Written for Jenny, who wanted JamesLilySirius and time travel fix-it. I tried to deliver. Merry Christmas — a few days late, sorry.
Also for Hogwarts' Writing Club: Amber's Attic - Death: Write about someone letting go of the past to give themselves a better future, Days of the Month - Pretend to be a Time Traveler Day - Write about time travel.
Word count: 2293
Everyone knows this part: the Veil swallows him up and chews on his bones, it crushes his soul and everything that makes him him until all that he can remember are shards of memories, too clear and not clear enough at the same time.
They slip through his fingers as he tries to hold on, so sharp they only hurt him more, and yet he can't let them go. They're all he has now.
(A boy, his face distorted with a terrible grief, fingers spread out like claws as he tries to reach for Sirius — but Sirius is already far beyond his reach.
His name is Harry, and he matters.)
(Another boy, similar but different, who smiles like the sun and laughs like the wind: a boy who makes Sirius' chest go tight and who left him long ago.
His name was James, and Sirius loved him.
Loves him still — nothing can make him stop, not even Death.
Not even, it seems, forgetting himself.)
(And a woman too, with hair as red as fire and a temperament even fierier, who looked at him like he mattered.
He loved — loves — her too, he knows, and she, too, was lost to him.)
He thinks he must have screamed. He thinks he must have cried, or begged, or…
Anything, really.
He must have done something.
But the Veil is empty and the void is relentless, and nothing works.
So here's the part nobody knows: nothing works.
The Veil swallows him, chews him and crushes his soul, but then it spits him back out, stuffs him back into his body and takes its chill with it.
The first breath hurts, but not as much as the sight that follows.
"Sirius! Sirius!" His world shakes and Sirius tries to flinch away from it, frowning and moaning at the pain that still lingers in his muscles. "Sirius!"
He opens his eyes and immediately regrets it, struggling against tears.
This isn't real. It can't be.
Rage bubbles hot in his stomach, burning like acid, and yet he can't manage to find the words for his anger.
(Merlin, if this is an illusion, please let it never end.)
He opens his eyes again, staring into the face of one Lily Potter, who smiles at him with brilliant relief.
"Sirius! Sweet Merlin, you worried us — collapsing like that!" She frowned and put her hands on her hips, green eyes ablaze with righteous fury. "Did you forget to eat again? Did you get hit by some curse last night and 'forgot' to tell us?"
The look in her suggests that he'd better not have done either of those things, but Sirius can't stop his lips from pulling up in a smile. Merlin, but there are no words for how much he's missed this.
Tabling Lily's question for the moment — and ignoring the way the words 'last night' bring back two different sets of memories in his mind, one sharp and bright where he battled Death Eaters in some nameless Muggle town, James and Lily by his side, and the other, cold and dark and already fading like a half-remembered dream, where he'd been locked in Grimmauld Place and drinking alone — he sits up gingerly.
Lily backs away a little, though her hands still hover around Sirius' shoulders. Her face is drawn in concern, and Sirius' heart twinges at the sight of it.
When was the last time, he wonders, somebody looked at him that way? And the thought doesn't sound quite right, doesn't ring quite true — James and Lily always look at him like this, and he was with Lily all afternoon.
Or was he?
Just then, the fireplace flares green and a dark figure stumbles out of it, surrounded by a cloud of ashes. Sirius springs to his feet, a curse on his lips (even though his wand isn't where he'd thought it would be), heart pounding in his chest, when he recognizes the intruder.
"James?!" The word comes out strangled and his hands start shaking. Had he been holding his wand, he would have dropped it.
James, his dark skin streaked with grey ashes, grins at his wife widely before turning to face Sirius, offering him the exact same smile, though it is now tinted with a hint of concern.
"I got your message, Lils," he says. He coughs once and vanishes the ashes away, cleaning himself and the fireplace, and causing his hair to stand up even more messily than usual. His fingers caress Lily's hand softly in a loving greeting, and the gesture makes something in Sirius' chest ache.
He turns to Sirius, worry lining his face. "Are you alright? Lily told me you'd just collapsed, out of nowhere, and that she couldn't wake you up. I came as soon as I could. Don't worry," he adds, rolling his eyes in Lily's direction, "I asked for my afternoon — family emergency," he says, winking at Sirius.
Throat tight, Sirius licks his dry lips. He doesn't know where to look: James or Lily, both sights equally welcome and equally impossible.
"I'm fine," he says, voice croaking.
From his friends' pointed look, they're not convinced. Still, James only sighs, exchanging a meaningful look with his wife before turning back to face Sirius.
"Why don't we sit down? I'll check you out — you know Lily's rubbish at Healing magic." He dives down with a laugh, avoiding Lily's pointy elbows as she hisses her offense at him. "Come on, you know I love you, but it's true."
She huffs but doesn't deny it, though she still glares at her husband.
Sirius takes advantage of the couple of minutes it takes more them to move to the living room to order his thoughts.
He also pinches himself, but apart from a sharp pain in his leg, nothing changes. James and Lily stay just a few feet in front of him, guiding the way in a house he'd tried so hard to forget — real and tangible and alive.
But he also remembers them lying dead on the ground; he remembers Azkaban and dying.
Time travel. Somehow — it's the only thing that makes sense. He was, after all, in the Department of Mysteries: who knew what could have happened to him?
Sirius had never heard of someone traveling back to their own past, other than in horror stories about people seeing themselves of causing life-ending paradoxes — his mother had an… odd taste in bedtime stories — but that doesn't mean it's impossible.
Not much is, when it comes to magic.
Why him and why now, he doesn't know, but he'd be a fool not to take advantage of this chance to save his friends — to make everything better.
And Sirius Black has already been a fool for way too long.
They sit down in silence, Sirius on the sofa, James and Lily on the two armchairs facing it, looking at him attentively.
Sirius swallows thickly, mind racing as he ponders on what he should tell them.
But in the end, it's not really a question, is it?
There was only one thing he could say: the truth. James and Lily deserve it from him — that, and so much more.
And so he opens his mouth and out comes his crazy story. Words spill out like water, but Sirius finds it strangely soothing to pour out his heart to people he can trust with it.
It feels like forever since he last had the chance.
And in a way, it was.
When she had seen Sirius collapse to the floor suddenly, Lily could have sworn her heart had stopped beating.
For an instant, Sirius had been so still and pale that she'd thought he had died, struck by some unknown curse they had missed on their post-mission check-up — or perhaps, even more frighteningly, this was a new curse designed to be missed.
She had only started to breathe again when she had seen the way his chest still rose and fell, and witnessed how his eyes twitched almost violently behind his closed eyelids. Whatever Sirius' mind was showing him didn't seem pleasant, but at least he wasn't dead.
At least he wasn't dead.
But it was clear that Sirius had changed. Lily would have suspected possession if she didn't know there was no way they'd have missed it, and the Imperius didn't cause someone to drop down like that.
Sirius was just… dimmer, somehow. His enthusiasm, his perpetual cheer wasn't anywhere near as bright as it was moments ago, before his fainting spell — in fact, Lily almost wanted to say that it had gone entirely, leaving a pale shadow of what it once was behind.
But it was also still Sirius — no one could imitate the way those grey eyes shone when they saw her and James, even though she had never seen them so full of grief before.
She had never seen anyone's eyes so full of grief before — at least, not while they were staring at someone still living.
And now…
And now Sirius is telling them the most implausible story — and yet the most improbable part isn't the story itself, but rather the way Lily finds herself unable to deny it. She feels its truth down to her very bones; they vibrate as Sirius speaks and her hand finds James' to hold onto almost of its own accord, an anchor of light in this dark tale.
She can tell that James believes Sirius' story too, even if he probably wants to about just as much as Lily herself does.
Finally, Sirius comes to the end of his story and falls silent, eyes staring at the ground and away from them. It hurts her heart to see Sirius so despondent, so… afraid, almost — he who never was afraid of anything.
(And to say that Lily had used to berate him for that — so she regrets bitterly that he seems to have lost this fearlessness.
She couldn't have known it'd make him look so broken inside.)
She tightens her grip on James' fingers but she also lets her husband speak; she wouldn't know what would come out if she tried to open her mouth now. A scream probably, or perhaps a sob.
(A son. She'd had a son, in this future Sirius had painted for them. This dark, horrible, ugly future where she and James had had a son; and that son had lived.
Somehow that almost makes that horrific future worth it.
James and she haven't really talked about children yet, apart from the wistful nighttime musings where they talk about maybe starting a family after the war.
Seems like in one world at least, they never really get to fulfill that dream.
Dread pools in her stomach. Will it be the same in this world?
No, she thinks, it won't be.
They won't let it.)
"Hey," James is saying as her mind spirals, his voice a soft crooning that has even Sirius' shoulders unwind, "it's gonna be okay, alright? You warned us about — " He pauses, swallowing thickly. Lily's eyes track the movement almost absently, though she's amused to see that she's not the only one.
"You warned us about what might happen," James says with a firm smile. "Now we can stop it. You don't have to worry anymore. Not about us."
And Lily's heart soars in her chest when some light returns to Sirius' grey eyes. It is but a shadow of its usual self, but it's not nothing — not anymore.
It's a start.
She squeezes James' hand once more. Gently this time, though. It doesn't fit with the overwhelming feeling of love she gets for her husband and the way he seems to so effortlessly find the right words at the right time.
"It'll be alright," she echoes, finally finding her voice. Somehow, despite all the horrible things that she's just learned, she finds her lips quirking up in a smile. With her free hand, she reaches over the coffee table and grabs onto Sirius' clenched fists, running soothing circles with her thumb on his skin.
Sirius lets out a wry laugh that stabs knives of ice straight to her heart. Still, Lily refuses to let go.
"You really think so?" he asks, and his eyes are pleading.
Lily takes a deep breath and chances a quick look toward James. Her husband nods back at her, sparkling hazel eyes uncharacteristically solemn.
She turns back to Sirius, offering him her best smile — the one that shows teeth and is just a tad too sharp.
The one that had made James fall in love with her.
"I know so," she replies, and the fire of her conviction burns in her veins.
She can see the moment it reaches Sirius too — the spark in his eyes strengthens. It still isn't the inferno it used to be, but Lily thinks she might like this tempered brazier better.
She hates everything that Sirius has told them he had to go through for him to lose some of the wildness that defined him, but she thinks she might like the person he became for it a little more than she liked the person he was before.
She hates herself for that a little too, but she learned a long time ago that she can't help the way her heart feels.
"So, what do we do now?" Sirius asks, voicing the question that is probably on everyone's mind.
Lily shrugs. Her eyes roam across the room and she can feel the two men staring at her — looking up to her.
"Today?" she finally says. "We rest. I think we've earned that much. And tomorrow?"
She grins. "Well, tomorrow's another day."