Life Is But A Dream by Pondering
Row, row, row, your boat,
Gently down the stream.
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily.
Life is but a dream.
II. Gently Down the Stream…
Sirius jumped off the couch, and was holding Harry closely to his chest, when he heard the front door unlock. He pulled his wand out of his pocket and aimed it at the door. Through the lounge room door walked in James Potter, his friend. His dead best friend was standing in front of him.
“James! I missed you so much!” Sirius exclaimed the words without thinking, as he hugged James.
“Miss!” Harry shrieked happily, clapping his hands.
“You saw him two hours ago,” said another voice. The owner of this voice stepped into the house, lugging in shopping bags containing enough food to last for three years. She brushed her dark red hair out of her face with her sleeve and set the bags down inside the door. “We’ve come back from the meeting, Sirius,” she said briskly. “Jones was kind enough to buy us all this food.” She eyed the numerous shopping bags with a critical eye. “Why so many cans of baked beans?” she asked herself quietly.
“Lily…” He didn’t know what was going on. Seething with frustration, he let out a strangled cry as he dug his heels into the bottom of the couch, collapsing onto it. She looked at him curiously; her emerald green eyes looked confused. “Are you sure you didn’t just have a bad dream?”
“Oh, yes,” he replied sarcastically, “It was a fantastic dream. The best dream I’ve had in a long time.”
James walked in and took Harry carefully off Sirius. While tickling Harry’s chin, he stated, “It was only a nightmare.”
“It’s the most bloody realistic dream I’ve ever had,” he said, rubbing his head with his hand. He was in the lounge room of Godric’s Hollow. There were a few potted plants scattered around. He saw a calendar on the wall. October had a picture of a Golden Snitch, its wings in mid flutter. He read the date. 30th October 1981.
“It’s not right! It’s not right!” he yelled, as he leapt off the couch again. He ran to the calendar, and lifted his arms up to it. He wanted to rip it off the wall, scrunch it into a ball and jump and stomp on it, as if doing so would declare it invalid.
Before he could do so however, James laid a steadying hand on his shoulder, hazel eyes showing concern. “Are you alright there, mate?’
James sat down on the couch, in the space that was previously occupied by Sirius and beckoned him to come sit down next to him. He sat Harry on the floor. Harry toddled off on unsteady legs, walking to his mother. He fell down countless times, but got up again and kept going. He went down to his hands and knees crawled into the small space underneath the kitchen table. Sirius did not accept this silent offer, and remained standing with his arms crossed.
As Lily knelt down on her hands and knees to try to coax Harry out from under the table, James turned to look at Sirius.
“So tell us about this dream of yours,” he said, watching in tight-lipped amusement as Harry avoided all of Lily’s attempts.
“You’re dead,” he declared simply, turning his head away from James’s piercing gaze. “You’re dead,” he echoed.
In the space of five seconds, he came to a conclusion. Those years in Azkaban that apparently never happened had addled his brain. There. That was a better explanation for all this madness. He was in Azkaban; this whole thing was a nightmare.
James waved his hand in front of Sirius’s face. Lily was bustling around in the kitchen with the thirty-something shopping bags.
“You’re dead,” Sirius said shortly.
James took in an exaggerated breath of air. “Nope, still breathing…seriously, Sirius, what’s wrong?”
“Switch Secret Keepers back to me,” he stated bluntly, as Harry played with his shoelace.
“Why?” James asked curiously. “A week ago you agreed that using Peter was for the best.”
“Peter’s the traitor!” he exclaimed. “Don’t you see? It was the perfect plot. I mean, we thought that no one would ever guess we would think he had anything to do with well, anything. He wants to hurt us, all of us! You, me, Lily, Harry…Harry. You have to protect him, James. You can’t let that traitorous bastard harm him!”
Lily lifted her head up. Using a handy spell she had learnt in Household Charms: Fifth Edition putting away the groceries had taken a remarkably short time. She bit her lower lip. “Only a nightmare. It is natural to have nightmares. I have some of them myself…” she trailed off, gulped and continued “…and in those nightmares I come home and I see the Dark Mark hovering above my house…so I enter…and I see everyone’s bodies lying on the floor, and they’re all dead…looking at the ceiling with their eyes wide open… ” Lily shuddered.
“People change, James!”
“You’ve being doing a lot of it today,” observed James. He picked up the stuffed Quaffle off the floor and started throwing it up in the air. Harry ran unsteadily to his father, and stretched his arms as high as he could reach, attempting to catch the fuzzy, red ball. It went right past his out stretched hands and fell on his feet. He blinked at the ball, picked it up in his small, chubby hands, and threw it into the air once more.
“I’m just thinking…why don’t we see how Peter is doing? We’ve only really spoken to him twice in the past few months, Harry’s birthday and...” Sirius asked, a plan forming in his mind.
Unfortunately, James knew him too well. “You’re thinking about going to Peter’s to look for ‘evidence’,” James accused as he stood up. His hazel eyes glared at Sirius, but he felt less fury, but more fear.
“No…”
James raised an eyebrow.
“All right. I do. But I’m also concerned about why Peter hasn’t been in contact with us ever since he went into hiding last month.” Sirius said. This was true. It was what had led to find Peter’s empty flat in his ‘dream’.
“I don’t think this is a great idea…” James said uncertainly.
“I think it’s a good idea.” Lily spoke up. Looking at the disbelieving look from her husband, she quickly added, “Checking up on Peter, I mean, not ‘looking for evidence’. We have the portkey, the one that’s charmed to go between our houses. You and Sirius can use that. I’ll stay here with Harry.”
James looked with amazement at his wife. She wasn’t supposed to agree with him! “All right. But what happens if Peter’s not home when we go, but turns up while we’re ‘looking for evidence’? What then?” James asked.
Sirius moved his trainers up to the couch. “I have a plan,” he stated simply as he undid the knot in his shoelaces, disconnecting his trainers from each other.
Lily sat down on the couch were James had been minutes before. Harry was in her arms; she had picked him up after the Quaffle had landed on his head. The beige-coloured couch had some shoeprints on it. She dusted them off. “This ‘plan’ better not be like the time when the Quidditch team nearly ruined the Gryffindor common room in their post-game party. Remember when McGonagall turned up, you said the Giant Squid had appeared and started flailing its tentacles everywhere.” She smiled, and absent-mindedly stroked Harry’s messy dark hair.
“Hey!” Sirius exclaimed hotly. “How was I supposed to know she wouldn’t believe me?”
“Hmm…” Lily pondered, a finger resting on the side of her forehead. “Maybe because squids live in water?”
“Let’s get going then,” James said, interrupting their conversation. “Where’s the Portkey?” He seemed in a desperate rush to prove Sirius wrong. “I still think this is a bad idea, since we’re meant to be in hiding and all…” he trailed off.
“You went to the Order meeting today,” Sirius pointed out.
“Well, yeah, Professor, I mean, Albus, requested our presence! He told us that there was some information he needed to make us aware of!”
“You could have let me have gone to collect the information for you, instead of leaving me to baby-sit!” Sirius shouted.
“Wow, have I just heard a logical explanation from Sirius Black?” James commented sarcastically.
“Sarcasm is the lowest form of wit!”
“It’s the only form of wit.”
“Stop fighting this instant!” Lily yelled as she pointed her wand. She aimed at the exact position where if she wanted to cast a curse, she could hit either of them without moving her arm. She had set Harry down on the floor, who was playing with his Quaffle, oblivious to Uncle Padfoot and his father’s yelling.
James stopped in alarm. The last time Lily Potter yelled that at him, he had ended up with green and silver hair and a week’s worth of detentions.
Sirius turned to Lily. There was some kind of fire burning in her emerald green eyes, and she looked determined. He was sure that she wouldn’t hesitate to hex James if she thought he deserved it.
“Fine.” James gave in. “I’ll do it, but only to prove…”
Lily slipped her hand into the pocket of her skirt and withdrew some house keys. There were also a few key rings. For a few minutes, she struggled to get it off the ring, then realised she didn’t need to. She handed the keys to James. Sirius studied the key ring in James’s hand. It was a miniscule phoenix, with red and gold plumage.
“What are the activation words again?” James asked. He felt strange. Why was he even doing this! Peter was not going to betray them. That would mean he was a…Death Eater. Not Peter. The man was too scared to speak Voldemort’s name, let alone meet him face to face. Peter was not a traitor.
“It’s the Hogwarts school motto. James, darling, please, please, promise me you’ll be careful.”
“I will, Lily flower.” He kissed Lily on the cheek. He knelt down and ruffled Harry's hair.
"Say good-bye to Daddy, Harry," Lily instructed her son.
Harry's green eyes clouded. "Daddy go bye-bye?" he asked, looking curiously up at his father. How could a baby be so cute, yet look so unhappy at the same time?
"Not for long. I'll be back before you know it," he said this mainly for Lily's benefit rather than Harry's.
Sirius put his hand in James’s so he could hold onto the phoenix as well. “Draco Dormiens Nunquam Titillandus,” he muttered under his breath.
Sirius felt the familiar spinning of a Portkey; similar to that Muggle cloth-washing device he had learnt about in Muggle Studies. What was it called again? Oh yes, that’s right. It was a washing machine.
They landed in the darkness of Peter’s flat. Sirius lost his balance and fell over, right onto a small table with a vase on it. It fell to the floor, and Sirius heard it shatter into millions of little pieces. Sirius winced. If Peter were home, he would have definitely have heard.
No one ran into the bedroom. Sirius breathed a sigh of relief. Peter wasn’t there. Good. Wherever he was, he was probably kissing the hem of Voldemort’s robe and worshipping the ground he walked on.
“So where do you suggest we start this sleuthing, Padfoot?” James’s temper had bettered. He had to know. Sirius had planted the seed of doubt in his mind, now he needed to know the answer.
“Lumos.” Sirius’s wand lit up, letting out a beam of light. They were in Peter’s bedroom. There were clothes littering the floor, as there would be in most households with a man living on their own. The bed was unmade. In the corner with his desk, there was parchment littering the floor. Sirius walked over, James following uncertainly.
He grabbed one of the scrunched up balls of parchment on the floor. He opened it. It was entitled- ‘Problems with Thin Bottomed Cauldrons’. It looked like a recent report for his job at the Ministry. No luck there.
“Merlin’s beard, no!” James whispered silently, his voice quavering. He had lit his own wand tip, and had followed Sirius’s example and had read a piece of parchment.
James, Sirius and Remus,
I don’t know how to say this, and it’s a pretty stupid idea because I know I won’t have the courage to send it. But people say that it’s easier to handle things if you write them down, so…here goes nothing.
I never meant for things to get like this. I never really meant to join the Dark Lord. But I did, and I can’t change it now. But if I had a chance…I would have taken it all back. Sometimes I hope that it was all a dream…some sort of nightmare…my life…but then I realised that I would never have met the greatest friends I have had in my whole life.
I’m always so scared…you have to understand…the Dark Lord’s taking over, what is to be gained by defying him, you’re going to die! And it will all be my fault“
The letter cut off there; Peter had not finished it. James was shaking. Sirius wasn’t sure if it was fury or disbelief. “You’re right, Padfoot,” he whispered, “You were right…Peter was going to betray us…” he gulped, and he looked like he was trying his hardest not to cry. “Dammit! WH--” James was interrupted by another beam of light shining into his eyes, by two people who had arrived at the bedroom door. The wand light illuminated their faces.
Severus Snape and Peter Pettigrew. Both of them were wearing their black Death Eater robes and had their white masks hanging around their necks.
“J-James,” Peter stuttered in surprise.
“Potter,” Snape spat.
“Snivellus,” James replied coolly. He turned to look at Peter. In the pale wandlight, the short, mousy-haired, young man looked much older. “Peter…how could you?” he said weakly, as if he was still disbelieving the plausibility of it all.
“How did you know?” he asked. Suddenly the older man was gone, and in its place was a confused little boy.
“Well, rat,” Sirius lashed out with more ferocity than he thought he could ever feel, “One, your wearing your Death Eater robes, two, you just walked in with Snape of all people, and three, we saw your letter." He grabbed a handful of Peter’s robes and did not know how he refrained from strangling the rat.
Peter’s already pale face paled even further, yet he did not speak. Snape did however. “I am not a Death Eater,” he hissed to Sirius and James.
“Your robes contradict that.” Sirius pointed out, gesturing to Snape’s Death Eater wear with his free hand. Peter squirmed slightly, and Sirius dropped him to the floor. He landed with a thud, stood up gingerly, drew out his wand and pointed it at nowhere in particular.
“You don’t understand, Black, you’re an innocent. There isn’t only light and dark, there are varying shades of grey.”
Snape sighed, and then turned to Peter. “When is the Dark Lord meant to come?”
“He said he would be coming tonight…that way I can divulge the information to him in person...” The look on his face showed that he was being pulled between two fears, what the Dark Lord was going to do to him, and what Sirius was going to do to him.
Sirius took two steps to the spot where Peter stood, trying not to let the fear show in his eyes. He failed.
Peter looked panicky, and for good reason, and it wasn’t the mess and clutter in the house. “When he is coming?” he asked, turning to look at Snape, whose face was hidden behind a curtain of black, greasy hair.
“He’s already come,” hissed a voice behind Peter. Standing in the doorway was a man, with soulless red eyes and slits for nostrils. Who else could it be? Sirius thought. It was none other than Lord Voldemort.
Life is But A Dream by Pondering
Chapter Notes: Hopefully this chapter will be accepted thanks to my new and wonderful beta!