, you can't be serious!" James shouted from the back of the room.
"Are we or are we not in need of a spy?" Dumbledore asked. "I have interrogated Severus and believe him to have honourable intentions for joining our cause. He will be loyal and has vowed as much."
"Why the hell would he switch sides?" Sirius angrily demanded.
"Those are my reasons and mine alone, Black," Snape drawled, his face expressionless save for the look of disdain sent toward Sirius.
Unfortunately, Sirius did not miss the brief moment where the man's black eyes flickered over to where James, Remus, Peter, and Lily stood.
The eye contact was enough to incite Sirius once again, and he growled, stepping closer. "Don't you dare look at my family."
"It's your family that actually has the need for my information," Snape declared. "The Dark Lord has caught word of a prophecy proclaiming his downfall. He believes that a child born this July will be his undoing, and he's seeking out information as to how he can . . . rid himself of the problem."
Everyone heard Lily gasp.
"Don't listen to him, Lils," Sirius insisted. "He's just trying to manipulate his way into the Order. How do we know that this prophecy even exists?"
"Because it was given to me," Dumbledore answered. "A young Seer approached me for a job interview at the beginning of this year. In the middle of her interview, she fell into a trance of sorts and began speaking about the downfall of Voldemort." Half the room flinched at the name, but no one more than Snape, who briefly looked terrified at the word being spoken aloud.
Though he had not used it much in the past himself, Sirius made a mental note to say the name as often as possible, if only to get that reaction out of Snape.
"Why didn't you tell us, then?" Marlene McKinnon asked, looking up at Dumbledore with hardened eyes. She had been known to get quite irritable when secrets were kept from Order members. While Sirius had not agreed with her much in the past, he felt just a touch vindicated at the look of irritation on her face aimed at Dumbledore.
"The prophecy speaks of Voldemort choosing his own rival," Dumbledore explained. "There are at least two children due to be born toward the end of July," he said as his eyes briefly glanced at Alice, who—up until that moment—had clearly not made the connection. Her hands protectively encircled her stomach, and Frank was immediately by her side, glaring daggers at Snape. "I intended to keep the prophecy contained in the hopes that, if left unheard, Voldemort would not take action to fulfil it. Regrettably, I was wrong, and he is now fully aware of the contents of the prophecy."
Everyone else was too busy watching Dumbledore to notice the brief flash of guilt that fell across Snape's face. Sirius, however, caught it.
"While we take care to keep both the Potters and Longbottoms protected, we still have a war to fight, and now have a new ally on our side," Dumbledore stated, placing a hand on Snape's shoulder. "Unfortunately, because he must remain in the good graces of Voldemort, should any of you come into contact with Severus on missions, I would ask that you do your best to keep up the ruse of his status, while also attempting to keep him from harm."
"How much harm should we keep him from? You expect us to just sit back and not throw hexes back if he attacks us?" Sirius challenged, glaring at Snape.
"Quite the opposite, Sirius," Dumbledore said with a smile. "I expect you to keep up the appearance of a rivalry in case others are watching. It would serve us well to keep Severus's position as a double agent the highest priority."
"So basically don't fatally injure him?" Sirius asked for clarification, and Dumbledore nodded.
Sirius finally lowered his wand. In the split second that Dumbledore's blue eyes turned away, he sent a closed fist into a large hooked nose, knocking the supposedly defected Death Eater to the ground.
"There," Sirius said with a triumphant smirk. "Rivalry still well established."