Sirius telling stories about his time at hogwarts to Fred and George during the summer spent in grimauld place in book five
Fred: do you have any stories about good parties?
Sirius: oh yeah loads. My favourite one is about James’s 16th birthday. So the party was going great. I’m standing in the common room and I’m holding a fire whisky bottle, you’ve been to the hogs head. And I’m standing there, and I’m holding a firewhiskey and I’m starting to black out. And I guess someone said like: “something, something McGonagall!” And in a brilliant moment of word association I yelled “fuck McGonagall!” “Fuck Mcgonagall!"And everyone else joined in.
A hundred drunk white children yelling: "fuck Mcgonagall” with the confidence of guys who have like already been to azkaban And aren’t afraid of it anymore. You know that like “I served my time, you come and take me” confidence.
But white children the reason someone had said: “Something, something Mcgonagall” was because Mcgonagall were there. So she walked through the portrait hole and looked out over a sea of drunk toddlers yelling “Fuck Mcgonagall” in her face
And she was almost impressed. She was like: “wow”
And then she cast a patronus and told it: “get the the other teachers”. And James, who was a father, this man had a baby, he grabbed a butterbeer, smashed it on the ground, and yelled “scatter!”
But everyone ran in a different direction. We all ran in different directions. It was like in the great hall when the slytherins come in the room and all the other students go in different ways.
We all ran in different directions. I ran out of the common room and I jumped into a secret passage that led me to the second floor and I crawled through a window and jumped down onto the grass and now I’m running through the greenhouses and there’s this big devil’s snare.
And I thought “I’ve never dealt with a devil’s snare that big before.” And then I woke up in my dorm.
He blamed himself. Everyday until the department of mysteries he blamed himself. He blamed others too. Peter, Voldemort, Dumbledore. In fits of anger he even blamed Remus, but that blame never lasted and he laid the blame with himself again.
Thinking of Remus was what almost broke him. They had argued all the time, just as much of his fault as it was Remus’, and in the last few months he hadn’t trusted him and he regretted that constantly, but he still loved the man with all his heart.
From the moment Sirius had laid eyes on the boy sitting in that train carriage he wanted to know him.
For the first few years he had protested in his mind that he just wanted to be friends with him but there was always an inkling that he never thought of Remus like he thought of James. And that had scared him. His family’s prejudices were so deeply ingrained into him that even now, at the age of 22, he still occasionally felt that his and remus’ relationship was wrong.
When he and Mary started dating it had just been to keep James off his back and then Remus had kissed him on his birthday. Sirius remembered the kiss more vividly than anything else. It had been perfect but he was terrified of admitting, even to himself the feelings he had for Remus. And so he had continued to date Mary and started to shut Remus out a little bit.
The next while of him and Remus shagging secretly and then pretending that they weren’t attracted to each other had been torture for the both of them. Sirius had let Remus believe that he simply didnt care about him in that way as a way of trying to convince himself hadn’t worked so he had been unbelievably cruel to the wolf and to himself.
Then in Cornwall when they had admitted their feelings Sirius had felt freer than ever before and even with the war it had stayed that way until James and Lilys’ deaths.
He loved Remus with all his heart. When he wasn’t there it hurt physically and even when the two of them were arguing he never wanted to even think about another person.
He loved Remus more than anyone could ever love anything he thought, with perhaps the exception of Lily and James. The two were perfect together and were perfectly matched. He would never admit it but he was incredibly jealous of the two of them. They had been destined for eachother from the beginning, so unlike him and Remus, and had barely had a minute of hardship in their relationship.And they had yet to be parted. Even in death. Perhaps it was the place he was in but Sirius wished constantly that Voldemort had killed him too and that he wouldn’t have to live without Remus anymore.
Live knowing that Remus hated him so much. And that was what almost broke him. That Remus probably would never learn the truth.
{So after i read all the young dudes i was obviously wrecked and i wanted to change the ending so it didnt hurt as much. I dont think you need to read ATYD to read this (i am kida taking it as canon) but if you haven’t you really should. Anyway the chapters vary in veiwpoint and this one is from Lily’s. Enjoy :) }
Chapter 1 (read here on Ao3. i think i have like four chapters posted now)
She had heard the scream from her husband and the cruel words the monster had sneered at him and the flash of green had shone through the entire house but she couldn’t let herself think about it. She would later. If there was a later.
Instead she had to focus on her son.
She held the boy close to her chest, tears streaming down her face, before placing him in his crib.
She could hear the footsteps of the man walking through the house, the charms for changing the layout only slowing down the inevitable.
Her voice shook as she whispered to Harry that she loved him. That his father loved him. That Sirius and Lupin loved him. She was about to say Peter but then realised that he must have given the information to Voldemort. Anyway it didn’t matter now.
She told her son how much he was loved by her and his father and their friends. And how much his grandparents would have loved him. How much anyone who met him had loved him.
Then the door flew open and ‘he’ stood there.
She pleaded with him. Pleaded and pleaded but green light shot towards her and the world went black.
She had visions in that darkness. Visions of her son and her husband. Of her friends and her family. Happy ones to start. Memories of days in Hogwarts spent by the lake. Of days before Hogwarts when tuney had been kind to her and Severus had been a good person. Of her wedding day and the day Harry was born. But slowly they turned darker. Memories of Harry crying. her friends arguing. Of her and James arguing. Meetings about the war. Severus and Petunia cursing at her. Hearing the lists of the dead which had grown longer everyday. Seeing the corpses at the funerals. Seeing Marlene lying so still. Hearing the thud of James hitting the floor.
Then darkness crept in again and she saw nothing more.
When she awoke she couldn’t see anything. She was lying on something hard, perhaps a large rock and there was wind whistling loudly and the sound of waves crashing somewhere near. She shivered and peered into the darkness.
She felt hollow. She hadn’t a clue what had happened and where she was. She supposed she was dead but she felt very cold and she was definitely corporeal as she could feel herself and the rock she was on.
As she waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness she tried to use her magic. No luck. Not that she had expected there to be a result as she had died far away from her wand. Well, had she died?
Lily Potter had always been a quick and logical thinker. One of the things that had set her so apart from her husband and that had held her back when she started liking him was that she would think things through carefully and try and come up with the best solution to a problem whereas James would rush straight into things without giving a second thought to the matter. At first she had struggled with that but had eventually realised that his need to protect his loved ones, that often hindered his thoughts was what would keep them safe during the war. At any rate he wasn’t as nearly so reckless as his best friend. That was something at least. As she was sitting in the dark thinking about this Lily wondered how Remus could deal with being with sirius. Knowing that the man’s recklessness and impulsiveness had put both of them in danger so often. Yet Remus is always stuck by him.
Thinking of her friends had helped Lily calm down. But then she remembered that her husband was dead and her son probably was too and she melted down into tears. Light drops of water at first. Just enough to coat her lips with salt before she was sobbing loudly and uncontrollably.
After a few seconds of sobbing loudly someone from somewhere in the darkness asked
“Is someone there?”
She would have recognised that voice anywhere and despite the situation she grinned happily.
“James?” She asked, not caring that he couldn’t be speaking, that he was dead.
“Lils!” James shouted, the relief in his voice obvious. “Are you alright?”
“Yeah. I think so. Nothing really hurts. Are you OK?”
“Yeah. What happened? Where are we?”
“I don’t know darling. But he’s got Harry. I’m sorry I tried to hold him off but he cursed me. I thought I was going to die. I thought…. I thought he killed you” The tears started again as she tripped over her words.
“Darling it’s alright. You did everything you could and obviously I’m not dead.” He joked, a bit of humour in the dank place they were in cheering Lily up immensely.
They tried to find each other by following their voices but they came to the conclusion that they were trapped apart from each other. They tried magic again and again. Spells for light. For letting people know where you were. For help. For heat. Even patronuses but nothing worked. So they gave up and talked to each other through the darkness. Hours later, or at least what Lily thought to be hours later James drifted off to sleep and she sat in the silence listening to his snoring. She must have fallen asleep soon after and she woke up with a dim light shining through the room.
She could see it more clearly now. Cavernous with tall ceilings and rough walls. There was a gate of sorts at one end of the room,enclosing her. A thin slit in the wall gave way to light behind it and she could hear seagulls screeching over the sound of the waves.
James was awake too and his cell, for want of a better word, faced Lily’s. They were so close. Barely a meter and a half between the two sets of bars and when they stretched their arms through their fingertips scraped each other.
If they strained their ears and tried to listen past the deafening waves they could hear screaming coming from far above them.
Food and water appeared in their rooms three times that day and they ate in silence, so rare for the two of them. So rare that it was just the two of them. Whilst in hiding they had barely a moment together without Harry and before that there were always friends, usually Sirius and Remus spending time with them.
In between meals they talked. They tried to figure out where they were and what had happened to them. They also tried to assure each other that Harry would be OK but neither of them really believed it. However if the unspeakable had happened neither of them would have been able to face it and they both cried themselves to sleep that night. The next day the sound of the waves disappeared for awhile and the screaming above them stopped as loud shouts and jeers sounded through the hall and cells they were in.
And those shouts were what led James to his theory of where they were.
They were sitting in silence a few days later when Lily suddenly felt very cold and she shivered. Dark memories and thoughts infiltrated her mind and she looked over at James who had started to cry.
Then the feeling was lessened and James jumped up with a triumphant laugh.
“Lils! I figured out where we are!” He said gleefully.
“Where?”
“Azkaban!” He said, the happiness in his voice fading.
“What? How?” She asked incredulously.
“I don’t know how we got here but it just seems the most likely outcome. We know we’re in a castle near the sea. We know that there are other people in this place who are being tortured or something and we both keep on getting periods where we feel terrible. So dementors possibly. ”
Lily didn’t know what to make of this other than admiring her husband’s thought process.
This revaluation didn’t help the two of them much however perhaps it calmed them a little to know where they were and shake off some of the uncertainty.
Over the next few days they could hear more shouting and heckling coming from above but not as loud as from the second day.
And soon days must have passed into weeks and weeks must have passed into months. They tried keeping track by scratching tallies on the walls but they kept on having different answers.
They tried not to think about what might have happened to Harry or to their friends or what was going on with the war and instead they talked about memories. Happy ones usually especially that summer in Cornwall before everything went downhill. As more time passed they were starting to run out of things in their life to talk about so they started making up stories about different worlds.
Months stretched into what must have been years and any hope they might have had at the beginning of escaping or being rescued was scuppered. They had tried hundreds of times to escape but nothing worked and no one had come near them.
At a certain point talking and thinking about their friends was too much and they spoke very rarely of them if at all. They spent most of their time telling stories and surprisingly dancing.
Lily had never been amazing at dancing. Sure she could dance in a party in the gryffindor common room but that was about the extent of her talents. James however had been taking lessons his whole life.
In a suppressed memory, Sirius has taught Lily to dance for her wedding but she had resigned not to think of her friends and that memory had faded. James taught her to dance in the prison. They would sing songs that they had played on Sirius’ record player in Hogwarts and music they had listened to after school and they would dance to the music together, waiting for when they could hold each other again.
So for years and years, they would tell tales from worlds they had constructed in their heads and they would dance and sing and scream until they fell asleep, their hands stretching towards each other through the barriers.
IMAGINE how annoying it must be to be from a different house during the marauders era. like I bet gryffindor has SO many inside jokes about them and their pranks that they just be screaming in the corridors about and the other houses were probably like
- never sleeps at night but always sleeping during the day
- you will never catch this boy awake in history of magic
- used to chain smoke but when he started dating lily, he stopped because he knew she didn’t like the smell of it
- sirius stopped smoking as well because he didn’t want to tempt james into smoking again
- bisexual king
- until the day he died, he would’ve been completely fine marrying sirius and even in the afterlife
- literally has the BEST friendship with sirius it’s not even funny like everybody is so jealous
- mother hen :’)
- since he never sleeps at night, he’s always awake at the crack of dawn and is always waking the boys up with him
- “if i don’t see feet on the ground in thirty seconds, i’m opening the curtains!’
- “don’t you make me count to three, mister!”
- “sirius get out of the bathroom, peter needs to pee and he can’t hold it anymore” “you didn’t have to tell him that james!” “we’re all men here, peter, grow up and learn how to tell people you need to pee”
- super smart
- loves the library but refuses to admit that he does
- once quoted shakespeare at lily and later, she told him it was one of the reasons she fell in love with him
- actually has really good sportsmanship
- like of course he gets super butthurt when he loses anything but he makes sure to tell the other player or players that they did a good job
- literally the nicest asshole you’ll ever meet
- like he’ll hit your books out of your hands and then help you pick them up
- resorts to physical violence because “it gets the job done faster moony don’t lecture me”
- has punched snape before but only because he called sirius privileged and james was not having it
- has a toad at home
- never told anybody about the toad (her name is cecilia and he loves her very much) so when sirius moved in and saw the toad vibing on his window sill, he flipped his shit
- cecilia pees on sirius every time he picks her up but it never stops him
- james is sure sirius loves cecilia more than he himself does
- when remus and peter find out about cecilia, they also flip their shit
- cecilia becomes the marauders mascot
- lily finds out halfway through seventh year that they have a mascot and it’s a toad named cecilia and teases them endlessly about it
- also has a cat at home
- his name is sandwich (james named him when he was four) and he’s best friends with cecilia
- the potter family owl is named odessa (james calls her dessy) and she hates james but james loves her
- he had a crush on regulus in his fifth year and never told a soul. remus knew but didn’t say anything
- his friendship with remus :’)
- it was his idea to become animagi (he read about it in a book) and it was also his idea for the map
- he did a lot of the charm work on the map
- there were a lot of ‘hypothetical’ questions for flitwick during this time period and flitwick was all too happy to answer them
- took ancient runes and arithmancy from third year to seventh and made an O in both
- took divination in third year with sirius, remus, and peter but he was the hermione in that group
- while remus, sirius, and peter were like ‘alright i can dig it’ with divination, james was getting SO heated about it
- for the remainder of their school career, he made sure to tell them all the flaws in divination at any chance he could
- lily was super into divination, though, just because she thought it was really interesting and there were too many instances of it being real to be counted as coincidences, and james literally almost imploded when he found this out
- when they heard the prophecy for the first time, james literally stood up and left lmao
- “i’m not believing some bullshit prophecy that tells me my son has to die at the hands of voldemort, lily!” “what if it’s not bullshit” “are you fucking shitting me right now lily”
- only agreed to go into hiding for lily
- also took care of magical creatures from third to seventh year and also made an O in that
- when they learned about unicorns, the unicorn looked at all the girls in the class and then trotted past and stood in front of james
- james never stopped gloating about this ever
- “sorry what was that? i couldn’t hear you over the sound of being trusted by a unicorn” “a unicorn trusted me minnie why would i ever break the rules like that”
- didn’t actually mind slytherins
- was almost one himself and def wouldn’t have made a huge deal about it because euphemia was a slytherin when she went to hogwarts and he knew they weren’t all bad
- the only reason he never styled his hair was because his dad invented sleekeazy’s. that’s it, that’s the only reason. he did it to spite his dad.
- momma’s boy !!!
- until the day euphemia died, james was not embarrassed to hold her hand as they crossed the street and tell her he loved her
- could not fathom a world without his mother so when she died, he shut down for a good month and a half
- used to actually be afraid to curse
- said his first swear word in fifth year and never looked back
- “what the fiddlesticks” “for the love of all that is holy, just say fuck”
- “f-f-” “yes, you can do it” “i’m nervous”
- fleamont found out that he smoked when he was in his sixth year and he ripped him an entirely new asshole before pulling out his own cigarette and lighting it
- cannot hold his alcohol
- was drunk by the third butterbeer
- was destined to be the chill dad because his dad wasn’t
- yes you heard that right. euphemia was the chill parent. fucking deal with it.
- was an amazing liar purely because of fleamont
- like this boy could lie straight out of his ass the second he learned how to talk
- “james fleamont potter did you break this vase” “didn’t I tell you, dad? the manor’s got a poltergeist!” “we do?!”
- the manor did have a poltergeist but he didn’t know that at the time
- humble rich kid
- his house is huge but so is his heart
- sirius found out his middle name was fleamont when he moved in because fleamont yelled his full name SO often
- james hates that sirius knows his middle name
- sirius loves that he knows james’ middle name
- sirius and sandwich the cat have a silent feud going on that james fuels by privately telling both of them that they’re his favorite
- his actual favorite is cecilia
this got super long but still, feel free to add your own weird james headcanons!
and he’d look up to the sky, whispering a name that had once fallen off his lips so easily, with so much love and devotion, in hopes that the stars would give a sign, a flicker, that they were still watching over him. but the stars remain always silent.
“you don’t mean that.” regulus said quietly, desperately clinging to the hope that he was right, and that sirius really, truly, didn’t.
“i mean every. fucking. word.”
“sirius, i-” the younger brother’s voice only cracked slightly.
there is a bittersweet pain in a brother’s betrayal, that sirius had seen coming all along. in a family of madness and secrets kept in the light of the stars, they were very few, the ones that came in the light of the sun.
and regulus had stayed in the shadows, where, seemingly, he belonged.
a single tear rolled down sirius’ cheek, that washed away the war’s pain, the traitorous act that regulus had done, the pain that had toughened them up, built them up, but at the same time, that broke them down.
family.
“mon petit frère est un traître.” sirius whispered, their voice shaking ever so slightly.
“non…” regulus trailed off. “sirius, s'il te plaît…”
and with the betrayal, the skull-headed snake marked in regulus’ skin forever,
“where the hell do you keep on going?” sirius said, glaring at remus from under their long eyelashes. “‘cause i am one hundred percent sure you’re not going only where dumbledore sends you.”
“i’ve told you! i’m not allowed to tell you!” remus’ words were almost a growl. “i’m not in the mood for fucking talking.” remus said coldly and went to their room, slamming the door behind him. sirius flinched.
you always had the upper hand
“why do i only go with the werewolves?” a nineteen-year-old remus asked, trailing off after dumbledore. “why can’t i go with my friends?”
“because that,” the older man looked at remus categorically, leaving no place for discussion, “is where you’re useful.”
“but it’s not fair! i-” remus started.
“no buts. do you remember how much i’ve done for you?” dumbledore cocked one single eyebrow. “it’s the time you pay me back.”
got caught in love and stepped in sinking sand
“maybe falling in love with you wasn’t the brightest idea i’ve ever had.”
remus wondered when did they fall out of love. was it with little steps, something that could have been avoidable, that they noticed just a little bit too late? or did they just wake up one day and decide that they didn’t love each other anymore?
nonetheless, the flame of their love had consumed them entirely. lit up by it, like a match, like a cigarette, and burned until nothing but their ashes were left.
you had to go and ruin all our plans
“i’ll be back soon, sirius. i promise”
“you never keep your promise though, remus, do you?” sirius looked up to their lover tiredly. “it’s all just unkept promises”
packed your bags and you’re leaving home
remus always came back late. and sirius would wait, until they got tired of waiting.
got a one-way ticket and you’re all sent to go
and with every single mission, they started to not be sure if they’d want remus to come back or not.
but we have one more day together
and everything would once come to an end. their love, the war; soon enough, even if they were going to be the ones who lost.
so, love me like there’s no tomorrow
they had very few nights of love left. with the uncertainty of war, never knowing the day you would stop waking up next to the one you loved, and everything going around, they’d have to live life to the fullest. even the little they had left.
hold me in your arms, tell me you mean it
so they’d just love each other.
this is our last goodbye, and very soon it will be over
they never knew how to quite make out the difference between sinners and saints. but when their last goodbye would come, they’d know that neither them, nor their lover, had been either.
