"i'm not afraid - i know who i married"

*

Sirius closed his eyes, his stomach twisting. Outside, the Death Eaters rampaged their way through the camp, terrorizing innocents. Flames leaped from their wands, eliciting screams from innocents.

First things first. Sirius ensured that Eva's charms were still up, catching a lock of auburn hair between his fingers before scanning the campground for ways to escape. He knew the forest wasn't far off (a product of poor seats) and reasoned that they could run if the time was right.

Whether he realized it or not, his Auror instincts were kicking back in like second nature.

"Eva?" He ran over to the bed and placed a hand on her waist, shaking her gently. He kept his voice soft and calm, not wanting to scare her. "Honey, wake up. We've got to get out of here."

Eva slowly opened her eyes and blinked a few times, trying to clear the exhaustion from her gaze. "Sirius? What's wrong?"

"Death Eaters." He didn't mince words, and his eyes met hers in grim understanding immediately. "We've got to go. Neither of us can afford to be caught here. Not now."

Her gaze hardened, and she immediately slid out of bed. Sirius tossed her a jacket and grabbed one of his own, poking his head out of the tent once again to check if the coast was clear. When she tried to lean out as well, he caught her by the arm and pulled her back in.

"Listen to me," he whispered. "I know you have a thing for heroics, but you can't put yourself in danger. Stay near me, okay?"

Eva nodded. "This feels strangely familiar."

"I know. I hate it, too." His hand found hers, and she held onto it tightly. "Come on."

"Sirius," Eva whispered. "Sirius, Harry's somewhere out there."

He swallowed. "There's no way we can find him in this. Arthur will look after him, and he's a smart kid. We'll find him after it's all over."

Eva nodded, but she didn't look reassured. Neither was he.

Outside, it was chaos. Flames leaped from tents and traveled across the grass. The distinctive crack of apparation and disapparation pierced the smoky air. Worst of all was the screams. They could be heard from every corner of the camp, screams of utter fear and confusion.

"Run!"

"Stay away! It's the Death Eaters!"

"Get out of the way!"

"Someone get help!"

They ran through the crowds, never letting go of the other's hand. Occasional spells shot through the air, but for the most part, people fled rather than fought.

Eva struggled to push her way through the crowd. Sirius, who was much stronger than her, had no such problems. She focused on the feeling of his hand tightly gripping hers, banishing fear from her mind. No one could hurt her if he was there. Most of her attention was spent on not tripping, so when a man decked out in emerald Irish shamrocks shoved her aside to keep running, she went sprawling to the ground.

She lost hold of Sirius' hand when she fell.

Bits of gravel and rock scraped her cheek and she immediately scrambled to her feet, terrified to be trampled in such an unpredictable mob. The pain didn't register in her mind. She spun around desperately, searching for her husband, then realized she was looking for Sirius, not Bert. A fresh wave of panic coursed through her as she struggled to remember what her charm made him look like.

"Eva!" She could hear Sirius' voice, strained and frantic and desperate. "EVA!"

"Sirius!" She screamed without thinking, then clamped a hand over her mouth. You can't go shouting his name in a public place! Still, in such chaos, she doubted it mattered. All that mattered was finding him.

"EVA!"

"I'm here!" She yelled, pushing her way in the general direction of his voice. "I'm here! Where are you?"

There was no response. Likely, his shouting had drowned in the din of the crowd. A purple hex shot through the air and plunged her hand into her pocket to deflect it with her wand, only to find it empty.

It must have fallen out of my pocket when I fell. Her hands went cold.

Whether it was wise or not, Eva turned back around, thinking it was even worse to be caught without a wand. Her fingers itched. It felt like she was missing a limb.

Quickly, she realized how futile her attempts were. There would be no searching the grass for her wand, not in a mob like this. Eva's breath caught in her throat at the sight of hooded figures, the ones that still haunted her nightmares fourteen years after they appeared.

"Sirius!" She yelled, this time without caring. Her voice cracked as she ran through the crowds. All she could think about was how she had lost him again. He's okay. Calm down. He's okay.

Eva coughed, the thick gray smoke in the air finally polluting her lungs. Her feet carried her towards the woods without permission from her mind, and that was a relief, because her mind didn't seem to be working right. She hadn't been so afraid in years, at least in the sense of intense anxiety. Only when she was safely behind the cover of trees did she stop to catch her breath, leaning over and breathing heavily.

Being wandless have her a strange feeling of vulnerability. She crept through the woods, hoping to find someone and hoping to remain undiscovered at the same time. A twig snapped and she nearly jumped out of her skin, but the guilty stick has been crushed beneath her own foot.

"Professor?" 

Eva's anxiety immediately spiked, as did her confusion. "Hermione?"

Two teenagers moved out from behind the trees. When they stopped in front of her, they were so close that their shoulders nearly brushed. Ron stood slightly in front of a ghost-white Hermione, both of their wands at the ready.

Eva swept them both into tight hugs, fussing with Ron's collar and Hermione's hair out of nerves. Neither stopped her protective mothering. "What are you two doing out here all alone? It's dangerous!"

"Mr. Weasley went to help the Ministry," Hermione said hurriedly, "he and Bill and Charlie and Percy. The rest of us split up. Ginny and the twins are somewhere out here as well."

"Where's Harry?" 

"No idea. We lost him somewhere in the crowd. Been looking for him ever since," Ron muttered, his eyes wide with panic. Eva could practically feel the color drain from her face. "Where's Sirius?"

"I don't know. We got separated. I can't exactly go yelling for him, can I? Not with Ministry officials crawling around." Eva bit her lip, glancing around the forest. She didn't trust that they were safe. There were too many shadows and trees to conceal oneself in. "Listen, let's stick together. I'll keep an eye on you two, but keep your wands out. I lost mine somewhere back there."

Hermione stared at her professor. "You lost your wand?" She asked incredulously. In any other situation, Eva might have laughed.

"Yes," she answered curtly, refusing to offer any more information. "Come on. Use lumos."

"Lumos."

"Lumos."

Eva pulled her leather jacket more tightly around her shivering form and led the way through the woods. No stars lit the midnight sky. Her heart was beating faster than she knew it should be, yet she forced herself to remain calm. A frantic professor was not what her students needed. Never mind what she needed. They mattered more. Harry mattered more. Her mind flitted to Sirius' warning about her tendency for heroics, but she pushed it aside.

A faint yell, a man's voice, interrupted the eerie silence choking them all.

"Mosmordre!"

A jet of green shot up into the sky from the smoking wreckage that was once a cheerful campsite. The spell formed in front of the clouds, taking the shape of a ghastly green skull with snakes pouring out of its mouth.

Eva's knees threatened to buckle, but she leaned against a tree instead, staring at the sky in terror. Memories flashed across her mind, memories she had almost managed to forget. 

"That's Harry," Hermione said suddenly. Without warning, she sprinted across the field, and without hesitation, Ron followed her. Eva took a deep breath and ran after the pair. 

Harry was just getting up from the ground when Eva flung her arms around her godson, pulling him into a bone-crushing hug. He quickly wrapped his arms around her, somehow sensing that she needed the embrace as much as he did. 

"Are you okay?" She questioned, looking over him for any injuries, smoothing his messy hair down, placing her hands on his shoulders. "Ron and Hermione said that you were separated, I've been so worried!"

"Yeah, I'm okay," he muttered. His bright green eyes focused on her face, and his brow furrowed. "Eva, you're bleeding."

She touched her cheek, immediately wincing at the contact. When she pulled her hand away, there was blood on her fingers. "I fell."

"Are you okay, erm, otherwise?" There was a heavier meaning in his words, one that only she could understand, and she nodded. This seemed to satisfy him. "Where's Sirius?"

"I don't actually know. We got separated as well. I thought I would have found him by now." Eva swallowed, her fears getting the best of her once again.

A blue curse whizzed through the air, and Harry yelled, "DUCK!" 

Eva dropped to the grass and covered her head with her arms, Harry right beside her. Ron pulled Hermione to the ground and wrapped an arm around her. Above, a colorful display of spells and hexes rained through the air, still heavy with smoke. 

"STOP! THAT'S MY SON!" Arthur Weasley came running into the clearing, holding his hands in the air to protect them all. "Ron, Hermione, Harry, Eva - are you all right?"

"Which of you conjured it?" Another man, frantic and distrusting, stepped forward, his wand wavering between the four of them. 

Eva's mouth fell open in disbelief. "Mr. Crouch?"

Barty Crouch blinked. For a moment, it looked like he was trying to place his old secretary, although she had recognized him in a second. Finally, he muttered, "Miss Taylor?"

"Barty, you can't possibly believe that one of them conjured the Dark Mark," one of the other men, Amos Diggory, said firmly. Cedric's father. "I mean, they're kids!"

"She isn't," another chimed in. He raised his eyebrows. "And she was married to Sirius Black, a convicted Death Eater."

"No," Eva said automatically, shaking her head several times. "It wasn't me."

"Professor Taylor doesn't even have a wand on her," Hermione volunteered, clearly trying to keep her out of trouble. "So it couldn't have been her."

Crouch's eyebrows shot up. "You don't have your wand?"

"No. I lost it somewhere in the campsite," Eva admitted, keenly aware that everyone's eyes were on her. It felt like the days after the war ended, back when the world decided that it needed to watch her every move. 

"That's interesting," Crouch said. He reached into his pocket and uncovered a wand. "Because we found a wand about a hundred yards from here, and Priori Incantatem revealed that this wand shot off the Dark Mark."

Eva felt her heart drop to her stomach. "It wasn't me," she whispered weakly. "Mr. Crouch, you know I would never-"

"The evidence is against you." Crouch stepped forward, his wand pointed at her. "Unless you have some other form of proof, we have no choice but to convict."

"Barty," Arthur whispered, "don't be hasty. I can vouch for Eva's character. She was only protecting the kids."

It was too late: Crouch's mind was already made up. With a flick of his wrist, metal handcuffs clamped Eva's hands together. Terrified, she tried to pull them off, but they tightened with her resistance. She groaned at the pain they caused.

"Hey!" Harry exclaimed angrily. He started for Crouch, but Ron held him back.

"Mr. Crouch," Eva whispered wildly, her eyes filling with tears, "it wasn't me, I swear it wasn't, sir. You know me, it wasn't me-"

"EVA!"

Her head snapped up as a man with auburn hair burst into the clearing, out of breath and wide-eyed. As soon as Sirius saw the handcuffs, he reached for his wand, but multiple Ministry officials pointed their wands at him, and he froze. 

"What's going on here?" He yelled, practically pulling his hair out. Eva looked close to fainting, pale as the full moon. He tried to step closer to her, but the officials blocked him off.

"Who are you?" Crouch shot back. "She shot off the Dark Mark. If you know her, perhaps we shouldn't trust you, either."

"I- I'm Bert. And now, what's going on here? Why is my wi- friend in chains?" His voice trembled with uncontrolled rage.

"She has been caught at the scene of the crime," said Crouch, never wavering, "and her wand was used to cast the spell."

"It could have been someone else, did you ever think of that?"

"There was no one else."

"Wait!" Harry said. "There was a man! I saw him."

Crouch squinted. Something changed in his expression. "A man?"

"Yeah. Over there. And that's where you would have found the wand, right? He must've disapparated." Harry pointed to a spot in the campground, and a few officials hurried to examine it. 

Crouch looked back and forth between Sirius, Harry, and Eva. He issued no apology. With a defeated sigh, he muttered, "finite." 

The handcuffs vanished, leaving bright red marks on her skin from where the metal rubbed. Sirius immediately engulfed her in a warm hug, and it was all she could do not to break down and cry right there.

"I would leave, if I were you," Crouch said to them all, his eyes lingering on the couple as he surrendered her wand. Eva didn't like the way he was looking at either of them, so she just nodded and buried her head in Sirius' shoulder. He just held her tighter.

Once all of the officials had left, everyone swarmed Eva. As much as she loved them all, the only one she really wanted was Sirius.

"That was so unfair!" Hermione lamented. "I can't believe the Ministry of Magic operates like that."

"They're paranoid," Arthur explained, though he didn't look happy, either. "The last time that mark was in the sky, too many people died."

Sirius seemed to sense what Eva needed, so he said goodbyes for the two of them and guided Eva back into the forest, then disapparated. They appeared on the back step of their beach house. Only then did she let her guard down and dissolve into tears, and he scooped her up, carrying her up to their bedroom while whispering comforting nonsense in her hair.

He set her on their bed and disappeared into the bathroom, returning with a box of tissues and a first aid kit. The charm had worn off as soon as they set foot in their home, so he was back to looking like her husband. The thought set her off all over again. 

With careful hands, Sirius cleaned out the scrapes on her cheek as she sobbed and braided her tangled curls out of her face, pressing soft kisses to her face as he worked. Her leather jacket was discarded to a nearby chair, and he offered her one of his sweatshirts, which she gratefully snuggled into. Only once she was well taken care of did he speak. 

"I'm so sorry, Evie." His voice broke. "This is all my fault."

"W-w-what?" 

"I'm supposed to protect you," he whispered, running his hands through his hair, distraught. "You could have been sent to Azkaban tonight because of me. You and our child."

"I'm okay," Eva whispered, lying through her teeth. Of course, he caught it. "Sirius, n-nothing h-h-happened. Everyone's ok-k-kay."

He threw his hands up in the air. "You're not! Eva Brandi, for once in your life, think about yourself!"

Eva looked at him, her eyes overflowing with tears. "I'm sorry for worrying you."

"Oh, darling, no," he murmured, pulling her into a soft embrace. His hand rested on her stomach, and he rubbed it gently. "I'm sorry, too. For everything."

They stayed there for seconds or hours, wrapped in each other's arms.

"At least..." Sirius barely chuckled. "At least Ireland won."

Her heart felt like it was going to explode and her tears still hadn't subsided, but she burst out laughing nonetheless.

long chapter! tell me what you thought! next one really starts getting into GoF!

what do you want to see happen?

is the baby a boy or girl?