CATCH A FALLING STAR
James Potter and Sirius Black had been together their entire life – more than friends, more than brothers. But when James was killed, Sirius had to take James' little boy and go into hiding in order to save him. Little did he know just how much his life would change…
DISCLAIMER: I don't own any of Harry Potter.
PrologueAugust 9, 1975"You are so hopeless when it comes to Evans, mate, I'm telling you," 16-year-old Sirius Black laughed as he looked over from his spot sprawled out on his back in the field. "You know she hates your guts, and you're still pining for her."
James Potter turned red with an embarrassed grin and shoved Sirius. "Can I help it if she's a redheaded siren?"
"Don't see the rest of us tripping over ourselves when she walks in the room," Sirius snickered.
"I do not trip over myself, thank you very much," James said indignantly, although his gaze returned to the starry sky above them rather quickly.
"Oh, that's right," Sirius said teasingly. "You walk into things."
"I do not walk into things either."
"'Has that wall always been there?' 'No, James, just for the last five hundred years.'"
James sighed and rubbed at his left arm pensively.
"Jay, don't rub your arm, you're going to irritate it," Sirius said, looking at his best friend worriedly. "What's wrong with it?"
"Nothing, Mum, just a bite," James replied quickly; a little too quickly as he tugged the sleeve of his sweater down further. "Itches, that's all. It'll fade soon."
"James, don't lie to me, you know you can't do it," Sirius said quietly. "I mean, if you don't want to tell me, then just say so. But don't tell me it's just a bite. You've been rubbing at that arm for months."
Again, James sighed and folded his arms back behind his heads, eyes following a falling star across the sky. "You remember when we were about five or so, and we saw that falling star?"
Sirius thought for a while, a little thrown by the sudden change in topic. Then he said, "Yeah, I do. We were four. You wanted to know if it was possible to catch a falling star and put it back where it belongs. I remember you got really upset when your mum told you that you couldn't catch it." He looked over at James, only to see a very serious expression on his friend's face.
"But does the star know it's falling?" James asked. "Can it stop itself from crashing? Can it feel its life unraveling? Is there any way it can get back to where it was?"
Sirius frowned at James. "James, it's a star. It doesn't know anything. What are you going on about?"
"Do the other stars know it's falling?" James continued. "If they do, why don't they do anything? Don't they realize the star doesn't want to be falling? Or do they see it and do nothing? Is the star simply replaceable, and they don't really care at all about the star? Do they watch the star fall and wonder why it wasn't fixed in place? Or was the star always a little different from them, and nobody ever saw that it was losing its balance? What made the star fall in the first place? If we knew, could we go back and change things so that the star never fell at all? Would the star be different, or would it still fall? Was its destiny all plotted out before it even came into existence? Was the star just doomed to fall, and it's going to crash no matter what anybody does?"
Sirius sighed and propped himself up on his elbows. "All right, we're not talking about stars anymore, James. What's wrong?"
James groaned and threw his arms over his face. "I don't know, Sirius."
"James, give me your arm," Sirius said commandingly, a sinking feeling in his stomach.
Apparently too frustrated with himself to argue, James let him grab his arm and push up the sleeve. Burnt in the skin on the inside of his forearm were multiple small circles, about the same diameter as a wand tip.
Sirius felt his face blanch. "James, how long have you been injecting?" he asked hoarsely, dropping James' arm.
James sat up and looked at Sirius, biting his lip. "A little over a year," he replied quietly.
A year… ever since his mother's condition had started worsening and his father had fallen ill. And then stresses of OWL year on top of that, the Irish Clanne's murder of his mother's family and a dormitory full of other boys with their own family problems…
"It's just… it's all falling apart, Sirius," James said, his voice shaking.
Sirius sighed as he felt his friend's distress somewhere deep within. Then he wrapped James into a tight hug. "I'm sorry, mate," he said softly, releasing his friend. "I should've realized something was wrong."
James shook his head. "Nah, you had your own problems, Sirius, without dealing with mine."
Sirius looked at James, seeing what he should've seen all year for the first time: the drawn face, the dark circles, the pained eyes, the downcast expression. "Your problems are my problems, Jay. We made a promise, remember?"
James let a smile escape, saying, "Yeah, I know."
"No matter what happens," Sirius said.
"No matter where we are," James continued.
"No matter who's in trouble,"
"We'll get through it together."
"Always," they finished together, both grinning at each other.
"Promise?" Sirius asked.
"Promise," James affirmed and the two friends caught each other's grasp.
"Do you ever wonder how long 'always' is?" Sirius asked, lying back down on the grass. "I mean, 'always' could be for hundreds of years yet. Or 'always' could be for the next ten minutes."
"Don't talk like that, I don't like to think about it," James replied, stretching out again.
