The Godmother

29. don't do anything stupid

Elizabeth appeared in her lounge room. Sirius was by the window, smoking out onto the city. He looked at her as she appeared. Cigarette in his mouth like a statue. So beautiful. Suffocatingly sweet.

"What did you find?", Sirius asked. He threw the butt out of the window and swept toward her, grabbed her waist and pulling her into a hug.

She didn't notice how pale she was in her cheeks, yet, how sickly red her eyes had turned. Her lips fluttered. Shocked. Went to speak but was abruptly stopped by the knowledge that she had come to know.

"They just... walked out...", she said breathlessly, staring out of the window.

Everything felt cold and slow. Slow like the wind when it hit you before a storm- each molecule of air packed with a forewarning that made your body cold and shivery, and filled your mind with fear. Enough to drive you over the edge. To drive you crazy.

"What do you mean they just 'walked out'?", Sirius demanded.

Elizabeth recapped everything that Madam Ainsworth had told her. That Alice and Frank Longbottom had quite literally 'walked out' of St Mungos and disappeared into the night. How was it connected?

It happened in 1986, so how could Alice and Frank have known that Regulus and Peter were out there? Maybe they were on another mission? Something more sinister and dangerous? It was overwhelming to theorise. To try and connect a thousand-piece puzzle in the dark. It was driving her insane- pulling at every last strand of hair until she felt like her head was going to explode.

"Lizzy, you don't know what happened to them", Sirius said, after she'd finished explaining. "I'm sorry to say it, but they're probably dead", he sighed.

She felt his hands bleed into her shoulders until it felt like they were melting into her body. He moved his hands from her shoulders to down her waist, then, he pulled her in for a hug. Heart-felt. Dangerously warm in its way that told her 'everything is ok'. Was it? Was it really?

Sirius didn't understand. He needed to. He didn't understand that she felt it. Alice and Frank were alive somewhere. It just made sense. They couldn't be dead. They were doing something. On a mission or trying to stop something. They were out in Bulgaria or somewhere in Europe trying to do something and Elizabeth needed to figure out what it was.

There was no 'they're dead'. No words that finalized, 'calm down and focus on yourself- on Harry'. It was constantly on the tip of her mind, ready to spew out of her eyes and nose and mouth all onto the floor because there was so much running through her head, her brain was about to start leaking like an overflowing dam.

Elizabeth didn't sleep that night. She was up with Sirius, smoking through the night like they were smoking away the pain. Smoking, if anything, made it worse. It encouraged her thinking like a drug addict buying needles when they had drugs at home. It helped her think. And when Elizabeth thought, she began to grow overwhelmed with knowledge that wasn't true or false. She theorised and guessed as though the world depended on it- though it didn't.

Through the thin blue wreaths of smoke that clouded the window, her thoughts were loud in her mind, but silent in the air. The night sky was beautiful, pitch dark and comforting like a cold bath. There were no stars. There never were. Not with the extraordinary amount of light-pollution that savaged the London sky. So dark she felt like the answers to all her questions would come riding on a dragon down to be delivered to her from the darkness.

Alice and Frank. Peter and Regulus. Peter had been taking refuge in the Weasley home since Lily and James had died. He had covered for himself, while Regulus sought solely and entirely to hide...