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"No..." Sirius Black gasped while jumping off his motorcycle mere minutes after Pettigrew had left the area by apparating away.
He'd been alerted by the knowledge of the safe house rushing back into his mind, and the screams from the magic that came with being Harry's godfather, that something horrible must have happened to James, Lily and most likely Harry. That the magic only would activate on the death of both parents was a bad omen. If the secret was broken in such a way, then it could mean only one thing. However, the mere idea was so horrible, he couldn't bring himself to even think about it. Denial after all was a strong power.
He knew what else this meant. Damn, we shouldn't have trusted Peter!
In retrospect, it had been a idiotic idea to switch secret-keepers. The idea that Peter would be beneath suspicion had been horrible and this disaster wouldn't have happened if he had listened to James and Lily and their concerns that they shouldn't switch. He cursed himself for convincing them.
This is my fault, was the first thing that came to his mind.
Standing in front of the ruin of the house, he could feel the magic released by the explosion. He wouldn't dare to use his wand to clear the path while the magical energies were still so disrupted. With the power of desperation he started to throw aside debris to free the way into the house. He was right now holding back his tears, but he knew they would come soon enough.
"Damn, Peter, how could you?!" Sirius wailed, fearing he could lose it.
"Sirius!"
Looking up, he saw Hagrid, the gamekeeper of Hogwarts, approach, clearly being sent by Dumbledore to check what was going on after the secret got broken. The huge man looked in horror at the ruin of what had been a safehouse, trying to understand what happened. "Sirius, what happened?"
"We were betrayed! James, Lily and me, we trusted the wrong man with the secret." He then returned to his task. "Help me!"
Hagrid was a more confused than anything else at the statement. Wasn't Sirius himself supposed to be the secret-keeper? However, questions could wait for the moment; it was more important to get into the destroyed house. Thanks to him being so big and strong, they quickly managed to get inside, only to be greeted with a horrible sight.
"James..." Sirius choked when seeing the corpse of his best friend, but he pulled himself together.
Fearing the worst now, both men ran upstairs, being forced to throw aside more debris, until they finally managed to enter the nursery. It looked like a bomb had went off in it, destroying the entire room and ripping away the outer wall. At the inner wall of the room, they saw their worst fear coming true.
"Lily..." The explosion must have had thrown her corpse around, thus why it looked somewhat beaten up. "Harry..."
Both men were barely keeping it together, but finding Harry took priority. Frantically, both men started started to search through the debris, praying that against all the odds, young Harry Potter had survived the explosion. Hagrid threw aside a big chunk blocking his view, and then stopped when seeing what was beneath it.
"Sirius, I've found him!" he called.
Running to Hagrid, Sirius couldn't believe it when seeing the unconscious child. Holding little Harry close, both men were relieved that he was breathing. Indeed, he seemed unharmed, which was strange considering the destruction surrounding him. The only injury he'd suffered was a bleeding cut on his forehead that looked like a lightning bolt.
A conflict was raging in Sirius. On one hand, he felt the overwhelming need to search for Peter and bring him to justice for his treachery. He could simply tell Hagrid to take care of Harry and then go on the hunt for the traitor. His reckless side was screaming for this easy and fast way to deal with the pain and the shame that his decision to switch caused this, fed by the hurt over his friends deaths.
It would be so easy to give in to the temptation.
Then he looked at Harry, and all of a sudden the true magnitude of the situation hit him. They had named him Harry's godfather, so he would take care of him in case something should happen to Lily and James. Shame rose in him that he had entertained the idea to shirk his duties to Harry in order to satisfy his thirst for revenge and make himself feel better. No, Harry took absolute priority over everything else and thoughts of doing the avenging himself died quickly.
Lily, James, I won't disappoint you.
Both men needed a few moments before understanding that they now should better leave.
"Hagrid, we need to go. The Muggle authorities will be here soon... and many of them. No chance that the Ministry can keep this quiet with how thin they are stretched. They will have to make up a story. Thank all goodness this house is as unmagical as it can get," Sirius reminded Hagrid.
Thankfully, Lily had reminded them that a house disappearing and then reappearing would be suspicious, thus the Fidelius Charm had been modified. Once it was broken, everyone who had even remotely come into contact with the house and hadn't known the true story would remember the house had always been there, with the addition that they just hadn't paid it any attention.
"Yes..." Hagrid then remembered something while they raced down the stairs. "Dumbledore gave me a one-use portkey. He's expecting an owl from me." Hagrid pointed at his coat and Sirius guessed that the man kept an owl somewhere in there .
"No, that would take too long." Both men had reached the street, where Sirius had parked his motorcycle. He held Harry close while getting into the sidecar. "You drive. Now we'll see if the driving lessons I gave you with it are paying off."
"I hope so as well..."