[Yet more First War Background for Mary Potter. This one was written in anticipation of a few more pointed questions during the confrontation with Sirius at the end of book 3. Apparently I am a Pettigrew apologist? The things you never knew about yourself…]

There was muttering outside of Lily's study.

Whispering.

A grown man's nervous chuckling.

The sound of Marauders who had bad news.

She crept to the door, throwing it open just as James raised his hand to knock.

"Lily-flower! We were just coming to talk to you about something!" he said brightly.

Sirius, holding the baby (who looked fine, so it couldn't be about her), snorted.

"What's wrong?" she asked flatly, somewhat displeased to have been interrupted in her translation of the most recent batch of books from the Potter Vaults. The ritual she had been working on would need some reconstruction, a little filling in of blanks, but it seemed promising, as a last fail-safe, if nothing else.

"Nothing's wrong. Why would something be wrong?" her husband asked, quite possibly rhetorically.

She grinned and answered anyway, leaning on the door-post. "Oh, I don't know, just a feeling. What did you want to talk about?"

"We should sit," Sirius said, sounding uncharacteristically serious.

"Well, then," she made a gesture down the hall toward the living room. "Lead the way."

They took their places rather awkwardly, the two of them on the sofa, leaving her in an armchair. Honestly, sometimes it was like James and Sirius were the married pair out of the three of them. She wondered if James knew the impression they were giving, of sides taken preemptively for the conversation ahead. Quite possibly not. He was a very straightforward man. Sirius almost certainly did. No matter how much he hated his parents, he had grown up in a Slytherin family, where such power-plays were as common as breathing.

She raised an eyebrow, waiting for them to say whatever was so important it required sitting.

Somewhat to her surprise, it was Sirius who spoke. "It's about the Fidelius."

"What about it? You haven't written down the secret and then lost it or something stupid, have you?" she asked, her mind immediately leaping to the worst possible scenario.

"No! No! God, no, nothing like that! Well, kind of like that, but not yet, anyway."

"Will one of you please explain what's going on?"

"Pads was almost killed by one of the Yaxleys in that skirmish a couple of weeks ago," James said, as though this explained anything. It kind of did.

"Sirius Orion Black, you son of a bitch! You're supposed to be keeping your head down! Half the Order knows! What if one of them is the spy? If you die, the Secret will be out!"

"I know! I know! Bloody hell, woman! That's why I'm here."

"Explain!"

"I – I can't stay in hiding. I've tried – I've stayed in the safehouses these last three weeks, only done the minimum for the aurors, not got into any fights – not on purpose at least – but Lily, people are dying!"

"I know that, you utter moron!" she hissed viciously. Did he really think she was unaware? She, who had been a healer on the front lines, and then in the safehouses, before all this 'you must go into hiding to protect your child' rubbish? "Suck it up! If I can do it, you can too!"

"Lily…" James sighed. They had argued more than once over the best way to keep Mary safe. James would have been happy to stay behind their wards forever, but Lily thought that their best chance was to fight, in the hopes of ending it all sooner, rather than later. So far she had caved to James' insistence that the two of them, good as they were, would make little difference to the fighting overall, and had focused on finding wards and protections to place upon Mary. Once she was satisfied that her daughter would be sufficiently protected in her absence, she would return to the fight, regardless of what her husband might have to say on the matter.

"I can't, Lily," Sirius said, looking her straight in the eye. "You're in hiding to protect Mary. I can't hide just to save my own skin when everyone else I know and care about is out there risking theirs."

"You're supposed to be in hiding to protect Mary too! And James and me," she added as an afterthought. She and James could, at least to some extent, protect themselves.

"I know I – it's driving me nuts, Lily! I can't do it! I thought I could, but I can't! It shouldn't be me! We – I – I need you to break the Fidelius. Re-cast it on someone else, someone who could hide, who isn't a target, whom no one would suspect…"

"We thought Peter would do it," James said, "You know he's been mostly looking after his mum, anyway. He never was a fighter…"

Lily stared at the two very-earnest-looking men across from her on the sofa, and silently thought curses at Dumbledore for convincing them to use the damn Fidelius in the first place.

It had seemed like a good idea at the time, but she hadn't realized until after they cast it that when it was placed on a residence, it prevented any other house wards from functioning properly, and placing a Secret Keeper under a Vow of Secrecy was contraindicated. She hated having all their eggs in one basket, even one so blindly loyal to James as Sirius. The fact that Sirius would literally kill himself before he let anything happen to James or Mary was the only reason she hadn't insisted that they move somewhere else when she realized the flaws of the spell (it was one of the less mutable rules of magic that there was always a price, whether an outright cost or in the potential for failure). Well, that and she didn't have anywhere better for them to go.

And now, now, he was having second thoughts? Damn it!

If Sirius wouldn't or couldn't be their Secret Keeper, she would rather not use the Fidelius at all. But it was too late now. Placing the Charm on the house ("The Potter Family resides at Potter Cottage in Godric's Hollow") had not only removed knowledge of its existence from the minds of anyone who knew of it, but had also scrambled the wards the Potters had laid down on the Cottage over centuries. It had taken her months to disentangle them, strategically breaking or neutralizing them and rendering the house safe for habitation. It would take years to repair the damage. She wondered briefly if Alice would mind if they simply moved back into the Longbottom manor for the duration, but discarded that option almost immediately: three months of Augusta Longbottom had been more than enough for one lifetime, and now that His Moldiness knew who he was looking for, even the Longbottom wards might not be enough, not long term.

No, the only alternative would be to re-cast the Fidelius, as the boys were suggesting, though probably out of loyalty and faith in their friend, rather than because they knew how impossible it would be to do anything else. But really? Peter? "Why not Alice?" she asked. "She's Mary's godmother, and the Longbottom wards have to be better than wherever Pettigrew and his mum are holed up." It was best not spoken of that Alice owed Lily a life-debt on behalf of Frank. Her loyalty would be assured, if only because of that, but bringing it up would only end in shouting.

It seemed the boys had already considered and rejected her, though. "Alice and Frank are targets just as much as we are," James reminded her.

"Peter's been living in the muggle world," Sirius explained. "Ever since Mrs. P's magic finally went. It's easier for her, not having to see it all around when she can't use it, you know? We figured anonymity would be almost as good as proper wards."

"Plus," James added, "Pete's an animagus, too. If he is attacked, he can just vanish." That was… true enough, Lily supposed. She had been suspicious when she first discovered that the fourth Marauder's 'spirit animal' was a rat, but her research into the matter had revealed more positive traits associated with the creature than she had expected, including intelligence, survival in adversity, and, quite surprisingly, loyal, pack behavior. It was no wonder he got on well with the stag, the dog, and the wolf.

"Not Remus?" Remus was Lily's favorite Marauder (sometimes even including James). She felt a certain sort of kinship with the werewolf. Perhaps it was because he had been her fellow prefect, or perhaps because they had spent more time in the library together than she had spent with any of the others anywhere until they had graduated, but if she had to choose the Marauder least likely to betray her (not counting James), it would be Remus. After all, he was a werewolf – he could smell a lie – and (unlike Sirius) he had never once tried to reveal any of her double-talk or deceptions or her ongoing friendship with Severus in their sixth and seventh years.

The boys shifted uncomfortably before James said, "The missions Dumbledore has him on don't really count as lying low."

Lily glared at them. "You think he's the spy!"

"No!" Sirius denied it too quickly. "Moony would… he would never."

"Of course not," James agreed, but there were shadows in their eyes.

"He's not!" she insisted hotly. Remus would die before he betrayed the three wizards who knew about his affliction and still treated him like a human being, and it damn well pissed her off to see them doubt that.

"We're getting off-topic, Lils," James said defensively. "It's got to be Peter. He's the best choice."

"Fine," she spat bitterly, grumbling under her breath about how much she hated the fucking Fidelius Charm. "You two talk to Peter and get me a proper copy of Dumbledore's notes on the Fidelius, give me a week or so to learn the spell, and we can do it whenever all three of you are free after that." It went without saying that she, trapped here, would be available at any time. She had abandoned her Healer's Apprenticeship to go into hiding and Dumbledore was insisting that she was most valuable to the Order guarding her daughter, much to her aggravation.

"Thank you," Sirius said, his sincerity almost painful to hear. "Thank you, Lily – I – just, thanks."

James just reached over and squeezed her hand tightly. "It's going to be okay, Lils."

She sighed, and gritted her teeth against telling him, yet again, that she couldn't shake the vague but overwhelming sense that it wasn't. Everything about this – hiding here – was wrong. It didn't make sense, she couldn't make a reasonable argument for leaving, and she had no valid alternative to offer; she just knew that what they were doing was doomed to fail. She kissed Mary's sleeping forehead gently before excusing herself back to her study to finish up that translation. The nursery and the crib were enchanted to stave off the apocalypse (and woe betide anyone who tried to hurt Mary there), but she couldn't confine the child to one room at all times. The sooner she found a charm or ritual or ward to protect her baby girl from harm wherever she went, the happier she would be.