The Life that Never Lived ? (Goblet of Fire)

THE DREAM

Before Harry could get started, Sirius turned pouting eyes on Lily, who was already excusing herself for the kitchen. She came back not too long later, with no food in sight.

"I set something to bake, it'll be done by the time we are with this chapter," she smiled pleasantly at the fact that she was clearly annoying Sirius. In truth, she'd made the heartiest meal she could think of, she still couldn't shake the image from her mind Sirius was losing weight by the minute.

Sirius didn't argue with her, but instead sat back in his seat with mutiny while Harry began.

"So, I wonder what you guys are discussing." James chuckled in surprise.

"You know, I'm surprised at you though Harry," Remus turned to him. "Looking back, you sort of just ran off to do as you were told, didn't it occur to you to go to Hagrid first? He was closer?"*

Harry opened, then just as quickly closed his mouth, that was an obvious enough answer.

"Don't be like that Remus," Lily scolded at once with a sigh, "it's easy to think of those things after the fact, as you just did."

He shrugged in acknowledgment even if he was still puzzled at Harry for it. Clearly the act of doing what he was told by the Dursleys still hadn't really ever left him, or he trusted Dumbledore more than Hagrid, either way it was odd to him.

"While I'd love for him to get sent to a very certain place for pulling a stunt like that," Sirius declared with a nasty look in place, "it fails me to see why he'd do that. Why come all the way up to the school just to pull a stunt like that?"

"You got me," Lily sighed, "the whole situation feels like something out of a murder mystery novel, and I always hate reading those."

"You might have to say it a few more times, just to make sure he got it," James smirked at Harry's eye roll.

Remus burst out laughing at this level of enthusiasm from him trying to figure this out, and though he could poke many holes in that, he couldn't deny Ron's spirit.

"How come we're not speculating on this?" Sirius pouted, "I've got a few ideas-"

"No Sirius," Lily said at once. "I want as little to do with that man as possible, and having to listen to what happened to him might satisfy you, but it'll only infuriate me more having to hear his name."

"It really won't bother you to at least try to guess what happened?" Remus asked her in surprise.

"I honestly couldn't care less what did, no matter what it was." She stated in no uncertain terms. "If you two want to chat about it later, leave me out of it."

Sirius grumbled at her being a killjoy, but James more than agreed with his wife on this one and waved Harry on.

"About time," Sirius' pouting increased, he couldn't believe how long it took Harry to get around to that, he should have used his cloak and done it without Dumbledore's say so!

Everyone disagreed with Sirius about that though, now that Harry was one hundred percent away from that, they didn't want Sirius anywhere near it either.

"Of all the fun, late night conversations you could have been having," James groaned. Would it kill his son to have a fun conversation once in a while like a normal kid?

Harry made a testy noise of agreement along with everyone else, no one was cutting Crouch any slack in here.

"Because that's always encouraging," James moaned, letting his head fall back against the cushions as the mention of Voldemort always caused such a horrid stirring in him lately even more than it had before his adult son fell into his living room. Now all he could picture was someone who was once a brother making that possible, when Voldemort was the reason he couldn't be there for his son! How on earth had Pettigrew ever worked out that this was okay, that he could continue going along with it? He tried to force himself to keep listening in on Harry, those kinds of questions kept plaguing him in what little time he actually spent asleep, he refused to dwell on it longer than he could.