The Godmother

50. dead

When Elizabeth landed, she felt her feet squelch into something muddy. There was grass all around them, taller than they were. The mud caused her to slip, and she felt her feet slide and she landed on her back, in a small pool of wet mud.

She looked up at Sirius, who was shirtless, shoeless and pale. He was standing still. Tall. His fists balled in his hands before they relaxed and rose up to his face. He took a breath in while Elizabeth sat in the mud. For a moment she wanted to get up, but then she laid down on her back, embracing it.

It was quiet. There were no sounds of fire burning or the smell of thick smoke lingering ferociously around the air. Crickets chirped nearby. That was all.

The sudden calmness made her shake.

Her house was gone. Her home. Pictures of Sirius, of Lily and James, baby Harry, her parents, her Hogwarts years, burnt and gone. Everything they'd bought, the stupid couch and tv, the dinner table, her bedroom, Harry's bedroom, gone. There was no home to return to. No point of coming back. The death eaters knew their location now. It was all over. They'd been sprung. They couldn't return.

Elizabeth looked back at Sirius as the mud squelched under his feet, and he extended his arm to her. She took his hand, and slowly tried to get up. The mud was thick, and she slipped a few times, but he had one foot planted on solid earth past the mud where he was able to stabilise himself enough to help her up.

She stood up and leapt to the ground, and into his chest. She clung her arms around his torso and breathed slowly, letting her heart race, until she felt tears in her eyes and a warm line streak down her cheek.

She hitched her breath, however, and pulled away, wiping her face before she could let herself crumble.

Where had Sirius apparated them to?

She was in a pyjama dress, and Sirius wasn't even wearing a shirt. Neither had their wands, which had now been taken by Bellatrix, regardless. They had nothing but themselves now.

When Elizabeth had run away, after Sirius' rearrest, she craved the nothingness. She felt that the tent she had lugged along was too much to be carrying. But now that she had a life, now that she had settled, and it had all been ripped away from her, she couldn't help but feel like she was a draining bathtub.

"Where are we?", Elizabeth asked, looking up at him. She could feel the mud beginning to crust in her long hair, down the back of her neck, back and dress.

Sirius looked around, almost confused, himself. He craned his neck over the grass before looking back at Elizabeth.

"The Burrow", he said. "Mad-Eye mentioned in a meeting that they would take anyone in if there was an emergency or an attack. We need to inform him and Shacklebolt about what has happened", he explained.

Elizabeth nodded, in agreement.

The Order needed to be notified. The death eaters had found where they lived, meaning that more people might potentially be at risk of being attacked, if they hadn't already.

Sirius took her hand and led them through the long itchy grass.

They walked for quite a while, having to go slow because the sharp dead grass cut into their bare feet, and because Sirius had apparated them about a kilometre from where the house actually stood. Sirius pretended that the prickly grass didn't hurt his feet, and waited patiently, holding his hand out for Elizabeth while she tried to find ways to walk that didn't hurt so much.

They took quite a while to reach the clearing, but when they did, the unmistakable sight of the Weasley house made Elizabeth sigh a breath of relief. They had never been outside of it, only entering the fireplace when Fred and George had arrived at their doorstep a few weeks prior. It was several levels stacked precariously on top of each other, like an unsettling lego house. But the dim orange lights burning through a few of the windows and quietness around them calmed her nerves. It felt safe.