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Author: Lady Chi Story: With All My Love Rating: Teens Setting: Pre-HBP Status: Completed Reviews: 9 Words: 60,540
Regulus Black watched it all happen from the corner he'd chosen, well away from the action. It wasn't as though Sirius had inherited all the brains in the family, after all. He had been smart enough to realize that something serious was going to happen that night, and as such, he had lain low during the "bust". Now from a safe distance he watched the long line of his housemates making their way down to Dumbledore's office, shrunken and beaten. Regulus sneered at the look on James's face -- one he perceived as smug and arrogant. The Gryffindors hadn't won yet, despite the fact that they thought their Muggle-loving doctrines and useless ideologies would be an advantage to them. Punishment would be swift for his fellow Slytherins, but he shrugged it off. If they weren't smart enough to avoid capture, it wasn't any business of his. Besides, anyone willing to follow that lunatic that the young "junior Death Eaters" had placed in charge of themselves wasn't worth his time, anyway. Navigating the hallways and corridors almost soundlessly was a natural talent of Regulus's that he had inherited from a long family history of sneaks and cheats, so he watched the progress of the procession down the hallway from a strategic place of observation. It wasn't really all that hard to follow them anyway, he thought to himself. They made enough noise to wake the dead, all marching along almost in step. In spite of that, following at a safe distance behind the group, he could catch faint bits of the conversation between Lily and James. "…Remus and Sirius should be here any minute… wake up at any little noise…" "…is this a good idea? How can we get them… without any trouble?" Then there was a long pause. So long, in fact, that Regulus had almost decided that they'd already gone into Dumbledore's office, and he'd begun to take tiny steps forward until he realized that he was now close enough to hear everything the two Gryffindors were saying. "I hear something," James whispered to Lily. "It sounds like a rat is crawling around somewhere." Regulus froze. Surely James couldn't have heard him. He'd been extra careful not to make a sound that a normal person would catch. Then again, perhaps Regulus had made a gross mistake in miscalculating James's intelligence and canny nature. "Are you sure you're not just hearing things?" Lily whispered back. "I don't hear a thing." James shook his head. "No, a normal corridor creaks. Sometimes it moans, especially with the weight of all these students. It certainly does not" -- he searched for the right word – "scratch." Lily opened her mouth in protest and then, apparently deciding that hallway noises were not her area of expertise, closed it. Cautiously, James drew a piece of parchment out of his pocket. Regulus leaned forward from around the corner he'd been using as cover. Lily and James were peering at the parchment intently. He saw James draw a finger to his mouth. "Complete silence, if you please," he said to the line of students, infuriating Regulus. A hush fell over the group, which only irritated the lone Slytherin even more. Members of his own House were taking orders from a boy, of all things. Lost in the whirlwind of his own thoughts, Regulus had not been paying attention to his surroundings as closely as he had thought. "Well, well," a voice drawled behind him, familiar and sarcastic. "Hello, little brother." Regulus spun around and faced the speaker, openmouthed. "S-s-s-s-sirius." "That's my name. Let's try to avoid wearing it out," Sirius responded with none of his usual gaiety. "I'm hoping that you can give me a very good explanation for this." "I don't owe you anything," Regulus snapped back, and recoiled as Remus stepped out of the shadows, a slightly bemused smile on his face. His own brother had him cornered, with no option of escape. "Of course not," Remus agreed, "but I think it might be in your best interest to give a rather complete account of what happened here, don't you?" Hating every moment of this informal inquiry, Regulus shook his head, swallowed hard, and gritted his teeth. He had neither the strength nor the talent to challenge either of these two, let alone them both together. "Yes, of course." The sound of footsteps diverted everyone's attention from the conflict between the boys, and almost as one, the Slytherins turned to face the source of the noise. A very tired-looking Albus Dumbledore and an agitated Minerva McGonagall stood in the corridor, examining the long line of junior Death Eaters. There was a pregnant pause where no one dared to move, lest they draw the attention, or worse yet, the wrath of the wizard who had their very fate in his hands. "I do not think," Professor Dumbledore said very slowly, as though drawing the words out of a deep well from within his mind, "that I need to state how very disappointed I am in all of you. However, we all make mistakes, and there are those among you, I am sure, who are relatively innocent of any charges we might press against you. "However, this might bear as a reminder to those of you who need it that the company we keep often defines who we are. It would be best to wisely consider that before you decide to meet as a group like this on Hogwarts school premises, anywhere else at all, for that matter." Regulus saw his brother pale at the words of his headmaster and noted the curiosity in his clever brain. Perhaps this would serve as useful information if he really wanted to climb in the ranks of those of his class joining the noble war against the filthy Muggles and Mudbloods who increasingly enrolled in Hogwarts every year. The purification of the wizarding society was a call of duty far and above that of loyalty to his brother. However painful a duty that might be. ** Almost a full 20 hours later, Sirius was lying on the hearthrug, basking in the heat of the fire while he simultaneously sulked. "I had thought there would be some hope for him. He seemed reasonable, damn it," he muttered under his breath over and over again as he stared into space. Finally losing her patience, Lily set down her Transfiguration book which she had been pretending to study. "Well, if you don't mind, I've got a few questions I'd like answered." Sirius, Remus, Peter and James shared a glance with each other that spoke volumes. "If they're the kind of questions I'm thinking, then we'd better take a walk," Remus said, and they all rose, grabbing cloaks and hats. "Just a quick one, though," Lily said hurriedly, trying to catch up with the boys and hastily slipping on her cloak, which James held out for her. "We don't want to be caught after-hours." Turning towards her with a smirk on his face, James simply raised an eyebrow at her. "Okay, so I wouldn't want to be caught after-hours." Sirius chuckled. "All right then, you lot, let's get moving so that Lily won't have to suffer a guilty conscience." "What's that?" Peter inquired lightly, a teasing grin on his face. "A serious mental condition brought on by a disease called rules." Peter shuddered. "Please. Let's not speak of that. This is a school with younger children around, Sirius." Instantly, Sirius donned a contrite look. "I'm terribly sorry, mate. I wasn't thinking. Younger minds are corruptible and all that rubbish, right?" "Indeed," Remus drawled sarcastically. "And some of those minds never grow out of that." That brought a damper on the previously jovial mood of the group, and as they left the school buildings, Lily shuddered at the blast of cooler air that met her. "Cold?" James asked her under his breath. "No, I'm fine," she responded automatically and shook herself. Then, noticing no one was paying attention to them, she added, "Thanks for asking, though." James nodded, and a small, very real smile came across his face that nearly took Lily's breath away. The look in his eyes as he turned to her stopped her heart. "You're certainly more than welcome." "Ahem," Sirius said as he cleared his throat. "You had some questions?" Blushing, Lily shook her head to clear her mind. "Oh, yes I did, didn't I?" Remus smiled so hard that the corners of his eyes crinkled. "That's what you said, at any rate." "Sorry," she mumbled, "it's a little bit difficult to think right now, is all." "What was that?" Sirius asked, leaning forward so that his ear was next to her mouth. If it was possible, she would have turned an even brighter shade of red. "I said I must be tired," Lily said, enunciating every word carefully, and then turning away quickly. Nodding sagely, Sirius agreed. "I don't know what we were thinking, asking you out here when you're not used to the hours we normally keep." "You mean to tell me that you all are normally awake sixteen hours out of every day?" Remus shrugged. "It depends," he said vaguely, and looked away, unconsciously checking the phase of the moon. Lily touched his shoulder lightly. "I understand. Now, my only other question is this. How did you two find James and me this morning?" James chuckled. "Exactly. Or rather, what took you so long?" Remus and Sirius looked at each other and burst out laughing. "What's so funny?" Peter demanded, stuffing his hands in his pockets and trying not to think about how very cold he was getting. A wave of resentment rose up in him. Really! After all he'd been through that day wandering around outside in the frigid evening air was a little bit more than he thought he have to deal with, but he quashed the notion until he could be alone with his misery. That way no one could poke or prod him out of it. "James thinks he can sneak away at night without our knowing about it, that's what's funny," Sirius said. "We knew he was leaving, of course." "The more pressing question was where was he going?" Remus continued. "The answer to which James quickly provided. At first, we assumed that he was headed to the headmaster's office to discuss some pressing Head Boy issue or the other…" "…Which would have been none of your business," James interjected. "On the contrary, it is our duty as Marauders to be well-informed of everything that goes on here on Hogwarts grounds. Apparently we've been failing miserably for quite some time," Sirius countered. Careful to avoid the obviously new, and very tender subject of Regulus, Remus got the conversation back on track. "Anyway, as soon as it became apparent that James here was not headed for an office of some sort, a closer investigation became necessary, particularly when we secured the knowledge that Peter was also missing." "Imagine our surprise, old mate, when we discovered that you had, instead of confiding in us, your old friends and comrades, turned to a girl in a potentially dangerous situation," Sirius teased, his eyes sparkling. "Why didn't you two let me know that you were following us?" James demanded. "We weren't exactly following," Remus said with a sigh. "It took us long enough to get organized that by the time we would have been able to offer assistance, it would have been fairly useless." "After a brief, erm, discussion, we decided to get ahead of the game and get help from the most competent people we could think of: Dumbledore and McGonagall. We determined that, after you had shut down the meeting, you would need help in controlling our fellow students." "It wasn't a discussion," Remus muttered. "It was a full-blown argument, which I won." Sirius looked over at Remus and squinted as though he had never seen him before. "Somehow I don't recall it that way." "Why doesn't that surprise me?" "We're very grateful to you," Lily said, surprising them both with a genuine smile that lit up her eyes and dimpled her cheeks. "It helped immensely. I had just begun to panic. I had no idea what to do with all those… I guess you could call them prisoners." Remus shrugged. "You would have figured something out. You're both pretty intelligent people, as you've proved time and time again." Lily blushed. "Thank you very much, Remus." A benign smile crossed Remus's face. "It's only the truth." A cold wind blew from across the lake, sending chills through all of the members of the party. "I suggest that we move this inside," Sirius said, wrapping his cloak even more tightly around his body. "It's getting too cold out here for my blood." Remus nodded. "Sounds like a fantastic idea to me." Lily shrugged. "I don't think I have any more questions to ask, anyway." "Well, then, if we're going to move inside, let's move inside quickly. If we get the blood moving faster in our veins we'll get warmer," James suggested. "Makes reasonable sense to me," Peter said, and set off at a brisk walk, letting the others fall in behind him. After a few minutes, all Lily could concentrate on was the feeling of blood as it warmed her face and hands and the beat of her own heart, as well as the light presence of James's hand on the small of her back, guiding her. Something in the back of her mind told her that she should say something to him. She hadn't granted him permission to touch her, and they certainly weren't seeing each other. It was the gentleness in his touch that stopped her, though. He touched her in a way she hadn't been touched since the death of her parents. He was simply guiding her through the path while she was too tired and distracted to do it herself. It meant nothing more than that. Surely it meant nothing more than that. "I'd give a Galleon for your thoughts," James whispered to her as soon as they were far enough away that the other Marauders couldn't hear them. "That much, eh?" "I'm quite positive that they're worth it," he teased, and noted that she was slowing the pace a little bit. Biting her lip, Lily decided to throw caution to the wind. "I've decided that I like it when we're, you know, close like this." James laughed. "I'm glad you decided that, because I like it too." "Don't be condescending. I meant it," Lily protested. "I wasn't being condescending. I meant what I said, too. There's something about you…." He trailed off and then stopped suddenly, effectively halting her too. His gloved finger brushed over her cheek. "I could look at you all day long. I spend hours just thinking about you. I like the way you look, I like the way you laugh, I like the way you move, and I love your smile." With a self-deprecating smile, he shook his head. "I guess it would be a safe assessment to say that I more than enjoy times like this… I relish them." Lily smiled. "That goes for me, too." And then, as discreetly as they could manage, they joined hands and strolled back to the castle, letting the others fade off into the distance as they relished the time they had together, for even then, a dark feeling had begun to sink over them. Lily and James were beginning to realize that a great wave was headed their way, and they were either going to have swim against the current or be sucked under by a very dangerous undertow. ** A/N: I learned a lesson this month that I have learned before, but for some reason, must continue to relearn. In times of emotional crisis, it is to those whom we love that we turn and who turn to us in comfort and strength. To everyone who has been a rock for me to stand on while I dealt with the most recent event to rock my perception of reality (and if you're one of them, you know what I mean), I thank you with every fiber of my being. To my readers, I simply say 'thank you'. God (or whatever High Power you believe in) has blessed me with a fanbase of patient and caring readers, and I thank you all for not stopping reading this despite the long wait between the last update and this one. If you've left a review for me, please know that I've read it and I take every word of praise to heart and carefully weigh all suggestions, so feel free to leave me a honest review. I promise, I won't delete it. Thanks to Anne and DPR for being totally amazing people. Without them, these stories wouldn't be have so enjoyable. If you're interested in a Yahoo! Group discussion fanbase for this and other LadyChi MWPP stories, leave a review to that effect and I will leave a link if I get enough interest in it. Thank you, everyone, for giving me such an amazing opportunity to entertain you for a while, and please, enjoy the rest of the story.
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