One Step Ahead Part II | Sirius Black

Chapter 222

"Do you remember what peace feels like?"

Albus Dumbledore startles, nearly dropping his glasses he'd been cleaning on his robes. He pushes them onto the bridge of his nose, turning and peering at the Veela of Hogwarts. She stares out across the Black Lake, and in the darkness of the coming morning her blue shirt looks black.

"Gwenyth," He starts slowly, turning his head to peer over his shoulder. She doesn't move, as if refusing to even catch a glimpse of the castle where she'd grown up. She refuses to look back, and in turn, he turns his weary shoulders as well and faces out across the water. He hesitates visibly before asking, "How did you know--"

"Please," She holds up a hand, silencing his curiosity. She smiles slightly, the fading moon cresting across the still waters and giving the illusion of whitecaps that tumbled and swayed across the ocean by her cottage. "I think you and I know one another well enough by now to have insight into the others secrecy." She sighs, rolling the tension from her shoulders before asking quietly, "Has Severus come and gone?"

The Headmaster smiles in spite of himself, feeling a flare of pride and gratefulness for the being standing next to him. It's his turn to sigh, to look up at the sky and study the stars, "Yes. He has."

"It's James and Lily then," Gwen muses, the tiniest crack in her passiveness surfacing in the break in her voice. "He wouldn't have come to you otherwise."

"Gwen," Albus shakes his head slightly, "You know it isn't safe to discuss these things."

"I'm not asking you what will happen next," The Veela's tone is sharp, her eyes sharper when they finally zero in on the side of his face. "I'm not demanding to know where they will hide, who their secret keeper will be. I'm not demanding any answers, Albus. You know I'm not. I'm simply clarifying the things that you and I have spent so long refusing to discuss." She turns to face him fully, a pleading look on her face now, one that looks sorrowful, "Tell me. Tell me you will do everything in your power to keep them safe. They are the family I have left and I wont let our silence be what sentences them."

Her heart aches at night when she closes her eyes and sees the first time she met Lily Evans, all flustered and emotional over not getting any points to Gryffindor during the first week of classes. Gwen thought she was beautiful, every bit as fiery and kind as her hair and her eyes hinted at. She was selfish enough to hold onto that memory as leverage, to keep her mind focused and her gravity centered despite the constellations of dismay and uncertainty pulling at her every which way.

"Somewhere along the way, you stopped listening to me," She accuses, crossing her arms at the way his brow quirks slightly. "You stopped asking for my help."

He turns his head to look at her, and she sees guilt in his eyes before he can shift them back to the sky. Her head shakes vehemently, "You had no idea that Dolohov--"

"You're right," Gwen notes the clench of his fists and the mist that coats the blue of his eyes, "I didn't have an idea. That is the problem with war, Gwenyth. It is a never ending cycle of ideas." He turns again and finds that she is listening, eyes earnest despite the stoniness of her face, "And I feel as if my mind is crammed too full of memories and thoughts, and yet I have no ideas."

She stares at him for a long moment, wondering why he hadn't answered her first question. He usually answered her questions or at least led her to a way to answer her own questions. Questions, the two of them had many. She finally settles on one.

"Tell me about the girl in the painting."

That painting, the one that hung behind Sybil Trelawney's shoulder like an omen the night she'd given the prophecy. The painting of a girl with vacant eyes and a wistful smile.