Barking Mad (Sirius/OC)

Brave enough to die

Chapter 61

When I'm standing in the fire

I will look him in the eye

And I will let the devil know that

I was brave enough to die

~ Somebody To Die For - Hurts

September, 1981

We had a rat in our little group. When Marlene McKinnon died, it became quite obvious. Now James and Lily were in hiding, and Sirius was slowly losing his mind. He had to keep up pretenses of course, but it was clear that everyone thought he was the Secret Keeper. This meant Sirius had thought right with his suggestion to use Peter instead. Even Dumbledore had volunteered, but even though James had an enormous regard for the wizard, he trusted his friends more.

That's James for you, I thought with a soft smile as I hurried to the next Order meeting. Sirius and I normally resided in the Order's Headquarters, but we had just returned from Malta. It had taken some doing, but in the end I got Sirius to come with me. It had done him good to get away from the war for a little while.

The war was slowly killing the man I loved. He no longer laughed carelessly, and the twinkle in his eyes only appeared occasionally these days. I grinned hopefully. Yes, I was indeed hopeful this evening because I had marvelous news.

While Sirius had already headed over to the meeting, I had a short checkup at St. Mungo's to confirm my suspicions. I could barely contain my glee, if I was being honest. This was going to rock our worlds and hopefully give Sirius something to smile about again.

My mind travelled once more to our traitor. Oh, I would love to get my hands on that witch or wizard. I firmly believed that it was a woman, because, let's face it, the only men remaining in the Order right now are Arthur Weasley and his five boys, Peter, Remus, James, Harry, Sirius, Dumbledore and the Prewett brothers. I doubt that the babies had anything to do with it, so that only left our small group of friends, and I trusted them with my life. The women, however, were a completely different story. I didn't know some of them as well as I would have liked. I bet it was that Deirdre person. Anyone called Deirdre was either mischievous or selling cookies for the dark side. She just had that kind of name that made you immediately suspicious of her.

I crossed my arms against the cold as I hurried along. It was already quite cool out for a September night. I hadn't been to this part of London on foot in a while, with good reason. It was hard to go outside when you could start shrieking your head off at any minute. To me, the whole Wizarding World was made out of dead people walking, and it took the charm right out of a shopping day at Diagon Alley, I can tell you that.

But it was well past eleven and the Ministry had seen to it that the streets were empty after ten, which meant that I had nothing to fear. Well, except for the Aurors who occasionally patrolled the streets but since I hadn't encountered any yet, I was feeling good about my decision to take a stroll.

I froze when someone called out my name. I only had a few more blocks to go before I reached the house so I could make a run for it if I wanted. The person had called out my name though, so he must have been a friendly. I weighed my options for a moment, but I didn't like either of them. If I ran, I could get hurt or killed and fighting could easily have the same outcome. I closed my eyes and felt my fist ball around my wand in anticipation.