I really need a book about the marauders, but not just a book, I need a good book. I need to have long chapters of James and Sirius being ridiculously compatible, being brothers, I need a background in Peter, I need paragraphs that make me suffer with every transformation of Remus and his love-hate relationship with the moon, I need Lily giving meaning to the word beauty, I need James Potter lost in those red hairs and that overwhelming personality and for merlín sake I need with every cell of my body that Sirius accurately narrates me his view for Remus John Lupin, I need him to spend hours describing me the color of his eyes, his smile and the intelligence of the boy he loves, the one we all love. I need books from the marauders.
Days like today are really hard for me, I live in constant denial, you can’t tell me that Sirius Black is dead, he is alive, he is alive in my heart all the damn days.
A/N: ANOTHER PART! I’ve been trying to write this all day but then my best friend called me and then my uncle came and then my sister wanted attention but I am determined to finish this today and so I did. Even though I want to be on Youtube. IMMA FINISH THIS!AND I DID!
XX
December brought so much excitement into your life. Suddenly, you started working with your brother in one of the Ministry’s facilities and there were always two of the administrators that worked the job together. You started working with most of your brother’s friends and it was so much fun because you started to taste his world for once. Of course, you had your own world still but that was slowly starting to fade away as you got lost in your brother’s world.
And it wasn’t only Remus you started to get close to, it was a boy you never thought you’d become close to.
James was driving you from your work and the two of you were laughing and talking in that car like you had known each other forever.
“Oh, fuck!” he cursed all of a sudden. “I forgot something at home.” he looked at you apologetically. “Do you mind if we take a turn back?”
“No. Of course not.” you smiled through your massive headache. “They’ll just have to wait a little, won’t they?” you looked at him from the corner of your eyes and he kept the eye contact going for a while.
“Yeah. They won’t mind.” he said as he drove into his driveway. “I’d totally invite you in but I think my folks are home.” he smiled awkwardly.
“That’s fine. I can wait here.” you said non-chalantly not really noticing the little hints he was giving you all this time since your head was pulsing with pain. You quickly took a pill from your backpack and swallowed it.
He was gone for good twenty minutes and came back smelling rather fresh.
“Damn. You smell really good.” you complimented and he turned to you, smirking.
“Really?”
“You didn’t have to parfume yourself for me, you know?” you started to tease him.
“Well, if I was home alone I could easily take you up to my room.” he winked and you were a bit shocked that he started to flirt back.
“And do what exactly?” you said a bit more frightened since you haven’t, even for a moment, thought that he, James the-always-hard-working-good-perfect-boy Potter, would flirt so aggressively towards you.
“You know-” he started to look at you with a sexual gaze as he started to drive and you could feel the air between the two of you get dense and heavy. “-be in bed or I could lean you against the wall and you know…” he smirked as you widened your eyes. “Maybe I should bring you next time when I’m home alone?”
“Oh…” you said as you looked forward. “Oh.” you smiled to yourself, then back at him. “But you know- uhm James…” you started to search for certain excuses and the only one that came was the most obvious one. “I can’t- I mean, we can’t.” you started to fumble over your own words.
“Why can’t we?” he continued in his deep seducing voice, killing you with his daring gaze.
“I sort of have a rule.”
“A rule?”
“That I don’t date my brother’s friends.”
“And wouldn’t you break that one rule?” he persisted and you started to get a bit annoyed.
“No. I love my brother and it’d be less drama.” you started to speak louder and clearer.
“Oh, that’s fair.” his tone changed and his eyes averted back to the road. “I don’t want any drama either.” he smiled brightly, bringing back the air that was lost.
And you? It didn’t bring back you from the experience you just had with him but this? It seemed nothing at first but you know… sometimes the tiniest rocks create the largest landslide.
—
New Year was around the corner and your best thing was to ignore everything that has happened with James until now. You thought celebrating New Years with your brother would be the best thing that could happen because neither of you wanted to celebrate it this year.
You worked with Sirius that day and the two of you had so much fun. You had also told your brother and Sirius of what James did but you begged them both not to tell him you told them about this whole situation. You trusted them both with this little secret, mostly because they knew you don’t trust easily and keeping your trust was like keeping a treasure. You weren’t somebody to mess with and they both knew that.
“That’s just James, girly.” Sirius said as he kept swinging on his chair. “He flirts, he says some odd, dirty things but that’s just him. He sees a girl- it’s totally harmless.”
“Yeah…” you said as you kept hearing your inner thoughts telling you otherwise. “It’s just… me? I guess that really shocked me and I don’t really like him that way, you know?”
“Yeah, I can see it in your eyes.” he laughed and started throwing his stress ball in the air. “Don’t worry about it okay, lass? And to be honest I see you with somebody completely different than James.”
“Really?” you laughed and crossed your arms over your chest, raising an eyebrow. “Who?”
“I don’t know but it definitely isn’t James. I see you with someone who’s just as wild and crazy as you. Somebody with tattoos and big and muscular and I don’t know… you and James are just two completely different worlds, you know? And he’s so awkward sometimes- I mean, he’s my best friend don’t get me wrong and I recommend him to any girl but I just wouldn’t recommend him to you.”
“That’s interesting.”
“I wouldn’t recommend me either, just so you know. I’ve always seen you as my baby sister…” he put the ball on the table and looked at you with a head tilt. “… plus I have a lot of trauma.”
You laughed. “Who doesn’t nowadays?”
“You’re better than all of us, (Y/N).” he gave you the sincerest smile you had ever received from him and it gave you such a wonderful sensation of comfort. “You deserve better.”
—
Remus said something completely different when you came home.
“You, me, Sirius and James in the pub- come on (y/n), I don’t want to spend another New Years at home!” he ran around excitedly and with a wide smile on his face.
“I’m tired.” you complained and threw yourself onto his bed.
“NO!” he protested. “You are going! We are going! We are not going to stay home like little babies and come on, (y/n). Another New Years at home?” he looked at you a bit sadly and with the hard situation you two had at home, you really did sympathize with him.
“But ugh! Does James have to be there?” you groaned into the pillow. “I feel so uncomfortable when he’s around.”
“Because of that stupid conversation.” Remus waved with his hand. “Get your head out of the gutter, lil sis. Not everything is about you and your world.”
You lifted your head and glared at it. “It’s my life so it literally is all about me.”
Remus laughed and left the room, coming back shortly with a toothbrush in his mouth. “I don’t know why you’re complaining over James so much. He’s a good lad- works, is ambitious, he’s even taking extra courses for becoming an Auror AND he’s got lots of money…” he leaned down to you and squeezed your cheeks. “Which comes in handy in our family, doesn’t it.”
“You’d sell me for a penny, wouldn’t you brother?”
“Actually for a peanut but yeah a penny as well.” he winked and left the room.
“Fine!” you got back up and after him to the bathroom. “I’m going to spend New Years and I will pretend that nothing happened between James and I in his little Muggle car.”
“That’s all I’m saying, lil sis.” he said as he spat out the toothpaste. “We go, we toast, we drink, we go home.”
“Okay.” you leaned back and looked at him a bit more calmer.
“Now, will you stop be dramatic?”
“Yes.” you smiled and started to walk away. “I’m just going to get ready.”
“Okay.” Remus smiled and continued to brush his teeth and just as he started to floss, he remembered something. “Oh and (y/n)!” he shouted over.
“Yeah?!” you shouted back.
“I forgot to tell you that you’re working with James tomorrow morning!”
SUMMARY: You finally start to hang out with your brother’s friends to which you never had the opportunity to do before but what happens when you start to work with them and your brother? Especially when one specific boy is starting to show interest in you?
A/N: I really wanted to write this for such a long time but I always avoided it. I feel like I have the time and the motivation to start writing it again. I don’t know what has been happening to me lately that I haven’t written anything in so long but here I am. Back. And I’m going to write this series in months instead of parts.
PAIRING: James Potter x reader
XX
It wasn’t easy being twenty-one but it sure was not boring either. You had been running from one place to another, one person to the next and finally coming home and collapsing on the bed.
Social butterfly… or something.
“Bloody hell, (y/n). It’s getting real annoying when all you do is run around all day and come home and just go to your room like there aren’t things to be done in this house.” your brother burst in your room.
“I am a twenty-one year old woman, Remmy.” you lifted your hand from your side. “I am either at work or in the gym or here- I might as well go out and have some fun, now that my job has finally let me two weeks off.”
You could hear him chuckle. “Alright twenty-year old woman. Go get dressed if you want to go out with me and some of my friends.” he threw a coat towards you and left.
You groaned into your pillow, got up and with your coat in your hand, you left with him.
—
You knew some of Remus’ friends. The ones he usually hangs out with and constantly talks about but you never took any interest in them before. Years later, even afer Hogwarts, you started to become more full of life and joy to be around new people.
You walked in front of Remus- with you head held high and a bright smile on your face you saw James sitting curled up in his chair. He had a black coat on and a beanie that let his front hair press on his forehead. His cheeks were all rosy from the cold and he had not wore his glasses.
You didn’t hug him or shook his hand, you only smiled brightly. “Oi!” you spoke loudly until his eyes caught a glimpse of yours and he smiled, his cheeks bulking up to his eyes. You sat down diagonally from him and waited for your brother to join.
“Hey.” he smiled just as brightly but didn’t say anything less.
James and you never really knew each other, despite your brother being his best friend. You remember seeing him back in Hogwarts but since he was out, not so much. Not even with Remus. Remus, Sirius and James had all been over-working themselves all summer and fall, going into winter. Most of them all, James was the one that was always more into work than the rest. He also started some further classes in the Dark Arts that are necessary for becoming a full time Auror, meanwhile Remus and Sirius had both been close to finishing those. Remus was in the lead, of course.
Now James and Remus continued to talk about work, work only they knew about and you were pretty much bored during these drinks.
That was of course until Sirius Black came along.
Sirius came very quietly and he hugged you from behind. “Hey there lil sis.” he ruffled your hair and you giggled. “Where the hell were you hiding?”
“Hey you!” you smiled brightly up at him. “Well, you know. Working and working and working and working.”
“Oh, where do you work exactly again?” James asked you finally for the first time in this whole time.
“Oh, it’s in this Muggle company a town away. It’s pretty darn easy most of the time but some days it’s unbearable.”
“What do you do?” he asked as Remus and Sirius had been having their own conversation.
“Depends where they throw me. Some days I’m behind this machine where I count the pieces, some days I’m helping with cleaning the mass from those other pieces, some days I’m behind an industrial line which is the best work yet because I can do pretty much whatever I want once the line breaks down, which happens so many times in one shift.”
“And you work night shifts too?”
“Night shifts are the best of the best.” you laughed. “The adventures I had with my co-workers.” you continued to laugh as you reminisces, your eyes shining brightly as Sirius and Remus put their attention on you. “We had so much fun- always messing around and joking and sometimes after work we went to go get cheeseburgers and get high and things.” you continued. “It’s the only reason I stayed in this company but now they left and I’m thinking of leaving too.”
“You are?” Remus raised an eyebrow at you.
“Yeah. It’s not the same but I’ll find another job before I quit this one.”
“I totally support that girl!” Sirius high fived you.
And you wish you knew what was about to happen after that day but back then everything seemed so innocent and normal.
Well, maybe it was good you didn’t see it coming- everything that was about to come with the boy sitting diagonally from you and innocently drinking his tea.
headcanon that sirius black talked to every single dog he ever came across, as if it was a real person. he had every single one of his friends convinced that he could talk to dogs, until one day james came across a stag in the woods, tried to talk to it, and got kicked in his face. remus & peter never managed to tell anyone, even lily, the story, because every time that they begin to tell it, they burst out in uncontrollable laughter.
Bloody hell, my loves, I think I wrote and rewrote this part about 40 times, but here it is. It’s probably the biggest segue yet, and I truly hope it doesn’t disappoint.
It was around 6,200 words last I checked, for those who want to know, and as always, please let me know what you think! And if I’ve forgotten anyone on the tag list!
James made sure to continue looking decidedly groggy and disinterested as he brushed his teeth.
“Dunno. Ask Moony?”
“I did, he says he doesn’t have it. And Pete doesn’t have it.”
“Well, clearly I don’t either,” James said, turning from the mirror to lift his arms as he stood in front of Sirius wearing nothing but a towel.
Sirius raised an eyebrow. “Don’t think I’d put it past you.”
“To what, clamp it between my arse cheeks? I said I don’t bloody have it.”
“So if I were to look in your trunk…”
“You say that as if I don’t know you already did. And has it occurred to you that Y/N might have it?” James turned back to the sink and began washing his face, still carefully maintaining his air of nonchalance. “She said something about needing to make amends with Evans for last night. Maybe she’s going backhander shopping at Honeydukes.”
That seemed to satisfy Sirius. He popped James lightly on the back of the head before making his way out of the bathroom.
“Prink faster, will you? I’m Marvin.”
“We can’t all roll out of bed looking like Godric’s gift to women. Some of us have to work at it.”
Bloody hell, my loves, I think I wrote and rewrote this part about 40 times, but here it is. It’s probably the biggest segue yet, and I truly hope it doesn’t disappoint.
It was around 6,200 words last I checked, for those who want to know, and as always, please let me know what you think! And if I’ve forgotten anyone on the tag list!
James made sure to continue looking decidedly groggy and disinterested as he brushed his teeth.
“Dunno. Ask Moony?”
“I did, he says he doesn’t have it. And Pete doesn’t have it.”
“Well, clearly I don’t either,” James said, turning from the mirror to lift his arms as he stood in front of Sirius wearing nothing but a towel.
Sirius raised an eyebrow. “Don’t think I’d put it past you.”
“To what, clamp it between my arse cheeks? I said I don’t bloody have it.”
“So if I were to look in your trunk…”
“You say that as if I don’t know you already did. And has it occurred to you that Y/N might have it?” James turned back to the sink and began washing his face, still carefully maintaining his air of nonchalance. “She said something about needing to make amends with Evans for last night. Maybe she’s going backhander shopping at Honeydukes.”
That seemed to satisfy Sirius. He popped James lightly on the back of the head before making his way out of the bathroom.
“Prink faster, will you? I’m Marvin.”
“We can’t all roll out of bed looking like Godric’s gift to women. Some of us have to work at it.”
James towelled off and took a breath. He didn’t like lying to Sirius. But then, he wasn’t technically lying. You did have the map. He just left out the minor detail that you were holding it for him till the weekend so he could use it to spy on Padfoot. He may have neglected to let you in on that detail as well.
Once back in the room, James evaluated the overall mood as he dressed. The mess around Peter’s bed was growing by the minute as he added the contents of his trunk to the floor in search of his left shoe. Remus and Sirius, meanwhile, were laughing about the unfortunate haircut Alice had given Frank that Frank refused to set right for fear of hurting her feelings. James gave his own hair a good tousle and hoped this wasn’t his lot in life now – blokes with girls talking to blokes with girls about other blokes with girls, while he and Pete just wandered around in the background, looking for their left shoes.
“Fuck’s sake, Worms, you’d think we weren’t literally at magic school right now,” Sirius said as Peter raked another pile of parchments, comics and socks out of his trunk. “Accio Peter’s left shoe.”
The shoe in question came flying from behind Peter’s bedside table. Sirius caught it and tossed it to him.
“Now can we please go to breakfast? If someone’s taken all the good scones before I had a chance to take all the good scones, I’m having Fortescue give you all haircuts.”
“If you’ll recall, I warned you this was going to happen. You forgot the second ‘N’ in 'Rennervate’.”
“I do recall.”
“And I told you I wouldn’t help you if you didn’t get it done last night, didn’t I? You need to mention the Shield Charm in that paragraph.”
“You did tell me that.”
“But you never listen, do you? Add a few foreign translations. 'Sersemlet’ in Turkish. 'Desmaius’ in Spanish. 'Stupor’ in German.”
“I absolutely never listen.”
“I’m sorry to be so harsh, but I just hope you’ve learnt a lesson this time,” Lily concluded as you rolled your Charms essay. You hoped you looked properly admonished, since the only thing you’d learnt was that you could always count on Lily to compulsively help you finish your assignments, even while in the midst of telling you she wasn’t helping you finish your assignments.
She sat down on your trunk as you finished packing your bag, and you could practically see your lecture running through her mind. She’d let you off the hook last night with a terse “let’s just get some sleep”, but now she looked every bit the mum about to give her daughter the “birds and bees” talk. Oh, Godric… she wasn’t about to give you the “birds and bees” talk, was she?
You were slightly relieved when she seemed more concerned about your method of exit last night.
“That’s a hundred-foot drop, Y/N.”
“I had a Whizzbee.”
“Which transitioned when from a sweet to a safety device? And I saw what he did with the broom – diving when he knew you weren’t even properly hanging on yet.”
“I’ve done more than my share of Wronski Feints, Lily, we play Quidditch. We’re perfectly comfortable in the air, and–”
“I know you’ve an answer for everything,” she said, cutting you off, “but I just want you to think about something for one second. Really think about it: What would’ve happened if something went wrong and you got hurt?”
“He wouldn’t have let me,” you said simply.
“Do you honestly trust him that much? I know he’d never hurt you on purpose, but you have to admit, he doesn’t tend to think things completely through.”
“Lily, I know you don’t like him, but is it really so awful not to think everything to death? I’ve been doing naught but thinking since term started, and where’s it gotten me? Confused, stressed, attracting hideous amounts of unwanted attention, and extremely bloody sleepy.”
“It’s nothing to do with liking him, it’s to do with understanding him a bit better after yesterday. It would seem he’s being backed into a corner. And as I recently learned you’re all part-time animals, I’m sure you can see where I’m going with that.”
“If you ever find Sirius Black attacking his way out of a corner – boy or dog – it’ll be because he’s pinned his friends behind him and is trying to protect them. That’s one thing it’d actually be great if you could understand about him, Lily. He can be an utterly selfish git, yes. He’ll take all the good scones, he’ll jump all the queues, he’ll buy the last Bad Company shirt in the shop even though he knew how much you wanted it…”
“Still hurts, does it?”
“It will always hurt.” Bloody hell, you’d wanted that shirt. You nearly decided to just end on that note and let Lily go on thinking the worst of the lousy shirt thief.
“Anyway, he’s a git. But when it’s something really important, he’s also the most selfless person I’ve ever known. And yeah, I’d trust him with my life.”
Lily looked you hard in the eyes until you crossed yours. She rolled hers and grabbed her bag off her bed.
“Fair enough. You’ve all made it this far without being expelled or permanently dismembered, and that’s more than I’d have put money on. Ready for some mediocre scones?”
“Just you watch – every one of them’s going to be lemon,” you sighed, joining her on her way to the door. “Oh, and Lily? I’d trust James with my life, too.”
“I wouldn’t trust Potter with my third toe.”
“Oh, well that I wouldn’t do either, he’s got a bit of a foot fetish.”
“And there goes my appetite…”
“More mediocre scones for me then!”
The week was a somewhat dull blur of Quidditch training and Lily demanding you focus on your schoolwork because in case you and the Marauders had forgotten, this was, in fact, an educational institution and not your own personal playground of wayward debauchery.
The Marauders continued forgetting.
Monday’s swearing-chalk stunt was a great success – you’d even caught Lily giggling a few times as Binns floated by, droning on about the Goblin Rebellion of 1752, completely oblivious to the torrent of obscenities his blackboard was unleashing. For an encore, however, they challenged Peeves to see who could come up with the most rude rhymes for “Snape”. Considering it took him a full two days of recitation whilst chasing Severus through the halls before he ran out of limericks, Peeves was the clear victor. But Lily was decidedly less amused by that prank, meaning you, Marlene and Emmeline had to spend all your free time placating her with revision sessions to stop her setting anyone on fire.
Elsewhere, Hogwarts had managed to weave a fascinating tale around you, Remus and Sirius, not a single portion of which was true.
Apparently, you and Sirius had been secretly dating since fourth year. Or had been bethrothed since birth, depending on who was telling the story. But a “volatile relationship between two people who are clearly mad as hatters”, as you overheard one seventh year put it, “well, it was just doomed from the start, wasn’t it?” Lovely. Anyway, all that doom boiled over when Sirius discovered Remus had taken you on a “clandestine” (publicly clandestine?) Hogsmeade jaunt, and your and Sirius’s fight was followed by an all-out brawl between Sirius and Remus in the Marauders’ dorm, which Sirius won. Or Sirius had challenged Remus to a duel, which Sirius won. Or in one particularly interesting version, Sirius had pushed Remus off the Astronomy Tower, which obviously also counted as a win. And now, you were either furious with Sirius, furious with Remus, or furious with them both, and everyone was waiting with bated breath to see what happened next.
The fact the three of you were currently taking your tea with James and Peter with nary a hint of conflict seemed to mean nothing to anyone.
“The thing that gets me is, I lose in every single version of this rumour,” Remus complained, shooting a hand out to snatch the last Bourbon away from Pete. “Not one person at this entire school could come up with a single scenario where I win?”
“Well, you’re clearly quick,” Peter frowned, settling for a Ginger Nut, “so I can’t see you just hanging about and letting Padfoot chuck you off the tower.”
“So… I successfully run away instead?”
“Well? It’s not a loss.”
“I’d win a bloody duel. Y/N, I’d win a duel, right?”
“Nah, you play too fair. Sirius would cheat.”
“Excuse me? You mean I’d be too creative to be limited by the parameters of mundane rules.”
“Six of one. Oh, Remus, don’t look like that. Tell you what, I’ll have Marly start a new rumour. You and Sirius decide how you’d win.”
“He challenges me to a swot-off?”
“How about I challenge you to sodoff?”
“Now, now, Moony, the real issue here isn’t that you’re losing, it’s that I’m winning in such completely uninspired ways. No one wants to lose a boring old dust-up. But what say you to losing a flying motorbike race whilst being pursued by a rogue dragon?”
“I say you’ve finally gone all the way doolally? Flying motorbikes don’t even exist–”
“Yet.”
“Fine, yet, but if we’re to’ve raced them, they sort of need to exist now. Meanwhile, I’ve still lost…”
“There’s an X factor in this version, though. What if you were neck and neck, and then bam, in comes the dragon, and you’re knocked off course as you narrowly dodge the vicious snap of its gaping jaws?”
“See? She gets it.”
“That’s not a comfort. But if that’s the case, then it should be a draw on the grounds of dragon interference.”
“Can I just interject to ask where I am in all of this? As if two of my best mates would be battling over another of my best mates and I wouldn’t be there to referee or provide moral support or witty commentary?”
“You’re where you always are: asleep in the common room,” you smiled at James, and as the lads laughed, you noticed Lily standing a few yards away, looking at the lot of you like you had three heads apiece.
“See you in DADA. Don’t be late,” you said around the last gulp of your tea before moving to intercept Lily. She still wasn’t quite over the Snape (“the oily snake, who shampooed once just by mistake, and his hair turned to mush like a sodden cake”… yeah, you’d had that one stuck in your head for days) incident, and you didn’t need James to lose any more points by saying something Jamesy.
“You really are all absolutely mental.”
“It’s basically a survival technique at this point. What’s going on?”
“I can’t find Marlene anywhere. She has my DADA notes, and I want to get to class early and start on the new chapter. Do you know–”
“Who would actually win a swot-off against Remus? Yes, I think I do.”
“Cute. Do you know where she is?”
“Let me step into this cupboard for a moment and I will.”
“Let you…? How is that going to help?”
“Just wait here and don’t open the door.”
You didn’t know what James was up to this weekend that would require you hiding the map, but you were glad to have it. There was a little errand you’d decided needed running, and as you looked over the names that slowly materialised, you reckoned now might be as good a time as any.
It took you a few minutes to spot Marlene in one of the empty classrooms on the fifth floor. Before you could wonder what she was doing there, you noticed another name quite close to hers: Duane Morgan. Merlin, Marlene. But actually, that might just work. Best of British to them, anyway. You gave the map a quick salute before tapping it with your wand and whispering “mischief managed”.
“She’s in the fifth-floor empty classroom next to the Boris statue,” you told Lily as you exited the cupboard and headed for the main doors. “Knock first and don’t act shocked to see Morgan.”
“Morgan?! Y/N Y/L/N, what did you just do?”
“The less you know, the happier you’ll be!” you called over your shoulder.
It was overcast and windy out, and you buried your face in your robes as a cold gust sent leaves swirling across the grounds. You hadn’t thought much about what you wanted to say, and that was just as well. Saying too much seemed to be what always led to friction when it came to him and the Marauders. The two of you, on the other hand, had maintained an odd sort of respectful civility by keeping your infrequent interactions brief, polite, and to the point.
You rounded a corner and found him sitting with his back against a large stone atop the slope that led down to Hagrid’s hut, using it to block the wind as he read. As you quietly approached, you could make out the dust jacket: The Eagle Has Landed. You’d seen a review in Remus’s copy of the Sunday Times last week. Brand-new Muggle novel about basically good people being forcibly recruited by the Nazis to do something bad. Undoubtedly a gift from Alphard. You hoped beyond hope that Alphard’s influence was taking root in there somewhere amongst the noxious weeds his parents sowed.
“Hello, Regulus.”
In the swift hands of a fellow seeker, the book vanished into his robes, but he relaxed when he saw it was you. He let out a small breath of what you assumed was relief and laid the novel in his lap as he peered up at you.
He didn’t have Sirius’s looks, but he was growing to be striking in his own way. If only he didn’t look so… repressed. Even without that pompous expression he wore whenever he was around his Housemates, he was a bit too pale, a bit too drawn, a bit too dour. Like a plant that had been denied proper sunlight for much too long.
Whereas Sirius had overcome his environment, Regulus was a clear product of it. He simply looked like what he was: an unhappy boy with no true friends, not thriving or having fun or looking forward to life’s adventures but just going through the motions of a rigidly scripted existence. And accustomed to having to hide his few joys from virtually everyone he knew.
His eyes – not grey like his brother’s but a misty blue that put you in mind of a hazy day on the ocean – were slightly wary now. You’d been regarding him a bit too long, and you needed him at ease for this conversation.
“To what do I owe the–”
“Rapturous pleasure of my delightful company?”
A ghost of a smile. So far, so good.
“Before we get to that, it’s helpful to keep a few decoy dust jackets about for when you don’t want people minding your business. Dull titles that have to do with maths and such. Remus and I have plenty; I’ll owl you a few.”
“Really? I’d… that is, that would be greatly appreciated. Thank you,” he said stiffly, but the look on his face gave him away as pleased. Time to get to the point.
“I’ve come to ask a favour. I don’t know what’s expected of you when it comes to your parents, and I’d never pretend to. But if there’s any way you could just play dumb from here on out when it comes to the topic of your brother’s… romantic pursuits, that would also be greatly appreciated.”
You’d expected him to be combative, to tell you to keep your nose out of his family’s affairs. You were surprised, therefore, to see him looking more apologetic than anything.
“I didn’t give them a name, I swear. I honestly thought they’d be glad. He’ll be of age next month. They want something settled, and every time they’ve spoken to him about it, he’s said… well, he…”
Regulus blushed and looked down at his book, so you finished for him. You’d heard Sirius say it often enough, and frankly, it never got less funny.
“He’s said he’d shag his way through the entire East End twice before he wasted a perfectly good ring on the finger of those shop mannequins playing at girls their jumped-up society friends birthed?”
The ghost of a smile took full form this time, and you grinned back.
“Yeah. That. Anyway, I thought they’d be relieved to hear that he seemed to be genuinely interested in someone. But if you’re here, I take it they’re not. So I won’t mention it again. And if they ask, I’ll tell them I’ve heard it didn’t work out. Is this agreeable?”
“It’s agreeable. Merci, Monsieur Noir.”
He smirked at you, and you felt the usual regret. There was still time for Regulus, but it was running out with every expectation he lived up to and every rule Sirius broke.
“Y/N?”
“Oui?”
“I’m not out to get him, you know. He thinks I am. I don’t like the way things are any more than he does, but it’s just the way things are. He has responsibilities. We both do. But… he’s my brother, and I love him,” he said firmly, but his expression was hesitant, as if he had just admitted a shortcoming. “If you could… perhaps not in those exact words, but…”
“I’ll give him your best, Regulus.”
“Please do.”
You turned to walk away but were stopped short by something he’d said.
“Hey, when you say you didn’t give your parents a name… does that mean you have a name to give?”
He seemed genuinely perplexed. “What do you mean?”
“Do you know who it is? The girl Sirius is interested in?”
Regulus looked at you as if unsure whether you were having him on or not. You supposed it was a surprising revelation, him knowing something about Sirius that his best mates didn’t, but you weren’t opposed to finding out this way if you had to. Sirius might have his reasons for keeping this under wraps, but you had no plans to break his trust. You just… needed to know. You needed the peace of mind of knowing that this girl wasn’t the type who might hurt him. He’d been hurt enough.
Unfortunately, Regulus didn’t look like someone about to divulge information.
His face was the picture of pure surprise now; his mouth had even fallen open a bit. He looked, for once, like a regular 13-year-old boy – and sounded like one, too, when he breathed: “You mean you honestly don’t know?”
“I don’t, but just forget I asked. It’s none of mine anyway, really.”
“Well, it’s sort of… wow. Yeah. Best not, actually. It’s not my place.”
Damn.
“No worries at all. Thanks again for the favour, and I’ll send those jackets off tonight. Until our next covert chat!”
You turned back one more time as he stood, fastidiously brushing bits of grass from his robes.
“Take care, alright, Regulus? Also, I’m easy to find. Should you ever need to find someone.”
“You take care as well,” he said quietly, avoiding the overture. As always.
“So despite the great personal risk to my toes, I’ll come up and get it. Just slide it under your door at midnight. That way, we can be sure no one sees you making the handover.”
“This is all extremely Avengers, isn’t it?” you asked, shoving your Quidditch gear into your locker. “Any particular reason?”
“Yes.”
“Git.”
“Aaargh, Y/N, don’t make me feel bad about this. There’s just something I need to check on. The lads don’t know either, and I swear I’ll tell you first if it turns out to be anything important. Deal?”
“Fine. 'You can keep your secret for the present, if you want to be mysterious.’”
“Tolkien!” Remus shouted as he flung the changing-room curtain aside. James laughed. He looked like a magician making a particularly dramatic stage entrance. It was good to see him so at ease.
“So Prongs has a secret?”
“Yes. I’m MI6, undercover. I trust Her Majesty’s Secret Service can rely on your discretion.”
“Git.”
“See?” you gestured. James stuck his tongue out at you and decided it was time for a diversion.
“What’re you up to, Moony? Come down to watch the old ball and chain practice?”
“I always watch practice, you div.”
“Hadn’t occurred to me to ask till now, but tomorrow’s Saturday. Going to Hogsmeade again, are we? Nudge nudge?”
“We’re all going to Hogsmeade together, like normal,” you answered, slinging your bag over your shoulder.
“Yeah,” Remus said, lifting the bag off your arm and onto his own. “Once everyone gets bored of the rumour-mongering, we’ll try another proper date.”
You gave Remus a sunny smile as he held the curtain back for you, and James realised with dawning horror that Remus Lupin was about a mile fucking smoother than him, and he was bloody well gaining on Sirius, for that matter. Never had he thought he’d be looking to the lad who’d come to Hogwarts terrified of his own shadow for lessons on how to impress girls, but he might do well to start taking notes.
The three of you made your way back to the castle together and got cleaned up for an uneventful dinner. Around ten – after several remarks about James’s “power-mad march towards tyranny” – Sirius declared himself exhausted and turned in early. James had run a particularly strenuous practice with just that outcome in mind. Remus’s second-favourite activity behind reading was sleeping, so he wasn’t far behind Pads, and Peter followed the majority, as usual.
There were a few sixth and seventh years still knocking about in the common room at midnight, but they were all focused on their books or conversations, and no one noticed when James slipped up the stairs to the girls’ dormitories. With the map safely beneath his shirt, he headed up to his room. Everyone was asleep, and he undressed quietly before sliding the map under his pillow and climbing into bed.
He’d hoped his tired body would drag him right off to sleep as well, but his brain had other ideas. Was he doing the right thing? Sirius was his best mate, and it stung a bit that he hadn’t talked to him about this relationship. James hadn’t been two minutes separated from the realisation that he fancied Lily before he was regaling Sirius with his plans for their future. He’d naturally assumed it would be the same when Padfoot finally set his sights on a girl. And he’d been blindsided when – in the space of just a few days – he’d gone from preparing for that conversation to be about you to wondering who the hell had turned Sirius’s head so quickly.
He had to know James would keep his confidence. So what was it? Was she a Slytherin? Had he actually developed feelings for one of the snobbish birds his parents had been forcing him to socialise with for years and was too embarrassed to say? Or was he embarrassed of James instead – afraid he’d say something offensive or do something daft? Was this his method of getting over you? Had he resigned himself to an arranged marriage and decided to make the best of a bad situation by snogging his intended at every opportunity?
It took some doing, but James finally quieted his inner monologue and, along with it, the fear that he was planning to follow Pads out of nothing but petty nosiness or wounded feelings. Things had not been going well for Sirius of late, and he was worried about him. All of you were worried about him. It didn’t matter to James who this girl was – so long as she was a good person who was treating Sirius well. Once he knew that for certain, he could relax and let everyone’s love lives fend for themselves.
He closed his eyes as the clock chimed two. Tomorrow was going to be an interesting day.
Breakfast lasted a week. Everyone got ready for six months. The walk to Hogsmeade was a decades-long pilgrimage for bloody butterbeer.
By the time the five of you had settled into a booth at the Broomsticks for lunch, James was convinced he’d be old and grey – but still ridiculously good-looking – before Sirius ever departed for his post-Hogsmeade date tonight. Not even watching a mildly tipsy Evans giggling with Vance, Fortescue and Macdonald a few tables over could cheer him up. Well… maybe it cheered him up a bit.
At least a distraction presented itself when McKinnon walked in with Morgan.
“How long’s that been going on?” Peter asked. McKinnon had spotted you and was trying to pull Morgan back out the door. From the look on her face, James guessed she hadn’t mentioned to you that she was seeing him.
“Not very long, I don’t think,” you answered. Morgan had spotted you as well now and seemed pretty adamant about coming in. That couldn’t be good.
“She didn’t tell you, did she?” Remus asked, having also noticed that Marlene looked as if she’d sooner leap into the fireplace at this point than be here. Morgan signalled for a pair of butterbeers and chose a table directly in your line of sight. That couldn’t be good either.
“No, but there’s no reason to. He wasn’t my boyfriend, we just went on a few dates. Last year, even.”
“Well, someone should tell him that before McKinnon runs out of oxygen,” Sirius said, nodding towards their table. Morgan was almost comically over-snogging the girl, pausing only to occasionally glance over to see if you were watching.
“Godric, poor Marlene,” you sighed. “What an arsehole.”
You turned and exchanged a look with Evans, who seemed to be trying to decide if she should go over and interrupt. Before she could, Sirius’s fingers flicked ever so slightly in Morgan’s direction as he pretended to scratch his nose. Suddenly, one of the butterbeers Rosmerta had just set on the table tipped over, drenching Morgan’s trousers.
He leapt up, cursing his way to the loo, and you and Evans descended on McKinnon, who was on the verge of tears. Once you’d convinced her she’d broken no sacred bonds where you were concerned and Evans had insisted she spend the rest of the trip with the girls, you returned to the table. James watched as you mouthed a quick “thank you” to Sirius, who tried for an innocent expression before giving up and winking at you.
After that, the group split up for the rest of the afternoon. You and Remus disappeared to the music shop, and Peter headed back to Honeydukes to try to chat up some bird he had his eye on. James and Sirius, meanwhile, elected to partake in one of their favourite forms of entertainment: donning the cloak and terrorising third years at the Shrieking Shack.
They’d just successfully sent a group screaming back towards the castle when you and Remus strolled up, large smiles on your faces.
“I thought that one kid was going to faint dead away when you were tugging on his robes,” you laughed as James pulled the cloak off the two of them.
“Just a few more satisfied customers!” Sirius grinned.
“Of some future therapist,” Remus added.
“The onus is on us to keep the 'shriek’ in Shrieking Shack, Moons,” James said, noticing with relief that twilight was finally creeping over the trees. “Do we need to round up Pete?”
“We saw him leaving with those Hufflepuffs,” Moony said, shaking his head.
“Was he using the 'my uncle manages the Rolling Stones’ story again?” James asked, cringing a bit. You bobbed your head.
“You’d think he’d have come up with a new one after he told it to that lass last year whose uncle actually did manage the Rolling Stones,” Sirius mused.
The four of you made your way back, boisterously singing Stones tunes the whole way, and after a quick dinner, Sirius excused himself and was gone. James decided to bide his time and was rewarded for it. Evans’s group returned and joined yours at the Gryffindor table, and – still relaxed by the butterbeer – she included James in her cheerful chattering as if she’d been doing it for years. By the time everyone decided to head up to the tower, he was practically glowing. Maybe he wouldn’t spend his life looking for his left shoe after all.
As the Hall thinned out, you and Remus hung back to congratulate him on not being persona non grata to the object of his affection for once. He told you to go on without him, saying he was going to do a bit of spying on Pete, who still had the Hufflepuff girls on the hook in the first-floor corridor. It wasn’t a lie; he listened in from beneath the cloak until Peter started assuring them he could procure tickets to the Rolling Stones concert of their choice. That boy’s lying was becoming a problem.
James headed back to the ground floor and found a quiet corner wherein he could spread out the map. Taking a deep breath, he whispered the words.
He scrutinised every nook and cranny in the castle, every tucked-away little alcove or dead-end space in a rarely used corridor where two people might sneak off to be alone. And while he discovered quite a few apparent trysts he’d never have predicted, what he didn’t find was Sirius.
He’d developed quite the headache by the time he decided to try the grounds, and that’s when he finally spotted him. In one of the greenhouses. Personally, James found the greenhouses to be more hideously disturbing than romantic at night, but to each his own. He adjusted his glasses and steeled himself to read the name alongside Sirius’s.
Only… there wasn’t one.
Shit, had he missed her? He looked quickly for dots that might have recently entered the castle from outside and found none. James pounded his fist on the floor in frustration. He’d never be able to keep the map away from Sirius for another week. He should’ve just left the Great Hall when Padfoot did, but he’d been too caught up in Evans treating him like a human, and now he’d blown the whole thing.
He was folding the map in defeat and preparing to go up to bed when the penny finally dropped.
Fuck.
He hadn’t missed Mystery Bird; she’d never been there at all. She’d never been anywhere at all because she didn’t bloody exist. Sirius had made her up. To avoid the conversation you were trying to have with him the night of the party. To protect himself after you agreed to a date with Remus. So that you wouldn’t find out he’d stood aside for Moony and would instead think he’d already been interested in another girl.
That stupid fucking and yet still somehow rather impressively selfless idiot.
The main doors appeared to open and close on their own as James took off for the greenhouses. There was a very slim chance he could still be wrong, but the pieces had fallen too perfectly into place. He’d forgotten which greenhouse Sirius had been in amidst the shock of his revelation, but he finally found him in the third, slumped against a stack of potting-compost bags, a half-empty bottle of firewhisky beside him. He was either asleep or unconscious, and James lit his wand in order to examine the ground around him. Only one set of footprints.
“Pads,” James said loudly, and Sirius jolted. He tried for a moment to scramble to his feet but couldn’t find purchase in the dirt. Dropping back against the compost, he raised the bottle of whisky towards James instead before taking a long drink.
“Sirius, what the hell are you doing?”
“Dating.”
“Dating? Well, I must say, this is not at all as advertised, and I have to wonder now why everyone’s so bloody interested in doing it.”
“Was dating. Date’s over.”
“Ah. When did the date end?”
“Five minutes. Just missed her.”
“That’s interesting, because I had the map out five minutes ago–”
“I fucking knew you had the map, you lied to my–”
“I didn’t lie to your anything, Y/N did have the map till last night. So as I was saying, I had the map out five minutes ago, and I couldn’t seem to find a name anywhere in the vicinity of yours.”
“Okay, ten minutes.”
“I had it out ten minutes ago, too.”
“Twenty then, what do I know, I’m drunk, and you did lie. If she had it, then you gave it to her just so you could do this. I can’t believe you–”
“And I can’t believe you. You couldn’t just tell me you’d made it all up? Me?”
“Made what up? So she left before you got the map out, so what, it’s none of your fucking business, James.”
“You made up a girl because you were afraid Y/N was going to tell you she–”
“What does Y/N have to do with anything. She’s with Remus. She belongs with Remus.”
“Did you honestly think I wouldn’t understand? And did you think she wasn’t just as scared as you? It took a lot for her to walk over there that night, Pads, she–”
“I can’t help it if she thought she was… whatever she thought she was. She was wrong, she got it straightened out, and that’s it. And it’s good luck she did, too, because… because I don’t even think of her that way. Never have.”
“Oh, really?”
“Really. She’s a friend, that’s all. A good friend. So just drop it, will you.”
“So it wouldn’t mean anything to you if I were to tell you she–”
“Leave it, for fuck’s sake!!”
“Sirius, she loves you.”
“She doesn’t. She loves Remus.”
“Sirius…”
“I don’t love her.”
“Sirius.”
“Ican’t love her, James…”
His voice broke, and he crumbled. James had seen Sirius cry before over the course of their friendship. But they had always been angry tears. Furiously storming out of the Potters’ fireplace after a row with his parents, defiantly swiping a sleeve over cheeks that were wet with disgust and shame and resentment, not sadness.
James suddenly had a very startling picture of just how terrifyingly powerful love could be as he dropped to his knees and pulled his sobbing friend into his arms. Sirius’s entire body was heaving, and James did his best to hold him steady until it stopped, not having a clue what else to do in that moment. What he did know was that he and Sirius were long overdue for a talk. But not now, and not here.
When Sirius’s misery had given way to the occasional shuddering sigh, James gently helped him to his feet.
“You can’t tell her, Prongs… swear to me you won’t tell her.”
“I won’t tell her, I swear. But mate, you need to tell me what’s going on. Everything that’s going on. And then we’ll go from there. Alright?”
Sirius nodded as James grabbed his upper arm for support, and the two turned to leave before James had a thought.
“Let’s just take this with us, shall we,” he said, bending to grab the liquor bottle. “The last thing I ever want to see in my life is a Venomous Tentacula that’s gone and watered itself with firewhisky.”
There was a pause, and then they both erupted in laughter. The boys were still howling as they staggered into the secret passage behind the ivy and had to stop midway through just to let the mania wear off before they got themselves nicked.
James took in a heavy breath as he pulled off his glasses to wipe his face. Crying, laughing, love, pain, fear, worry, hope… and all in the space of about five minutes.
I’ve been stuck on this part so long, and I finally sussed out that I was vastly overthinking where I wanted it to go next. Soooo I reckoned if I let this part move out of the house and be its own person, the next part might be free to, y'know, move into its old room and get comfy lol
This one is still around 5,000 words on its own, though, so I desperately hope it doesn’t feel like shortchanging. I love every one of you who’s read any part of this, and I promise I can see the light at the end of the tunnel now! Happy belated Halloween, and please feel more than free to keep guiding my scattered self through what I am determined will be my first finished fanfic! <3
“So call me cynical, but I think that was less about making sure you were alright and more about sussing out whether you’ve called bagsy on Remus or Sirius so they can go after the other one,” Marlene said, pulling her hair into a ponytail.
“Well spotted.” Your voice was muffled beneath the pillows you’d piled over your head.
“Come out from there and do your Charms work,” Lily called from her bed.
“My favourite was the third year who asked you to get her a lock of Black’s hair,” Marlene continued cheerfully.
“Or that girl who asked if Lupin had any tattoos,” Emmeline added as she and Marlene descended into a fit of giggles.
“Does Ilvermorny have a student exchange programme?” you wondered aloud.
“I’m not going to help you in the morning if you haven’t done your essay,” Lily warned, meticulously filling out her diary for the week.
You wished you had James’s cloak so you could slip out of the room. Better yet, out of the school. Out into the night and just stop thinking. James was right. You were tired of thinking. And worrying, second-guessing, trying to interpret and predict everyone else’s thoughts and feelings and moods… You knew you needed to listen to Lily, but that was just more thinking you didn’t have the energy to do.
Instead, you remained in your bedclothes cocoon until the girls had settled in, their rustlings eventually replaced by the familiar sounds of the castle at night – the distant creaks and thumps and pops you’d always found strangely calming. You were just about to let them lull you to sleep when you heard a light tapping at the window beside your bed.
It was late for an owl, and you jolted back into alertness, hoping nothing was wrong. The tapping sounded again as you dropped onto the sill and lifted the latch. Pushing the window open, you were met with nothing but inky darkness. You leaned forwards, confused, and were about to poke your head out when Sirius’s face rose suddenly in front of you.
“Candygram!” he grinned, proffering a Fizzing Whizzbee.
You fell back onto one elbow, gasping so hard a shrill wheeze emitted from your throat.
“Holy… what– how are you–?”
Your mind was racing as fast as your heart as you watched him bobbing in mid-air, still holding out the sweet. Not even ten packets of Whizzbees could lift someone that high off the ground.
You sat up as Sirius receded from the window, affording you a full view of him – astride his broomstick. Exhaling slowly as he drifted back to the window, you snatched the sherbet off his open palm.
“As apologies for giving someone a heart attack go, this is lacking.”
“I haven’t begun apologising yet,” he said, abruptly solemn, and the tension left your body so quickly you almost tipped over again. You weren’t angry with him. Maybe you should’ve been. He had acted like a prat, but at the end of the day, the last thing he’d said to you (shouted at you, whatever) was that he wanted you to be happy.
What would make you happy was for him to be happy again.
“Sirius, you don’t need to–”
“I do and shall, but first – fancy a spin?”
He raised his eyebrows at you hopefully, and you smiled.
“Please tell me Black isn’t somehow floating outside our window right now,” Lily’s groggy voice came from across the room.
“You did tell him to keep off the stairs…”
Sirius laughed, and your smile widened at the sound of it.
“Give that a go,” he said, gesturing to the Whizzbee. “I don’t want you trying to drop straight off the edge.”
“Please tell me you’re not about to climb out a window over a hundred feet in the air!” Lily said, her pitch and volume rising with every word.
“Course I’m not, you’re dreaming,” you said clumsily around the large sweet in your mouth, scooting to the edge of the sill and dangling your legs out the window. You felt like you were the one dreaming as your bum suddenly lifted a few inches off the stone beneath you and Sirius took hold of your wrist, smoothly guiding your hovering form across the sheer drop and over to his broom. You put a hand on his shoulder, discarding the Whizzbee and settling lightly onto the broomstick behind him.
The natural thing, of course, would’ve been to wrap your arms around his middle, but you couldn’t seem to make yourself do it, awkwardly clutching the bottom of his T-shirt instead and shifting slightly backwards to widen the gap between you. Sirius swivelled his head, side-eyeing you amusedly, and you looked up, pretending to admire the stars.
That was your first mistake.
Without warning, Sirius dropped the nose of the broom, sending it plummeting into a downward dive. You could’ve sworn you’d screamed, but the corresponding sound never came as all air was ripped from your lungs by the sudden fall. Your stomach, meanwhile, felt like it’d been left on the swiftly retreating windowsill.
Survival instincts shoved inner turmoil out of the way. You flung your arms around him, clamping your hands tightly over his stomach and flattening yourself against his back. Your eyes were watering so that you could barely see, and you sputtered as you tried to extricate strands of Sirius’s wildly flapping hair from your mouth.
At that, he pulled the broomstick out of its dive, levelling off about 15 feet above the ground and pausing there. You could feel his body shaking with silent laughter as you released your grip on him to exasperatedly shove his hair down the back of his shirt. You wanted to call him any number of names, cuff him on the back of the head, kick him in the ankle.
But you found those options all paled in comparison to how much you wanted to wrap your arms around him again and let him go on laughing forever.
He glanced back tentatively, apparently expecting one of the more violent reactions. You gave him your brightest smile instead.
“Thought we were going for a spin?”
Sirius beamed, and your heart leapt at the mirthful glint in his eyes. It had been missing for so long.
“As you wish.”
The broom shot upwards, rocketing high above the castle before Sirius turned abruptly, launching the two of you into a series of loops and barrel rolls that had you shrieking with joy. The waning moon resembled a bouncing ball in the sky as your perspective cycled rapidly between right-side up and upside down, and your head was unquestionably spinning by the time he evened his flight path.
As he flew smoothly but with electrifying speed above the grounds, you relaxed your arms into a comfortable hold around his waist and rested your chin on his shoulder, letting the wind engulf you in the stormy scent of him. He navigated the castle’s turrets in precise figure-eights, made a brief game of taunting the Whomping Willow, and took a few turns around the Quidditch pitch before sailing low over the Black Lake.
Sirius slowed, and you watched as the reflected sky transformed the lake’s surface into a fluid canvas of stars. You were trying quite hard to put out of your mind that this was exactly what you’d imagined doing if the two of you had ever gone on a date when he brought the broom to a halt. He slung his leg over, sitting on the broomstick like a swing, feet dangling over the dark water, and you followed suit. You sat in silence for a moment, watching the occasional ripple send a shiver through the stars, but the silence was loaded and you needed to break it. Being uncomfortable around Sirius was unnatural. And it hurt.
“Know what I love about watching the water move in the lake? It could be the squid, or a grindylow, or even a merperson. But it could also just be a fish. A perfectly boring, non-magical fish. And if it’s just a fish, then I get to be just a girl for a moment. Nothing else.”
“Just a girl… levitating above a lake on a broom.”
You smirked at him, and he nudged you with his shoulder.
“Only winding you up. I know exactly what you mean. If I were just a boy, I’d only have to listen to Walburga’s gaping gob on holidays. She wouldn’t have the option to pop it in the post.”
He snorted humourlessly, and you found yourself modifying your instincts again. In some other time that seemed bizarrely much further away than just a month or so ago, you’d have taken his hand or put your arm around him. As it was, you leant against him lightly, hoping that was encouragement enough for him to go on. He sighed and slid a hand through his hair.
“She threatened me. Again. Which means she’s still invested enough in this parent thing to care what other people think of me. I’ll need to up my ‘blight upon the family legacy’ game. Suggestions?”
“Hmm. You could always join the VSO. Just become even more of a disgustingly worthwhile human being.”
He chuckled quietly, and you waited. Walburga threatening Sirius was old hat. There was something else bothering him.
“Seems as if darling Regulus has also taken to spying for them. I’m sure that’ll earn him a pat on the head and an extra chestnut at Crimbo.”
“What did he tell them?”
You felt him tense and glanced over.
“He’s somehow heard about… well, that there’s… a girl.”
His tone shifted to discomfort as he spoke, and you were having trouble deciding what to make of it. He certainly hadn’t been shy about his love life last night. One thing you did know, however, was that you weren’t prepared to let your lingering feelings for him drive a wedge between you. Even now, just sitting here beside him after a late-night joyride, you felt the full force of how much you’d missed him.
“Rotten little blighter. And why does he care all of a sudden? If you’re the sort to listen to rumours, you’ve gone out with everyone from Marlene to Madam Rosmerta.”
“I started that last one,” Sirius said conspiratorially, leaning forwards to watch your expression. It was something he’d done since first year. Always waiting eagerly to see if you smiled or laughed at his jokes, looking pleased with himself when you did. You didn’t disappoint him, and he kept his eyes fixed on yours as he continued.
“I’m really sorry about last night, Y/N.”
“So am I.”
“You don’t have anything to be sorry for.”
“I was shouting just as loudly as you. Though in fairness, you did win the blowing-things-up contest I wasn’t aware we were having.”
“You were only shouting because I was acting like a complete bellend. And being pissed is no excuse. None. I don’t know what… I just wasn’t…”
He looked out across the lake, blinking in frustration as he tried to find the words he wanted. You didn’t like that it was a struggle. He should be able to talk to you about anything, without a second thought. Including this girl.
“Sirius, I haven’t said that I’m happy for you, and I should’ve done from the very first. Because I am. I’m glad you’ve found someone special. I’m glad you’re having fun. Nobody deserves it more than you.”
“I can think of two people offhand: you and Moony. And I’m happy things went well last night. I swear I am.”
The silence was lighter this time, and after a few moments, Sirius produced his wand, waving it towards the latest ripple in the lake. A few golden sparks drifted over the surface, and as they descended, a small fish jumped out of the water, mistaking them for food. Sirius smiled at you.
“Just a fish,” you smiled back.
“Just a fish. But I’m sorry to have to inform you that you’ll never be just a girl. Not to me.”
In your head, you tumbled off your perch into the lake, where you would live out your days with the merpeople, far away from your feelings. In reality, you tightened your grip on the broomstick to prevent that from happening whilst forcing yourself to maintain eye contact. He was speaking to you as a friend. Just a friend.
“But since there’s something extraordinary about being ordinary around here, let’s make a pact: You can always be just a girl with me, and I can always be just a boy with you?”
You wanted to tell him how very much that simple offer meant to you, but you didn’t trust your voice. You nodded instead, then watched as his momentary calm gave way to something much more troubling. He looked defeated. It was a look you’d never seen on his face before, and it frightened you.
“Tell me,” you said quietly. There was no hesitation this time.
“It’s getting worse. It’s getting so much worse, and I don’t think it’s going to stop. Last summer, it was just locking me in my room for the day, sending me to bed without dinner because of the posters on my wall. I’d give her cheek, she’d do her screaming bit, I’d pop off to Prongs’s for a weekend. But this summer, she didn’t just lock me in my room. She’d put a body-bind on me first. One night, she had Kreacher cast Levicorpus on me, left me hanging in the corner until I was all but unconscious. And bog-standard screaming isn’t good enough anymore – she uses the fucking stinging jinx as exclamation marks.”
You’d gone entirely cold, but you didn’t interrupt. He needed someone to know. A part of you felt like you could literally dissolve into tears, but you didn’t do that either. You needed him to know that you could handle hearing this. Because you had a sinking feeling he was right – it wasn’t going to stop on its own. And if he went silent about it again, you wouldn’t know when it was time to take matters into your own hands and make it stop.
“It feels different in there,” he continued, his voice pensive now. “Tense, heavy, like the entire foul place is waiting for something. Before, they were perfectly chuffed to be shot of me; now, they don’t always let me leave. It’s like they’re trying to… break me. So the question is, why do they need me broken? And how far are they willing to go to–”
He gave you a pleading look.
“You know I’d never do anything to hurt you, right?” he asked suddenly. “Including letting anyone else hurt you.”
“Of course, love,” you said, your voice cracking slightly. You’d only thoughtyour head was spinning before. But of all the emotions assailing you right now, the one missing was surprise. If Peter’s parents were suspect, Sirius’s may as well be lunching with Voldemort at Rules.
“She said that if I took up with any girl they didn’t approve of… well, I didn’t let her finish saying what she’d do, but I can’t really think of a good end to that sentence. So you understand, yeah? You understand why I can’t–”
Why he couldn’t be more open about his relationship. You understood, and you felt more terrible than ever that you’d been avoiding him.
“I don’t care what happens to me. But if something were to happen to someone I care about because they finally realised that would hurt more than anything they could do to me…”
“Sirius, if anyone in your family ever tried to hurt someone you care about, it’d be naught to do with you. You being good is not what makes them bad. These people, these Death Eaters – they want to hurt all of us. Full stop. If we’re not with them, we’re against them, and they don’t need another reason. But don’t you ever forget that there are people who do care what happens to you. Please don’t go through this alone… that hurts me more than anything.”
You could see the moonlight shimmering silver in his eyes, and you knew one blink would send tears spilling down your cheeks as well. Bloody hell, weren’t the two of you smiling just five minutes ago?
“Sirius,” you said with as much solemnity as you could muster. “Let me hate your parents with you.”
He exhaled a relieved laugh as you held out your palm. You might be too namby-pamby to take his hand, but it was different if you left it up to him, right? He looked at your hand for a moment, then slid his beneath it, slowly curling his fingers and yours along with them until your closed hand was wrapped warmly in his.
“Nearly all my secrets,” he said softly. “Safe and sound.”
“Nearly all?” you managed. You felt like your insides had melted.
“Well,” he winked, giving your hand a squeeze before releasing you and swinging his leg back over the broomstick. “A bloke’s got to have a little mystery to him.”
You pulled your leg back over the broom, and when you wrapped your arms around him this time, there was no mistaking it for self-preservation. Pressing your cheek against his shoulder blade, you hugged him as tightly as you could, wishing you knew how to keep him safe. He relaxed against you, resting his left arm on yours as he guided the broom above the forest.
You could tell he was heading for the ruins and caught a faint whiff of wood smoke as he wove through the branches. Behind the crumbling stone structure, a small fire came into view, Remus, James and Peter gathered round it.
“Moony reckoned we all needed to let off a bit of steam,” Sirius said as he came in for a landing, helping you off the broom before propping it against some rubble. “And Prongs reckoned we needed to let it off without firewhisky,” he added, scowling at James as he freed his hair from his shirt.
“Yes, how terribly unreasonable of Prongs, considering we’ve established what a right ray of sunshine you are when you’re on the hard stuff,” James challenged, pointing at a rock onto which Sirius dropped sulkily.
“Knob.”
“Prick.”
“Langer.”
“Cockwomble.”
“Don’t you just love it when the family’s all together?” Remus asked cheerfully.
You grinned as you sat down beside him. He still looked peaky, of course – the usual aftereffects. He was paler than normal, which accentuated the dark circles under his eyes, and he moved slowly and a bit stiffly due to the lingering soreness. But he was in much better spirits than he’d ever been so soon after the moon.
As you studied him, he reached into his jacket and removed the Dairy Milk wrapper, placing it on your knee and watching as you opened it to the sound of James and Sirius’s continued sniping.
“Why, Remus… you’ve saved me exactly one square of chocolate.”
“Thelast square of chocolate! You know how big a sacrifice that is for me.”
“I do. I also know that you know that if I were to pick up that last square of chocolate and even pretend I intended to eat it, you’d start in with the puppy-dog eyes and I’d give it straight back to you.”
“Yes, but it’s the thought that counts,” he smiled, snapping up the chocolate. You gave him a quick peck on the cheek and counted his furious blushing as sufficient payback.
“Just have a fucking butterbeer and shut it!!” James bellowed at Sirius, flinging a bottle at him before turning and offering one to you like a suddenly well-mannered sommelier.
“And for the lady, a charming little vintage and our finest twig.”
You accepted the butterbeer and the stick he also extended.
“I know he’s being stroppy right now, but I’ll not have a hand in beating him.”
“Cheers!” Sirius nodded, raising his already-two-thirds-depleted butterbeer in your direction.
“Nah, we’ve got marshmallows. Loads of them!” Peter said, tossing you a packet. You skewered a few and handed it off to Remus, and the five of you settled into chit-chat as you toasted and ate your treats. You were trying your best to relax and enjoy the moment, but in the back of your mind, you were mulling.
Apart from the blushing, which was just involuntary Remus, there was no awkwardness between the two of you. Not even after last night. So… maybe it was a sign. Perhaps you’d been wrong and what you really needed was a nice, safe, predictable relationship. What was the harm in comfortable? Jumpers, blankets, books, tea… people liked this stuff for a reason, for Godric’s sake. Yes, you’d fancied Sirius, but he didn’t fancy you back, and that was that. The two of you were in a good place again and you were glad of it, but it was high time you gave your full attention to the boy who seemed to want it.
“Marshmallow for your thoughts?”
You plucked a browned marshmallow off Remus’s twig and chewed as the two of you watched James and Sirius attempting to talk Peter into eating a still-flaming one.
“Just tidying my head is all.”
“You and Padfoot alright?”
“We are. I should’ve just ignored him last night. I don’t know why I didn’t.”
“You’re allowed to have your fill every now and then. We can’t get overfond of him; it’ll just go to his head.”
You smiled. “This is lovely, by the way. Thanks for thinking of it.”
“It was actually something you said. Or wrote. That it would all run its course eventually. So it can just run its course now and have done with it instead. And I reckon the forest makes a pretty good course.”
You started to ask what he meant but were interrupted by a yelp of pain from Peter and a cheer from James and Sirius.
“Wormtail, you have got to learn to say no, mate,” Remus sighed, motioning to James, who stood and cleared his throat loudly.
“Firstly, I think a toast to Moony’s health is in order. Normally, he’d still be in hospital right now. Yet here he sits, his furry little problem reduced to a furry little inconvenience.”
“To Remus!” you all cheered, raising your drinks.
He raised his in return, looking around at the four of you.
“And to the best mates a lad could ask for. Never dreamt I’d have friends at all, much less friends who’d be willing to do what you lot have done for me. Thank you.”
That hung in the air for a moment before a loud crash somewhere in the forest sent a startled flock of crows into the night sky.
“Alright, I’ve no interest in being emotional while I’m eaten by an acromantula,” James resumed quickly. “Down to the point, fifth year’s been a bit of a roller coaster up to now, but there’s nothing we can’t handle so long as we stick together. Things are changing, yeah, but we’re an adaptable bunch of miscreants. And on that subject, Y/N, three-quarters of us haven’t yet had the pleasure.”
“Of?” you asked, and you must’ve looked as shocked as you felt because Remus choked on his butterbeer.
“No, no, he doesn’t mean 'of going out with you’. I suggested we come out here tonight to have a good run through the forest. And Sirius is the only one who’s seen your animagus form.”
“Right, so go on then!” James urged excitedly.
“Well I’m not shifting with you wallies just stood here staring at me!”
“We’ll turn round,” Remus said, standing and moving between you and the others. “Turn,” he ordered, and they begrudgingly complied. You took a deep breath and focused, feeling yourself sinking into your form.
You opened your eyes to find yourself staring at Remus’s legs. Extending your long neck, you nipped at the hem of his trousers and he spun, his face positively lighting up at the sight of you. If you weren’t currently a swan, you’d have been grinning from ear to ear; he looked like a child who’d just received his first puppy. As it was, you honked softly as he ran his hand over the feathers on your neck, which prompted the others to turn.
“Blimey, that’s brilliant,” James exhaled as he and Peter also reached out to stroke your feathers. You suddenly felt a bit shy. You didn’t blame them for being interested, of course – you’d been fascinated the first time you saw them shift as well. But unlike them, you weren’t quite accustomed yet to being an animal. Especially not around people.
Sirius had stayed back, watching you, but he stepped forward now.
“Alright, hands off, you all bloody well know she belongs to the Queen,” he said, shooing the lads. You honked a laugh and he shot you a wink that seemed to say he’d somehow sensed your discomfort.
“Off we go?” He tossed a marshmallow into the air, then shifted in time to catch it in his mouth.
“Show-off,” James grumbled as his and Peter’s bodies melted away in opposite directions.
“Looks positively delightful when you lot do it,” Remus grinned. Sirius whined and propped his chin on Remus’s leg. “I wasn’t feeling sorry for myself,” Remus said, ruffling the fur on Padfoot’s head. “Well, except that I wish I could go with, but I’m in no shape to run.”
James snorted and began gesturing backwards with his antlers.
“I’ll be fine here,” Remus insisted.
James raised a back hoof and began hopping about on the other three as he scratched at his side.
“What is it, Prancer? Got ticks, have you?”
As a series of honks, barks and squeaks replaced laughter, James suddenly appeared in the stag’s place. The whole animagus thing really was utterly bizarre.
“Climb on, you berk, I was clearly telling you to climb on my back!”
“Well, forgive me if I’m a bit rusty on my Deer Charades, seeing as it’s been approximately never since I’ve played. And you don’t have to do that, Prongs. I’ll only slow you down.”
“Give me some credit, son, I’m a bloody majestic king of the forest.”
It actually worked like a charm. James was the size of an enormous horse in stag form, and Remus was easily able to hold onto his antlers as the five of you sped through the forest.
You felt freer than you had in ages. You alternated between flying high above the trees – slowly beginning to feel as if you belonged halfway between the sky and the earth as you continued to adjust to your form – and low amidst the others, delighting in simply being young, wild and dissident with your mates. It was at times like this that you always felt you and the Marauders were getting far more out of your time at Hogwarts than the students sleeping safely in the castle.
You eventually made your way back to the ruins, exhausted but decidedly tension-free. The fire was nearly out, and James doused it for good with what was left of the last butterbeer.
“Wait for me by the greenhouses,” Sirius instructed the lads as he hopped back onto his broom, hovering low as he waited for you to say your goodbyes and join him.
“Straight home, madam?” he asked once you were in the air.
“Eh, once around the pitch first, Jeeves.”
He grinned back at you and took off at a lazy pace that made you feel as if you were being rocked to sleep. There were a million things you could have been thinking about at that moment, but in your ultra-relaxed state, one thought in particular popped into your head and subsequently out of your mouth.
“How did you know I was uncomfortable? When they were gathered round me after I shifted?”
“We tend to be on the same wavelength about most things,” he said without hesitation, circling the Slytherin stands. Without exchanging so much as a glance, the two of you drew your wands and fired off spells, yours at the flag on top and his at a green-and-silver banner hanging from the front. You laughed as the flag transformed into a fabric snake, flapping about limply with large Xs where its eyes should be, and the banner suddenly read, “Ssstay ssslimy, Sssnivellus”.
“Case in point!” he gestured. “Anyway, my animagus form’s a bit more socially acceptable than the others. Prongs strays too far in that posh neighbourhood of his and he’s liable to get shot at by some Lord or another’s hunting party. And Wormtail couldn’t exactly go strolling about either without people and cats trying to put an end to him. But man’s best friend is free to jog about where he pleases, so I’ve done a lot of it in Islington. It’s a good way to stay out of the house. And while you get used to it eventually, in the beginning I felt like a fucking idiot every time I got patted on the head and told I was a good boy.”
You buried your face in his shoulder, shaking with laughter at the mental image, and he joined you.
“Now I think on it, I should’ve been flattered. I don’t get that kind of affirmation at home.”
You laughed harder as he rounded the final set of stands and headed back towards the castle.
“You’ll have to come round during holidays, we’ll do a turn around the borough,” he said as he pulled even with your open window. “Black dog and black swan, out on the town.”
“And we won’t lack for snacks, seeing as people will be tossing bread at me whilst they’re patting you,” you added, prompting another fit of laughter.
“What in God’s name are the two of you doing out there?!” Lily’s “past the point of fed up” voice demanded.
“Ah, Gryffindor’s resident killjoy awaits,” Sirius said in his “purposefully too loud” voice, digging about in his robes. “Don’t reckon I envy you going back in there.”
“It was worth it,” you said, leaning forwards to give him a peck on the back of his jaw. You decided to tell yourself you’d imagined it when you felt a shiver go through his body.
He cleared his throat as he turned to hand you another Whizzbee, then held onto your wrist again as you manoeuvred yourself onto the sill. As you dropped the Whizzbee, he pressed a quick peck of his own to your hand.
“Don’t get too close to the edge!” he called as he turned the broom towards the greenhouses.
“Bit late for that,” you sighed as you watched him disappear into the darkness.
I had intended to keep banging away at this part, but then I checked the word count and oh my giddy aunt… somewhere in the neighbourhood of 9,000?! lol So I found us a pausing point.
My loves, thank you so much for your reading, your sweet comments, and your general brilliance as human beings. Let me know what you think and whose team you’re on! lol
You tilted your head towards the space between your curtains and the bedpost closest to the window, taking in a slow, deep breath of cleansing air. Lily had opened the window before she, Marlene and Emmeline left the room, knowing the rain would soothe you.
They hadn’t tried to speak to you, and you were grateful for that. You weren’t in the mood to chatter cheerfully about your date with Remus, and it wouldn’t have been fair to do anything less. You really did have a nice time. You also weren’t in the mood to explain the shouting match with Sirius. And you already knew what Lily would say: Sirius’s behaviour wouldn’t have wounded you so deeply if you didn’t still have feelings for him.
The low rumble of rolling thunder gave you something else to focus on, and you closed your eyes, shivering a bit and pulling your blanket over your bare legs as a particularly cool blast of air wafted through. You’d kicked your jeans off hours ago but hadn’t bothered getting all the way into bed.
The door to the dorm opened and closed. Someone must have forgotten something. You waited quietly for the sound of them letting themselves back out, but after a few minutes of silence, you wondered if you were just hearing things. Though it didn’t feel like you were alone in the room…
“Hello?”
“Does Evans really sleep with this old stuffed bunny? Because that’s almost impossibly cute.”
“James! What the hell are you doing in here?”
“Came to talk to you, of course. Dear Godric… did you know every quill in this drawer is placed at the exact same angle? Probably had a protractor out and all just to make sure–”
“I’m sorry, did you say you came to talk to me or to completely invade Lily’s privacy?”
You heard Lily’s drawer close.
“You can’t blame a bloke for having a peek, can you? Now. Are you coming out or am I coming in?”
“You’re coming in. If the girls find you in here, they’ll go absolutely spare. Toss me my pyjama bottoms first, will you? They’re on the chair.”
You shook your head and smiled as your pyjamas came marching through the gap in your curtains, turning and standing at attention in front of you. You were glad James was here.
After slipping them on, you lifted the curtain and he dove onto your bed.
“Bloody hell, remember when all five of us could fit on here?” he asked as the two of you settled back against your pillows, James’s feet touching the end of the bed. When Sirius had first sussed out the girls’ stairs, the lads got a kick out of sleeping in your room from time to time, just because they could. You’d gotten quite adept quite quickly at silencing charms in your panic to ensure the girls wouldn’t hear the five of you giggling and playing Exploding Snap until dozing off in a huddle.
You nodded. “Wish I could go back to that place.”
James kissed your temple. “I know, love. So do I sometimes. We woke, we ate, we pranked, we ate and pranked some more, and in between, you and Moony did our homework.”
You snorted but felt a real pang at the thought of simpler times, the laughter of five happy kids playing hide-and-seek in the greenhouses long after they should’ve been in bed echoing through your memory. It’s not that you were against change. You just wished it would slow down a little and uncomplicate itself a lot.
“But here we all are, older, wiser, insanely more attractive,” James continued, “and I can’t beat around the belladonna with you anymore, darling: Are you in love with Sirius?”
You felt like you should’ve been taken aback by the directness of his question, but suddenly, you just didn’t see the point in being shocked or embarrassed or nervous anymore. Perhaps you’d grown up a bit further still in the last few seconds, head on your brother’s shoulder as you both listened to the rain. If you had to grow up, there were worse ways to do it.
“I was. I’m trying not to be now, considering he’s made it clear he’s not interested.”
“Has he, though?”
“I can only believe what he tells me, James. If I tried to guess what else was going on in his head, I’d go mad. I can’t read him like you can.”
James smiled. “You sell yourself short. But you’re right about one thing: We can’t have you going mad along with him. One stark-raving lunatic is quite enough. So what can I do to make this easier on you?”
A few moments of silence hung in the air before you interrupted with a quiet sigh, rolling onto your side and hugging James’s arm.
“Does she make him happy? This girl?”
“I really couldn’t say. He’s been out with her several times now, but he still won’t talk about her.”
“I feel like I’ve failed him. I saw how miserable he looked at King’s Cross, and I swore I was going to be there for him. Instead, I feel like I’m making things worse somehow. So I hope that, whoever she is, she’s doing what I can’t anymore.”
“Don’t say that. You know how much you mean to Sirius, Y/N. The worse things get for him at home, the harder he fights us, but that’s just Sirius and his pride. We’re always going to need each other. If in the distant future Evans ever figures out I’m a lot fucking cuddlier than that old rabbit over there, she’s just going to have to understand that there will be times I’ll want to go find my sister and climb into bed for a chat. And your future husband will have to understand too because I’ll need him to bunch over.”
You laughed at the mental image, knowing James wasn’t even partially joking.
“The point is, don’t give up on Sirius just because he’s being a temperamental git right now. No one, most especially not some girl he just met, knows him like us. When the time comes that he admits he needs help out of the pit, we’ll be the line and you’ll be the light. Just like always.”
James’s words actually made you feel a bit better. Made it feel less like you were losing Sirius.
“As for Moony…”
You released James’s arm and fell onto your back, hands over your face.
“Oh, no. I’ve been in here moping half the day, what if he thinks I was avoiding him?”
“Weren’t you?” James laughed.
“No! But sort of… I was avoiding my feelings, yeah, but not him.”
“Personally, I can’t blame you – I’d avoid any bugger who alluded to a good snogging and then reneged,” James said, yelping as you pinched his side.
“Have you answered that question you had last night yet?” he asked, clamping his hand over yours to prevent further injury.
“I’ve been thinking about it all day, and–”
“And there’s your problem. You and Remus are thinkers. Overthinkers, if you ask me. Stop thinking for once in your life and just let your feelings take over. See what feels natural in the moment. And then bloody well do that.”
“Bless your straightforward soul, James Potter,” you breathed. You suddenly had an idea that would keep Remus from taking your Sunday in bed as a sign that you hadn’t enjoyed your Saturday.
“Somebodyhas to stay drama-free around here,” James said dramatically.
“Yes, well done you, now get up and let’s get out of here before Lily sees you.”
“Evans knows I’m in here,” James said with a grin as he rolled off your bed. “I told her I wanted to talk to you first.”
You raised a brow at him. “Lily Evans found out that you know how to take the enchantment off the girls’ stairs and you lived to tell about it?”
“I did indeed,” he answered proudly. “I mean, I ran up the stairs first before she could get her wand out. But then I confidently turned round and without a hint of fear told her that it was all Padfoot’s fault.”
“Well, hopefully he steers clear of her for the rest of the day then,” you said, removing a Dairy Milk bar from your trunk – the last of your stash of muggle chocolate from the summer – and heading for the door.
“I’m sure he will. Especially after they’ve had their talk. Also my idea.”
That stopped you in your tracks.
“You sent Lily to talk to Sirius? James, she despises him. Have you heard the things she calls him? She’ll have him for lunch.”
“With a side of chips, I hope. And if we’re lucky, he’ll be better for it on the other side.”
Lily paused at the door to the Marauders’ room, gulping down a few deep breaths. She’d lied to Potter. She wasfrightened.
The Sirius Black she’d encountered when she first arrived at Hogwarts was nothing but a conceited brat. The perfect partner in crime for Potter. They constantly disrupted classes, cost Gryffindor points, and when they also decided to make Severus a primary target of some of their meaner-spirited pranks, she’d written them off completely. She had no use for bullies.
But over the years, she’d made enough peace with them to be on semi-civil speaking terms when she had to be – more for your benefit than hers or theirs. She’d reasoned that if you (a genuinely good person, despite your own disrespect for the rules) saw something redeeming in them, she would be a good friend and look the other way when the five of you got up to your nonsense. She’d made clear to you, though, that she reserved the right to treat Potter however she saw fit when he began putting on that he fancied her. She knew the arse was mocking her. She just couldn’t work out why he hadn’t tired of it yet.
Lily had also given Potter, Black and Pettigrew credit where credit was due when she’d worked out that Remus was a werewolf in fourth year. They’d not only kept their friend’s secret, they’d taken pains to try to make things easier for him – pains even greater than she’d originally thought, now she knew about the animagi endeavour.
But whereas Potter and Black were still the obnoxious berks they’d always been, Black had grown to be dangerous as well, as she’d tried to tell you on multiple occasions. He was reckless and quick-tempered – a terrible combination – and when he flew off the handle, as he seemed to do more and more these days, the repercussions were increasingly dire.
She’d learned things about his family, both from you and her own research into wizarding world history, and while she gathered (especially from his sorting into Gryffindor) that he made an effort to be the exception to every House of Black rule, his behaviour often made her wonder whether or not he could escape the history of insanity, even if he wanted to.
She glanced longingly at the door to the stairs, wishing she could back out, but there was no way she was giving Potter the satisfaction. With one final deep breath, she quietly turned the doorknob.
The room was darker than Lily expected, what with the storm clouds and the fact that neither the stove nor any of the lamps were lit. She closed the door and leaned against it, waiting for her eyes to adjust.
Wrinkling her nose at the smell of boy, she watched as the beds to her left and right slowly sharpened into focus. The latter was in complete disarray. There were more blankets, sheets and pillows on the floor than on the bed. Books, parchments and sweet wrappers were scattered across every surface, and a Gryffindor robe hung half in, half out of its owner’s trunk. She peered at a photograph on the table. An incredibly unpleasant-looking man and woman stood on either side of a young boy, who started to smile for the picture before a look of fear melted over his face instead as the man dug his fingers into the boy’s shoulder. Lily of course recognised Pettigrew but recognised his parents as well – she’d seen them in the Prophet over the summer, photographed leaving the Ministry after questioning for suspected Death Eater activity. She shuddered and turned her attention to the space on her left.
Neat as a pin, and Lily smiled softly. Remus. He was the only Marauder she counted as a friend, and she’d been devastated when she discovered his condition. For someone so gentle and calm to have to suffer such brutality and chaos month after month simply wasn’t fair. Everything was in its place on and around Remus’s bed, and she moved a bit closer to get a look at the photos atop his chest of drawers. In one, a very small Remus ran cheerfully along the bank of a river, a smiling man and woman following behind him, hand in hand. In another, the same woman sat on the bonnet of a car, a stylish scarf around her head and her pretty face frozen mid-laugh. A muggle photo. Lily felt a wave of sympathy for the woman, imagining what it must have been like to discover the wonders of the wizarding world, only to have her son permanently scarred by it.
Lily moved further into the room, convinced now that it was empty. Both Black’s and Potter’s beds were a rumpled mess, which wasn’t a surprise. She was surprised, however, to see a book on Black’s bedside table; she hadn’t figured him for a casual reader. Or a reader at all, frankly… he seemed to do nothing in the way of revising or even paying attention during lessons but still had high marks in all their classes. Yet another thing about him that annoyed her. She also noticed that he was the only Marauder without personal photos on display. Instead, what looked like two pages torn from a magazine and enlarged were tacked to the wall beside his bed, one featuring a silver-and-black motorbike, the other a grey sports car, its chrome gleaming.
She’d known Potter’s domain as soon as she saw it, tipped off by the Quidditch paraphernalia literally coating the wall. Gryffindor banners and jerseys mingled with Puddlemere United posters and programmes. Mixed in were bits of parchment on which he’d scrawled out strategies, jotted down notes, and formulated training regimens. Not fully conscious of the fact she was doing it, Lily sat down on the edge of the boy’s bed to get a better look. Quidditch was ridiculous, of course… senseless violence masquerading as sport. But she had to concede – grudgingly – that his apparent work ethic was impressive. She just wished he’d apply it to something constructive.
Lily picked up the framed photo on Potter’s table. A what looked to be 6- or 7-year-old James pulled a face at her before adopting the mischievous grin with which she was familiar. Behind him, his parents – quite a bit older than hers – shook their heads fondly at his antics before giving one another a loving glance and smiling for the photographer. They looked to be thoroughly pleasant people, warmth in their eyes and smiles, and Lily herself smiled absently at the sight of the clearly happy family. Potter was so cocky; she’d always just assumed he inherited his arrogance. Perhaps he was just a bit overindulged by two people who’d waited longer than most for a child. And perhaps the rest was false bravado.
She placed the photo back on the table and had the sudden urge to see what was in the drawer. No one could blame a girl for having a peek, right?
“Is it common practice for prefects to snoop through everyone’s belongings when they’re not around? Because I’ll want to hide a few things better in future…”
Lily slammed Potter’s drawer shut and leapt to her feet, clamping a hand over her mouth to muffle a small scream. Black’s head now rose slightly above the pile of blankets and pillows that had previously concealed it.
“You scared the life out of me, you arsehole.”
“Not to split hairs here, Evans, but I’m not the one breaking and entering.”
“That’s not what I’m doing. Nor am I snooping through everyone’s belongings.”
“So just snooping through James’s specifically then. Noted.”
Lily clenched her fists, debating whether or not to just leave. How in the hell was she supposed to have a meaningful conversation with this antagonistic prat? Then she thought about you. If there was a chance this could help, she had to try.
“I’m actually here to speak with you,” she said, edging closer to Black’s bed and attempting to adopt a polite tone. It came out rather stiff instead, but it was going to be the best she could do. “I was hoping we could discuss a few things.”
Black’s head dropped back onto his bed and out of sight.
“Not up for it, sorry.”
“Ireally need to have a word with you about–”
“Look, Evans, I had a rough night. So whatever school rules or Gryffindor codes of conduct or girls you’ve heard I violated, could you just make a list, send me an owl, and I’ll atone for it later?”
Lily jumped as a loud tapping sounded at the window near Black’s bed.
“That was quick,” he mused.
The tapping increased in volume and insistence until it seemed as if a full-grown man were outside beating on the window.
“MyGod, are you sure that’s an owl?” Lily asked nervously.
“That’ll be Nobilis,” Black said. His voice was hollow and weary. “He’ll break it eventually, you might want to step back.”
Lily made the snap decision that she didn’t really want to see that happen, steeling herself as she stepped towards the window.
“The bird bites,” Black warned.
Lily lifted the latch and pushed the window open before scurrying out of pecking range. The largest eagle-owl she’d ever seen proceeded to step onto the sill like a king onto his dais. Shaking the rain from his feathers indignantly, Nobilis ascended to the top of Black’s table with one flap of his wings before dropping a red envelope onto its surface with an air of disdain. He dropped back onto the sill, fixing his piercing eyes on Lily, who previously would not have thought it possible to feel judged by an owl. She took another tentative step backwards.
“Piss off, you buzzard,” Black muttered, and a jet of sparks shot from his bed, connecting with Nobilis’s tail. The owl let out a furious screech but mercifully ducked out the window, and Lily rushed to latch it before Nobilis could change his mind. She turned slowly, eyeing the Howler on the table.
“Last chance to leave.”
“I really do need to speak with you,” Lily said, her voice barely above a whisper. A chill was creeping up her spine the longer she looked at the Howler. It was as if the thing were somehow radiating menace, but she was determined to accomplish what she came here for.
“Suit yourself.”
Black slowly pushed himself into a sitting position, back against the wall behind his bed. He was shirtless, and Lily quickly directed her attention to her shoes. She glanced back up, however, when he raised his arm and watched as he flicked a finger at the Howler, which sailed into the air above the stove in the centre of the room. With a wave of his hand, Black broke the seal on the envelope, and Lily stumbled backwards into his chest of drawers as a shrill voice rose from the Howler’s mouth. It was possibly the most hateful sound she’d ever heard.
“For the second time this term, I have been forced to lay hands on a letter from that half-blood, muggle-loving filth Minerva McGonagall,” the woman’s voice spat. “I would have assumed that I made plain over the summer that you are not to give Albus Dumbledore’s menagerie of dross reason to address me as if you are any sort of reflection upon my ability to rear children. I recommend you adjust your behaviour accordingly. If I have to speak again on this matter, you will regret that you did not listen the first time.”
Lily was stunned by the level of contempt in the woman’s voice. This was someone’s mother? She looked over at Black. His face was entirely expressionless as he watched the Howler.
“You should also know that your father and I have been made aware that you have taken up with a girl. Hear me, Sirius: It may not have been within our power to reverse the shame of your placement outside Slytherin House, but if we discover this girl to be of questionable stock, or worse, a mudbl–”
Black’s arm flew up so fast it was nothing but a blur in Lily’s peripheral vision. He had his wand in hand this time and thrust it forward violently; it looked as if he were trying to run the Howler through with a broadsword. Instead, the Howler exploded, sending hundreds of tiny bits of charred parchment and envelope fluttering through the air. With another halfhearted wave of his wand, the pieces were swept into a vortex before swirling through the open door of the stove. It slammed shut behind them, and suddenly, the room was silent except for the pleasant crackling of a fire that completely belied the horrible thing that kindled it.
“Well,” Black said flatly. “Isn’t this cosy.”
Lily hadn’t noticed until then that her hands were covering her mouth. As she lowered them, she realised they were shaking. Aside from being in shock, she felt extremely uncomfortable. What little she knew of Black she didn’t like, but now here she was, standing feet from the boy’s bed after having witnessed a very personal – not to mention terrifying – moment. Lily wasn’t accustomed to not knowing what to do, but even though it felt as if she had a brick lodged in her throat, she forced herself to say something.
“Black, I’m… I’m so sor–”
“Don’t be.”
His tone was clipped, and Lily wished she could just disappear from the room.
“I… erm… I apologise for… everything, for being here, for disturbing you, but if I could just talk to you for a moment, I promise I’ll make it fast and be on my way.”
Black scooted himself from the shadows into the light now afforded by the stove, and Lily did an abrupt half-spin, her cheeks reddening. She’d forgotten about the shirtless bit.
“I understand I’m the one intruding , but could you possibly put on a shirt?”
“Sure, but just so you know, there’s nothing on the other half either,” he said, grabbing his blankets as if to move them aside.
“Black, don’t you dare!” Lily shrieked, and the boy smirked.
“I’m joking, Evans, but I am down to my smalls. So in the interest of sparing you that trauma, you can toss me a shirt. They’re in the second drawer.”
Lily plucked a T-shirt out of the drawer and flung it his way.
“Bad Company. Nice choice. While you’re up, get me a quill and some parchment out of my trunk?”
She let out an annoyed huff as her usual irritation with him began overriding sympathy. Lily opened the trunk as Black shoved his arms through the sleeves of the shirt. She started to grab some parchment that was wedged into a flap on the inside of the lid but decided it was too thick a piece, all folded up like a map. As she pushed it back in place, a photo that must have been stuck to the lid behind it dropped onto the pile of stuff in the trunk. She picked it up to replace it, then froze. It was a photo of you.
You were standing in the Great Hall, wearing the clothes you’d had on yesterday for your date with Remus. Black must have taken it before you all gathered for the group shot. You gave him a bemused look once you noticed he’d taken the photo, but before that, it seemed like you’d already been watching him. And if Lily had to label your expression, “longing” would do it.
She quickly slid the photo back behind the large piece of parchment and snatched up a smaller sheet and a quill, closing the trunk and dropping the items onto the foot of Black’s bed. He paused with the shirt hanging from his shoulders and leaned forward, quickly scrawling something onto the parchment.
“In exchange for my silence regarding your keen interest in James’s personal space, kindly give him this when you leave and ask him to post it to my Uncle Alphard.”
“Blackmail? Really?”
“That’d be a pretty good pun if I thought you had a sense of humour.”
Lily rolled her eyes but bit her tongue as she yanked the parchment out of his hand. He began pulling his shirt over his head, and she decided the fact that he was being a complete wanker entitled her to read the note. Besides, he could’ve folded it if he really wanted to keep it private.
Is there any chance at all that Dad’s impotent and Reg and I are adopted?
She snorted in spite of herself, and Black winked at her as he pulled his hair through his shirt collar.
“A man can hope, Evans. So. Now that we’re all fit for company, what is it you need to discuss?”
Lily opened her mouth, then closed it as her mind went blank. It felt like hours ago that she’d walked through the door intending to give Black a good, stern talking to. But after hearing his mother in action, “stern” sounded like a day at the beach. An unhappy home life was still no excuse for him to mistreat you, but it dawned on her that while she’d definitely heard the two of you shouting at each other last night, she had no idea what had been shouted. Would you even want her chastising him on your behalf? Before she could work out how to begin, Black spoke.
“Guess who I always go to after I’ve gotten one of those things?” he asked, staring into the flames flickering in the stove. “Her.”
With that one word, the smugness and defiance were gone from his face. He looked like a lost child.
“I know you’re here about what happened last night. I’ve no excuses; I acted like a fucking idiot. But I’m a big boy, and I’ll make my own apologies later. If she’ll see me.”
He glanced up at Lily, his eyes turning that last into a question. He really did have lovely eyes.
“I’m sure she’ll see you,” she said quietly. She knew now what she needed to say to the boy. Because considering where things seemed to be heading with Severus, she needed to hear it herself.
“Sometimes friends are just passing through. We change, they change, circumstances change… whatever it is, we wake up one day and can’t find a reason to hold on anymore. And when that happens, the best thing we can do is just let go.”
Black’s eyes dropped, and Lily quickly continued.
“But sometimes we’re lucky enough to meet people we can feel in our bones are going to be with us forever. No matter what. They love us for who we are, and even when – maybe especially when – we feel like we don’t deserve it, they just love us more. The five of you have that. I’ve always sort of envied it, if I’m honest.”
He looked slightly hopeful but nowhere near heartened.
“Well, I can’t speak for the others, but friends mean very nearly everything when you’ve never had any. So I hope you’re right, Evans. Not that I deserve any more second chances.”
Lily’s chest tightened at that. It felt surreal hearing Black say something so personal; it felt even more surreal knowing that he was being sincere. There was always such a disingenuous air about him, like he was forever putting on a play. She couldn’t shake the sense that she’d dealt with two different people today: the Black she was accustomed to, always having a laugh at everyone else’s expense, and then this one, clinging to the family he’d chosen as he suffered at the hands of the one into which he was born.
“Of course you do,” she said, thinking that she might just give Sev another second chance as well. “Everyone does.”
“Everyoneworthsomething.”
“Now, you listen to me,” Lily said matter-of-factly. She’d finally found something to lecture him about. “You and I may have our differences, but you are not worthless. You’re worth quite a lot, in fact, to Y/N and you’d do well to think about that the next time you feel the urge to wake up the whole castle with your temper tantrums. God only knows what all the girls would do with themselves if you weren’t around to wink your stupid pretty eyes at them, you’ve helped Gryffindor win the Quidditch Cup for the past three years straight, and you have great taste in music. I’ll have you know that I am quite fond of Bad Company. You’ve gone above and beyond for Remus, you help Pettigrew in Potions – and if you didn’t, we’d probably all have been blown sky high by now – you’re nice to the firsties when you think no one’s looking, and from what I saw today, your skill levels are off the charts. You’re not even 16 and already using wandless magic. Howlers are supposed to be impossible to destroy before they’ve finished the job, but tell that to the one in the stove. You’re some sort of flipping magical prodigy, and believe me when I say that I find that infuriating, but there it is. So just… deal with all of that!”
The last bit came out as an agitated squeal, Lily having worked herself into a right state by that point. Breathing heavily, arms rigid at her sides, she silently dared Black to keep being morose. The chances of it seemed slim, considering the way he was gaping at her. After a few moments, he slowly closed his mouth, swallowing gingerly and blinking as if trying to convince himself he wasn’t hallucinating.
“I, erm…” he started finally. “I doubt you have to worry about me threatening your status as Star of the Slug Club.”
Lily sighed. Of course he wouldn’t know how to take a compliment.
“Speaking of, he asked me to try to get you to join again,” she said.
“I’d rather milk a murtlap.”
Lily couldn’t stop the laugh that bubbled out of her throat, and she was stunned to see Black smile. Genuinely smile. This was truly one of the oddest days of her life thus far, and as a muggleborn witch, that was saying something.
“I’ll just… get out of your way now. I’ve taken up enough of your Sunday,” she said, moving for the door.
“Evans?”
“Yeah?”
“Thanks.”
“You’re welcome, Black.”
“Oh, and Evans?”
“Yes?”
“I have honestly never heard anyone say they were ‘quite fond’ of Bad Company. Quite fond of… I dunno, Steely Dan, maybe, but Bad Company…”
“Shut it, Black,” Lily called, slamming the door behind her.
You and James had just stepped off the stairs into the common room when you heard a door close to your right. Turning, you saw Lily. She looked a bit shell-shocked and was holding a piece of parchment.
“You prepared a speech?” James asked.
“I wish,” Lily exhaled. Descending the stairs, she handed the parchment to James.
“He wants you to post this to… damn. Alfred?”
“Ah, yes. At the Batcave,” James quipped. Lily shot him a look that made clear to you she’d had enough Marauder humour for one day, and you lightly elbowed James.
“Alphard. His mother’s brother. Shockingly sane,” you explained as you joined James in reading the note.
“Shit, did something happen while you were in there?” James asked, looking at Lily with real concern.
She nodded. “He got a Howler…”
“Walburga?” You instinctively reached out and took Lily’s hand. Merlin knows what she’d heard.
“Walburga?” Lily grimaced. “Lovely name for a lovely woman.”
She squeezed your hand. “Anyway… he seems really sorry.”
“It’s fine, Lily. Already forgotten.” You tried your best to sound nonchalant. You were going to have to perfect that if you wanted to get over Sirius. Judging from Lily’s face, you needed more practise, but she let you off the hook.
“I have a Charms essay that needs doing before dinner,” she said, giving you a quick hug and heading for the stairs.
“Hey, where’s mine?” James called after her.
“You can hug Y/N all you like. She seems to be immune to tossers.”
“Don’t you at least want me to escort you to your room?”
“Potter, she’s out of bed and speaking, so I appreciate whatever you did, but if I see you, Black, Lupin or Pettigrew set so much as a toe on these stairs again, you may as well say goodbye to that toe.”
Lily shut the door with emphasis, and James turned to you with a grin.
“She appreciates whatever I did.”
His smile faltered, however, as he folded Sirius’s note.
“He’s usually looking for you after one of those…”
You knew James was hoping you’d go up to the boys’ room, but you just couldn’t. Sirius had a girlfriend now. Granted, none of you even knew what House she was in, but considering he was spending all his free time with her, she should be the one to comfort him. You were never going to give up on Sirius as a friend, but for the sake of your own emotional well-being, you were going to have to stop thinking of yourself as the most important girl in his life.
“James, I promise I’ll talk to him later if he still wants to. But for now, let me post the note and I’ll see you lot at dinner, yeah?”
You took the parchment without looking at James so you wouldn’t see the disappointment on his face.
Fresh air was exactly what you needed right now, and you were grateful the wet weather had the opposite effect on everyone else. You didn’t encounter anyone as you took your time climbing up to the owlery to hand the note off to Sirius’s black owl, Ozzy. You stood at the top of the stairs, letting the earthy breeze ruffle your hair and watching the bird until he disappeared into the grey mist of low-hanging clouds.
Making your way back to Gryffindor Tower, you stopped at an alcove near the common room entrance, tapping a small stone on the inner edge with your wand. Remus had been so nervous he rarely even spoke during your early days at Hogwarts. Not knowing the real reason, you’d just assumed him to be painfully shy, so you devised a method of communication that spared him being put on the spot. You found a few hiding spots around the castle, and from then on, the two of you would use them as a means of exchanging notes and treats. Remus’s personality finally had a chance to shine through in writing, and you’d been best friends ever since. You’d never stopped utilising the hiding spots, though. Remus was every bit as nostalgic as you were.
The loose stone floated out of place, revealing a space behind it. To your surprise, it wasn’t empty. You removed a folded slip of parchment and a small packet of custard creams. Smiling, you opened the biscuits and popped one into your mouth as you unfolded the parchment.
How very kind of you to be about to say, Y/N – I had a lovely time as well! And thank you in advance for the chocolate!
P.S. – You don’t need to apologise for having a lie-in. I (and the rest of Scotland) heard. You know I’m here for you if you want to talk about it.
He was entirely too clever for his own good. A familiar surge of affection for the boy washed through you, warming you in spite of the drafty corridor and your wet clothes. Tucking his note and the remaining biscuits into your robe, you removed the spare bit of parchment you’d brought and the chocolate bar.
Well, I guess we know who’ll be getting an O on his Divination O.W.L.! Enjoy my last Dairy Milk, you cheeky bugger.
P.S. – We don’t have to talk about it. Everything will run its course eventually.
Placing the items into the empty space, you tapped the hovering stone, which replaced itself as you continued along the corridor.
“Ah,there is a smile more befitting a young lady,” the Fat Lady chirped. You hadn’t realised you were still smiling.
“Yes, well, your approval means everything to me. Ulotrichous.”
“Allow me also to commend you on your choice,” she said, ignoring the password.
“Of?”
“The Lupin boy, of course. Such a respectful lad. He’ll make a much finer husband.”
“Husband?! Bloody hell, I’ve been on one date with him–”
“Mydear, but you’re nearly 16! In one or two years, you’ll be past your prime, and then–”
“Would you please visit a painting near a calendar and check the century? Ulotrichous.”
“–what will you do?” the Fat Lady continued, unfazed. “I understand the surface appeal of the young Black heir, after all, financial security is a must, well of course it is, and pedigree of decided import, but the Black family tree is a bit lacking in distinct branches, not to be indelicate but there it is, and I’ve found the portrait of Phineas Nigellus Black to be abominably rude besides, and the Lupin boy is quite intelligent, isn’t he, I’m sure he’ll have many fine prospects post-Hogwarts…”
Gideon and Fabian Prewett came jogging up the stairs, freezing mid-step as they took in the scene of you lying flat on your back in front of the portrait, lightly bouncing your head off the stone floor and repeating the password like a mantra as the Fat Lady incessantly blathered over you.
Grinning, the twins took an arm each, pulling you upright.
“Can’t catch a break today, can you, love?” Fabian asked as Gideon snapped loudly at the Fat Lady.
“Oi!! You heard the girl, you great gasbag! Ulotrichous!”
“Well, I never!” she sputtered, swinging aside.
Gideon bowed, his arms swung towards the portrait hole, ushering you in.
“My heroes,” you breathed, crawling through. Fabian was right: This truly was the day from hell.
“Always at your service,” he said, hopping into the common room behind you.
“Speaking of,” Gideon chimed in, “if you’d like us to have a word with Black for you, it’d be our pleasure. Pretty sure the git put itching powder in our Quidditch gear.”
“Tempting, but it’ll sort itself,” you said, taking the opportunity to work on your nonchalant smile again. You got the sense that you were going to have several more opportunities before the week was out; it seemed as if everyone in the House really had heard the row.
“Fair enough, but we’ll be keeping an eye on Lupin from now on as well,” Fabian called as the two headed for the boys’ stairs. “We don’t just protect our seeker on the pitch!”
“I feel better already!” you laughed, and you meant it. It was nice to know that the friendships you’d formed over the years were strong. You told yourself that James was right, that your bond with Sirius wasn’t going to weaken. You just wished your inner voice sounded more confident.
You opened the door to your room to find Lily on her bed, hard at work on her essay, notes and books surrounding her. Marlene was painting her toenails, and Emmeline was engaged in the assigned DADA reading. It suddenly occurred to you that you’d done none of your homework. Guess you were in for yet another late night.
“When did Black figure out how to break the enchantment on the stairs?” Lily asked without looking up.
You laughed. “Have you been sat in here all this time just waiting to ask me that?”
“Black was in here?” Marlene gasped, her eyes wide. “Why didn’t you tell me? I’d have worn something sexier to bed…”
“Question answered.”
“Ohhhh, he was here with yoouu,” she said slyly, shooting you an exaggerated wink.
“Yeeesss, he was here with meee… and Potter and Lupin and Pettigrew. And we were 11.”
“Firstyear?!” Lily exclaimed, slamming her Charms book shut.
“More like… first week,” you said, trying not to smile as her face turned as red as her hair.
“It’s a waste,” she muttered, fiercely shoving her books and parchments into her rucksack. “That’s what it is. Talent just dripping out of his ridiculously flawless pores, but does he use it for good? Of course he doesn’t. He uses it for sneaking into girls’ dormitories. And disguising dungbombs as grapefruit and leaving them on the Slytherin table. And making the mistletoe chase everyone through the castle last Christmas playing 'Let’s Get It On’.”
You choked on a laugh. “You have to admit, that was classic.”
Lily turned her glare on you, and you quickly ran over to Marlene and Emmeline, grabbing their arms and hauling them off their beds.
“Dinnertime! Who’s ready for dinner, step lively, off we go!”
Remus strolled along the sixth-floor corridor, pausing briefly to break another square off the Dairy Milk bar. He placed it on his tongue, letting the creamy chocolate melt a bit.
He’d been walking around the castle for the better part of the day, which was fine. Part of the time had been spent on his appointed prefect rounds – and had subsequently saved Prongs and Wormtail from detention after he ran across them charming Binns’ chalk to write random swear words on the blackboard. At least History of Magic would be entertaining tomorrow.
He could’ve done with more sleep, especially after he woke with a fairly thumping hangover. But when it became clear to him and Pete that Sirius wasn’t going to emerge from behind his curtains and explain what had gone on last night, they’d opted to head down to breakfast, passing a snoring James in the common room, as was becoming the norm. Remus hadn’t been surprised when he didn’t see you at breakfast either.
But it wasn’t as if he didn’t need the time alone to think, and he’d done plenty of it.
A part of him wondered if he should’ve told Sirius off for shouting at you last night. The five of you bickering amongst yourselves wasn’t uncommon, but a full-scale row was. Then again, you were more than capable of handling Sirius – perhaps the most capable… even James had to wash his hands of Padfoot from time to time – and Remus didn’t want you to think he was trying to fight your battles for you. The note he’d found with the chocolate bar seemed to indicate he’d made the right decision there.
He also wondered if he should’ve been the one to go up and see about you today when you didn’t come down. He was your best friend, after all, and last night’s date didn’t change that. But considering how he’d ended the date, waltzing into your room might have seemed a bit forward. He was relieved when he encountered Lily a bit ago and learned that James had spoken with you. Even if she did throw in a few choice threats about taking the enchantment off the stairs.
How he’d ended the date. The thought rebounded on Remus and made his stomach flip, just as it had been doing all day.
What the hell had gotten into him? Other than enough butterbeer to float a bloody barge. His initial reaction when he’d woken this morning was shame – he’d moved way too fast. But it wasn’t as if he’d been on a date with a stranger. And ultimately, he kept coming back to how completely and utterly free he’d felt in that moment… none of his usual nervousness and doubt, just him and the one person with whom he’d always felt most comfortable, and when you’d said what you said, it was as if a switch had been thrown – his mind shut down and his emotions took over.
It was exhilarating, but there was just one little problem. Alright, perhaps one very large problem: He didn’t think he could replicate it. He tried to imagine being that bold again for perhaps the hundredth time today – tried to imagine striding up to you, pulling you into the nearest broom closet, and snogging you senseless. His knees buckled, and he flailed out for the nearest thing he could grab onto to stop himself hitting the floor: a suit of armour, which clanged loudly, startling a passing ghost.
Remus blushed and gave the ghost a small wave, breaking off another square of chocolate as he spun round and headed back the way he came. That brand of bold was best left to the Siriuses of the world. Still, he really did feel more confident today than he had the day before. The two of you had had a brilliant time in Hogsmeade, and he felt closer to you for it, which was honestly more important to him than anything else. And as for the end… well, you hadn’t exactly seemed opposed to the idea of him kissing you.
A slight grin crossed his face at that thought, and he checked his watch. Finally time for dinner. Now there was just the matter of smoothing everyone’s ruffled feathers, and Remus had an idea that might do the trick.
Sirius slowly opened his eyes, intending to push the curtains aside and check the time. Instead, he found himself nose to snout with a large deer, its antlers branching above him like a prickly chandelier.
“FUCK!” he yelped, launching himself backwards and going arse over tit off the edge of the bed.
The stag made a series of grunting noises that sounded suspiciously like laughter as Sirius dragged himself from the floor, rubbing his neck. James’s voice suddenly replaced the grunts as the curtain flapped about wildly.
“Shit, Pads, I’m hung…”
“I’ve seen you in the shower, I wouldn’t go thatfar.”
“Myantlers, you twat.”
Sirius walked around the end of his bed, barking out a laugh at the sight of James shaking his head violently, antlers still attached, as he attempted to free himself from the eyelets at the top of the curtains.
“Serves you right, you literal hatstand.”
“Tosh. You had that coming and you know it. Now get me loose.”
Sirius smirked, lifting the lid of his trunk and grabbing the camera instead.
“Give us a smile,” he said as James flicked the V. Sirius snapped the photo and tossed the camera back into his trunk, waving his hand at the curtains as he made his way to his chest of drawers. The curtains extricated themselves from James’s antlers, and Sirius slid on a pair of jeans as he watched his friend squint in concentration. The antlers shrunk down slowly to hilarious little stumps before finally disappearing altogether.
“You alright, mate?” James asked cautiously, straightening his jostled glasses. “I heard Evans was introduced to Walburga…”
“Figured you sent her up,” Sirius said, dodging the topic of the Howler. Prongs’s stiff-upper-lip attitude was endearing, but pep talks had stopped working on Sirius long ago.
What he wanted after an encounter with his family was to acknowledge the darkness he felt, not deny it. He wished that he could go back to the days when he simply pretended his family didn’t exist when not in the presence of direct evidence to the contrary. Out of sight, out of mind. But while his friends knew about his parents’ blood-purist extremism, they didn’t know the whole story. They knew his parents often punished him when he was at home; they didn’t know the specific methods, which were growing increasingly abusive with each passing year. They knew his parents’ social circle shared their supremacist ideals; they didn’t know that circle was expanding to include suspected Death Eaters. “Suspected” was a laughable word at this point, he thought bitterly. He’d yet to hear of anyone “suspected” of being a Death Eater who’d not turned out to be one.
To try to ignore what was happening at 12 Grimmauld Place, to try to shrug it all off and go on his merry way, was to be unprepared. He had to stay on his guard. And so he wanted to feel the darkness because the darkness was what reminded him how very precious the light was. How worth protecting.
Your face flashed through his mind, along with a simultaneous pain through his chest. It was his own fault he wasn’t getting to turn to you today. You understood what he wanted in those moments: Not to be encouraged to let it go, not to be told that everything would be okay – just to be allowed to feel it all. Sirius was fairly sure you’d guessed the things he hadn’t told anyone. You’d always been good at reading people, especially him, but you didn’t try to press him on it. You listened. You held his hand. And when his eyes told you the words he couldn’t say out loud – that he was terrified they’d win in the end – your eyes answered that it’d be a cold day in hell before you ever let that happen.
He felt tears stinging the corners of his eyes. He needed you… now, next year, forever. That was the finite truth of it. He needed you, but he didn’t deserve you. His behaviour last night had proven that.
“…just figured maybe you’d listen if you heard it from someone else for a change,” James was saying.
“How is she?” he blurted out. “Is she… I mean, I know what I said… everything I said… fucking bang out of order, but is she okay?”
James stared at him blankly for a moment. “Evans? What’d you say to her?”
Shit, that’s right – James had been talking about Evans.
“No, sorry. Y/N…”
“Well, she wasn’t doing handsprings, mate, but it’s Y/N. You know she cares about you. Which I believe she made extra clear by screaming it at you last night. Just talk to her, Sirius. Like you always do.”
Sirius felt more tears threatening to form. He had to get a grip on himself.
“Anyway, back to Evans… erm… yeah, that made a big difference. In fact, after she walked in on me starkers, we–”
“Shewhat?!”
Sirius was relieved to find that his chuckle was genuine – the look on Prongs’s face was priceless.
“Relax, I’m joking.” He figured it’d be best not to mention that he had actually been half-naked. “It really was a good talk.”
He wasn’t lying, to his surprise. Evans’ method of getting through to him – shouting his various attributes at him while looking as if she might set his hair on fire at any moment – was oddly effective. If someone who hated him as much as she did could find some worth in him, maybe he wasn’t a lost cause after all.
“Smashing!” James said, brightening. “And guess what else? She only insulted me one time this morning!”
“A new record!” Sirius grinned, high-fiving him. “Hungry?” Hopefully you’d be at dinner so he could apologise. Pushing you away wasn’t the solution to his problem.
“Famished. By the by, Evans did say she’d amputate our toes if we set foot on the girls’ stairs again.”
“That’s not very neighbourly.”
“Oh, and Moony asked if we’d bring the map and the cloak. Says there’s something we need to do tonight.”
“Map’s in my trunk,” Sirius mumbled. He’d dropped to his stomach and appeared to be trying to fish his boots out from under the bed.
James plucked the map out of the lid of the trunk, stooping to pick up a photo that fluttered to the floor. He watched you blink in surprise as Sirius took the picture before arching an eyebrow at him, then winced at the look on your face before the shutter was pressed. He hated seeing you sad.
There was a thud as Sirius began shoving his feet into the boots, and James slipped the photo back into the lid before quietly closing the trunk and sitting down on it. Sirius had a photo of you hidden in the lid of his trunk. Not Mystery Bird. You. He glanced down at the map in his hands. Sirius hadn’t let it out of his sight since he started going out with this girl, but if James had anything to do with it, he wasn’t getting it back tonight. It was high time he met Sirius’s new lady friend.
Sirius popped up from the floor, and James tossed him the map before retrieving his cloak from his own trunk. They walked to the Great Hall in silence, except for a brief pause on the stairs to cheer on Peeves, who was chasing Filch down the third-floor corridor with a mop.
Remus and Peter were already at the table, but James noticed you and the girls were missing from your usual spot. He worried you might be giving dinner a miss as well, but a few moments later, you walked in with Evans, McKinnon and Vance. Sirius immediately made to stand, but James grabbed the hem of his shirt, tugging him back down.
“You don’t want to go over there right now, Pads. You’ve activated the girl shields.”
The four boys watched as every girl in Gryffindor shifted closer to you and your roommates as you sat down, immediately whispering and casting occasional nasty looks at the Marauders. No shouting match the likes of last night’s was going to come without the cost of a bit of chinwagging. James knew you were miserable, though. You hated gossip and seemed to be doing your best to smile and wave the girls off.
“What are they glaring at the rest of us for, we didn’t do anything!” Peter protested.
“Well, we can’t very well put him in the pillory, can we, so we’ll just have to stay here and absorb some of the collateral damage,” Remus grinned, extending a long arm across the table to give Sirius’s shoulder an encouraging slap. James was relieved to see that Remus wasn’t angry with Sirius.
“Listen, Moony…” Sirius started, wanting to make sure, but Remus cut him off.
“We’re good, Pads. It’s between the two of you, and you’ll work it out. But I might be able to help with that later.”
The rest of the meal passed with the usual banter, plus occasional laughter when you’d catch the boys glancing at you and toss subtle “kill me now” gestures their way. You apparently had had enough concern by the time pudding was served, excusing yourself and hotfooting it out of the Hall with Evans on your heels.
When dinner wound down and the Hall began to clear, Moony quietly explained his plan. It seemed to make everyone feel a bit better. James knew that things weren’t about to magically return to normal, but this should at least stop the boat rocking for now. As professors and prefects began shooing stragglers to their Houses, the Marauders slipped under James’s cloak and made their way towards the One-Eyed Witch.
I am SO TREMENDOUSLY SORRY to the ridiculously (riddikulusly?) kind people who’ve let me know they were hoping this story would continue. I don’t even know what to say other than I couldn’t be more deeply touched that you like it that much. I also couldn’t be more deeply ashamed that I’ve left you hanging. But apart from some more major life changes (I’m ready for all the life changes to stop for a good long while now!!), I’d been sitting on this bit of the story for ages now just doubting the bejesus out of it.
I suppose that’s normal when writing fanfic? Or I hope it is… this is still just my second go at it, but without going into detail on how many times I deleted bits I told myself were boring and awful, PLEASE feel free to tell me if I’m cocking this up!! lol If you don’t like where it’s going or how it’s getting there, don’t hesitate to tell me. In return, I’ll stop thinking it to death and try to let it go where it seems to want to go.
Anyway, enough sheepish excuses. I’m forcing myself to publish this part even though it seems like I should have done more to it. If you’re still here reading, bless your lovely heart, and if you asked me at some point to add you to the tag list and I didn’t, just remind me again because we all know now that my brain is a cluttered attic with a bloody ghoul in it lol
You knew one of two things would happen if you went upstairs right now.
The first scenario was that Lily and Marlene had waited up and would pounce on you the moment you entered the dorm, possibly shrieking, likely jumping up and down, and definitely diving onto your bed to demand you regale them with every detail of the day’s events.
The second was that they hadn’t waited up but would instead wake you at dawn to do all of the above.
Youdid want to talk to them, of course, particularly level-headed Lily. Today – and particularly tonight – had left you with much to process, and you’d be glad of an outside perspective. But your head was in no shape for it at the moment. Bits and pieces of the day were flashing through your mind at too swift a speed… snippets of conversations you and Remus had had, images of him laughing freely at the Broomsticks and excitedly pointing out rare books at Tomes & Scrolls, the sounds of a softly played piano, and the rush of adrenaline as the two of you tripped your way up the staircases beneath James’s cloak.
Further complicating things at the moment was the fact that those images were being too frequently interrupted by the lingering feeling of his lips sliding gently across your jaw.
Considering you were also still a bit sloshed, you arrived at the only logical conclusion: Sleeping on the sofa it was.
A wave of your wand had the fire roaring again, and you pulled a blanket up to your chin as you settled against the pillows. After a bit, you found that simply concentrating on the swaying flames helped slow the roundabout in your head. One particular question kept begging for attention, though, no matter how you tried to ignore it.
Had you wanted Remus to kiss you?
Sussing out the answer felt like significantly more effort than you wanted to exert at the present time, but something in the back of your mind kept insisting it was important to try. Either you’d wanted him to kiss you or you’d just been curious to see if he would. The difference would tell you… it would tell you…
“I just want to sleep,” you groaned in frustration as the back of your mind yanked you once again from the edge of a doze.
“Well, fine then! I know when I’m not wanted,” a voice came from behind you. “Thank Evans for that.”
You snorted. “Thank Evans.”
James paused for a moment, then laughed as he caught on.
“Thank Evans instead of thank heavens… oh, we’ve got to make that a new Marauders in-joke, it’ll drive her round the bend.”
You giggled as you pictured Lily a few days from now, red faced and stamping her foot as she demanded to know why everyone kept saying that.
“Sorry to disturb, though, I’ll leave you to it,” James said, his voice a bit further away. You shook your head, then realised he couldn’t see you; you’d wedged yourself as deeply into the sofa cushions as you could manage in your fitfulness.
“No, I wasn’t talking to you. I was talking to myself. I feel like I’m losing the plot, James…”
You rubbed your face. James’s timing was, as per usual, impeccable. You suddenly knew that if anyone could help you sort through this, it was him.
You extended your arms so that he could see them over the back of the sofa.
“Hold me,” you said in your most piteous voice.
“Why, Y/N!” James gasped, his head appearing above yours, a mock expression of shock on his face. “What would Moony say?”
“Belt up and get over here.”
“How forceful of him,” James teased as he vaulted the back of the sofa. You pulled your knees quickly to your chest to avoid having your legs crushed. You couldn’t, however, avoid being jostled violently, and before you could regain your breath, James had grabbed you round the waist and hauled you into his lap. Angling back against the cushions, he put a hand on your forehead and pressed down until your head was resting on the arm of the sofa before draping his arm comfortably over your stomach.
“How is it you always manage to make me feel simultaneously assaulted and loved?” you asked.
It was only partially a joke. James seemed to barrel into every endeavour like a drunken ogre yet, by the end, it was always as if everything had gone precisely according to his plan. It was part of the reason you were so sure he and Lily would eventually end up together. She just had to wait out the ogre stage.
“It’s a gift,” James yawned, pulling the blanket over the two of you. “Now. How satisfactory is Remus’s snogging? I reckon he goes in a bit frantic, but Pads pegs him as more of a tender lover…”
“If I weren’t so tired, I’d look at you indignantly,” you said, eyes closed. “There was no snogging.”
“Not even a peck goodnight?”
“No. Well…”
“Aha!”
“I said no!”
“And then you said ‘well’. Everybody knows that 'well’ after 'no’ means 'yes’.”
You managed an exasperated sigh. “Did he not speak to the three of you when he came in?”
“Two of us. Sirius still isn’t back.”
There was that twinge again.
“And you know Moony. Told us to sod off and crawled into bed before we could even so much as get a word out. But he was grinning like a Cheshire cat when he came through the door, so I just figured–”
“You just figured what?” you asked, opening your eyes just enough to narrow them at him. “That he couldn’t possibly be grinning because we’d had a nice time or because I’m excellent company?”
“You’re always excellent company and you two always have a nice time. So something different had to have happened. And snogging would definitely be different.”
“There was nosnogging.”
“But there was a 'well’.”
With a quiet groan, you reached up to rub your temples, which were beginning to throb.
“Why does everyone always want to have deep, probing conversations with me when I’m fucking shattered?” you demanded. “What’s wrong with soul searching at, say, half eight?”
“We all know 'tipsy and tired’ is your and Sirius’s Veritaserum,” James said matter of factly.
Your eyes widened, and he quickly put a hand over your mouth.
“Allow me,” he said, clearing his throat and sending his voice into an exaggerated falsetto. “James, how dare you! Do you have any idea how manipulative that is? If you weren’t so incredibly handsome and virile, I’d be very, very cross with you.”
You couldn’t help but chuckle into his hand, and he took that as a sign that it was safe to remove it.
“Itis manipulative,” you muttered.
“If you want to be negative about it,” James said with a dismissive wave. “I prefer to see it as a sign of how close we all are. I mean, we’d have to be to pick up on this stuff, wouldn’t we? Get a fair few down you and Sirius, wait till you’re good and cream-crackered, and the both of you will spill your guts. Don’t act like you’ve never bribed Remus with chocolate, and we both know you can guilt him into anything if you appeal to that honourable streak of his. Just tell Pete 'that’s something James and Sirius would do’ and he’ll do it. Honestly, Y/N, if you don’t occasionally manipulate your friends, do you really even care?”
You opened your mouth to protest, then remembered how many times you’d gotten James to do something he didn’t want to do by telling him how impressed Lily would be when you told her.
“Alright, fair enough. We’re extremely close, sort of rotten friends. We deserve each other. But for the record, I was going to tell you anyway. 'Tipsy and tired’ or not.”
One of the things you loved about all the boys was that they knew when it was fine to take the Mickey and when it was time to shut it and listen. James sat attentively as you summed up the day, his mouth dropping open as you reached the end.
“Moony did that?! OurMoony?”
You nodded.
“Fucking hell,” James said, grinning through his shock as he shook his head. “I didn’t think he had it in him. So… what happened next?”
“I threw a pillow at him.”
“As you do.”
“Not smack in the face or anything. He sneaked off right when I thought… well, I thought he was going to properly kiss me. Next thing I knew, he was on the stairs.”
“Merlin’s undies, he went from nervous wreck to Casanova in a day? You must be one hell of a date, love.”
“That goes without saying, but I don’t think it had as much to do with me as it did with Remus just… throwing caution to the wind for once. This is going to sound odd, but I felt sort of proud of him. He’s capable of so much more than he thinks he is.”
“Apparently. Ten minutes before we went down to the Great Hall, he was snogging a paper bag. If you’d told me he’d be moving on to chins a few hours later, I’d have–”
“He did not snog my chin. Godric, James.”
James laughed before tapping his own chin with his thumb, something he always did when he was thinking.
“So what is it you’re upset about? That he didn’t properly kiss you? Did you want him to?”
James watched as you slowly nibbled the inside of your bottom lip. You always did that when you were thinking.
He had to admit, he was reeling from this news about Moony. He hadn’t had any doubt that Remus would eventually relax and the two of you would settle into your usual simpatico swing. He wouldn’t have left his cloak with Rosmerta otherwise. But from there, he’d reckoned it’d be a hug and off to bed, followed by a few agonising weeks of having to watch the two of you awkwardly dance around one another – complete with loads of blushing and that Alice-and-Frank hand-brushing bollocks – while you all waited to see where this would go.
Remus had skipped ahead a few chapters, and now it was time to figure out whether that had advanced the story or spoilt the ending.
“That’s what was keeping me awake when you came down,” you said finally. “Did I want him to kiss me… romantically? Or did I just want to see what New Remus would do next?”
“Well… maybe a comparison,” James suggested. “How have you felt just before being kissed before?”
Your eyes dropped, and a slight flush washed over your cheeks.
“I haven’t been kissed before,” you said quietly.
James’s eyes widened in genuine surprise.
“Don’t take the piss, James, not right now.”
“I would never! I just assumed Morgan had at least had a go…”
“He had welts for a week after that Stinging Snowball stunt. Hasn’t put his face anywhere near me since.”
“Sorry? I suppose?”
“You suppose wrong. He’s nice enough, but he’s a bit of a big head. Always on about shallow rubbish, doesn’t seem interested in getting to know me. The real me, I mean.”
Suddenly, you looked vulnerable and sad. Just like Sirius had that night outside the kitchens. James really wished he could make everyone stop looking like that.
He’d had all the standard, humiliating warnings from his mum that people’s feelings would go all… feely once they reached a certain age. It’d been especially delightful the night she’d decided to include Sirius in the conversation. “Be wary of young ladies who only seem to be attracted to your looks,” she’d said. “Particularly you, Sirius.” James scowled slightly as he remembered Pads bursting into laughter.
But you and Remus, Sirius and Mystery Bird… regardless of the warnings, James hadn’t expected to start fifth year with everyone pairing off. And if he was honest, he was feeling a bit gutted that, despite a little progress, he seemed no closer to adding 'James and Lily’ to that list.
But none of this was going to be solved overnight. A change of subject was definitely in order.
“I vote we not be serious for the rest of the night.”
“I second,” you said, giving him a grateful smile.
“I third! One of me is more than enough.”
James watched as the smile slipped from your face at the sound of Sirius’s voice. You used to light up when he walked into a room. How had Pads never noticed that?
Tilting his head back, James watched as Sirius caught his foot on the edge of the portrait hole and tipped forwards. Just before he hit the floor, however, he spun, putting a hand down behind him and propelling himself upright. The whole thing ended up looking more like a bloody dance move than a drunken eejit tripping into a room. James shook his head. He loved Sirius dearly, but sometimes he wondered if it wouldn’t do Pads some good to fall flat on his face every once in a while. Might knock some sense into him.
“Uh-oh,” Sirius said, dangling over the back of an adjacent armchair. “Cuddles with Prongs means something’s wrong.”
“You’re almost as poetic as Peeves,” you retorted, rolling your eyes.
“So what is it?” Sirius continued, unperturbed. “Bad date?”
His tone was confrontational. He was also pissed as a newt – eyes bloodshot, voice heavy and sluggish, and his breath could have knocked over an erumpent. This was not good.
“Perfectly lovely date, thank you,” you said shortly. “Best time I’ve had in ages.”
James watched as a pained look flickered over Sirius’s face, replaced almost immediately by another James knew all too well. That sulky look that said “Pads is now in a mood – terrible decisions on his part are about to be made and something will inevitably get broken”. This was very, very not good.
“Oh? Then why are you in the common room being consoled by Prongs instead of upstairs showing off your love bites like mydate?”
James felt you flinch and instinctively grabbed your hand as the pained look found a new home. Yours didn’t last long either, though, anger scorching the hurt away from your eyes.
“Bloodyhell, Sirius, shut your gob and go to bed,” James tried, knowing it was too late. You sat up stiffly, glaring at the boy as he raised a smug eyebrow at you.
“That was horrid,” you said quietly, your voice quivering slightly.
“That’s not what she said,” Sirius drawled, standing upright.
“Why are you acting like this? This isn’t you. Why are you doing this to– why are you doing this?”
Sirius faltered for a moment at your sudden pleading tone, and James held his breath, hoping fervently that some faint, preferably sober voice in Padfoot’s head would lead him right. But then the mask slid back down.
“Doing what? Having a little fun?”
“There’s a difference between having fun and acting like an arrogant prick.”
“So I’m a prick now because I’m not Remus?”
“Who said I wanted you to be Remus?”
“Then who is it you want me to be?”
“You! The realyou.”
“And where has that ever gotten me? Who gives a shit about the real me?”
“I DO!!” you yelled, and James watched as Sirius’s eyes widened slightly. You stood abruptly, clearly flustered, and stomped to the bottom of the girls’ stairs. Surely that had snapped Sirius out of it…
“Yeah, well, you can tell Remus the real me is a prick too on your next perfectly lovely date.”
Aaaaand fuck. James let his head drop onto the back of the sofa as Sirius stalked to the boys’ stairs. In his peripheral vision, he could see you swiping quickly at your eyes while Sirius wasn’t looking.
“Believe me, I will,” you said, your volume rising. “And don’t worry, I won’t be spoiling your fun from now on. Why you even bother concerning yourself with what dull, boring little Y/N is doing is beyond me.”
“BECAUSE I FUCKING WANT YOU TO BE HAPPY!” Sirius shouted.
The two of you glowered at one other for a few seconds before you bolted through the door to the girls’ tower, slamming it behind you. Sirius pounded his fist against the boys’ door before violently kicking it open.
At least nothing got brok–
James ducked as a bolt of light shot from the top of the boys’ stairs and a small table near the portrait hole exploded. Wearily curling up on the sofa, he listened for a few moments for any further signs of movement. Or destruction. While it was a safe bet that everyone in the House was awake now, he hoped they’d stay in their dorms. He needed to take stock, and better to do it here than upstairs with the Human Molotov Cocktail in the next bed.
Silence settled slowly over the room.
First on the list of things needing pondered: James had seriously underestimated Remus, who had apparently been a character from a romance novel all along – sensitive, suave, well-read, dashing, musical, and moonlighting as a werewolf. Pun very much intended. He also seemed to have intentions of snogging you at some point in the near future, though whether or not you wanted to be snogged was still up in the air. And meanwhile, Sirius’s snogging was clearly out of control.
If it turned out Pete was snogging anything, James was going to be extremely put out.
To make all of that even more complicated, despite your best efforts to be furious, you and Sirius had really only proven one thing with your row: You still had feelings for each other. The Veritaserum had spoken. Or in this case, shouted.
“Tipsy and tired,” he sighed, pulling the blanket over his head. He himself was unfortunately only one of those things.
“Potter!”
James groaned. What the holy hell now? It felt like he’d barely closed his eyes five minutes ago.
“POTTER!”
Irritably, he yanked the blanket away from his face and winced against the sunlight streaming into the room before forcing one eye open. Lily was standing in front of the sofa, arms crossed, foot tapping. James closed his eye. Could she just once plan a lecture for a time when he didn’t look like he’d been trampled by graphorns? Seeing as he usually couldn’t defend his actions, it’d be nice if he could at least smoulder.
“Potter, I obviously saw you open your eye, so why would you bother closing it?”
“Because my dream seems to be malfunctioning. Normally, you’re naked.”
“Oh my God. Just forget it, you manky plonker,” Lily huffed, turning towards the portrait hole.
“Wait, wait, Evans, I apologise. Step into my office, we’ll have a chat that I’m sure will include many more apologies by me.”
Lily looked dubious but settled into an armchair as James dragged himself into a sitting position, straightening his glasses.
“I’m sure this will come as a nasty shock, but I’m not here to talk about you,” Lily began. “Though I would be interested to know if you ever actually sleep in your bed.”
James opened his mouth, but your voice suddenly popped into his head.
“Do NOT say 'You’re welcome to find out’, for fuck’s sake, these are the things that do not impress Lily no matter how funny they are, James.”
“It was safer down here last night,” he said instead.
Lily nodded with a sigh.
“That’s what I wanted to talk about. We were all awake when she came in, of course, but she just dove into bed and drew the curtains. Hasn’t come out since. Please tell me it wasn’t Remus she was shouting at…”
“It wasn’t Remus. It was Sirius.”
“Sirius?”
“He stumbled in from his date while Y/N and I were chatting. It went… less than well.”
Lily sighed, casting a worried look towards the girls’ dorm.
James frowned. Damned if he was going to start yet another week with everything gone pear-shaped. He needed a plan of action. A change of perspective.
“Evans, what do you think should be done about a person who’s too pigheaded to understand that another person’s been trying to tell them they fancy them?”
“Don’t you call me pigheaded, James Potter!”
James snorted. “No, no, not you. Sirius. The row last night, it was nothing but the two of them lashing out at each other because they’re hurt and stubborn. And in Sirius’s case, bevvied. With a dash of stupid.”
“So you think Sirius still has feelings for her?”
“I know he does. But the thing is, he’s had his bloody chances and he just keeps cocking it up. I’m of a mind now he’s doing it on purpose.”
Lily’s eyes widened. “Why?”
“I’m convinced now that he stood aside for Remus. Which under any other circumstance would’ve made him quite the noble bastard, but under this one… I don’t know. I reckon Sirius wanted to give Remus’s confidence a leg up, but from what Y/N said last night Moony’s doing just fine on his lonesome.”
“She talked to you about her date?”
James raised a brow. “Some girls have no trouble at all talking to me, Evans. Some girls quite enjoy it, in fact.”
“Yes, well, some girls also quite enjoy waxing their legs. So they had a nice time?”
“I’ll leave the details to her but yeah, seems so.”
Lily stood suddenly. “I’m going to talk to her. If things went well with Remus and she’s committed to seeing where else they might go, then she needs to give it time. Which means Sirius needs to stop complicating things. Perhaps you should tell him as much.”
“About that,” James said, eyeing Lily cautiously. “Me telling Pads what to do is about as effective as me telling that fireplace poker. Meanwhile, your continued refusal to find me irresistible means you don’t know much about men. No offence.”
“Point?” Lily groaned.
“What Y/N needs right now is insight and empathy. What Pads needs is a stern lecture. Care to trade?”
Lily looked puzzled for a moment before crinkling her nose in disgust. “You want me to speak with Black?”
“Frightened, are you?”
The girl puffed up immediately and it was all James could do not to laugh. She looked like a disgruntled owl.
“Hardly. Repulsed is more like it. He’s horrid. Second-most-arrogant person I’ve ever had the misfortune to meet. Selfish, spoilt, a complete and utter rake…”
“And yet you… don’t want to lecture him?”
Lily paused. “Actually, now you mention it, yes. Yes I do. It’s certainly clear no one else in his life ever has.”
“It’s settled then,” James said, hopping up from the sofa and heading for the girls’ stairs. “I’d have a go now if I were you; I reckon he’s too hungover to be belligerent.”
Lily marched towards the boys’ stairs but whipped around, mouth open, at the sound of James whispering behind her.
“JamesPotter!! Did you just take the enchantment off the girls’ stairs?!”
“Sirius taught me!” James yelled over his shoulder, taking two steps at a time to get out of hexing range. “Feel free to include that in your chat!”
“Oh, I will! Once this business is sorted, we’re all going to be having chats about lots of things! I amaprefect, you know!”
“Yes, yes, thank Evans for that,” James called as he opened the door to the dorms, grinning as Lily’s voice drifted up the stairs: “Thank me for what?”
