September 1st, 1995 -
Dear Walburga would have a fit if she saw you imbibing common bourbon, of course neglecting the fact that all she does nowadays is have fits. There are a million more genteel beverages you could choose, but you've settled for this one. It goes down more easily than firewhiskey.
After shaving - though what's the point in shaving when you're not going anywhere - you pour yourself a drink, unsteady hands sloshing a few drops of liquid onto the floor.
The ache in your stomach and skull gives way to a pleasant, floating apathy. Downstairs, the children and their guard are nearly ready to leave for King's Cross.
Except they're not really children anymore. Two years ago, they were three kids taking on a world and reality beyond their ability.
Ron's shot up half a foot in height in as many months. Hermione's started to fill out in a way that's going to have boys lining up around the castle for dates. And Harry?
He's grown an inch or two and lost some of his goggling childish brightness. In its place, a silent anger has taken hold. It's hard to catch if you don't look carefully, but when you do – from the tension in his shoulders to the knot between his eyebrows, right below the scar – it screams like a klaxon.
He's not so much lithe as awkward, like all teenage boys. He's not broad like his father but he wears this silly grin that reaches all the way up to his glasses and all you see is James, James, James, even despite the green in his eyes.
He gives you a long hug, which leaves your body singing in the wrong places and your pants far too tight. You squash that little voice that notes the easy flush of Harry's cheeks and his lingering glances. It nearly gave up your sanity while you were imprisoned.
"Try not to get into too much trouble at school," you warn, attempting to sound responsible.
If he does something moronic and ends up expelled and back here, you'll throttle him. He hasn't quite got his mother's brains, but he's smart in his own right, and he doesn't deserve this place. As if anyone does besides Kreacher.
Harry snorts. "When have I ever gotten in trouble at school?"
At lunch, Moony side-eyes you for drinking alone and Mundungus grins and slips you another bottle under the table.
You rail down shots until it's all so mixed-up that you could be Padfoot again, and this could be Hogwarts.
October 27th, 1975
You lounged lazily on the rock overlooking the lake, smoking a cigarette and watching for professors out on a stroll. James sat next to you, memorizing a muggle poem for the most insipid possible reason.
A certain girl had told Moony during prefect duties that she adored T.S. Eliot, whoever he was, so there James was, committing one of the man's works to memory. Even though it was called the love song of some dead wanker, it didn't sound like one. Too complicated to be a love song.
You rolled your eyes at the spectacle and watched with faint amusement as James bit his lip in concentration. Moments later, he put aside the book he'd nicked from a dusty shop and groaned, frustrated.
"Who in the bloody hell is Lazarus?"
"Sounds like a wizard," you figured, from the Latin.
"Yeah, but muggles wrote this." James shrugged and opened the book again. "I don't understand. He came back from the dead."
You quirked an eyebrow. Maybe there was something to this poetry thing after all. More likely, though, it was a crock. "Wait, he what? You can't just—"
James shoved the offending passage into your face, his filthy hands so close you could smell the Quidditch pitch and a hint of sugar quill on them.
"Mate, it says here," He pointed to the stanza. "I am Lazarus come from the dead, come back to tell you all, I shall tell you all."
That returned the two of you to square one.
"So he was a wizard, then."
"I guess."
James continued reading the poem, trying to get the inflections right, and it felt for a moment as if he were reading it to you. For you. And, stubbing out your cigarette into the grass, you couldn't help but laugh.
From years down the line, you hear the next verse in your head.
That is not what I meant at all.
That is not it at all.
September 23rd, 1995
Time grinds to a halt in this haunted edifice to which you've been confined and consigned. You'd like to take a wand to the whole place, cast Fiendfyre and watch the Noble House of Black burn itself to bits, but the Order needs a safe spot, and this is the best that can be done.
Visitors come and go. Mundungus with his bottles, Molly with her maxims, Arthur with his strange preoccupations with spark plugs, Tonks with her violet hair and the way her eyes lingers over Moony's scars.
However, he's too preoccupied with you to notice her.
"Sirius."
He swallows, rouses you from the floor of your mother's room. "Padfoot, this is no way to live."
He pulls you out of a puddle of your own vomit, eases some hangover potion down your throat and forces you to exist, here in the present, where the light of freedom burns as it streams through the decaying holes of the House of Black.
He repairs the bruises from where you've overturned things in your old bedroom, his hands always tender. It's so unfamiliar, this, after the dementors, after thirteen years of joyless gray. If you remember not to focus too hard, he could almost be –
No. He couldn't. Because James is the stuff of dreams, white like memories and just as ethereal, always gone in the morning, while Moony's still around. You can practically feel the hope emanating from him like heat and can't figure out how to explain to him that they cannot go back. He spoons some of Molly's leftover stew into a bowl and holds it out to you, the only warm thing on this dreary September morning.
You recall the first words you said to each other since the darkness. You hid out in the Shrieking Shack, waiting for him to realize, and the minute he did, the sentence bubbled up from two you at the same time.
"I was wrong."
You had both thought the other the spy.
Trust is difficult to mend. You suppose in a twisted sort of way, that this is recompense for the prank you played on Snivellus Snape a thousand years ago, the unthinking one beneath the Whomping Willow. It could have been Moony in Azkaban instead of you, if you'd actually offed the greasy git.
So you want to forgive him for this, but there's still a bit of inherited Slytherin in you, holding onto the grudge like Kreacher grubbing after old trinkets in the tea room. Solitude becomes you, more than feigning interest in the passing visitors, so you shut yourself up in her old room, charm the door locked, and chug vodka until you smash your head on the dresser.
Hours later, you awaken, the world's gone sideways, and your mouth tastes like something rotten.
Another hangover then. The act of getting up requires a Herculean effort. Yelling for Kreacher in his mangy towel comes much easier, but it's not him who answers your call.
Instead, it's a pale woman who smells like cinnamon. Her flaming red hair serves only to highlight the million muted shades around her. She sits cross-legged, smiling serenely, as if she's always been here.
You wish more than anything to throw her out. You hate her. She cannot be here. And yet, she brushes her fingertips across the fresh cut on your scalp and shakes her head.
"Still living inside your bottles, I see." A distasteful glance at a flask, lying on its side mere inches away from your outstretched hand.
In fourteen years, she hasn't aged a day. Go figure. Must be nicer where she is.
"What the bloody hell do you know, Evans? You're dead.
She kneels over your prone body, hair tumbling onto your face, as if she's about to tell you a secret.
"But you're not."
Then she's gone, in her place, Remus murmuring healing spells and checking you for broken bones. You shove him aside, run to the bathroom, and retch your guts out. There's a madman staring you down in the mirror, unshaven, with a steely bloodshot gaze.
You're going insane. Even if you're not cackling mad like Bellatrix, six feet under like Regulus the Death Eater, or shrieking like Walburga's portrait – never mother, not anymore – you're going the way of all the other Blacks, mad drunks the pureblooded pack of them.
You keep drinking, drinking further, drinking faster, remembering only to feed Buckbeak and then to pass out on moth-eaten sheets. The room crumbles around you. Casting Reparo would be useless at this point.
October 25th, 1995
Days drift by, until the first meeting Albus has managed to make all month, so you attempt to look more sober than usual. You shave, you comb your hair back, but then finally decide to leave it hanging down in order to conceal the dark hollows of your cheeks.
He arrives in his violet robes with his hat slightly off-kilter and his glasses twinkling. What the muggles must have thought when they saw him. You actually manage half a grin, one that widens when Mother starts shrieking downstairs about mudbloods and blood traitors. The absurdity of it all.
"Good afternoon, Sirius."
Albus smiles as if you're old friends.
You see the eyes, though. It's all in the eyes, the plans, the tactics. He might offer you a lemon drop and ask you about your months in exile, but his mind's world's away.
Which makes two of you, you suppose.
The meeting's a refreshing dose of same shit new day. Voldemort's recruiting, the Ministry's lips are sealed tight and Umbridge's reign of terror is ruthless. It's only a matter of time before her iron fist comes crashing down and she seizes control of the entire school.
"And when that time comes," Albus says decisively, "I will inform you, and you must be ready to act. I may not be able to remain at Hogwarts forever."
The mention of Hogwarts reminds you that there haven't been any letters from Harry, thanks to the machinations of that tyrannical bint. You want to ask Albus about him, need to ask about him, about the boy who constantly insists on getting himself into trouble.
Contemplating him and his Defense Association is the only other thing that rouses much interest from you anymore. You'd kill to be where he is, out and about, instead of here, trapped between heaven and hell.
Especially since Halloween's next week.
Oh, Halloween.
Mundungus hands you a hastily wrapped bottle of the Hog's Head's brand of Firewhiskey under the table. You excuse yourself to use the bathroom. Moony gives you that look, but you play dumb and dash up the stairs, powered by something akin to relief.
What's the point in knowing the plans for the Order if you can't participate anyway?
You sway, sitting on the edge of the bathtub and drop the nearly empty bottle onto the floor, where it predictably shatters.
It's strange, but broken glass reminds you of the first time Lily ever scared the shit out of you.
April 4th, 1979
The first thing you registered was the sweltering temperature of the room. Not the sweaty humidity of sex, but the dry warmth of spellwork. The second was the darkness. How could so much heat exist in a place devoid of light? A squat cauldron sat at a rapid boil in the center of the room, with no one presiding over it.
Then, you noticed the person working with what appeared to be an alchemist's wet dream, a series of glass tubes and flasks tangled and tethered to each other in dizzying configurations. Her hair had been pulled back into a tight bun. The sleeves of her russet robes were hiked above her elbows, exposing her forearms.
When she finally looked up at you, her explanations flew over your head. Chemistry. Lidocaine. The synthesis of a substance to counteract the lethality of Aconite, known better as Wolfsbane.
"Damocles had it wrong," she said, her color high with anger. "He only ever created the potion to prove it could be done, never mind what it did to the drinker. Feeding poison to werewolves."
One of the unused vials on the shelf shattered. Her magic crackled in the air, energizing it. The dog within you folded its ears to his head and whined apprehensively, but she continued speaking as if you weren't there.
"Although it's only deadly after years and years of consumption. Ten or so. Maybe he hadn't figured it."
She showed you her calculations in written cramped scrawl, the sort you knew from years of cheating on Potions exams.
"Not bad, Evans," you replied. Even that felt stilted. Watching her work both transfixed you and seized you with the urge to flee. Gone was the silly girl who threatened you with detention and charmed flowers into goldfish.
She gave you a tight smile before turning away to concentrate on the mucky substance before her. Once again, you assumed a secondary position to her work.
She stirred her potion feverishly, chanting incantations so rapidly you could not discern where one ended and the next began. The liquid went violet and began to smoke, but rather than stepping back in alarm, she grinned and stirred faster, stepping closer to cauldron to gain leverage.
At that moment, where the conflagration beneath the pewter gave way to accommodate her small figure, you saw not Lily Evans, but a salamander. A creature born and borne upon fire.
Maybe this woman and her dangerous intensity was the one James had fallen for.
By the time your dazed trip ends, the meeting's long over, but Moony and Albus are still chatting. Their conversation lilts up in genial tones.
I know the voices dying with a dying fall
beneath the music from a further room.
You have spent the better part of twenty years hating that damn poem.
As long as they're not coming up, might as well try to look presentable. You grab a vial of pepper-up potion out of the bathroom cabinet and gulp some of it down, and scourgify yourself. Don't need to smell like the Hog's Head during happy hour.
When you emerge, the two of them are saying their goodbyes, but they pause to look up at you. And they both somehow know, and that's the part that kills you.
"My boy," Albus says, peering up the flight of stairs to where you stand, gripping the banister upon which the world tilts with one hand, and the newly repaired bottle with the other. It feels as if he's looking down upon you, like you're still fifteen and you and James have played some egregious prank yet again.
"My boy, it does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live."
You hurl the bottle at him as hard as you can manage, predictably missing, hitting a picture of Great aunt Aurora, who shouts epithets at you in response. Remus stares at the scene, utterly flabbergasted, makes an attempt to dash up the stairs and restrain you any further, but Albus holds him back with one thin hand.
The old man's concern for you is nearly tangible. Albus fucking Dumbledore. Get glass thrown at his face and care more about the attacker. You don't have time for his pity when you're all just pieces in his game. James, Lily, even their son.
You will not stand for him and his damned twinkling eyes behind those spectacles, so wise, so above it all, the puppeteer holding all the strings except the ones between the fingers of Voldemort himself.
"When have you ever lost anyone?" you roar at him, hand raised as if still clutching a bottle. "You tell me when, and then say that to me again!"
The pity in Albus's eyes slips and he gives you one long, cryptic look that might be either guilt or empathy.
You're aware enough to register the pop of disapparation and the disappointment on Moony's face before you disappear behind the closed door of Walburga's room. Buckbeak tilts his head to one side, bows, and allows you to stroke his feathers.
October 26th, 1995
After the dust settles, you come down to make yourself a pot of tea. Moony just sits at the dining table, at a complete loss for words. You don't need him to tell you that what you did was unacceptable.
"I'm sorry." It's all you can offer.
Scarred, marked, with his hair thinning from the stress of transformation, he turns away. "I'm not the one you should be apologizing to."
"I know. But… I'm sorry. About everything." It's not just the bottle or the vomit. It's the anger, and the dark cloud that hangs over you, the way it must be affecting him. Absently, you remember he has lost nearly as much as you have.
He's a bloody werewolf and he still manages to act like a human being. This is no way to live.
"I'll stop drinking," you offer, along with tea. He sighs and takes the chipped little cup from you.
"I doubt that highly, Sirius. Even in school, you and James—" He stops there, before you lose yourself again, searches you with his eyes to make sure you're all there, which you never are, but nonetheless.
Your fists clench at that name and it's all you can do to not dash out of the room and hide upstairs.
When he gets up and crosses the table, embraces you, enfolds you into his arms, it's like the first time the two of you saw each other after the war, the relief and disbelief.
November 1995
Remus Lupin tries to fix you. In the daytime, in the harsh light, during Order meetings, he's no more than a few inches away, ready to grab your hand under the ragged tablecloth or whisper some words of encouragement.
When the sun is up, you can operate blindly enough through existence going through the motions, but night comes, all bets are off.
You scream at everything, curse everyone, assaulting invisible foes born not only from thirteen years of Azkaban, but the withdrawal. He's got the last bottle in his hand and you're trying to wrest it from him before he vanishes it and it goes to where all vanished objects go.
"Years, Moony, I waited years! You never came back," you snarl. "While I stayed in my cell, you had freedom, sweet freedom, and now you won't even give me an ounce to chase away the demons!
His chocolate brown eyes trace the pattern of the aging wooden floor. "Sirius, I'm sorry." He murmurs, but then continues, stronger, "My lycanthropy follows me around, in case you've forgotten. I haven't been free since I was eight. And as for you, how could I come to you when all the evidence pointed to your—"
"You should have known me better than—"
"Nobody knew anyone anymore. Would you have expected Peter to be one of them in a million years?"
It doesn't seem like a great stretch anymore, but then, so many thousand days before? You're surprised Peter could have stopped shaking and crying for Mummy long enough to create such a plan.
I love you, Sirius, but I couldn't take your word. Do you know how it destroyed me? And then, finding out you were innocent all along, that I had let you stay there for thirteen years with nobody but a the dementors and a few psychotic Death Eaters?" His voice drops, but his grip on the bottle never slackens.
And then it disappears. You scream at him, but he refuses to leave. Eventually, like a child throwing a tantrum, you scream yourself out and descend into docility, lying next to his sitting form on the bed with your eyes wide open.
Any potions Moony could prepare for you – dreamless sleep being high upon the list – run the risk of dependency, so you reject them all. Rather than giving up and just leaving you to your own devices, he tries his best to cheer your up, to distract you.
One night, as you lie shivering and sweat-stained upon the filthy mattress, he gives you a devious little look and summons your mother's best china from the cupboard downstairs. The two of you take personal pleasure in destroying every single one in the most outrageous of ways.
"What happens if you hit a teacup with an unforgivable?"
The two of you pull out your wands, but Moony beats you by half a second, points his at the teacup first.
"Imperio."
He attempts to force the thing to do backflips and nearly succeeds. Then it cracks down the middle, right across one of the garish patterned flowers in gold leafing.
"Well, fuck that then."
You laugh so hard your ribs begin to ache.
Every week before the full moon – there's a calendar nailed to your wall that you check every so often - you make sure Moony drinks his Wolfsbane, even if it's Snivellus delivering it. The insults the two of you exchange on these occasions have taken on a sort of routine. He calls you out on your uselessness to the Order, and you call him out on being a filthy traitor who chose the right side out of convenience. At this point, it's more of a protracted greeting than anything worse.
"The bloody bastard's gone! I've got your potion!" you call up the stairs.
Even though he's been drinking it for years, he grimaces every time.
When the night draws near, causing Moony to growl epithets and apologize for them just as quickly, you grin and say you actually like this side of him. It makes you feel like less of an asshole. Then, you hand him a piece of chocolate and put on the kettle Molly got you.
"Where's the other one, Sirius dear?"
"Destroyed it."
Molly lips tightened as if she'd like to say something, but far be it from her to admonish you in your own sitting room.
"We'll just have to get you another one, won't we?"
You gave her a few galleons and told her to buy you the most basic one, and to keep the change. "I trust your taste. No patterned flowers, agreed?"
So it's just a ceramic teapot, scarlet like the hangings over your bed once were. You like it. Moony likes it. The entire thing's charmed to be stain proof. Even better. You stay up drinking tea with him until his transformation.
The two of you – distant cousins, one domesticated, the other wild – lie on the floor side by side sniffing at the other's fur and whining at the stars, until he falls asleep. Then, thoughts simplified by your canine mind, you drift off as well. In the late morning, you awaken human, beside an equally human and half naked Remus, your fingers laced. He awakens slowly, stubbornly, as if he never really slept. When his eyes open, he gazes at you quizzically. Lycanthropy induces short term memory lapses. It'll be a few hours before he remembers everything.
You blow an errant lock of hair out of your face. "Thanks for the night of wild sex, Moony."
He grabs a pillow off the bed and throws it at your face. You catch it, shove him down and kiss him into the carpet.
Then how should I begin
To spit out all the butt-ends of my days and ways?
And how should I presume?
December, 1995
A fortnight before Christmas, Dumbledore gives him an assignment, one that will keep him occupied for the better part of the month.
"Can I trust you in this house alone?" he asks, looking more serious than he has in weeks
"What in the name of Merlin's saggy left bollock am I going to do now that the liquor's gone, Moony? Gamp's Law and all, it's not like I can make some appear out of thin air."
On his way out the door, patched up carpetbag in hand, he embraces you tightly before stepping out into the swirling snow.
"Stay away from Mundungus Fletcher. And no leaving the house."
"Got it, Mum!" you shout after him.
The dry spell lasts about three days.
You wander into your old bedroom, find that picture of the three of you, James in the middle, and find your wand's already in your hand. Fifteen inches, good for Charms' work.
You can't make it appear out of thin air, but you can summon it if you've got a rough idea of exactly where it is. You think of your brother's bedroom, point your wand in that direction and watch a goblin made crystal flask sail into your hand.
Kreacher, the only permanent guest on the darkest month of the year, mostly avoids you, occasionally stopping to mutter things about how far the most noble family has fallen, their last son an alcoholic and a deviant.
The clothes you had on yesterday are the warmest ones you can find with the minimal effort you're willing to exert, so you lie on the couch, in front of the fireplace, reeking of soot and aged cognac. You could cast a warming charm except you've got this sneaking suspicion you're going to be cold forever.
The clock ticks down hours and days in this frozen age.
December 21st, 1995
Goddamn you're getting old, fast.
I grow old… I grow old…
I shall wear the bottoms of my trousers rolled.
The radio, garbled by static, crackles out an old tune about a drunk hag wandering Strathclyde.
Then Phineas is yelling in his reedy voice, something about Arthur Weasley being attacked by a snake and Harry witnessing this in a dream. You stare at him in a vague stupor.
"Professor Dumbledore requests that you allow Mr. Potter and the Weasleys to stay here for the time being."
"Yeah, sure, fine, it's…"
You raise yourself to a standing position and summon a vial of hangover potion. "It's fine. Tell them I'd be delighted to have them."
Phineas disappears with your response almost instantly. You wonder if he was ever there.
Arthur Weasley and a giant snake? What?
You gulp down more of the potion and confirm, yes, this is actually what you just heard.
Mere minutes later, five teenagers, pajama-clad, are standing in your sitting room – the youngest Weasley children, and Harry, who looks simultaneously exhausted and nauseous, on the verge of collapse.
"What happened?"
Fred and George are quick to chime in with their own questions, and everyone looks to Harry.
Harry, for his part, recounts the contents of his dream numbly, and you ask yourself how long it would have taken for anyone to stumble upon Arthur's body were it not for him.
The minute he concludes, the four Weasleys are ready to head off for St. Mungo's to check on their father, a decision you vote down for its stupidity.
"Please," Ginny begs, still in her pajamas. "Just lend us a few cloaks. We can get there ourselves."
"No."
Fred and George jump into your face with and all but demand you let them out.
"We're of age! We can go see him!"
"He was hurt while on assignment for the Order. Revealing how much you know could compromise—"
"Who cares about the bloody Order? It's our dad!" Fred protests. George is quick to take over.
"What if he dies?"
"Your dad, who was in the Order of the Phoenix, and knew the risks of taking the assignment. At any rate, you don't know anything about his condition, where he is, or what's going on, so would you all just stay put and wait for word from Molly?"
That argument catches Ginny and Ron, at least, and they sit down.
In the end, all of them take up vigil in your dining room, Kreacher thankfully gone, and drink the dusty bottles of butterbeer you'd been keeping in the cupboard. It's lighter than air, stuff you wouldn't touch in a million years. Even Remus deems it essentially harmless. They sit there with their drinks and watch the clock, silently. When Molly sends word that Arthur's still alive, no one moves from the table.
You exchange glances with Harry every so often, the only other non-Weasley in the house. His scar's a jagged maroon gash across his forehead, rendered nearly fresh in the flickering candlelight.
Once Molly returns with good news, everything accelerates to a frenetic pace.
You hardly have time to think with all the people moving out and about in this usually tomb quiet house – Order members, other Weasley children, you're almost you catch sight of the ghoul you were sure lived in Regulus's room when he was a child. But the sudden activity buoys you up like a raft. You always thrived off the presence of others.
You and Molly chop up onions side by side in the kitchen. Kreacher is nowhere to be found.
"Sirius, I doubt we'll have enough cups for—"
You point your wand at the seven chipped mugs on the counter. "Geminio." A beat. "And now we do."
In the biting cold, the family and their guard leave for St. Mungo's. You're alone again.
December 22nd, 1995
Arthur's going to be fine, so you should be celebrating.
Everyone's jolly and jubilant and you've made a great strides toward elation all day, but now you're tired. It's easy to be happy when there are people around you, but now you're alone. Instead of sitting downstairs with everyone else, talking about plans, you're up here in this dank little room, with a glass of rum in one hand and a photo album in the other.
You should probably go back down and talk to them, try to be happy, Sirius, this is no way to live. However, some masochistic part of you wants you to feel what you're feeling. So now you're here.
There are many photographs in this book. You count them out. Twenty eight, to be exact. The first is of a stern-faced Remus, prefect's badge gleaming on his chest, studying for Charms, while Fabian Prewett and Peter play Gobstones in the background.
A half dozen more pages in - you and Remus, deep in conversation.
Lily glaring at the muggle record player, a gillywater in one hand, a Floyd album in the other.
The last one's of two shirtless young men, spooning on a sofa you inherited from Uncle Alphard. In typical form, you're dead to the world, but James has always been a light sleeper. One of your arms is slung carelessly around his waist, the other hanging over your eyes to block out the light.
To the cameraman, he offers an expression of faint amusement, and Peter's bubbling laughter at having captured this image rings through your ears. James mouths something at the camera and winks, gesturing at you.
Maybe if you leaf through these photographs long enough, you'll start to believe you were ever this young. Those days seem far away and dim, secondhand memories relayed to you by someone else, distorted in transit.
Shall I say, I have gone at dusk through narrow streets
And watched the smoke that rises from the pipes
Of lonely men in shirt-sleeves, leaning out of windows?
It's only when your vision blurs that you realize you're crying. You lean against the headboard of your bed, silent tears running down your face.
You want them all back, but you're starting to realize that even if you could truly could reverse the clocks, back to 1979, back, back, back, that you wouldn't be the Sirus they wanted. You are something altogether strange and different.
"Stay where you are!"
You shoot off the bed at the immediacy of the sound. Phineas yelling again? At what?
He starts in one of his long-winded tirades about the presumption of youth and you realize he has to be talking to Harry. Poor sod.
The way he looks gives you a start.
You know all too well the bloodshot glare of someone who's been trying to avoid nightmares, who paces the floor at nights instead of sleeping. He's been getting more ragged by the day, like everything in this house, and maybe there's some unseen force in here that preys upon the vulnerable, something vaguely related to a Dementor but far more insidious.
You plant a warm hand on his shoulder and he nearly flinches out of his skin. His glasses quiver on his nose.
"I'll hex you, I swear!"
And then he reddens and lowers his wand.
"Oh. Sirius. I'm sorry. I was just, uh, going to the kitchen…"
Not even a good liar. James would be ashamed.
"Lumos." Harry's eyes are red-rimmed and slightly glazed over. You shake him to attention.
"When was the last time you got any decent sleep?"
"Not since the attack."
When you count it on your fingers, that comes up to three days. You look him over. If the pink marks on his arm are anything to go by, he's been jabbing himself with his wand to stay up. Either that, or he's breaking with dragon pox.
"My room. Now."
He obeys and follows you to the end of the hallway. You keep talking to him to keep the still of night at bay. He chatters on.
"Sometimes I dream of a room with a lot of black doors. And I've seen the room before, I just can't figure out how. It's the spot where Mr. Weasley got attacked."
The Department of Mysteries, you know it. You want to tell him and know you can't, because that would just lead to more questions for the naturally curious mind, questions not even you can answer, and answers Dumbledore would surely want to keep from him.
He grows more into James every day. The hair, the shape of his forehead - neglecting the scar - even his voice.
"If you're being possessed, why wouldn't he just make a move now?"
"Maybe he's getting information! Waiting for me to eavesdrop on something important!"
"That barely makes any sense."
"It makes perfect sense!"
This argument's getting you nowhere. Paranoia's beginning to set in for him. You wonder if he's been hallucinating as well. That would explain his jumpiness.
"Harry, if you don't sleep, you'll drive yourself mad."
"I'd rather be mad than have him in my head."
James also had this knack for arguing you to a stalemate. It hurts to contemplate.
Streets that follow like a tedious argument
Of insidious intent
To lead you to an overwhelming question
"Right then. I need a drink."
You summon a flask of firewhiskey, and as an afterthought, a dusty bottle of butterbeer for Harry. Maybe the negligible amount of alcohol will be enough to put him out.
No such luck. Even at dawn, he still lies beside you on the lumpy mattress, drinking his butterbeer and listening to you crack indecent jokes.
Bloody hell. You force one of your flasks into his hands.
"What's in it?"
"Drink it."
After the first swig, his face relaxes. After the fourth, which he knocks back with a swagger, he's slurring a stream of nonsense, none of it related to Voldemort.
"This girl, she's brilliant, y'know, but she's always crying and she always wants to talk about what happened…" His breath hitches. "…in June."
He lowers his head in shame. You tilt it back up.
"If you don't want to talk about it, you don't have to, not even to her. People… they have different ways of dealing with things."
Loopy and drunk, he laughs at the plaster patterns in your ceiling and plays with your hair and stares at you a whole lot.
When he finally passes out, you consider waking him to drag him to his room but decide better of it. You'll just stay up until he wakes, then send him off. That, or nap on the doxy-reeking sofa downstairs. You make to do just that, until he snaps up and grabs your arm.
"Don't leave me." So much panic. "Please, Sirius."
So you stay.
And when he rolls over and throws an arm across your stomach, you say absolutely nothing and do not move. You don't want to disturb him. And with his eyes closed, with his glasses still perched on his face – in his exhaustion, he neglected to remove them – he's almost a perfect fascmile. Prongs. Even his Patronus, you can remember the light of the stag driving away the Dementors, the young man with the untidy hair and the glasses, wand held aloft…
No.
You wish you had spent this Christmas on a total bender. That would at least provide justification for your thoughts, but no, this has to be all you, nearly sober and half-insane.
He's not all there either, if the nightmares are anything to go by. Then again, if you'd faced down Voldemort at the age of fourteen, you'd probably be having nightmares too.
He thrashes, he whines and whimpers and begs people not to kill Cedric Diggory.
The sweat beads on his face. You can practically hear his heart trying to hammer its way out of his chest, almost as if he's having a seizure, but he's not, and you're utterly paralyzed.
He cries for his parents, and something within you snaps.
You grab him, hold him close, his face nestled in your neck and stroke his hair. Anything for the screaming to stop.
Otherwise you might start screaming with him. Or worse, laughing.
When they took you off to Azkaban, you couldn't stop laughing. Laughing mad Sirius black.
His breathing deepens, and the lines in his face smooth out like ironed clothing. He snuffles once in his sleep, and begins to snore evenly.
And the afternoon, the evening, sleeps so peacefully!
Smoothed by long fingers,
Asleep … tired … or it malingers…
You drift in and out, finally awakening him eighteen hours after he takes up residence in your room.
He goes down to talk to Hermione and Ron, and the second he leaves, you close your eyes, James Potter wandering through the dusty halls of your mind.
November 4th, 1976, the day James was rejected for the sixteenth time by Lily Evans, this time in front of everyone in the Great Hall.
To celebrate the occasion, you haggled a bottle of Firewhiskey off a seventh year for a galleon and way to sneak into the Ravenclaw girls' dormitories. How you knew this was a trade secret.
James busied himself with getting swiftly plastered while you just took long pulls from the bottle when it came your way. He wasn't the only one trying to drink away the universe.
Regulus, stupid snotty Seeker Regulus, aged fourteen, due to the indoctrination of your idiot parents had recently taken the Dark Mark. Oh so eager to please, dear Regulus. With You-Know-Who swearing in little teenagers.
What the hell was he using them for? Cannon fodder? Your brother would do it happily.
He ignored you in the corridor. He had bigger and better things to do, had already gone the way of Cousin Bellatrix.
You ignored him harder. If and when a rebellion rose up against that monster whose very name inspired fear, you'd join them in a second. You wondered though, if you would be able to kill him.
So, you kept drinking.
You and James leaned side-by-side on the sinks of the deserted bathroom, exhaling against the mirrors, fingers gripping the metal faucets for traction.
"You're so fuckin' knackered man," James laughed into your face, one hand slipping off the edge of the sink. His glasses hung lopsided on his nose, which had turned a cherry red. This bathroom was colder than Filch's soul.
"And you aren't?"
Not your best retort, but a coherent sentence.
"Yeah, but Evans didn't call you 'a tosser of the first degree' at breakfast," he said, staring at the floor.
This was too much for you. All this over some stupid girl with obnoxiously red hair and bad taste in friends. He could have had his pick of anyone in the school, but no, it had to be her. Sodding farsighted James Potter, couldn't see what was right in front of him.
"Fuck Evans. At least your brother's not a Death Eater."
That managed to rouse him. He gazed up at you, eyes wide and perfectly round. His glasses slipped off his face, but he didn't notice.
"He… what?"
Paradoxically calmed by James's expression, you relayed the tale to him. "Yep, took the Mark and everything. He's one of them now. One of his little men." You clawed for the bottle. James, either blind, stupid, or both, did not relinquish his hold.
"I'm sorry," he said instead.
You allowed your hand to drop to your side and nearly keeled over when James grabbed it, his calluses rough against your palm.
"Really. I am sorry." He pulled you into a hug, listing drunkenly against you.
You went off babbling about how you promised you'd protect your baby brother and now you were going to have to kill him, about how he had no idea what the hell he was doing, about how he hadn't even taken his bloody OWLs yet and now look where he is, Prongs, Prongs, why?
"My brother," you croaked. "My blood. If I had been able to get him out of that damn house, tried back then to get him sorted into—"
You weren't sure who was holding whom anymore. James, a hair's breadth shorter than you, pulled you closer.
"It's not your fault," he whispered, lips upon your ear. He was too far gone to register how completely bent the two of you must have appeared.
Which is probably why you kissed him on the lips, once, chaste.
But not why he kissed back, this time with vigor. That, that might have been revenge against Evans.
You'd take what you can get, when you could get it. Fair enough that your animagus form was a dog. You'd take the scraps, the sloppy seconds, as long as it was him.
You divested him of his robes in record time, really it was easier on a bloke since there were no stupid brassiere clasps or damned attempts at modesty. The two of you crashed to the floor along with the bottle, which you left broken where it fell. Legs, thighs, lips, entwined, you ignored all else.
Despite your advanced state of drunk, you tried to commit every little detail to memory. His parted pink lips, his heaving chest, the hazel eyes of the face hovering over you, every contour, dip, perfection, and imperfection. You traced your fingers down his chest, his waist, his sides.
He clutched your hair and bit down upon your shoulder to keep from moaning when you touched him, and you attempted not to die when, encouraged by his exploration of the upper half of your body, he shoved his hand down your trousers.
"Fuck, Prongs. Fucking hell."
He grinned at you and pumped harder. Two could play at that game, however.
And, since you hadn't essentially pledged yourself to some redheaded twat, you had quite a bit more experience in this department, if the noises he made low in his throat were anything to go by.
December 23rd, 1995
Later in the day, Harry's back again, calm and bright, full of sleep and conversation. However, anxiety still runs through him like a minor current.
"I told them everything." His eyes avoid yours, repelled by their intensity.
"You didn't."
"I told them most of it. And they figured I wasn't being possessed, so what does it matter?"
"Harry…." You card a frustrated hand through your hair, which hangs listlessly around your face, and choose your words carefully. "Listen, I know you don't want to scare them, but they're your best friends. You have to trust them."
The shadows drifting through the windows grow longer and longer as the sun goes down. The two of you joke around and play Exploding Snap, until some godawful hour. Not even Molly and her strident calls for sleep can break the two of you up.
He asks you for a drink, which you refuse with a shake of the head. He's not going down that road.
"Well, then tell me a story or something," he says.
You could tell him a lot of stories, ones the muggles probably never told him. They have horribly bland taste in fairy tales anyway.
"Right so, when your dad and Remus and I were about your age, we may have got banned from Honeydukes for a few years."
"Oh? What were you doing?"
"Duelling Slytherins. Right important work then, though it was more me and James doing the dueling and Remus yelling at us to put our wands away."
"So how'd you get banned from Honeydukes?"
"One of James's stunning spells hit this outside display of chocolate frogs. Scattered 'em everywhere. A few even hopped clear to the castle. James and Remus tried their best to round up the cards, y'know, before people could steal them, but it was a total mess. Meanwhile, I was still chasing after the blokes we'd been fighting. You don't just end a duel that quickly."
The sparks of anger flare within you, even though it happened nineteen years ago.
Regulus had been told to duel you on a dare from Walden McNair and Thorfinn Rowle. Of course James wasn't going to hit your brother, so he hit the frogs instead, sent them scattering. And you launched yourself after the bastards while he and Remus tried to clean everything up.
But underneath that, there's joy of battle singing through your veins like Amortentia. Nothing like a good fight to set the blood flowing.
Before Regulus had gotten involved, back when it was just two on two, you and James had fought McNair and Rowle back to back, though they were both seventh years at the time. You duelled back to back, with a balletic fluidity only created from knowing each other so well. Anticipating spells before the other uttered them, compensating for your weaknesses.
Last you heard, McNair was slaughtering so-called dangerous animals for the Ministry and still sporting a white patch under his eye from where you or James hexed him. In spite of yourself, you grin, soaking into the memory like a sponge.
Harry gives you this all-understanding look as if you've made perfect sense. You remember that his record isn't exactly spotless.
Lying propped up by his elbows, he looks at you expectantly, waiting for you to continue.
"Professor McGonagall gave us about a hundred detentions apiece, but James and I, we told her not to give Remus more than ten since he'd been trying to stop us and all. Maybe a month and a half later, here James and I are, sitting in like the fortieth consecutive detention for the year, writing lines, and he goes 'Hey Pads, fancy a chocolate frog?' and pulls one out of his pocket. I just about died."
You tell him stories about his father for hours.
Merlin knows the Dursleys wouldn't have bothered with it. He listens attentively, occasionally telling you about his misadventures with Ron and Hermione. You're somewhat alarmed by, but also rather proud of the number of intimate run-ins they've had with danger.
"You're telling me there's an army of Acromantulas in the Forest?"
"Oh yeah, Ron and I got chased by them!"
There are things you leave out though, details of the later encounters with proper Death Eaters, where both sides were dueling to kill. You suppose, heavily, that he's doing the same careful omission.
July 1978 – right after graduation – bloodstained faces in muggle London and a Slytherin with whom you'd had detention the month before sobbing in an alleyway, "I didn't know it'd be like this!" One of the few of them who'd actually been on the side of the Order, he'd killed himself after hexing one of his old dormmates off a building.
September 1978, the day the first of the Prewett brothers died. Maybe that was when their elder sister, Molly, had begun growing gray hair.
February 1980, when Lily was hit with the Cruciatus and she'd doubled over with nearly lethal convulsions.
The things you have seen swirl around you like ghosts, but colder. That is what you won't say to Harry, that the war never ends, at least not for you. Maybe it's trauma. Maybe it's the years of Dementor exposure. When you turn quiet and brooding, he squeezes your hand.
"What else, Sirius?"
July 1981. That's something you can actually tell him, about his first birthday and the toy broomstick you got him. You wish you knew where you'd hidden the photographs, for both of your sakes.
Halloween 1981, where after you'd heard the rumors down the line, you ran to Godric's Hollow and found nothing but devastation. The bodies were already gone. Harry was already safely tucked away with Hagrid.
And now, he lies there next to you, silent and inscrutable as a closed door, once the last tale about his father that comes off to the top of your head is concluded. Then, there's pity in Lily's, Harry's eyes. That alone irritates you. Are you so obviously miserable that even Harry – who has seen and known more than most adults – should feel pity for you.
"I look like him, don't I?" He asks, skin paled by the moonlight drifting through the window.
The transparency of his gaze both rankles and arouses you. Lovely, round, black pupils, enlarged by his thoughts. He leans into you, his fingers a millimeter away from your hand.
That green. That damned green, like nearly everything in this house that isn't gray or black. You despise the color with every fiber of your being.
"Well, considering you're his son, and all, I can't imagine how you wouldn't," you snap.
He recoils as if he's been slapped, and you nearly apologize, until you recall what lies at stake. You should not be indulging the impulses of a partially deranged teenager.
If you spurn him like you do everyone else, the better for him.
Lily would kill you. James would kill you. They'd flay you slowly and watch you burn, and you'd let them, because you deserve it.
When he closes those verdant eyes and cups your cheek, you're statue-still.
Do I dare
disturb the universe?
In a minute there is time,
for decisions and revisions which a minute will reverse.
He brushes his lips against yours, ignoring the wrinkles at the corners of your mouth, the twenty years between the two of you. Your hands find your way to his waist, in this dance you've done before, so many times before.
And James is kissing you like before in the empty common rooms and bathrooms and Astronomy Towers and abandoned sheds in Godric's Hollow and there were never any demolished homes or homicidal madmen with black hoods and green curses and it is 1976 again and you are not yet members of the Order of the Phoenix.
He's yanking you close, so close you can feel him beneath his clothes, that you can nip at his pulse point.
"Prongs," you whisper against the soft, thin skin of his neck. "It's been so long."
He's inexperienced, but then again, the bloody bastard promised himself (not quite) to Lily fucking Evans. He makes up for his lack of one-night-stands with eagerness, attempting to tear the fraying sweater from your back. Desperately, like a trapped animal struggling to escape.
You are desperately trying to escape from something.
Reality.
Rounding second base with your godson. The truth crashes down around you like the bare remains of the Potter home.(Why did you betray them Wormtail, answer me dammit!)
With massive effort, you wrench your mouth from Harry's and shove him roughly away. He looks at you with those goddamned eyes again and you feel every ounce of perversion in your body like lead.
You can't even look at him.
"I'm so sorry."
Harry's voice is calm. "Don't be, would you?"
"What I'm doing to you…." But you aren't doing it. Not anymore. "Harry, it isn't fair."
"It doesn't matter."
A boy of fifteen should not be so old, so jaded, so apathetic and world-weary. You want to go downstairs and shout at the fellow Order members. "What the hell are you doing to him?"
Nothing worse, nothing better. All you can do is stare at him in open-mouthed shock.
"You went to Azkaban." he explains. "What part of that is fair?"
"Nothing's fair in war," you say.
"Exactly."
Fear breeds irrationality. Pain breeds insanity. You could write a book about the correlation between these things, were you not too busy experiencing them, watching him experience them. Young. Too young.
You're a decent Legimens, and as it turns out, Harry is absolute shit at Occulmency. That which he cannot not articulate with his mouth shouts from his mind, the fear, the fear of losing himself, the despondency at an impending battle, the need for something major to shift, for something to obliterate every trace of Voldemort.
Give something, lose something.
And now you really want that drink, because Harry's shirt's hanging half off his lanky frame and his trousers have been somehow yanked – (did I do that?) – down to his knees and the mile-wide list you had of reasons not to do this is evaporating before your eyes, like the days, the weeks, the months.
He's not a time turner.
But you're so lonely that he's close enough. Harry shuts his eyes again.
"I could be James." His eyes are still closed, his fingertips outstretched, feeling blindly for you, for your hands permanently stained with grime from Azkaban and this different type of limbo. "Couldn't I, Padfoot?
He couldn't be James. James is dead and gone forever, along with Lily, the Prewett twins, and so many other Order members. Give you a sheet of paper, you could name them all. Might as well count the Longbottoms too, while you're at it. No one will hear anything from them ever again.
Arthur could have just been another number. So could you, or the others in the house. So could Harry, for that matter.
Any of you could be dead tomorrow, with a one-line obituary in the Prophet. Not for you, of course, Sirius Black, the infamous mass murderer. They'll celebrate your death in the streets when one of Voldemort's supporters finally does you in.
"Sirius?" He trembles.
Those eyes so green they glow almost phosphorescent in the darkness, so green you think perhaps they're not really Lily's after all, but instead a reflection of the Killing Curse, they swim before you. As if their owner is about to cry.
Isn't there something more powerful than Dreamless Sleep that could chase away his nightmares? Isn't it love that sets you apart from the enemy, from the ruthless cowards in masks?
Repair the pretty faces of the young. Return them all to the grounds they once roamed like immortal kings. You hear the Order planning downstairs and know it won't be enough. You wish they'd just give you an address and a wand, you'd take as many of those bastards down as you could handle. Quickly now, before this generation comes of age and throws themselves into battle.
His face is so near you can see the hairline crack in his glasses.
I have heard the mermaids singing, each to each.
I do not think that they will sing to me.
It no longer matters which Potter you're kissing, whose fists ball in your shirt with a desperation born only in times of war. Your teeth crash together, tongues, mouths colliding, in perfect imperfect configurations.
He's a quick study, copying your every move.
You clutch at his hair, unkempt, yet unbelievably soft, and roll him onto his back, straddling him, your knees digging into the mattress. You lick an invisible line down his clavicle, down his too-defined ribs, experimentally nipping at one rosy nipple.
"Sirius!" He gasps, grabbing your arms, jolting you back into the present.
You wait for alarm, for revulsion, for him to shove you off him and bolt from the room. But instead, he runs his lips across your wrists, across the marks the shackles left, the more visible scars from Azkaban that you've taken pains to cover. He kisses the palm of your hand gently, and catches your eye.
"Don't stop," he says.
So you don't.
You cast a silencing charm on the door, pull his jeans the rest of the way down, and toss them to the corner of the room. He kisses you hard, demandingly. This will not do. You nibble the space between his neck and his earlobe, tinging the thin skin violet.
What a mess he is, this delicate-boned child and this gawky young man, sex-starved and desperate.
The second your hand dips into his boxers, you hear the sharp intake of breath and then the moan you previously thought him incapable of making. It vibrates through your chest, down to your groin. His greedy little hands make quick work of your shirt, fingers flying wildly across the buttons.
James had always liked rapidfire fucks in the showers when everyone had gone off to bed, one-offs in the loo and the dormitories. Quick and dirty. Before Lily, before cinnamon and mysterious solutions bubbling in flasks had polluted that pure Quidditch pitch outdoor smell that hung off James like a sign, he had been yours.
You wrap a rough hand around his cock. The warm flesh hardens at your touch. This much is still the same. That, and the dark sound from his throat, that begins as a moan but turns to a whine when his voice cracks. His hands flutter like lost birds, searching for purchase across the expanse of your naked back. Every sound he makes, you store in your mind. New lovely material for your visions and revisions of the past. The old ones were beginning to fray with age.
He rocks into the sensations you wrest from him, inadvertently pushing one leg between your thighs. You bite your lip to keep from making a single sound, and when one of his hands finds its way into your trousers, you nearly draw blood. A frission of arousal, like lightning, courses straight to your cock.
You could collapse on top of him just from that, but do not. His rhythm isn't nearly as sure. His hands are erratic, like his breathing. That's when you realize that his eyes have been squeezed shut for the entire time.
"I could be James."
He needs to stop trying to be who he isn't. For your sake, as well as his. You wonder if anyone other than his friends have ever actually seen him, instead of a weapon, or a device, a Messiah to be held at arms length.
You gaze at the scars on the shaky hand wanking you off. I must not tell lies.
You never shied away from punishment. Why should this be any different?
"Harry," you murmur. He stills and shudders.
"Yes?"
"Open your eyes, love."
And I have known the eyes already, known them all—
The eyes that fix you in a formulated phrase,
And when I am formulated, sprawling on a pin,
When I am pinned and wriggling on the wall…
He locks eyes with you, but the guilt never comes. That should probably scare you.
Those green eyes widen and bulge. His entire body goes taut and he comes, silently, hand tightening around your length, causing you vision to explode with stars. You tumble over the edge after him.
He curls up next to you and dozes off, one hand entwined with your own. The guilt that should have stopped you assails you now, because asleep, he's young and innocent if he isn't thrashing about like a maniac. The unconsciousness of the act induces neutrality.
Really, what you ought to do is give yourself up. Go downstairs and tell them exactly what you've done. Molly would kill you on the spot. Or Arthur. Or anyone else in the house. Ron and Hermione and Ginny may be too young to know the Unforgivables properly but they could probably do some damage if you combined the three of them and a good reason.
Asleep, with his glasses still on his face, his head tilted back far enough upon the pillows that you can see the outline of his Adam's apple.
James never went to sleep with his glasses on. You ease them off him, summon a bottle and indulge your favorite activity. No glass this time, no pretense, just directly from the flask.
First you'll obliviate him, and then yourself. If nobody can remember it, then perhaps it never occurred. There is no one absolute truth, only one of several. A mistake should be forgotten. Terrible things will happen, have happened, to Harry without adding this to the list.
You hold your wand up to his head, just about to whisper the incantation when he awakens.
"Sirius?" He sits up sleepily, groping for his glasses. "What're you doing?"
His look is so bare and utterly bereft of guile, that you let your wand drop to the bed soundlessly.
"Nothing."
January 2nd, 1996
The drawing room doesn't seem nearly as drafty when he's in it. While the two of you stand in this embrace that could be familial, but isn't, you inhale deeply.
He could have never been James. They don't smell the same.
You press your lips into his forehead, and he pulls you down for a real kiss, quick and stolen, a secret from everyone else. Once he's outside, he gives the house one last look. He gazes at the spot he figures is your window, and isn't far off.
"I love you," he mouths, before the group turns the corner and disappears from view.
Once Harry leaves, you don't even wait the three days like you did when Moony went out on his assignment. You floo Mundungus Fletcher, thrust a bag of galleons into his hand, and drink yourself stupid on the resultant windfall of alcohol.
When the light's too bright to bear, you do what Orion used to do, mix another drink, tip it down. Hair off the dog that bit you. You'd know a lot about that. When the bottles run low, you just refill them.
You keep the mirror by your bedside hoping to see a flash of green or unkempt black or at least the scarlet and gold of a Gryffindor scarf, but nothing. Nothing. Weeks past and the mirror stays a surface that only reflects your bloodshot eyes, your unshaven face. Upon further consideration, why would he want to talk to you? You took advantage of him in the worst sort of way.
But I was drunk! I didn't mean to!
What was it Lily used to say? That the road to hell was paved with good intentions? You wait for her to appear in an alcohol-stained vision to flay you alive. Not with magic, but with fire and her bare hands.
You can't remember if Firewhiskey's dangerous in large amounts. It probably is, but who gives a flying fuck?
Your dreams are torturous mixtures of wishes and memories that leave you digging your wand into your jugular in the morning with the "Avada" halfway out of your mouth before you remember that you're supposed to be killing Voldemort.
"It was never Lily, Pads…"—
"I could be James. I look just like him, don't I?"—
"Thirteen years Sirius, how could I… I'm so sorry…"
"He's not James, Sirius, and you'd do well to remember that!" —
"And I'm going to join the Dark Lord and become his greatest servant! You'll see!"—
"You were only dreaming love, calm down. You really do need to stop falling asleep while you're watching Harry, James would have a fit if he found out." —
"You have dishonored the Noble House of Black for the final time with your insolence." —
Remus returns, feeds you reassurances, keeps the left side of your bed warm and spikes your tea with Dreamless Sleep because you've hit absolute bottom and really it makes no difference what you're addicted to anymore. At least this way, you can be of some use to the Order.
He kisses you when he thinks you're asleep, and sometimes you kiss back.
April 7th, 1996
Harry's head appears in the floo, and you're sure someone's been killed. In fact, that's the first question out of your mouth.
"No, no, nothing like that. I've got a question I need to ask you."
It's about you and James, this time in the context of Severus Snape. And then Remus appears at your side, having finished making lunch. That train of thought's already a bad place to go on a good day, but once Harry tells the two of you Snape's refused to teach him Occlumency anymore, you both lose it.
"Someone should hex him," you shout the minute Harry's out of earshot. "The nerve of that irritable little shit! It's not like it's Harry's fault he saw into his memories."
More though, you're relieved that nobody's attempted to hex you.
After the Azkaban breakouts, a letter arrives addressed to Remus from Hermione Granger, sent from an Owlery in Hogsmeade.
He looks at you confusedly, upon confirming the handwriting on the envelope isn't hers, and that – furthermore – she's sent you a blank sheet of parchment. He taps it with his wand, and nothing happens. You tap it with yours, and a message from Harry to not do anything rash in the wake of the escaped prisoners materializes upon the paper.
"Is everyone obsessed with telling me not to leave the house?"
"It is sound advice, Sirius, don't start. He just cares about you. And don't tell me you weren't brewing Polyjuice Potion in the attic."
You can't argue with any of that, so you don't.
May 23rd, 1996
April melts into May and a single golden feather flashes into view before disappearing just as abruptly. A signal.
Dumbledore's left Hogwarts. Snivellus, the git in all his glory, even confirms this with a sneer, the next time he moves through Grimmauld Place.
"Yes, and all Potter's fault. A bloody Defense Against the Dark Arts Association called Dumbledore's Army! All this with Umbridge as High Inquisitor!"
The twitching of your lips must give away the fact that you're about to laugh yourself hypoxic while sober for the first time in months.
June 20th, 1996
It happens at the blink of an eye, like the moment a fire ceases to warm and begins to burn.
Kreacher walking away from the floo wearing an expression far too gleeful for your liking.
The interrogation.
The summoning of the Order.
"Sirius, stay here!"
"You can't expect me to just sit around!" Your wand's already in your hand. You will petrify Alastor if you have to. "Are you out of your mind?"
Realizing it's completely pointless to argue with you, he rolls his good eye. The other one's doing that sickly dizzying thing where it whizzes around.
"Quickly then, boy."
Let us go then, you and I
when the evening is spread out against the sky.
The two of you apparate directly into the Department of Mysteries, into a wide circular room containing only a stone dais and a marble archway, inside of which a flimsy veil ripples and dances. However, you take little time to consider the architecture of the edifice, since Lucius Malfoy's got a prophecy in one hand, and is advancing toward Harry with his absurd snake head cane in the other.
Really, punching Lucius in the face is child's play. Still clutching the prophecy, he goes down onto the stone dais and the glass orb shatters. Harry gazes at you in awe.
The other members of the Order arrive right behind you, distracting the Death Eaters from the students while you pull Harry to an area of the dais just out of the line of fire.
You grip his shoulder and try to keep your tone calm, conversational even, remembering Harry likes being ordered around just as much as you do. "Why don't you just take the others and get out of here?"
"No," he insists. "I'm staying with you."
Evidently Malfoy has managed to yank his wand from his absurdly gaudy cane, because one of his spells cracks the stone just above your head.
It's you two against him.
Malfoy, in your experience, is a reasonably accomplished duelist, but far too confident in his skill. His wand flourishes are superfluous and unnecessary. If he'd stop treating this as a game, he might actually make some headway. McNair jumps into the fray and evens out the number, but you take him down easily.
That's when Malfoy changes tactics, starts aiming directly for the pair of you. Red, green, blue sparks fly as you try to keep him away from Harry at all costs.
"Expelliarmus!" Harry shouts, and the man's wand flies out of his hands.
Appreciatively, you shout over the cacophony, "Nice one, James!"
You take advantage of that moment to stun Malfoy off the dais. Before you can even exchange a glance with your godson, and apologize for the slip of your tongue, Bellatrix appears out of nowhere with a crazed glint to her eye, wand extended outward like a sword.
"Avada Kedavra!"
You shove Harry away from the deadly flash.
Everything slows down.
You watch the glee on Harry's face turn from confusion to shock to despair in minutes, rather than seconds. He makes to jump after you, but Moony, sweet Moony pulls him back, screaming something that you can't quite make out.
I have seen them riding seaward on the waves
Combing the white hair of the waves blown back
When the wind blows the water white and black.
It takes forever to fall, gentle as your descent is.
By the time you feel ground, solid ground behind your back instead of air, the archway's but a pinprick above you. A burning star. Blinding white. You close your eyes against it and just lie there, breathing in the smell of grass and trees.
We have lingered in the chambers of the sea
By sea-girls wreathed with seaweed red and brown
"Padfoot? You okay?"
Your ears would have perked up at that voice, had you been in dog form.
James Potter, seventeen and alive, bends down and offers you a hand up. You take a look around and realize it's twilight in Hogsmeade. What the hell was I doing on my back?
"Reggie's stunner caught you in the chest, but it wasn't hard to revive you. Still wanna go to Zonko's?" he asks.
You notice for the first time the flecks of light green in his hazel eyes, the unusually bright evening star above you. You struggle to recall something significant, and fail.
Till human voices wake us, and we drown.