Part III: Sirius Black, Fleamont Potter and Euphemia Potter.

Word Count: 836

Sirius had never been the reason for anyone's tears. At least not that he knew of. He assumed that his parents had never cried over him anyway. They had most certainly argued over him and cursed his name or the fact that he had been born at all; but cried over him, never. So, when Sirius came sneaking down the grand stairs and towards the kitchen at five in the morning after spending hours of trying to fall into the same kind of peaceful slumber as his best friend and found Euphemia crying in Fleamont's arms, Sirius was unsure of what to do. Fleamont was leaning against the wall while Euphemia was leaned over him. Euphemia's entire body was shaking while he gently stroked her arms and back.

"But he's here now," Fleamont whispered before leaning down to kiss her grey hair. "He came straight here and you took care of him. You did exactly what he needed you to do."

Sirius held his breath for as long as he humanly could while waiting for Euphemia to say something, anything. He could feel the hair on his arms stand up and a shiver went down his spine as he practically stood on his toes waiting.

"But we should have gotten him out sooner," Euphemia said. "We've known about this for years and we never did anything to get him out of there."

Sirius didn't know if he wanted to laugh or cry. He took a few careful steps backwards so that he could sit down on the last step of the stairs. James would have said something similar. If he found out that one of his friends were hurting and there was something that he could have done then he would have blamed himself. Now Sirius knew where he got it from.

"E, my darling, the system is at fault here, not you or me," Fleamont said in that soft baritone of a voice. His grey hair was as messy as James were and they had almost the same body type. Although Fleamont wasn't as muscular and he had a certain dignity which Sirius was sure James would have too in a few years. "We have done everything we could up until this point."

"Up until this point?" Euphemia repeated and asked the question that Sirius wanted to have answered.

Fleamont nodded. "Well obviously now we can do more than we could before. He ran away from home."

Sirius released a sigh of relief. For some reason, although he couldn't justify it to himself, he had assumed that something bad was going to follow Fleamont's statement. But he didn't, couldn't, expect Fleamont to want to help him even more than both he and Euphemia already had. Or maybe he could? Sirius sat completely silently and still at the last step of the stairs and wondered in his hazy sleep-deprived state of mind if he was supposed to talk to them. Was he supposed to make his presence known or was he supposed to thank them for helping him more when he technically didn't know what it meant?

"He needs a room," Fleamont laughed at Euphemia's words and Sirius saw him nod. "It needs to be next to James, obviously, because he wouldn't have it any other way."

"Who wouldn't have it any other way?" Fleamont wondered with a teasing tone in his voice. "James or Sirius?"

"Both." They replied at the same time and laughed.

While Sirius watched them plan he thought his heart would combust into a million tiny pieces. He had never seen anyone cry over him; at least not because they were worried. And he had never seen anyone plan for him, include him in their lives, the way that Euphemia and Fleamont were at that moment. For a few seconds it didn't matter that his body was still aching and that he hadn't slept a wink that night; his heart was racing inside his chest and he couldn't stop smiling.

When he and James were younger, the first time that Sirius spent a holiday with the Potters, he remembered that Euphemia had talked about life. He couldn't for his life remember why they had ended up discussing life but somehow, they had and Euphemia had said that life consisted of both darkness and light at the same time. This could be applied to people too; no one carried only dark or only light within them. No one was ever only good or only bad. There was a little bit of good and bad in every person. With life this translated to a firm belief that there would be good events in life and bad events. But the bad ones didn't make the good any less good.

Sirius had been through something bad and he was in pain in all the ways a human could be in pain. But these flickers of light proved that eventually the pain would subside. Something or several good things would happen. Technically, something good had already happened.