21 Years Earlier

by Morning Lilies

Picking up in 1970, the story before the story unfolds. Switching between the marauders, Lily and Snape, Molly and Arthur Weasley's budding family, and any other important events that take place, here is the 21 years before Harry's story began.

A/N: So this is a strange story for me. A strange format, anyway. It started out as a writing exercise to help me pin down what was happening in my version of the Marauders' era, a timeline of sorts to work off of, and turned into a 23,000 plus word document. I've written it off and on for about eight months, in present tense, which is weird for me but seemed to fit.

Alright, enough from me. Don't own a thing. Read and review, yes?

1970:

Molly, six months out of school, is working as a nanny for the Bakers. She is living in their attic, looking after their five small children. Arthur is working in the tiny Misuse of Muggle Artifacts Department, where he's been for a year and a half now. The pay is not much, but it's enough to put away for a future he is vaguely planning out with a thrilled sort of secrecy.

The first tricklings of news about a group of Dark Wizards is hitting the Wizarding world in earnest. For years now, they have been the things in the shadows, occasionally breaking into the news with horrible deeds that could not be linked directly to them, although people suspected. Now they have a name: The Death Eaters. And they are piquing fear in many people. Moody is in charge of the force working to break up and subdue this movement.

The Muggle world is still blissfully oblivious to the imminent danger. Lily Evans has struck up a peculiar friendship with the scruffy boy from Spinner's End who never seems to have a home to go to. Paul Granger, just out of school and looking to start his own dentistry, has made plans to meet up with his old classmate, Megan Foster. For them, the future looks bright.

In early January, while listening to another dark news report, Molly and Arthur are struck with the feeling that you must grab life while you can for you never know when it will be over and decide to elope. They have been moving towards marriage anyway, why waste time and money buying a ring, waiting for the right time to ask, planning a wedding, when they could be together now? No one knows but Linda Bones, Molly's best friend, and her husband Edgar, and of course Arthur's brother Bilius, who just seems to know things.

They spend the night in London, and tell their very shocked, but pleased parents the next day. They move into Arthur's parents' house for now.

…

Arthur's mother suspects it before Molly does. It has been nearly three months since their sudden marriage. The snow has melted into pouring rains of mid-march. Elsewhere, Remus Lupin is celebrating a lonely tenth birthday, growing old enough to be miserable at the prospect of permanent isolation. Soon James Potter will be celebrating his tenth birthday in a very different manner. But Molly Weasley knows nothing of this. Those people are far-off in affecting her future, and each other's, too. In late March, Molly Weasley is concerned with the flu she can't shake, her mother-in-law's infuriatingly knowing looks, and the fact that she's late.

It wasn't planned exactly. They both knew they wanted children, Molly and Arthur, and that they wanted them in the near future. But neither one expected it to be the immediate future. One look from a medi-witch and it's decidedly determined that Molly is pregnant. And even though they hadn't expected it, Molly and Arthur are elated. A baby. Molly loves children. She always has. She is six years older than her twin brothers and spent much of her childhood looking after them. She was the one to look after the younger students at school, the one to help with homesickness and nightmares and whatever else plagued the littler ones. It was why Professor McGonagall chose her as prefect. And her job with the Bakers has been perfect. She cannot wait to have a baby of her own. Arthur is the youngest of his brothers by several years, has always loved his big extended family, and the prospect of having one with Molly is a dream come true. He can hardly stand the excitement of his life beginning.

But there are other things to attend to now. With a baby on the way, they will need a house of their own. Arthur's parents have extra rooms. They would be more than happy to have them another year or two, help look after the baby. But Arthur wants to be independent. He wants to take care of his family on his own, wants it to be his family. And Molly wants her own house to look after, raise her own baby.

So in April they go for a walk. And they end up at an old stone farmhouse in the middle of Devon. It's small, not glamorous in the least, and comes with chickens, but Arthur can afford it with the money he's saved and Molly loves it. They move in in May.

…

Gideon and Fabian come for a month in the summer. They are thirteen, and it is all Molly can do to keep them out of trouble in the village, in Diagon Alley, in her own backyard. It is a crazy month, but it is only a taste of the chaos that will later reign in that house. The boys have dubbed it the Burrow. Molly tells them off, blushing furiously, thinking they are mocking Arthur's – and now her – last name. But Arthur likes it. He thinks it's funny. The next day he pounds a sign into the ground by the back door declaring it for all the world to see. After all, 'the sixth farm house after the bend of county lane G, Ottery St. Catchpole' is too long of a floo address anyway.

…

The baby comes in November. Late November. It is a week late, cold and dark, the first snow clouds blowing in as the sun sets when cries are finally heard from upstairs. Arthur jumps to his feet, his father and father-in-law chuckle at the expression on his face. Bilius is there, he always is. He's been trying to get Arthur to drink for the past hour, but Arthur isn't having it. Rupert's come, too. Little Art's first baby is a big deal to them. Any first for their baby brother has always been a big deal for them.

His mother comes down to get him after a few minutes, and Arthur fairly bounds up the stairs. Molly looks exhausted. She slumps back against the headboard, face shining with sweat, but there is a glow of happiness about her that seems angelic to Arthur. Her mother sits on the bed beside her, both women gazing down at the little bundle in Molly's arms.

Mrs. Prewett excuses herself when she sees Arthur and goes down to wait with the others in the sitting room. It's a boy, Molly tells him. Arthur had figured it would be. He is one of three brothers. His father is one of seven, his grandfather one of four. There have been no girls born in the family for generations, but Molly has maintained hope. She isn't disappointed now, he can tell that. Maybe the next one, she says, but she is too consumed by this one to think about another. Arthur is thrilled, secretly. He has worried that she might not want to go through all of that again.

They sit together and absorb their baby, their flesh and blood, something they have made, for a long while. They have already talked about names. He has fallen asleep in Molly's arms and it looks like she will be quick to follow. Arthur carefully lifts the baby out of her arms, holds him for a few minutes because he can't let him go just yet, then tucks him in the basinet in the corner as his mother had shown him how to do weeks before.

Then he goes down to announce that William Arthur Weasley has officially been named.

…

Gideon and Fabian come for Christmas, too. They are severely disappointed that they were not pulled out of classes for the birth of their first nephew. Bill fascinates them. They have never been around a baby before. Molly and Arthur bring little Billy and the twins over to Arthur's parents' for Christmas Eve. They invite Molly's parents, too. Rupert is there with his sons and wife, Bilius comes with eggnog. It is a boisterous, merry atmosphere and Molly cannot help but hope that one day, far far off in the future, of course, she will be the center of a family like this.

1971:

The first eleventh birthday to come is Severus Snape's. He is more excited on January 9th than Lily has ever seen him before and it is because he is officially eleven. She reminds him his letter won't come until the summer, as he's told her time and time again, but he is too happy at the prospect of leaving for school to bother about the months of waiting left to do.

Lily turns eleven exactly three weeks later. Severus turns up for her birthday party, clutching a gift wrapped haphazardly in brown paper and dressed as oddly as ever. Petunia opens the door and wrinkles her nose. Severus glowers at her. Lily bounds over, dark red hair wound in braids and a bright smile on her face, and drags him into the house, into the rest of her friends who giggle and stare at him, but Lily pretends not to notice. She introduces him as her friend Severus and he can't help but grin inside at the words, or the way she spends so much of the party talking to him and sitting by him instead of all the rest.

Remus is next. Well, Sirius was really the first, back in December last year, but it held little significance to him but the realization that his opportunity to escape was impending. Andromeda pointed this out to him, as a matter of fact, hoping it might keep him subdued until September. It didn't.

But Remus is next. On March tenth. His mother makes him a cake, his father brings home a wrapped gift, and they try to make it cheerful, but all Remus can think about is that he is alone and what this birthday means for every other magical child. It is that evening, after she has kissed her son goodnight, unable to chase the miserable expression from his face, that Remus's mother decides something must be done. Her husband is ahead of her. He is already writing to Dumbledore.

James is next to last. It is a big party, his parents' large house filled with people. James has no siblings or cousins, is the only child there, but he is the center of attention. As the only child among his parents' older friends, whose children have already grown and had children of their own already in school, they fawn over him. Eleven is a big number, the tell him. He knows. He is already planning his first year at Hogwarts.

Peter is last. It is May when he turns eleven. His mother takes him out to London for the day to cover the fact that his father is not home and his brother off to an expensive boarding school. His brother is like his father, not magical and does not want to be.

…

The Death Eaters are not going away. The more the Ministry hunts them down, the more widely they seem to spread. They are much more powerful than the rogue band they were originally thought to be. Dumbledore is getting involved. He has theories about their leader, but the Ministry doesn't have patience for no-names like Tom Riddle who disappeared years ago. One investigation is enough to show that Riddle, though a Slytherin, was a fine student, well-liked by his teachers and employers, and quiet. They turn their backs.

But the threat is not going away. And Molly and Arthur are not the only ones to elope.

Andromeda Black does it for different reasons. She is tired of playing games with her sisters and her parents, disgusted more and more with each family function she is dragged to, and finished with hiding her boyfriend from the world. Ted Tonks was surprised when she told him back around Christmas that they were going to run off the moment she was out of school. Well, actually, she told him that she was going to run off and that he could come with her if he wanted. He does want. It is a curious love. Both were surprised at the certainty and depth it has taken. Her family will not approve, but she does not care.

Two nights after getting off the Hogwarts express for the last time in June, Andromeda disappears. She leaves a note explaining what she has done and never hears from her parents again. Narcissa and Bellatrix both come, though. Bellatrix is furious, Narcissa is bitter. The three sisters have one last fight before decades of silence. But Andromeda is happier for it.

…

Their letters all arrive in July. McGonagall comes to explain to Lily and her parents about magic, things Lily has already known from Severus but which now her parents believe. Petunia expects them to be wary, to not allow Lily to go to this strange school, to not believe such bizarre, grotesque things could be real. But they are delighted. And Petunia disappointed. She tries to tell herself it is not something she wishes to be caught up in, but she knows that is a lie. She writes to the school. She is Lily's sister, after all. She must have something of Lily's strange abilities. Perhaps they can coax them out of her, teach her, too, how to use magic.

But they can't. Petunia is bitter. The kind words of the headmaster are lost on her. All she hears is no. That Lily is special and she is not. That she is forever barred from that world. The disappointment is too much, and she turns it into anger and disdain.

Lily finds the letter. Well, Severus finds it, actually. He is too surprised that a Muggle could have gotten in touch with Hogwarts to care much that he is being rude going into Petunia's room. He sees the Hogwarts crest through the open door. Lily feels awful. Petunia has been so cold to her lately, but now she understands why. Petunia wants to come too, and it seems fair to Lily that they at least try to teach her sister magic if she is willing to learn. It is so natural to her that she cannot imagine anyone not being able to do what she does if they were to try. Severus does not like her idea, but he does not like Petunia, so Lily is not much perturbed. She is determined to try whatever anybody says to her.

Even her sister. They fight on the platform. Petunia did not want to come. She won't say goodbye. And it hurts Lily. She is nervous enough about going off to school. She wants her sister's reassurance, even if it is haughty, even if she calls Lily a baby and is mean about it like she usually is. Lily can see in her pale eyes that Petunia only acts mean. Lily's her baby sister, after all. But it goes horribly wrong, that goodbye. Lily lets slip about the letter and Petunia is furious, betrayed, embarrassed. She snaps. She calls Lily a freak, and storms away. There is no goodbye and no reassurance. But what really makes Lily cry is that there is no pretending in her sister's eyes when she says it. She means it.

James is eager to leave. He is painfully excited to be around children his own age, to learn magic and be just like his father. His mother cries a little, but she laughs more as they go back and forth before the train leaves, bantering as they do. James realizes he will miss it. As the whistle blows, his mother warns him to behave. She knows her son can be wild and mischievous, but she is indulgent because he is her only one. His father laughs, says for James not to behave too much, though, and sends him onto the train with a final hug, a final fond ruffling of his already-messy hair, and a proud smile.

Sirius is told off, not sent off. He stands on the train steps, looking around the bustling platform with an expression of feigned boredom he has so perfected as his mother lectures. He is to uphold the family name. He is to be a proper Black. He is to do as Narcissa tells him. He is not to act childish and immature as he has all summer. Yes, yes. He is to be a good little pureblood. He understands. But she keeps those sharp words coming.

It is mostly the way they stop talking about Andromeda because she's married a Muggle-born that makes Sirius want to do everything they don't want him to do. All he really knows is that Bella talks about 'purging' which he realized last year means 'killing', and they all are proud and thrilled, but Andromeda marries the wrong person and they throw her out. Andromeda was the only one he really liked to begin with. He's furious at them all for disowning her, furious at her for leaving him alone. Anger simmers under the surface, but he acts bored. He cannot wait to just get away from them all.

The Whistle blows and Sirius charges up the rest of the stairs and slams the door shut, cutting his mother off mid-sentence. He doesn't care. He leans out the window as the train begins to move and shouts to Regulus, who is hiding behind their father, not to touch his stuff or he'll hex him inside-out when he gets home. Then he races away, up the train, already trying to get as far away as possible.

Remus stares out the window. A fat boy is the only other occupant of his compartment, and he sits opposite Remus, kicking at the floor sulkily, but Remus doesn't mind at all. It is so novel just to have the company of someone his own age that he wouldn't have cared if the boy had two heads and a foul mouth. He had expected to ride alone. His mother looked so happy when she saw him off, so did his father for a rare moment. Remus is nervous-bordering-terrified and excited-bordering-bursting to be here. His mother warned him that he must study hard, reminded him that it is a privilege that he should go at all, that they are just seeing how it will go and he must make the most of his time at school, but his father had hugged him and told him to have fun, too, though. And Remus wants to make them both proud. He wants to be normal for his father and a good student for his mother and for Professor Dumbledore and for himself. Perhaps here his insatiable curiosity will find a home.

Peter's mother took him to the platform. They were late because Peter had insisted on waiting until the last minute, hoping against hope that his father or Paul would show up to go with him. They hadn't. His mother tried to cheer him up all the way into London. She had found him a compartment with another first-year boy, insisting in the most embarrassing way that they might be friends, acting as if nothing was wrong. And then she defended him. She told Peter that his father would have been there if he could, that Paul was really busy, but Peter knows that his father had seen his brother off every single year when Paul was in school.

The other boy seems content to stare out the window, which is fine by Peter. He doesn't want to talk to anyone.

James intends to start the school year off with a bang. A dung bomb, actually. He rather wants to see what he can pull over on the prefects. But Sirius stops him. He would be annoyed, but Sirius confides that he has already tried. He points out his cousin and her boyfriend down in the Prefects' carriage, the bloke who looks like a girl and the girl who looks like someone's twisting her face, the ones with the purple gunk in their silver-blond hair. James quickly forgets his pitiful dung bomb hearing Sirius's story. At once he knows he will like this boy. He invites him back to his compartment. There's only some weird girl in there sobbing in the corner, and she doesn't make good company.

They are sorted into Gryffindor. All but Snape of course. He should have known Lily would end up in the house for the brave. She isn't pureblood enough to be a Slytherin. But it disappoints him all the same. Lily finds him after the feast. She says just because they sleep in different parts of the castle and eat meals at different ends of the hall doesn't mean they won't still be friends, of course. And he can't do anything but agree because Lily Evans speaks with conviction.

…

James and Sirius are fast friends and it isn't long before Peter is tagging around everywhere they go. If nothing else, he knows how to tag along. But Remus keeps his distance. He doesn't know how to interact with kids, he is discovering quickly. James and Sirius are loud and rambunctious. People know them instantly and they love it. Peter wants some of that glory, knows it will make school better for him, but Remus doesn't. No one can find out what he is. No one. He is quite content sitting in the library day in and day out.

But James and Sirius apparently are not content with that. They insist on badgering him, James especially. Remus cannot understand James Potter's obsession with stopping him from studying. But James has found himself a challenge, and nothing motivates him like the word 'no'.

…

Bill's first birthday comes so much faster than Molly expects. He is starting to walk and talk and grow up before she is ready for it. But Molly is walking on air. She loves the long days spent tidying the house and playing with her son. She loves to see Arthur come home and the stress of the day melt off him as he rolls around with Bill on the sitting room floor. Her mother is already saying how Bill will be a heartbreaker when he grows up, so handsome already.

…

Lily goes home for Christmas. Severus doesn't. She soon finds herself wishing he has. Her parents are thrilled to have her home, but Petunia is not. She hoped her sister would have come around while she was away, hoped she might apologize. Lily wrote her letters once or twice from school, but she never wrote back. Petunia barely stays in the house. She hardly looks at Lily for the entire break and is not home when Lily leaves for school again.

Sirius stays at school, and James decides it might be fun to have the run of the castle. Peter joins them for no other reason than he doesn't want to slip out of their group. But Remus goes home. There is a full moon over the break and he doesn't want to take any chances. They don't notice him slip off once a month, probably assume he falls asleep in the library. To his surprise, James and Sirius spend a lot of time trying to convince him to stay for Christmas, and even though he won't, it still gives him a strange warm feeling of maybe being wanted somewhere besides with his parents.

1972:

It is January when Remus is finally turned. It happens almost without him knowing it. Of course James and Sirius showing up on either side of him while he tries to catch up on the work he missed from the last full moon he notices. And when they swipe his homework and take off running through the maze of the library, miraculously not being caught by Madam Pince, he notices. He has no choice but to chase them down, but when he finally catches up to them, lounging nonchalantly in the corridor, his papers are nowhere to be found. They strike up a deal with him. He must come on an adventure with them. Then they'll give him his homework back. And as an added bonus, if he can look them in the eyes and say he never wants to do anything like it again, they will leave him alone. How can he refuse?

But when it's all over, when they're in detention with McGonagall for being out-of-bounds and out of bed, something Remus expects to be close to his worst nightmare, and Sirius asks him what the verdict is, Remus cannot honestly look at them and say he never wants to do something like this again. Because even though they're in trouble, for a minute it felt like he fit in, and for a minute he forgot that he didn't.

James and Sirius decide that's good enough. Whether Remus really wants it or not, they have taken him into their group. And Remus decides it's easier not to resist. He doesn't know how long he'll be at school. Isn't it better to have friends and lose them than to never have any at all?

A part of him knows it is less painful never to make connections, but most of him remembers the aching loneliness and thinks maybe it isn't less painful after all.

…

This time they are expecting it. In late March, Molly and Arthur learn that they are going to have a second baby. They decided over the holidays, watching Molly's brothers play with Bill, seeing all of Arthur's nephews running around, that it is about time they get to having another one. They have been hoping for this since Christmas, and now they know for sure.

But even as they talk happily about this new addition to their family, even as they sit with Bill on the sitting room floor, reports of masked figures attacking homes, of disappearances springing up around the country come flooding in over the wireless. The Ministry does not like to admit it, but the world knows they are at war. Things are getting worse. With one person apprehended, there are three more joining the ranks. A leader has emerged. One who calls himself Lord Voldemort. He appeals to the public his pureblood propaganda, and he gleans followers in droves. Bellatrix Lestrange and her husband are happily among them. Sirius is disgusted and mortified to find out, but not all that surprised. He doesn't tell his friends.

…

Summer comes. James goes home to his parents to while away the hours of blissful childhood. Sirius goes home to face his parents for the first time since his rude departure, since becoming a Gryffindor, since ignoring them all school year. Peter goes home to face not being good enough. At least at school he could pretend he was worth something. Remus goes home a changed person. He has friends, he realizes as they call good-byes to him on the platform, as James promises to invite them all to stay. He knew they were his friends before, but part of him had always thought he might just be pretending. Now he knows for sure. Of course they've no idea what he truly is. But until they do, why should he ruin this dream by worrying?

Lily intends to spend most of her summer with Severus. But her friends invite her to stay, one from London, one from up near Scotland, one in Tinworth. She sees much less of him than she expects.

Fabian and Gideon stay with Molly and Arthur again. Molly anticipates a hectic summer, with the boys now fifteen. But she is surprised. They certainly stay out later than she wishes, and she would rather not know what kind of things they get up to, but they seem to have adopted a kind of maturity. Just in time for their fifth year of school and their O.W.L.s, too. She soon learns this stems from a tragedy that struck one of their friends in the spring. His mother, a Muggle-born witch was abducted. She is still in St. Mongos' Spell Damage ward. It has brought home to them the reality of what this group that calls themselves the Death Eaters will do.

…

School starts again. Sirius spent the last month of summer with the Potters, Remus and Peter came to stay for the last two weeks. For them, they are still far from the center of the struggle. James's father, a member of the Department of Magical Law Enforcement, brings home some stories, Sirius's parents whisper about the other side of things, but Remus's family keeps their head down these days, and Peter's father is a Muggle and his mother happier not knowing about the dark happenings of the Wizarding world.

It is in October when Remus's world seems to come crashing down around him. At least, that is what he thinks. It turns out his friends are not so oblivious to his monthly disappearances as he thought. He would learn only later that they have had their suspicions since around the time they recruited him to their group. James and Sirius are naturally curious boys who make it their business to know anything and everything they can. It was, in hindsight, very foolish of Remus to believe they would not take notice of his absence, even before they were friends. It was easy for them to connect the dots after that, but they said nothing.

James was brought up to be tolerant of all backgrounds, a message his mother in particular imparted in him in excess. It makes little difference to him that Remus is a werewolf. He sees it as simply an interesting fact about his friend, like Peter not being able to swim, or Sirius hating his parents. Sirius was wary, but it took little of James's persuasion to convince him not to care either. All he knows is his parents' blinding hate, and he vowed to go against that ages ago, if only to piss them off. Peter was scared, but wanting to be part of Sirius and James's group is enough to keep his mouth shut.

But in October they feel it is about time they are upfront with their suspicions. It has grown tiring to watch Remus scramble to come up with suitable lies, hide from them every month. Remus panics. He has gone along thinking things were fine, that something in his life has actually worked out, and here it is crumbling around him. It takes a great deal of effort on James and Sirius's part to make Remus realize they aren't backing away from him, aren't telling on him. And then even more to convince him nothing has changed. It is a singular moment in his life. A changing and defining moment that James and Sirius and certainly Peter don't understand the significance of. It solidifies their friendship into something far stronger than mere friendship, although it is a hard change for anyone outside of the four boys – perhaps even only the three – to see.

…

Two weeks after Bill's second birthday, the baby decides to make an appearance. Again, Molly's parents and Arthur's parents both come. Arthur sits downstairs with Bill on his lap, vibrating with eagerness and only the slightest bit of nerves. He knows how to be a father now, has had two years of practice.

This baby takes longer to come. It is late in the night when it starts wanting out, but mid-afternoon when cries are heard from above. Finally. Another boy, healthy and squawking. They expected it, of course, but Molly still holds out hope that she might get her girl. Ever since she nannied for the Bakers, with their two daughters and three sons, she has wanted girls. Arthur told her how unlikely that is to happen, but Molly still hopes.

They already know the name of this one, born just as the first snow begins to fall. It is Charles Rupert Weasley, the middle name for Arthur's brother. Molly is flushed with joy as she holds the new bundle. He has strong lungs, Arthur can hear. He is smaller than Bill was, but Molly says he kicked twice as hard.

Arthur's father brings Bill up to see his new brother. Bill is fascinated with the baby. He keeps looking up at his parents and saying "baby?" as though he can't believe it. Before he allows Arthur to carry him away, Bill leans forward and kisses his new brother on the forehead, dispelling any worries his parents might have had about the boys not taking to each other.

The house must be expanded. There are only two bedrooms. For now Charlie will sleep in a cradle at the foot of his parents' bed, and perhaps they will be able to put him in with Bill when he gets bigger, but if they plan on having more children, another story will need to be added. Arthur and his father and brothers discuss how this construction might be done whenever they are together.

…

Christmas comes bitingly cold. This year, James opts to go home. Sirius stays, even though his parents have requested his presence. He dares them to come marching up to Hogwarts and drag him back. Remus goes home if only to keep his mother company, and Peter, a bit intimidated at the prospect of spending the holidays with only Sirius, goes home as well. Lily decides to stay with Severus this year. Her parents are going on vacation and she would rather be here than with her sister's cold shoulder.

Lily and Sirius very nearly get into a duel in the common room. Bitter about his parents and with none of his friends to rein him in or keep him company, Sirius resorts to picking on Snape continually if only to amuse himself. It is harmless now, purple hair here, a biting teacup there, only irritating things, but it drives Lily up the wall. She already does not like Sirius and James and by extension their friends, although she suspects that Remus is a decent person roped into their group. Peter annoys her. He always will to an extent although she later develops sympathy for him. But these holidays cement her dislike of the Marauders, and most especially Sirius.

1973:

It is in late January, shortly after their anniversary, that Molly learns she is already pregnant again. The news is more than a little surprising, although she and Arthur are decidedly pleased.

Rumors continue to swirl evermore worryingly about the Death Eaters, but it is still a distant matter to school children and young families.

James's father tells him only that he is being kept busy, and that James needn't worry, and so James puts the matter from his head.

Sirius has not seen his parents since July and does his best not to hear the dark whispers he's almost certain are going on in his very house. He finds it somewhat hysterical that his best friend's father is hunting down his own family. But his mother and father have yet to join the pureblood movement themselves, so there is very little he can do to get them arrested. He is still too young to fully understand anything larger than his personal injustices with them.

Remus's family has learned the hard way to keep their heads down. They live quietly in a little cottage far out in the middle of nowhere, raise their son to be a good student and a good person, and don't pick sides. They have enough to worry about as it is, and Remus, though slowly becoming aware of the brewing conflict, follows their lead.

Peter's father is a Muggle and is derisive of most wizarding 'news'. He puts up with his wife's strangeness, pushing it aside as husbands often do with women's foolishness. That his youngest son indulges in this nonsense that he doesn't understand has always left him with little patience for the boy. Peter's mother has no mind for the news. She often stays disconnected from wizarding society, very nearly a squib herself. Peter has no idea.

Lily knows something. She realized that Severus was wrong. It does matter to some people if you are Muggle-born or not, though she knows it is an unfounded assumption. She has been hurt before by the prejudice, particularly from Severus's other friends. But she has no idea what a war it will bring.

Molly and Arthur know, too. And Fabian and Gideon are swiftly becoming aware. The letters her brothers write to her are less and less filled with trivial school pranks and more and more with inquiries about recent events. Abruptly it seems, Molly's baby brothers are becoming grown-up.

Of course Molly worries for her boys more and more these days. For Bill and Charlie, both still babies, and for the one due in September. For her brothers away at school, becoming aware of the adult world at such a dark time. And for Arthur, of course. What would she do without him? But they are purebloods. She does not like to think about blood status, but a part of her is relieved that there are no Muggles in their family trees. She is ashamed to think this way, but it keeps her family safer. Arthur's job is the only connection they have to the Muggle world. It makes her nervous, but she would never ask him to give up what he loves for her silly fretting. The Aurors will take care of this any day now. It has gone on quite long enough.

…

On a cold, wet day in February when the snow fall more like slush, Andromeda gives birth to her first and only child. Ted wants a big family. At least one or two more, he tries to persuade. But Andromeda has been adamant about it since day one. She barely wanted one child, let alone another. Too many opportunities for bad blood, she says, and Ted knows she is thinking about her own sisters. It stops him from pressing the matter, but he will always imagine what it might have been like to have a son… to see a couple of his daughters giggling together….

It is a girl, their baby. She is beautiful. Andromeda is surprised at how melted she is by the child. She has always been reserved, cold, even, some of the time. It is what growing up with the Blacks does to a person, lest they be ripped apart as a child. But Ted has managed to warm her up, and this baby positively melts her. They call her Nymphadora, a name Andromeda finds uniquely beautiful. It ties to Andromeda's own name as she prefers to interpret it, being out of Greek Mythology rather than out of the stars as the rest of the Blacks. And when Nymphadora's hair begins to change color, it is all the more appropriate. Ted was hoping for Suzy or Marie, but he can't help but get the feeling those names would not be quite enough for Andromeda's daughter.

As the Tonks' celebrate their new baby, however, Molly and Arthur lose theirs. It is late March. Molly has felt ill for days before. Contractions start without her even realizing it, and once the medi-witch who has tended to both her other children since the moment she found out about them arrives, it is too late for the baby. It is hardly a baby, really. So small and deformed that when Arthur looks at it, he does not realize at once that it is his child. He dashes out of the room to be sick when he realizes what he has seen.

It is a hard spring for them. They do not even know if the child was a boy or a girl. If it was a girl, it would crush Molly to know. And if it were a boy, it would be little better. It is easier not to know, not to think of names that child might have had, of a life it wasn't destined for. Charlie is only four months old, just a tiny baby, and Arthur feels dreadful that they are so unhappy with little giggly Charlie so new and healthy right there with them. But the loss of a child is a heard one to bear.

…

Summer comes eventually, arrives with its warmth and light. Molly smiles freely again, Arthur laughs honestly. The sun melts away their grief, and they spend the days with their sons, with Molly's brothers when they come to stay again, with Arthur's brothers and their nephews. And things seem better.

James's parents take him on Holiday, a great disappointment for Sirius, who is stuck at home for a solid two months. It does not help that this year his brother will be starting school. Remus is content to be out of society for a while. For a boy raised almost entirely without company aside from his parents, two years of school and friends as close as he has become with James, Sirius, and Peter are a social drain.

It is easy to see Remus's difficulties, and Sirius never stops complaining about his family, but none of them know what Peter faces at home. It is not bad, really. Not in a terrible way. His mother dotes on him, makes a special effort to make up for his father's indifference. But it grates on a person. Especially a teenage boy. It is in the few weeks of August, when James returns home only to find that Sirius, in a fit of boredom, rebellion, and frustration, has angered his mother practically to tears and (at least according to his dramatic letter) may never see the light of day again, that the subject of Peter's father finally makes its way into the light.

James and Peter spend an afternoon together. With Remus barely responsive to letters, and Sirius trapped at home, they are, in a way, forced. It is a day of thrilling adventures and teenage daring, and a memory that Peter will fight down for most of his life. Because it is difficult to convince himself that James was never really his friend like he was to Sirius and Remus with that memory in his head.

…

September comes again, but by now it is old hat. Third year brings with it only one riveting excitement for James, Sirius, Remus, Peter, Lily, Severus, and the rest of their year: Hogsmeade. They are thirteen, now, able to roam the village and feeling quite old and wise because of it. No one can call them little newbies, anymore. Not that Sirius or James ever abided by such titles. Their age did not stop them from making friends of the older students, and it certainly helped them out a time or two.

Regulus, Sirius's little brother, begins this year. There is a moment during Regulus's sorting that Sirius might be looking hopeful, but the moment the hat screams out SLYTHERIN!, Sirius severs all ties. Regulus is little more than a nuisance he avoids and would rather not talk about. But although he won't admit it to a damn soul, he tries a little harder to be cool, to go out of his way to prove what a time he's been having at school, doing as he pleases. Daring Regulus to report back to their mother. Which Regulus is doing, at least at first.

And an idea has begun to form in James's head. Sirius is too busy worrying over his brother, so James keeps it to himself for now, but it is there, and he can't help but vibrate with excitement inside when he thinks of it.

It is not easy to be friends with a werewolf, even if nobody knows that's what he is. James knows that Remus has the short end of the stick, but they have now spent a year watching him come back from full moons once a month, more often than not ending up in the hospital wing for a night or two. It is hard to watch that, to imagine how awful and lonely those nights from hell must be. But it is when James learns that Remus's boggart is the full moon that it really strikes him what a terror his friend must endure. And if he does not find a way to help, it will tear him up, too.

…

Bill turns three in November. Fabian and Gideon are forever putout that they weren't there for either of their nephews' births, nor can they be there for the parties. They claim it is missing Molly's excellent cake and the opportunity to smash it into someone's face that they are really disappointed about, but their nephews have quickly stolen their hearts, though sixteen-going-on-seventeen-year-old boys don't often admit to such things. They send cards galore though, and the pictures have Bill in hysterics. Charlie giggles along, too, enjoying the laughing simply for the laughing.

And it is barely two weeks later that it is his first birthday, and the process repeats itself.

Christmas swirls in. No one sees it happen, but somehow, Regulus manages to guilt Sirius into going home this year, on the grounds that old Uncle Alphard is coming to stay and it might well be his last holiday with them. He is younger than their mother, but the boys would hardly know it from his gray hair and wheezing voice. It is a fiasco. Sirius's temper is getting shorter the longer he is at school, the more he hears from James and Remus and the teachers about how the pureblood movement is ripping up families. It is beginning to sicken him, what his family believes.

It has been nine months since Molly miscarried. The healers said to wait six to nine months before trying again. But when Arthur broaches the subject, thinking that a new baby would help to erase the pain of losing the one in March, Molly pushes it down at once. Two is enough for now, she says. She has enough on her hands, enough to worry about. Arthur is reluctant, but he does not push the matter. They can wait. They are young, after all. There is plenty of time for more children later. And he thinks, watching his boys fondly, Bill and Charlie are quite wonderful enough as it is.

1974:

In January, a bleak, gray morning just begging to be livened up, a red envelope wings its way down to Sirius at the Gryffindor table. He barely has time to blanch before his mother's bat-screeches are echoing around the Great Hall. She is yelling about his misconduct in school, his rude behavior to his brother and the other pure-blood families, his fraternizing with miscreants, his poor marks (an unfounded accusation), and whatever else she can think to shriek. But Sirius knows it is revenge for the way he ruined the holidays. He knows his friends are looking at him out of the corners of their eyes, pretending they don't hear a word of it, knows the rest of the hall is gaping, torn between disgust, amusement, and embarrassment for him, depending on which house they belong to, but he keeps his expression cool and neutral. If he learned something from his family, it is that.

When it is over, when even the teachers watch the howler crumble to ash over his bacon, Sirius looks up at everyone watching him, sighs, climbs up onto the top of the table and declares "Miscreant and proud of it!" James joins him, hauling Remus up with him, and Peter scrambles along, too. They've knocked half the plates off the table, but the whole hall is laughing and Regulus is looking sour-faced, and Sirius has won this round, too. At least, the rest of the school thinks so.

It is not until later that night, in the privacy of their dorm room, that James, Remus, and Peter find Sirius tearing apart his trunk in an unexplainable rage. It is hard to see, but they know him well enough to recognize the hurt he is trying desperately to cover up. Being rejected by your parents is no easy thing to handle, even if you went out of your way to make it happen.

Remus doesn't know what to do, but James, as he always seems to, does. He takes a running leap and tackles Sirius. Remus is at first alarmed, but when he realizes with perplexity that rolling around on the floor, punching at each other actually seems to be cheering Sirius up, he doesn't interfere. Eventually they break apart, James complaining about broken ribs and Sirius calling him a crybaby, and somehow they're both back to normal.

…

Winter melts into spring. And James unexpectedly gets his first shot at being a Quidditch star. The team has been dominated by older players for the last two tryouts, and James was glumly banking on not being able to join until fifth year, at least. But then one of the Gryffindor chasers is injured and can't play. McGonagall recruits him. He can't believe it and neither can anyone else. But she's seen him play pick-up games and he's good. She is willing to look over his less-than-model-student reputation if he plays well. And he does. So well that they win the cup.

And next year he is practically guaranteed a Chaser position. He's ecstatic, which kick-starts the smugness, which makes Lily turn away in disgust. She has never liked Potter, but this makes him more than a nuisance, it makes him intolerable. Or it will, come next Quidditch season.

…

The end of the year comes in a blaze of heat and sun. Exams taken, summer work assigned, train boarded, and the students are back home. It is Fabian and Gideon's last summer. Molly wants to know what they plan on doing next year when they're done. They tell her they don't know, but they do know. They want to work in MLE, maybe even be Aurors, though they haven't quite got the patience for mystery-solving. They want to be in the thick of the action, try to stop the Death Eaters from gaining power as they are. But if they tell Molly that, she will lose her mind. After the baby last spring, she has been on edge. Before that, they would have told her and she would have been happy for them. But now she will only worry.

Sirius spends most of his time at James's or even Remus's houses. He hates being home these days.

…

The summer slides away quickly, and it seems that it will fade into fall without a sound. But then, in the last days of August, gruesome news hits the public. Seven attacks all across the country occur one night around midnight. There are thirteen fatalities and even more in St. Mungo's. It is the Death Eaters. They have never struck this brazenly before, but now they are asserting their power and number. A state of war is officially opened by the Ministry of Magic.

Molly is badly shaken. One of the attacks was on the Baker household, the family she nannied for right out of Hogwarts. Their eldest daughter, Risa, was just about to start her first year of school, but she is now badly hurt in St. Mungo's. Both of her parents, who were Muggle-born, were murdered. As was her seven-year-old sister and nine-year-old brother. The two littler boys are alright, physically anyway. But Molly sobs for hours thinking of what will become of the poor children who had to witness it all. And that the little ones she once played with, read to, sang to sleep, are now buried in the ground.

And it is not only that. The Head of the Muggle Liaison Office, his wife, and grandson are also among the casualties. Squibs, Muggle-borns, half-bloods, anybody openly advocating Muggle-Magical relations have basically been put in the corsairs, is the message of the attack.

Arthur is obviously among the last group, and it terrifies Molly. She won't sleep until protective enchantments have been put around the house, until she has checked every window and door herself. She cannot lose another baby, another child she has cradled in her arms. The total is three, now. But it will double in the coming confrontations.

Fabian and Gideon know one of the boys who was killed. He was not their close friend, but he was in their year, had been in their classes, in their clubs and gossip. The entire school is shaken by this loss so close to term starting. Five of the thirteen killed were children, but he was the only one attending Hogwarts. They don't say it to anyone, but it has solidified Fabian and Gideon's decision to join the fight, one way or another.

So the school year starts on a somber note. Fourth year for the Marauders, seventh for Molly's brothers. And this year, James, Sirius, and Peter are preoccupied with another project. James started research last year, but now he has brought it out into the open. Sirius and Peter join his cause at once, but Remus is upset. It's too dangerous, he tells them, it won't work. Better off not wasting your time. You'll be in terrible trouble if someone catches you. But since when have they started listening to him?

…

Fall slips past. Molly turns twenty-four at the end of October. Bill is four a month later, and Charlie two as winter blows in. James shines on the Quidditch pitch, Remus in the classroom. Sirius does all he can to avoid his little brother and ignore his parents. Peter does all he can to keep up with his friends, Lily does all she can to deal with hers. Or more precisely, one of her friends.

There is something different about Sev this year. Before, it has been easy for Lily to pull him back into how things have always been between them, even as they both grow and change. But not this year. He is with his friends, the ones who harass Lily, call her and people of her birth awful names behind their backs, write them on bathroom stalls and back tables. There is a darkness in him that she will not see yet, but that she is subconsciously becoming aware of. It hurts her and makes her feel cold and lonely, even though she has plenty of other friends. It's just that things were different with Sev….

Dark stories haunt the news more frequently than before. The Ministry is continually feeding a line of hope and confidence to the people, but the bad news just keeps coming.

…

Christmas is quiet this year. Molly and Arthur take the kids and Molly's family over to Arthur's parents. But the adults are tenser, the children just a little bit older. Bill and Charlie are the youngest of the grandchildren, and some of Arthur's nephews are at Hogwarts now, old enough to understand the seriousness of what is happening.

James stays at school with Sirius this year. His father tells him to, as he is very busy at work and it's really safer for James to be close to Dumbledore, although what the letter says is that James's mother is going to visit her sister and his father has bad shifts in the office for the holiday. But James is smart enough to guess. Remus stays at school, too, for the first time. There is no full moon and he has heard there's nothing like the Hogwarts decorations, and he wants to keep Sirius and James company because he can see that under their larger-than-life egos they have been perfecting all term, they are starting to get scared.

Lily goes home. Partly this is because James and Sirius are staying. Partly because, though she won't admit it, she doesn't really want to be around Severus at the moment.

1975:

On their anniversary in early January, Arthur decides it is about time to talk about having another baby if they are ever going to.

Charlie is two, nearly completely out of nappies, running around and talking up a storm and quickly leaving babyhood behind for the world of early childhood. Bill is four, intensely curious about everything, and continually surprising his parents with what he has figured out. Arthur can spend entire evenings sitting with his son, reading to him out of story books and watching Bill's eyes fallow his finger along the letters, beginning to put sounds with the lines. They count to one hundred together, talk about telling time and whatever else Bill has found to be curious. He will soon need proper lessons on reading and writing and figuring numbers, which will take up Molly's time.

If they are to have a new baby, it should be soon, before they will be busy with teaching the older boys, before they get out of habit of changing nappies and dealing with baby things, while the boys are still young enough to be close. It is easy to have many at the same age, doing baby things, then teaching things, then sending them off to school together where they can keep an eye on each other. And it is lonely, Arthur knows, to be isolated from your siblings by age. He is a good decade younger than his brothers.

But Molly does not want another baby now. And Arthur finally discovers the true reason when she breaks down crying. She does not want – cannot – lose another baby. The more children they have, the higher risk there is that they will lose one to the war, to some random accident, to cruel fate, and Molly does not know if she can take it. Not after the little Baker children. Not after her own baby two years ago.

Arthur tells her nothing will go wrong this time, that the more children they have, the more likely they are to have a family after the war. But Molly is not consoled. She is too shaken by the dark events, by the loses that have already struck so close to home. She knows what her brothers are planning, even if they have not come out and said it. And she is stretched in too many ways of worry just now to have another baby.

Arthur is disappointed. He tries not to show it, for he understands her fears, but he has long-since wished for a big family like his brother has, for his sons to be surrounded by brothers as he was not, so much younger as he was. But it is not just about what he wants.

In the following days, he watches his family, imagines that it is complete. Bill and Charlie will not be lonely. They get along so well now. They will grow up together here in this house, sharing their bedroom until they move out. They will play hide-and-seek in the orchard across the field, dare one another to climb the fences into old Farmer Buckley's pastures, study at the scrubbed wooden table, play chess before the fire. They will have one another to keep them company, and they will always have their parents' undivided attention. A parent for each child; a child for each parent.

They will be happy enough. A happy little family. But there is something missing, an unfinished air that Arthur cannot put his finger on. Until he looks at his wife, and he realizes he cannot imagine her with only two children. She has always overflowed with compassion. It is one of the things that pulled him head-over-heals about her. He had never known Molly to be happy without a couple of little ones tugging at her skirt to peck into line.

For now she had two little boys for that, but soon enough they will be big enough to want to do things on their own. In a mere seven years, Bill will be leaving for school, and Charlie will be quick to follow. And what will Molly do then? She will not be happy puttering around the house by herself, or even being a nanny again. It is one thing to watch the children you have spent all day caring for run into their parents arms at the end of the day and dream of someday having some of your own to run into your arms, but when those days have passed, it slowly chips away at you.

Molly will change her mind. When things have settled down, when the boys get just a little bit older, she will not be content with never changing another nappy, never waking up for another four a.m. feeding, never meeting another new little face full of possibility.

He will just have to wait.

…

Remus has never seen James or Sirius throw themselves into something this powerfully before. He had hoped sheer difficulty would tire them of the idea quickly enough, but it has not. Actually, they are making progress, doing things no fourth year should be able to do with transfiguration. They might actually make it happen, and while it elates them, drives their egos even more to be accomplishing something so secret and so advanced, it makes Remus nervous. Suppose they actually make it happen?

…

Lily has caught James's eye. It is hard to say when exactly it happened. Long before it becomes apparent to the rest of the school, surely, but when exactly? It was sometime in December when Sirius noticed the goofy look on his face as he watched her absently from across the courtyard, the end of third year when James noticed the flutter in his stomach when that long red hair would swish in front of him, maybe even that first day on the train when her fiery temper caught his attention. But it is the end of fourth year that the rest of the school starts taking notice.

It takes the confidence of a second Quidditch cup under his belt and the golden secret of their succeeding transfiguration project for James to finally make his move. It is nothing extravagant; the same sort of thing he has used once or twice on girls before to easily talk them into going to Hogsmeade with him or snatch a first kiss under the Mistletoe at old Slugy's party. A few smooth words and his impressive Quidditch triumphs speak for themselves. But Lily is not having it. She is no more moved by his attention than a tree might be. James laughs it off, thinking he should have known Lily wouldn't sway so easily. If she had, it would hardly be worth the effort, just like the one or two girls before her.

Because after all, nothing motivates James Potter like the word 'no'.

…

Fabian and Gideon leave school for the last time in June. It is now time for them to face the real world and the grim state it has fallen into. They start training as hit wizards for MLE a week after school gets out against many misgivings. They want to help, to make a difference, but it takes barely one glance to tell how corrupted the ministry is. But it is the only way they can see to get in on the action.

It doesn't last long, though. After the summer training program, both boys are so disgusted by the bigotry in the very establishment claiming to fight the pureblood movement that they cannot stand to be employed there. Arthur sympathizes with the boys as they rant the night they quit the program. They are disappointed and bitter by what they have seen, their blood already hot with injustice. Arthur can understand it, he really can. His job is little better than a janitor or the village idiot in the eyes of many ministry members, but he has never let other people's opinions stop him from doing what he wants before. He can roll that sort of thing off his shoulders. Fabian and Gideon cannot.

Molly is relieved – though she hides it well – when Gideon grabs a job at the apothecary in Diagon Alley instead, and Fabian starts apprenticing for a Dark Detector craftsman. They've let a flat in the wizarding community in London with a couple of their schoolmates, but every couple of weeks they swing round the Burrow to check up on their sister and her two quickly growing little boys. It is practically expected to find the twins, Benjy Fenwick, and Sturgis Podmore at her kitchen table every other Sunday.

The summer has passed quickly and volatilely for James and his classmates. Tension is higher than ever in the Black household. Sirius spends the entire time he is in his house fighting. Fighting with his parents, fighting with Narcissa and her new fiancé, fighting with Regulus, fighting with anybody who thinks Bellatrix is a hero and Andromeda a traitor. James keeps talking grimly about what his father brings home from work, Remus keeps talking about what he reads in the backwoods magazines and modern books printed on dark wizards, half of Peter's family are Muggles, and the conflict is being brought directly to his doorstep.

Lily and Severus have fought more this summer than they ever have before. It goes in a staggering pattern. Lily spends a few days or weeks on holiday, visiting friends around the country, leaving Severus all on his own at home. When she comes back, they try to slip into old habits, but within a week they've had a big row and won't speak again until Lily comes back from some stay with a friend or relative and it will start over again.

Severus returns home bitterly to sit in his small dark bedroom and blast flies off the ceiling, mulling it all over with anger and bitterness on the outside, anger at Lily for not understanding his friends, for not seeing that he is different, strong enough to be different from them and still hang around with them. Angry at her for being Muggle-born. And bitter that fate would put him in this position, to pick between her and them. But underneath that, he doesn't think Lily could possibly understand how much it hurts to feel her drifting away. But he refuses to see the inevitable way this must end, is determined to keep holding on.

And Lily waits until she is alone in her room, buried in her pillows and blankets, to let her tears spill steadily and silently down her cheeks, thinking Severus cannot possibly know how much losing him kills her.

Now they are back at school, back for what will be their most eventful year until they graduate.

Sirius is restless and agitated from his family, and James, exhilarated with their latest breakthrough, is looking to cheer him up. The very first thing they do that year is piss Lily off. They were only joking around, scaring a couple of little first years, hexing a couple of smart-mouth Slytherins, harassing Snape.

Lily is already upset. Upset that Petunia ran off without a word the moment she turned eighteen. Upset that she and Severus spent half the summer fighting. Upset that James Potter has turned his attention to her for some crazed reason. Upset that he and Black think they can strut around the school as if they are the mighty kings of the place. Upset that Lupin doesn't stop them, even though he's been made a prefect.

She yells at them for half the train to hear, and by the end of it they are laughing fit to burst and she is nearly crying with rage as she storms away. Severus follows her, sits awkwardly opposite her in the compartment she has thrown herself into. She ignores him until he offers a quick, muttered thanks and she slides miserably across the compartment to sit beside him, rest her head on his shoulder. His stomach flutters madly, but no one would know by looking at his indifferent expression. Lily might know, might hear the subtle catch in his breathing, but she makes no mention of it.

She tells him she doesn't want to fight anymore. It's not worth it, she says. Why can't they just be friends like they used to? And he tells her they can. And she believes him because she wants to so badly.

…

Remus can't believe he has been made a prefect. He didn't even expect to make it to his fifth year, really. But here he is, pinning the badge honoring four years of apparently honor-worthy conduct to his robes each morning. And, he thinks, failing miserably to uphold it every time he walks out of his dormitory. He thinks he will always remember what it felt like to open up his Hogwarts letter in July and feel that silver badge slide out into his palm, heavy and proud with responsibility. His mother cried. His father worked overtime for a week to get him a gift, despite his protests. He knew part of it was Dumbledore hoping he would be able to contain his friends, that compared to Peter, who can barely show up to class on time, and James and Sirius who seem to go out of their way to avoid rules, he is the only choice. But all the same, that he, a werewolf, would ever be considered just like a normal student, judged for his merit as though he were normal, it feels too good to worry about the other half.

But he is a werewolf. And all too aware that he is lucky beyond words to have friends like his, to have these opportunities. And he can't bring himself to reprimand them when they start acting like arrogant burkes. Every time he opens his mouth to rebuke their behavior, all he can think about is what they are trying to do for him, that half the time they are hexing students on his behalf (or on Sirius or Peter's) and how can he tell them off for that? He is letting Dumbledore down and he knows it, but he cannot help it.

…

It is late September. Linda and Edgar Bones have just given birth to their first child. Her name is Evelyn and she is beautiful. Of course she is. Molly has yet to find a baby who is not. She sits by the fire holding little Evy, the small weight of a newborn against her chest, that uniquely sower-sweet smell of a newborn wafting around her, the tiny, fussy coos of such a small creature all she hears. This is her goddaughter. Her little goddaughter.

Later she asks Linda if she thinks it's selfish to have children in a war. Linda straightens and turns to her. Of course she doesn't. She has just had her first baby. What could there be selfish about wanting to give life in the middle of such tragedy? What could be wrong about miracles amid the misfortune? Ought it to even things out? But what if something happens, Molly wants to know. What if – Merlin forbid – something were to happen? Hasn't she seen all the orphans and traumatized children this war has already produced? Isn't it just one more life that can be torn apart?

Linda tells her she would rather know the joy of life and take a risk of pain rather than never having either.

That night, when she and Arthur have carried their sleepy boys home and tucked them into bed, Molly cries again. But it is different this time. There is no fear and desperation in these tears, just a soft grief for the Baker children, for the baby she will never know. By the time Arthur finds her hiding in the scullery, the tears have already dried. He can see the tracks on her cheeks, but she speaks before he can ask.

She wants to know if he still wants another baby. He lifts her off the ground and spins her once, twice in the little room and sets her down again and kisses her hard on the mouth and it is decided then that their family will get bigger.

…

Things have reached an all-time bitter for Sirius in late November. Somewhere else, a happy family is gathered in the Burrow, celebrating Bill's fifth birthday. Uncles are finally there with little gifts and plenty of attention to spoil their nephews with. Little boys laugh as their parents watch fondly and think with hope and excitement of their growing family.

But those people are far, far off in Sirius's future. His family is the root of his near-perpetual stormy mood brewing just beneath the surface. He doesn't let it spill over. Never. Never will he let Regulus see what they do to him. But he hides it with wilder laughter, with more reckless stunts, with more hexes flying down the corridor at those purebloods that represent his enemy, at whoever dares to annoy him. He is no longer a child, his mother tells him in the letters she insists on sending him, more often than not howlers. He has learned to cast a quick freezing charm on them, but it only buys him enough time to get out of the crowded Great Hall without being suspicious. He tries not to listen as he flings them down abandoned secret passages, flushes them down toilets, hurls them out open windows (imagining that is exactly what his mother would sound like if he hurled her off a cliff), but he can't help but hear some of what she says, hear that tone. He knows she is trying to pull him back in, and what is worse, he knows that if he did as she wants, he could be the pride of her world. It sickens him. But it has been such a long time since he's had a mother to smile at him, to touch his cheek softly, to run her fingers through his hair as he sees James's mother do so often, Remus's mother, even Peter's, too.

So one night in December, when the full moon hangs low in the inky sky like a pale eye, Sirius does something stupid. Stupid and rash and dangerous, but he just doesn't care because his mother just sent another letter, a howler in place of a birthday card, and his father, who hasn't said a word to him since July, sent a book about the whys of pureblood supremacy by way of a gift, and he has just passed Regulus in the corridor and ignored him as always, but for the first time he can remember, Regulus ignored him back and maybe it's not fair to feel it after the last two and a half years, but he still does. And that is when he meets Snape and it is very unfortunate that Peter is the only one with him.

Snape is staring out a window. He has seen Madam Pomfrey leading Remus across the grounds. Black comes up behind him, sees what he sees, and barks something at him to make him turn and miss seeing Remus disappear into the tree. A few snarky remarks are exchanged, but Sirius is burning too deep with anger and recklessness to pay much attention to what he is actually saying. And he decides that if Snape wants so badly to know where Remus goes, what is the point in keeping it from him? If he wants to know, well then, he can find out for himself. Little git deserves it, after all. And all Sirius can think is how bloody funny it would be for Snape to know the truth. So he tells him how to follow Remus, taunts him, doesn't really think he'll follow a suggestion from himself. And he walks away still not caring.

James only finds out what has happened because Peter mentions it when he gets back to the common room. Sirius is brooding, too busy being pissed somewhere else. Peter sniggers as he relates the story, thinking it is like any other prank they have pulled on Snivelus, and is therefore shocked when James rams a fist into his stomach, eyes flashing, calling him an idiot and asking why the hell he didn't say something earlier, and before Peter can ask what the problem is, James is tearing away and telling him to get McGonagall and tell her what Sirius did.

James sprints down seven floors, so panicked that he trips twice. He sees a dark figure across the grounds as he throws himself out the front doors, tries to shout to him, but they are too far apart. He doesn't slow down until he is in the tunnel, running bent double, hearing the growls and yelps at the end, terrified more than he ever has been before. He doesn't remember exactly what happens. All he knows is that Snape was still in one piece at the end of the tunnel, that there was a lot of swearing and manhandling and a wolf's sharp teeth and slashing claws fighting viciously against the crate blocking the tunnel's exit. There is a burning pain in his shoulder, but he doesn't even notice it until he has dragged Snape out, until McGonagall is shrieking over them, touching the blood dripping down his shoulder, and she is whiter than he has ever seen her.

It is just a scratch. Not even very deep. It might leave a scar, Madam Pomfrey thinks, but it won't affect him. She wants to keep him in the hospital wing overnight, just in case, but James won't stay. By now there is a cold rage freezing him solid. No one could have made him stay in that hospital bed that night.

When he finally finds Sirius up in their dorm, fists fly. Not at first. At first he is too furious even to say anything. Sirius tells him he has been suspended. There is some shadow, some storm brewing behind those gray eyes of his, James can sense it, but he is too angry to care. It is the worst fight they ever have. Ever. They draw blood with their punches, and even more with their words. Especially James. He ends by telling Sirius it's funny how hard he tries to get away from his family because he's exactly fucking like them, and then he turns his back and slams the door. He won't sleep in the same room as Sirius anymore.

…

Sirius goes home for the last few weeks of the term. He is forced back into his house, without even Regulus as a distraction for his parents. No one writes to him. He writes a letter to Remus to apologize, but gets no response. He is trapped and it is worse, far worse than any summer, because he does not even have the solace of knowing he has a real family outside these walls. It is Hell. His own personal Hell.

…

Crack!

The sound echoes around the stone kitchen. The sound of flesh smacking against flesh rings far louder than any shouts that have filled the house for days now, years, really. There is enough force in the blow to send him staggering into the wall, to leave an angry, five-fingered mark plastered across his cheek with all the fury and disappointment and disdain that has grown between them for sixteen years.

A look of frigid coldness settles in Sirius's gray eyes as he slowly straightens himself in the ensuing silence. It is a look that might freeze the blood of anybody else, a dangerous, inhumanly hard look. But it does nothing to the woman it is aimed at. He'll say a lot of things made him do what he does, but he will always know it was not the arguments that pushed him over the edge, not their expectations or views, not even the stinging blow across his face. It was the remorseless coldness with which his mother stares back at him, not a flicker of shock or regret or pity or hope or anything that might have indicated feeling. For a moment their icy glares bore into each other, a match in power, so obviously one in the same, inherited.

Then Sirius turns away and bolts for the stairs and he is once again burning with that indefinable fury, passion, something, more intensely than ever before. And his mother turns away, too, moving over to sip her tea as if nothing has happened. His father sits stiffly at the table, impassive as ever, but his cool gray eyes shift from the door to his wife now. Regulus shakes himself from where he has been standing frozen by the table and walks after Sirius, breaking into a run once the kitchen door has swung shut behind him.

They can't make him stay. Not a damn soul could have. He would have hexed his way out of there, fought to the death to be free that night. But they don't move fast enough, don't believe he would really leave. And he is out in the whipping sleet before any of them can get a hold of him. Not his mother's claws that dig in so that you must rip yourself up to get away, not his father's iron grip, not even Regulus and his naïve eyes. He is dragging his trunk to the street, calling the Knight Bus, leaping aboard and letting it shuttle him away from that place forever.

He doesn't know where he's going to go, what he's going to do, and feels a bit like his life has ended, but he laughs so hard he can hardly breathe on the swaying bus because he knows he will never go back there. They would have to kill him first.

He rides around at the back of the bus for half the night, until he is the last passenger and the conductor tells him he needs to pick a destination. He says it because honestly it is the only place he can think of outside of Hogwarts. He hasn't got enough money for a room at the Leaky, and maybe Peter would have been a safer bet, but the only place Sirius can think of is the Potters' house. It seems like he's already thrown it all up in the air tonight, why not?

It is downright pouring rain in the southern part of England. Sirius's trunk bursts open when he heaves it down the steps, and by the time he has hastily gathered his soaked and muddy possessions – wondering if he will be selling them on the street tomorrow to sleep in his trunk – and dragged the heavy oak box up the country lane to the Potters' large brick house, he is completely drenched. He finds a stone on the ground and chucks it at the dark window he knows (or hopes) is James's. It bounces back and hits him in the shoulder. After some staggering about and cursing, he picks up a bigger rock and hefts it at the window, which cracks down the middle this time.

James jerks awake instantly. Snatching his wand off the bedside table and jamming his glasses on, he leaps for the window. It takes him a moment to realize no one is trying to break through, and is about to fling himself back onto the bed, cursing the storm, when he notices the half-drowned-looking figure on the law below.

Sirius is about to throw another rock when the lamp flicks on and he can see James squinting at him through the window. He sees the recognition slide across James's face before he disappears. Sirius turns away, resigning himself to building a shelter in the trees and trying to convince himself that it is the sleeping arrangements that are the cause of the plunging in his stomach.

Then a lamp flicks on on the porch, the front door opens, and James runs out, holding his cloak over his head. He and Sirius lock eyes for a second in the dim light, then he grabs the handle of Sirius's trunk and begins to drag it towards the house. Sirius hastens to take up the other end, trying not to feel that warm relief spreading through him.

James doesn't say a word as he drops Sirius's trunk by the end of the stairs, slams the front door against the driving rain, and leads the way into the sitting room. He scoops a bundle of material from an armchair and flings it at Sirius, who has followed him, shivering and uncertain and not accustomed to that feeling. Sirius separates a towel from a set of dry pajamas and gratefully begins drying himself off, stripping the leather jacket his mother despises, the decidedly Muggle fashions he makes a point of dawning during the holidays.

James is busy with the fire. He tries to spark the logs as his Muggle-Studies professor insists the non-magical community can do, but after a few minutes and muttered curses, gives up. He slips his wand out of his pocket and mutters a spell and soon the room is filled with blazing firelight.

He turns around to find Sirius collapsed on an armchair, in the dry clothes. They are James's, so it looks a bit like Sirius is trying to dress a size or two too small, but he'll take too-short sleeves over soaked clothes any day in December. James sinks down onto the sofa and as if this is a cue, Sirius leaps up and begins pacing before the fire, running his hands through his soaked hair, flinging droplets accidentally into James's face.

James is the first one to break the silence. He wants to know what the hell happened. And Sirius tells him, with a crazed gleam in his eyes as though he can't believe it himself, that he escaped, and it sounds for all the world as though he has broken out of prison and the authorities are on his tail. And that is when James knows that things aren't so broken between them that they can't be repaired, knows because even if the dementors of Azkaban were coming after Sirius, he would hide him here.

When he has finished with the story, Sirius seems to lose all the energy it had filled him with before. He collapses on the rug, leans his head back against the sofa, and laughs like he did on the bus. Laughs because he must be fucking crazy to run away, because where is he going to go? Because surely he's a dead man now, with no money and an enemy of the biggest pureblood family there is, crawling with Death Eaters. He doesn't realizes he's spoken all of this aloud until James smacks him upside the head and asks him what exactly he think he's doing here then if not staying. James's father isn't about to let the house be stormed by purebloods, and no one will be able to touch him at Hogwarts with Dumbledore around, and what exactly does he need money for anyway?

When he realizes what exactly James is saying, Sirius feels like crying with relief, like he's just been dragged out of the rolling waves into a lifeboat. But he doesn't cry. Instead he fixes James with a serious look – so out-of-place on his usually-emotion-filled face that for a moment James doesn't recognize it – and says it's not just for the weekend or for Christmas that he needs a bed, that it's not any ordinary family he's running away from. Just as seriously, James tells him he knows, and somehow that settles everything.

There is half a bottle of Fire Whiskey above the fireplace. They don't drink all of it, just enough to get their blood jumping, to remind themselves that they are, after all, still only kids. And when Harold Potter comes down the next morning to find an extra teenage boy in his living room and is informed by his son that they've got a permanent guest, he smiles and laughs. He doesn't ask about the quarter bottle of whiskey that's gone missing, only how Sirius likes his eggs, and that's it.

…

It's like a Christmas gift, Molly thinks when she discovers she is having another baby for sure. It is five days before Christmas, and she holds the secret until then to share with Arthur once the children are in bed and it is just them dancing beneath the mistletoe. She thinks that she has never seen Arthur happier than when she is telling him about another baby coming. This is the fourth time now, and it still makes her heart flutter with elation.

1976:

No one asks where he's been when Sirius shows up for the new term. Oh, they wonder, but they know better than to ask. It is not so uncommon these days for family emergencies-turned-to-tragedies to take students out of school. It has not gotten as bad as it will, as bad as every student's heart skipping a beat when the door opens in the middle of class, but bad enough that they don't ask. Peter acts awkward for the first five minutes before catching on to everybody else's charade of pretending nothing happened. But Remus avoids the common room the first day. James has written to him, explaining what's been going on. He doesn't defend what Sirius did, but it is obvious there is a plea for forgiveness under his words.

Alone in the library, Remus mulls over what he has been thinking about all holiday. He knows Sirius was not thinking of him when he pulled his stunt, knows Sirius was not thinking at all. It was not an attempt to out him, not directed at him and what he is. He knows that Sirius is sorry, sincerely. But can he afford to have friends who are so careless? Does he want friends who ride that reckless edge so closely? It scares him sometimes, the wildness in James and Sirius – Sirius especially. And he is not sure which he is more afraid of: being lost in their recklessness, or losing them to it.

But if not James and Sirius, what friends has he got? He knows Peter will follow them, too much of a push-over to do anything else. And he is convinced that, if given the choice, James will pick Sirius over him. It comes down to all or none, and Remus must decide again which one is really best for him.

By the time Madam Pince comes by to chivy him out of the library, he has made up his mind. There are few enough second chances in life, he knows. His father will not get a second chance to save his humanity. His mother will not get a second chance to be a part of her family after walking out on them for not accepting her son and what happened to him. Here was his opportunity to dodge the bullet of loss that comes with having anything. Four years ago he was foolish and young and lonely, but now he knows better, has had his fun. Here is his opportunity to duck out before someone gets hurt, to live up to the badge pinned to his chest and not lead three innocent boys into attempting to become animagi, not force them to pick between him and the rest of their lives when, as it is inevitable, it comes out what he is. Here is his second chance to make everything right.

But when he gives the Fat Lady the password, when she swings forward and he climbs into the nearly-deserted Gryffindor common room, when he sees them sitting round the fire and imagines what it would be like to watch that from the outside again for the rest of his life, all those perfectly clear reasons he had among the dusty volumes of black-and-white fact seem to melt into gray. Perhaps he is being weak and selfish. Perhaps it is that he cannot bring himself to be just another person holding something against Sirius Black. Perhaps it is that they are so close to becoming animagi, and although he despises himself slightly for it, the thought of not being alone anymore is better than any dream he has ever had. Or maybe it is that he knows them too well now, and reckless or not, cares too much to walk away.

It only takes a few steps, a few muttered words of apology and acceptance, and the whole thing is over. They are laughing quietly and eating marshmallows and guessing what horrors their teachers have in store for the new term like they used to. But that night, as they get ready for bed, Remus looks over at Sirius with that anciently serious expression only he can pull off at fifteen, and says that it can't ever happen again. And for once Sirius accepts with more gravity than Remus thought was in him.

It will not be like it was before. It is one of those things that reshapes everything. But eventually it will bind them all the tighter.

…

A few days later, Sirius quietly goes about giving his thanks. He figures it is the least he can do after James took him in, especially taking into consideration preceding events. It's easy enough to let slip to Lily how James saved Snape's neck. Everyone knows there's something up with the Whomping Willow, some fearsome beast or curse at the end of it. And Lily saw him sleeping down in the common room with his shoulder bandaged up. And because it comes from Sirius, Lily can't even call James an arrogant git this time. It's a small token that may make no difference in the long run, but Sirius feels the least he can do is try.

…

James changes first. Of course he does, he's been the transfiguration prodigy since first year. It always drove Remus mad that for all the time he spent studying while James played exploding snap, they were neck and neck for top of the class, in transfiguration at least. It is late January when he manages it for the first time. At first, when the world flashes red-black and he feels like every atom in his body is flying away, he thinks something has gone horribly wrong. He hears Sirius's yells reverberating off the walls of the secret passageway and imagines what the teachers will think when they find his body.

But then he realizes that Sirius is whooping and Peter is cheering and he is not dead after all, and when he opens his eyes, the whole world looks different. He's higher up and when he turns his head, something scrapes against the stone wall and he can feel it tug at his scalp. He steps forward and a clopping noise rings through the corridor. He's got hooves and antlers. Merlin, he's a deer. But he's too elated about not being human at the moment to care much that he isn't a fearsome lion or a sharp-taloned hawk, but a skittish deer for Merlin's sake. And flushed with his victory, he canters up the corridor, stumbling only a little bit as he gets used to four legs and antlers and such.

There is a mirror at the end of the passage, the big ornate one that hides it from the rest of the student body and Filch alike. And he's not just a deer, not like Bambi or whatever that cartoon thing was that Peter's mother made them watch two summers ago. He's a stag. Tall and majestic and proud-looking with his antlers and his long, lithe legs. And he'll never be embarrassed by his animagus form after this.

Sirius and Peter have caught up to him. Peter is still looking more than a little awed, but Sirius tells him to quit admiring himself before he ends up drowning in a pool or however that old story goes. For a moment James is afraid he won't be able to turn back, but then the world turns red-black again and he can feel everything shifting around at top speed, and he's lying on his stomach on the cold stone, black hair in his eyes and glasses knocked off. And until Lily kisses him, it's the best day of his life.

Sirius is quick to follow. Not three days later, he's the one thinking the world has ended, only to open his eyes and find it's really been opened to a whole gaggle of new possibilities. He's a dog. A huge, bearlike black dog with flashing white fangs and a bark that James thinks is ridiculously like his own laugh, and laughs himself silly when he realizes that Sirius is 'the dog star'. But Sirius can take him down in one great leap now and slobber all over his robes.

He loves it. Loves bounding up and down the corridor, his huge padded paws thumping against the stone, and he's sure that no one would be able to catch him like this. He even dares to venture out into the castle, sniffing around corners for Mrs. Norris, growling at Peeves as he bounces past and nearly scaring him out of the air. This is a boundless freedom the likes of which he has never known before.

It takes Peter the longest. It is mid-February before he turns, and it is a slight disappointment. James and Sirius have had to carry him to this point. He is hopelessly lost in theories and calculations. He just does what they tell him and hopes it doesn't get him warped beyond repair. But when he finally makes the transformation, it's a fat gray rat. Nothing like the mighty stag or the bounding dog. He's disappointed, although he can't say that it comes as a surprise to find that he isn't some great, enviable animal.

James and Sirius quickly assure him that it's really a good thing to have such a small animal in the group. They'd be really stuck if they were all big beasts. Peter will be able to get to the knot on the willow's trunk while he's transformed and they needn't worry about being caught levitating things. Think of all the places he'll be able to go unnoticed, James says. He'll never be caught for anything again. He won't need an invisibility cloak to get down to the kitchens. There's probably a whole network of mouse holes he can fit into now to get from place to place. He can even sneak up to the girls' dormitories and eavesdrop.

And Peter begins to think that being a rat really isn't so bad after all. If you don't care what people think of you.

…

February is their first full moon together. Remus is self-conscious. He has brought them to the shack a few times before, but this feels like the first time he let them see the claw marks gouged half an inch into the wood, the spatters of bloodstains rubbed too deep in the walls and floor to ever come out, the tufts of hair stuck in rough planks. James is the only one who has seen him not human, and there was so much adrenalin in that memory that Remus isn't sure James recalls what happened. He knows that after four and a half years, after what they've managed to do for him, he should have more faith in his friends, but there is a part of him that will always know the deep ache of rejection and fear it more than anything. After this night, everything will be different again.

Remus doesn't remember it very well. But when he comes to in the pale light of dawn, his body does not ache so much. There are no gashes or bite marks, not even a scratch on him for the first time in longer than he can remember. A blanket has been flung over him to keep out the chilly February morning. And the most incredible thing yet: he is not alone. A great black dog lays across the gaping hole that leads to the tunnel, snoring lightly. A stag has made a deer bed of some shredded curtains in a corner. And a fat gray rat is nestled in the corner of the windowsill.

As a pink sunrise breaks across the frosty grounds, four boys emerge, pale and tousle-haired and for once peacefully quiet, from a gap in the roots of an old tree. They huddle together, crouch low so that they will all fit beneath one invisibility cloak, and cross the ground, leaving only a very peculiar combination of tracks winding around the willow and through the forest.

…

Molly and Arthur wait until April to tell anybody else about the baby. Molly is already showing, but so far she's been able to wear sweaters and jackets and bank on everyone else being too polite to point out that she seems a bit chubbier lately. But as spring sunlight warms the ground and everyone else sheds their extra layers, it is impossible to keep the secret much longer. And they are past March. Past the date three years ago when Molly first knew what it was like to lose a child. It is time to let the world in on their secret.

The boys are excited. For now, a baby is still a novelty. Bill can't remember what it was like before Charlie came. They are the youngest of their cousins. A baby is a new and interesting change. Bill promises to teach him how to read as he stumbles through a few sentences in the picture books Uncle Rupert and Aunt Arlene dropped by for him now that their boys have outgrown them. Charlie can't wait to show him (the boys have already taken to calling the baby 'him' no matter their mother's insistence that it might be a girl) all the new pictures he's made with the art set he got for Christmas. The baby pops up in nearly every conversation for at least two weeks after they find out, and every night one of them crawls into Molly's lap and gently runs a little hand over her protruding belly.

Arthur's family is pleased, of course, but they all seemed to be expecting at least one more from the two of them. His mother insists that little Charlie couldn't really be her last grandson. Molly insists he still might be if this one's a girl. Her mother-in-law nods and smiles and says of course she's right, they shouldn't assume, but she is only humoring Molly. She has had nothing but nephews, brothers-in-law, sons, and grandsons.

Gideon and Fabian are thrilled though, possibly even more excited than Molly and Arthur. We'll be here to see this one when he's born, Gideon crows.

…

In May, it is obvious that O.W.L.s are swiftly approaching the fifth years. Even the infamous Gryffindor quartet has been seen poring over books in the library. In reality, it is only Remus and Peter who are studying. James and Sirius, with their animagus project completed and their hexes and pranking hobby fixing them with a few too many detentions for their liking, have had to find something new to occupy their time with. And this time, Remus must admit it is a clever idea.

Nearly five years of sneaking around at night under James's cloak, plus the recent escapades during the full moon in the forest and Hogsmeade have given the four of them a more complete knowledge of the school and the grounds than most students and even teachers could dream of. They don't know about a certain vanishing room on the seventh floor opposite that tapestry of a would-be troll ballet, but aside from that, there is little they don't know about the school, and James and Sirius think it's about time to translate their years of scribbled notes into a more useful format. Laying down a map of Hogwarts isn't quite as difficult as becoming animagi, but it is certainly up there. Especially the sort of map the two of them have in mind. But Remus has consented to assist in this project after exams are over, so they will not be put off by anything.

Meanwhile, Lily and Severus seem to be living on different sides of the planet. It has been weeks since they've talked properly, and in all honesty, Lily is a bit afraid to seek him out. Not because his friends are growing more twisted by the day. Not because she feels guilty for dodging him in the corridors. But because she's afraid that something will happen to ruin things completely. They don't spend evenings tossing stones into the lake and laughing about anything and everything as they once did. They don't study together or play that what-if game that used to get the both of them smirking for days or dare each other to do crazy things (crazy for them, anyway). No, it hardly feels like they're friends at all anymore, but at least they aren't fighting.

…

Exams come. Remus has never been so nervous in his life, but he is surprised to find that he can calm himself down these days. He knows his subjects well, and he knows that he knows them. Perhaps some of James and Sirius's confidence is rubbing off on him. Neither of them is worried one bit.

The exams are nearly over when it happens. All they have left is Transfiguration and History of Magic. It isn't so out of the ordinary for James and Sirius to pick on Snape. To bully him, really, because that is what they do these days.

Remus doesn't think they realize exactly how far they've taken it, how dangerously close to 'the line' they are pushing it. He has tried, more than usual lately, to reign them in. But once down a path it is hard to pull someone back. They have always strutted the school, knowing they were popular, knowing they were naturally talented and good at nearly whatever they tried. Funny, bright, athletic, and above the law, it is no wonder they are so popular. It is no wonder the greasy little oddball who hangs around with the Slytherin creeps and can't stay on a broom to save his life despises them. And it doesn't help that they despise him back. And what's more, it has always gotten under James's skin that Lily chooses to hang around with Snape after all that and won't give him the time of day. There is endless reason for enmity between them.

It doesn't seem so out of the ordinary, but that summer afternoon, irrevocable damage is done. When Lily sees what is going on, she can hardly ignore it. She is still his friend after all, no matter if they have drifted. But they have drifted farther than she knows. The word stings her. She does not let it show, but it cuts her far deeper than it ever has before because it comes out of her friend's mouth. And that is when she knows for sure that they aren't friends anymore. That they can't be. She has seen it coming for a long time now, should have expected something like this sooner or later. And the tears that she sheds – the last tears she will shed over the boy who was once her friend – are resigned and sad, but not angry. She is done being angry.

He doesn't want to let go, though. He tries to apologize, tries to make it right like he has before. But it is one time too many, and Lily can see what he cannot, what he will not. What he never will. It takes him a long while to accept that she really is done with him. It is not until she walks right past him on the train, her eyes going right through him as he steps forward, and all the could-have-beens rise up before him and, just like that, evaporate into mist. They will haunt him the rest of his life, turn him more bitter and angry than he is that day, but Lily cannot bring herself to care because it hurts too much. She gave him all the chances she could. And that is the worst part because when he does finally grow up, he will realize it was his own fault.

But until then, and even after then, he blames James Potter and Sirius Black. And Lupin and Pettigrew, too. But mostly James Potter. It is this more than anything that cements a life-long hatred of the man, this that will fuel the loathing of a boy who committed no foul but to carry Potter's last name and appearance. It is all James Potter's fault, and he can never, ever, be on the same side as Potter, even if that is the side Lily's on.

And Lily blames James, too. It isn't fair, really. She knows it somewhere, but every time she looks through her old best friend, all summer while she avoids his side of town, the play park, anywhere he might be, she curses James Potter and Sirius Black. But she can't make them out as evil. They are all but, but they don't use dark magic, and that makes them just a bit better than Avery and Mulciber and the rest. But not much better.

Neither knows that Sirius is spending the entire summer with James because his family has disowned him. Neither knows that James offered to share his home, his room, his family with his friend in a heartbeat. Lily has no idea and Snape cannot appreciate how terrified Remus is of spending a full moon by himself over the summer, and what lengths James, Sirius, and Peter go to to make sure he doesn't have to – won't have to ever again. To the world James and Sirius are arrogant, bullying arses, Remus is a shy, studious push-over, Peter an incompetent tag-along. But the world has no idea what they really are.

…

It is a hot August morning, hot even at six thirty-seven, when a newborn baby's cries come once more down the stairs of the Burrow. Gideon and Fabian are the ones to leap to their feet this time, and Arthur stands more slowly, laughing a little at his brothers-in-law. They arrived at two this morning when Molly's water first broke, and since alternated between pacing and whispering excitedly together. Rupert is here again, and so is Bilius. Charlie, nearly four years ago, is the last baby they've had in the family and truth be told, they've missed it. Arthur must squeeze his way out of the little sitting room, so crammed it is with uncles and fathers and brothers (Charlie has fallen asleep in his grandfather's lap, but Bill rocks in the old rocking chair, watching his father with keen blue eyes, waiting to be taken up to meet the new baby.

It's a boy, Arthur's mother announces as she comes down the stairs, smiling broadly and whipping her face. No one is surprised, of course, but Arthur thinks Molly might be just a little let down. It doesn't show in her radiating smile, in the way she can't take her eyes off the little bundle in her arms, the obvious pride she takes in showing Arthur their new son, but he knows her by now, knows how much she wants a daughter.

He kisses her and tells her maybe next time, and she nods her agreement. It is Molly's turn to pick the name. She thinks he looks like a Percy, with those big blue eyes, that perfect little mouth. And the middle name she wants to be Ignatius, for her favorite uncle who passed away in the spring.

So Arthur goes down to announce that Percy Ignatius Weasley has been born, and almost as soon as the words are out of his mouth, Fabian and Gideon are up the stairs in a bound. Bill tugs at Arthur's elbow and wants to know if he can meet the baby now. Arthur scoops him up, and Charlie, too, who has woken and is looking groggily about, and carries the boys upstairs. He's kind of squishy, is Charlie's first observation, which has Molly's brothers laughing so hard she sends them out of the room. Bill admonishes him with the big-brother look he already has down at five-and-a-half, and proclaims that he thinks the baby will be cute when it grows some hair and un-scrunches its face a little. Fabian and Gideon practically howl from the hallway.

…

School resumes. It seems that aside from Lily and Severus's official severing of ties, nothing much has changed. The Marauders are as rambunctious as ever before – in fact, the teachers think they've gotten even wilder, though it's hard to pin them with everything these days – James still tries with all his might to charm Lily, and she and Snape still oppose him at every turn, though now they do this entirely separately. It seems things will be back to normal this year.

…

In late 1976, the death toll is steadily rising. Muggle casualties are higher than they have been all decade. The seventh year of fighting is coming to a close, and Dumbledore thinks it is about time he stops trying to get the Ministry to do something, and simply does it himself. He begins covertly contacting people he believes will be willing to go around the Ministry and start getting something done. It is not the Order of the Phoenix. Not yet. But it is the seed of something.

…

Bill turns six at the end of November, and Charlie turns four two weeks later. They still share their room across the hall from their parents, Little Percy still sleeps in a cot at the foot of the bed, but Arthur thinks it is about time to change that. Money is tighter these days, with three little boys now, so the necessary remodeling will have to couple as a Christmas gift. The boys will get their own rooms and will get to decide exactly how they want them done. They take the bait, much to their parents' relief. Arthur cannot bear facing disappointed sons because his job does not pay well.

Gideon and Fabian and Arthur's brothers and father have helped him come up with a good plan for adding on and come over to help build a third story without breaking their bank. It is simple enough. They add two more rooms upstairs: a new bedroom for Molly and Arthur and a nursery for the baby. They'll put Bill into their old room, as it will be easier to move just him rather than both the boys. Bill is simple enough. He wants his walls to be blue, but not the baby blue of the room he shared with Charlie, blue like the ocean, wish fish and sharks and octopuses and stuff. Charlie wants dragons. Fabian and Gideon gave him a few model dragons for his birthday and since he has become infatuated. Molly's brothers take care of the artistic requests of their nephews. They are by no means artists, but they can handle a few magically painted fish and dragons. Molly winces at the exuberance her brothers put into the paint job, the painfully bright colors, the sinister shark that circles under the window of Bill's room, the flame-throwing beasts that arch across the ceiling in Charlie's, but her sons are thrilled, so she can't help but smile and kiss her brothers' cheeks in thank-you. Thankfully Percy's nursery is a soft yellow with nothing more than a few winking stars on the ceiling.

…

Sirius comes of age shortly before Christmas. His parents have not spoken to him in a year and Regulus is little more than some random fourth year, which is perfectly fine by Sirius. He's well shot of them all and happier for it. Even happier when Mrs. Potter throws him a birthday party the evening they come home for the holidays. It's not exactly a party, not in the invite everybody who knows or cares way. It is just James and his parents and Remus and Peter, whose parents brought them straight over while Mr. Potter distracted James and Sirius in London, but she made a cake for him and hung some streamers and that's about the best sort of gift he could have hoped for. Sirius doesn't get emotional. He's not the sort to even know how to go about it. But he does offer his earnest thanks to the people who have taken him in, no questions asked. Mr. Potter claps him on the back in that fatherly fashion Sirius thinks he must have been born with and Mrs. Potter hugs him not quite like a mother hugs her son, but closer than anything Sirius has felt in a long time… since Andromeda ran out, maybe.

James's parents are good at being parents, he thinks. Sure, James is a bit wild and spoiled and arrogant, but then, Sirius is, too. Or at least he always had money until a year ago. It just seems like being parental has always been in their nature and he thinks it's an awful waste that they didn't have a load of kids to use it on.

What he doesn't know is that they would have loved that. James's mother had miscarried three times after his parents were married and they had been told they would probably never conceive a child. So when James came along, he was their miracle, quite literally. It was no hardship to take in another teenager. They like hearing the boys' laughter ringing through the house. It keeps them feeling young.

…

It is just before the new year that Sirius's uncle – the one who he and Regulus always thought seemed so old despite being younger than their mother, passes away. Alphard leaves his share of the family fortune to Sirius. Sirius is fairly stunned. Alphard always seemed a little cracked, never in good health. But his will seemed quite coherent. And in it he says his sister can blast her wand at that tapestry all she wants, but it won't change the fact that Sirius is her son and he is her brother. He must have had a soft spot for Sirius, or at least some sympathy for a kid all on his own. Or maybe he really was just cracked. Whatever it is, Sirius is grateful.

He's an adult now, and he's got the money to support himself and not mooch off his friend's parents. James's parents are a bit reluctant to see him go, in all honesty. They worry about him living on his own in London, even if it is only over the summer and then he'll be graduated anyway. But Sirius assures them he can look after himself. There's no time to get a flat before school starts again, but it will be the first thing Sirius does in the new year. Well, right after buying a great flying motorbike from a chap in the Three Broomsticks.

1977:

Sirius buys his motorbike in January, James egging him on and Remus rolling his eyes the whole time. (Where do you plan on putting a giant flying motorbike, Sirius? Behind the shrieking shack, Moony, duh. Everyone's too terrified of you to go near that place. A few good spells and some protective curses, and maybe just a few hexes around here for fun….)

…

In February Bill and Charlie get dragon pox. Molly sends Percy over to Arthur's brother, Rupert's house because he's so little, but it isn't long before Rupert's youngest sons are sick, too. Molly's parents have taken a holiday in France and Arthur's are staying with one of his ailing uncles, so it falls to Fabian and Gideon to look after the baby.

Molly has misgivings. They might be twenty these days, which they remind their sister is the same age she was when Bill was born, but they still live the freewheeling life of bachelors in a flat in London with two of their school friends, frequenting the Leaky every Saturday and then some and who knows what else they get up to. But it's only for a few days. And in those few days, aside from one panicked late-night floo, the boys prove to be… actually responsible. The thing is, if there is one subject they take with utter seriousness, it's their nephews. They adore their sister's boys.

…

In March, Remus, then James come of age. For Remus, he actually feels like he might be a productive member of society. He's an adult now, with O.W.L.s and hopefully more. He has the qualifications to get a job, to be more than just an outcast. For James, it is responsibility. He has never felt that heavy weight of responsibility before. But in the ornate watch his parents send him, in their words of pride and congratulations, he feels the expectations of growing up, and for the first time, wants to live up to them. It marks the beginning of a slow change.

…

In April the world breaks. Or at least, James Potter's world breaks. Clean in half. It is not even a month since his seventeenth birthday. One moment he is a restless teenage boy, screwing around with his friends on a Sunday afternoon, the next, nothing will ever be the same again.

The dormitory is full of sunlight. It is a beautiful spring day, one of those late afternoons when the whole world seems to be coming alive again. Remus and Peter are working on an essay, stretched out on Remus's bed, Peter munching on chocolate frogs as he scribbles away. Sirius and James, bored, are roughhousing, smacking each other with pillows, grabbing each other in headlocks, their shirts off and their ties tied around their heads. They are not the picture of adulthood in any way, which Remus has pointed out several times. But his remarks have fallen on deaf ears.

James's mother's tawny owl has to let out an indignant screech before she is noticed at the window. James buttons his shirt as he crosses the room, pulling his tie off his head. He wonders vaguely why his mother didn't wait until breakfast the next morning for the letter, but her owl is often impatient with deliveries. He can tell just form glancing at the letter that something is wrong. His mother's usually neat script wavers all over the page. She can go on for rolls of parchment, but this letter constitutes of only a few shaky lines. She hasn't even signed it.

It doesn't feel real to James as he reads her words. How could those words ever be real? Remus is explaining some potions theory to Peter and Sirius is stealing some of Peter's frogs and getting a book thrown at his head for it. The sun is warm on his face and birds sing from the forest. It is peaceful spring afternoon. How could this letter be true?

It is not until the peaceful afternoon is shattered by breaking glass as James whirls and smashes his fist through the half-open window that the others notice something is wrong. James drops the letter and bolts for the door, a wild look on his face that none of them have seen before. He doesn't hear their cries and when Sirius attempts to block his path, James shoves him hard into a bedpost and keeps running. Sirius leaps up and is after him in a second, paying just as little heed to Remus's calls. Remus has snatched up the letter James dropped and reads it even as he half-sprints down the spiral staircase after his friends. His stomach turns to ice.

James is out of the portrait hole by the time Remus reaches the common room. He manages to catch Sirius by the arm though, and drag him to a stop. Read this, is all he says, hissing it in Sirius's ear as he stuffs the letter into his hand. Lily Evans is picking herself up off the floor, having been a victim of James's hurricane through the common room, and Remus helps her up, offering a mumbled apology for his friend. But Lily, oddly enough, doesn't seem disgruntled with James. She asks if everything is alright. If James Potter knocks her to the ground and doesn't even stop to help her up again and try some smooth remark, something must be wrong.

Remus opens his mouth to answer, but Sirius has finished with the letter. He lets out a loud string of swearwords and then he makes for the portrait hole. Remus only barely manages to hold him back. Sirius insists that James is going to do something stupid. Didn't Remus see his face? But Remus murmurs to let him be for now. If he doesn't come to dinner, they'll bring him something, but for now they ought to let him alone. Sirius whirls and nocks a lamp off its table, shouts that it's not fucking fair, then turns and storms back towards the spiral staircase. As he passes Peter, he rams the letter into Peter's stomach hard enough to knock the breath out of him. Remus makes to follow, then, as Peter is too busy squinting down at the letter to pay attention, turns and grabs his elbow and halls him up the spiral staircase to their dorm. Lily watches them leave, a sinking feeling in her stomach. Even if she detests Sirius and James, she finds she does not wish them tragedy.

At the Gryffindor table that night, Lily spots Remus searching for his friend's messy dark hair. He has turned to leave, having ascertained that James is not there, when she stops him with a hand on his elbow. She asks him again if Potter's okay. Remus hesitates. But she will no doubt see it in the paper tomorrow. So he ducks his head and tells her in a low murmur how James's father was killed that afternoon coming out of the Ministry. A group of masked figures were attacking a couple young Muggle-borns and he tried to help.

Lily watches Remus walk away, head bent and more solemn than she has ever seen him, which is saying something. And she feels a lump rise in her throat. Not just for the man who lost his life trying to protect people like her, but also for the boy who will never see his father again because of it. And those are the first tears she sheds for James Potter.

They find him on top of the Astronomy tower. The clear, sunny day has turned into a stormy night. Rain pours from the sky with the wild abandon only found in spring. James sits slumped against a parapet, face turned up to the churning clouds the night has alrady covered in blackness. Rain has soaked him through, runs down his glasses, hides the tears that might also be soaking his face. Sirius flings off the invisibility cloak they have borrowed and slouches across the soaked stones to throw himself down at James's side. Peter follows suit, slipping to the ground on James's other side. Remus tucks the cloak in a dry corner of the staircase before joining the others. He leans against the wall, the cold rain dripping in his eyes, and looks down at his friends.

James hasn't moved and doesn't for a long while. They sit there in the rain, letting it nearly drown them, and don't speak or stir until it begins to let up. As the last pattering drops hit the stones, James says in a low, raspy sort of voice, that he will kill every last Death Eater out there or die trying. He vows it. When he leaves school, he's joining Dumbledore's lot and he's going to fight until they're all dead, and whether he's talking about Death Eaters or Dumbledore's lot is hard to say, but it hardly seems to matter which he means.

Me too, Sirius promises. It is a simple statement, but the truth of the words burns in the night. Sirius will fight alongside James to the end. Peter agrees, too, maybe to play tag-along like he always has, maybe because for a second he really did care about his friends. No one will ever know. They all turn to Remus, standing with his hands in his pockets, bangs dripping, and he gives them his solemn promise, too. And he realizes he means it as much as Sirius does. This is something he can do no matter what. Something he will do. Fight for a better world. And that's when he really understands why the Sorting Hat put him in Gryffindor.

That night on the Astronomy tower four boys made a pact. And maybe if they had all kept it, none of them would have had to die trying.

…

The funeral is in May. The first of May, a week after Harold Potter was killed. Sirius tells McGonagall that he is going whether they give him permission or not. He's of age, after all. They can't stop him. But they don't even try. All three of them are given permission to leave school for the funeral. They stand at the back of the small crowd gathered in the graveyard and listen to some white-haired man talk about death and life. It is the first funeral they have been to. Despite reading almost constantly about attacks and casualties these days, this is the first funeral they witness. It is like the war has finally found them. Over the next four years, they will go to more funerals than they can count. But this first one, and the last one will be the worst. At least for Remus, the only one who will be able to attend both.

Sirius watches as James steps forward to sprinkle his handful of dirt into the grave. Watches as Mrs. Potter's knees give out and James pulls her back to her feet, holds her as her sobs echo out across the graveyard. Watches as the group breaks up. Remus goes to find James, for his uncle Charlus has taken over comforting his mother. Peter wonders away to the church where food is laid out on tables inside. When the graveyard is cleared, Sirius makes his way to the headstone, hands in pockets, and stares. He can hardly believe it.

James's father was not young, well into his sixties. But he was not so old either. He might have lived another thirty or forty years at least. Long enough to see James married with children, maybe even grandchildren. He won't ever see that now.

And Sirius knows that the small part of him that wants to kick and scream and cry like a little kid is being selfish, but he watches James and his mother breaking down like this and feel like he has been booted out into the cold. That family that he might have been part of for half a second back at Christmas has been ripped up and now he's back to square one. It can't be real.

But it is.

…

School lets out in June. Sirius gets the keys to his flat in London, but he doesn't break it in with a big summer bash like he'd been planning on when he bought it. It's just James and Remus and Peter, but that's good enough for him. James asks why he didn't invite his current girlfriend, Mary McDonald, and he shrugs. She's pretty enough and he likes taking her on his motorbike, but she's not family. So the four of them down a bottle of fire whiskey, and the night passes at first with laughter, the first real laughter in nearly two months, and then with quiet murmurs about the coming war and their plans and their futures that will be long forgotten in the morning.

…

In July, Molly finds that she is pregnant again. Percy is not even one year old, and it is something of a surprise, but a welcome one. More than welcome. There is nearly four years between Charlie and Percy, and Arthur worries he'll be left out by his big brothers. The new baby will be only a year and a half younger. They can be mates like Bill and Charlie. And the thought of a big family makes Molly glow these days. It won't be long before her little Percy will be up and running with his brothers and what will she do then?

…

In early August Remus is woken by his curtains being ripped back at six in the morning. The next thing he knows, James is jumping up and down on his bed telling him to getupgetupgetup you'll never believe it! James has been made Head boy. Remus doesn't believe it until James pulls the badge out of his pocket and thrusts it into Remus's stunned hands. Remus claps him on the shoulder and grins and says congratulations and that he didn't think James approved of authority figures, but somewhere inside him he is just a little bit jealous and just a little bit hurt and just a little bit resentful. He is the better student, the more responsible one. And wouldn't it have been something if a werewolf was Head boy?

But then James sinks to the floor, fingering his new badge. He says how happy his mother was… how proud his dad would have been… how he wishes he could have seen this. And Remus isn't jealous anymore because his father and mother are both sitting downstairs, probably laughing over James's antics right now. Remus doesn't know what else to do except sink down beside him and ask what Sirius thought about it. James admits that Remus is the first he's told, and the fact that James came to him before Sirius for once makes him grin a little.

Afraid he'll stick it to your forehead with a permanent sticking charm? He asks with a sly grin. It was what they nearly did to him when they found out about his prefect badge. James laughs and Remus is glad to hear it. Yeah, maybe a little, he says.

…

Percy's first birthday is at the end of August. There is a big party in the Burrow's back garden. It's mostly family, but Edgar and Linda Bones come with their daughter. Linda is six months along with her next baby, and the women laugh about what Hogwarts will be like with so many Weasleys and Bonses in the same years. Percy and Evy will be together, and now the new babies, too.

Their mothers have already planned the budding romance that will no doubt spring up between the two on the tedious evenings of prefect duties (for Percy and Evy were both destined to be model students, probably Head Boy and Girl), and then Molly and Linda would finally be family, as they had pretty much been since their first year anyway.

…

In September they go back for the last time. Mary comes to sit with Sirius and Lily tags along. At first it is strange. A year ago they wouldn't have dreamed the six of them could sit companionably in one compartment, but Lily and Remus have been good friends since they both were made prefect, and, as Lily says, she and James will have to get along this year so they might as well start now. She is Head Girl, of course.

…

In October the mediwitch informs Molly and Arthur that she has found something and would like to run a couple of tests. Immediately they panic. Not again. Something can't be wrong again. Molly hasn't even felt ill. But far from something being wrong, everything is more than alright. They are not having a baby. They are having two. Twins.

Neither of them say it, but it's almost as if that baby they'd lost is coming back to them.

…

In November pigs fly, the end of the world comes, and Sirius has to take Peter as his date to Hogsmeade. Because these are all things he claimed would happen before James finally got the girl.

It starts like this: Lily and James finish up their nightly patrol by shooing a couple fourth years out of the astronomy tower. Nobody ever told them how good the Head positions were for being in on school gossip. They are having an amiable conversation about their successful interruptions, one of the many amiable conversations they've shared in recent months. And it's all so strange and normal that it just sort of slips out. He's mostly joking when he says – like he's said a million times before – you'll be on my arm in the Three Broomsticks tomorrow, right Evans?

He laughs because it's the first time he's asked her that in ages and it really is a joke. He's halfway down the corridor before he realizes she's stopped walking. And when he turns around she's looking at him in the weirdest way, with her head tilted to one side. And then she says yes.

He can't believe it. He jogs back to her, makes her repeat it about five times before he believes her, and when she's gone up to bed he dances around the common room with this grin he hasn't had since his father's funeral back in the spring. And that's when Remus finds him and thinks he's skipped out on patrols to get plastered in the village.

They spend all day in the village together, and it's not the date James has been expecting. Lily takes him to that nauseating tea shop off the main drag, then to look at antiques for ages in some dusty old hole-in-the-wall, then to the shrieking shack where all the third years always congregate on the first trip of the year. They must hit every possible boring or girly place there is in the village.

But as they walk up the long drive to the castle, Lily takes his hand. She asks how he liked the date and James tells her it was fantastic and she tells him he's lying through his teeth. She laughs and says she thought he'd be running for the hills before they even started looking for dress robes. It was the worst date she could possibly think of. She and half the other seventh year girls. All he can do is blink at her in bewilderment.

There were two reasons behind it, she tells him. First of all she wanted to make sure it wasn't just about the victory, that he didn't just want to show her off, that he actually wanted the girl, not the date. Secondly, he deserved it after everything he'd pulled over the last six years. He can't help but double over laughing at that. Next time it will be a proper date, she promises, pats his shoulder, and then walks away.

He watches her go, hands in his pockets. But halfway up the drive she turns around. She is giving him that weird look again, with her head tilted, the wind whipping her long hair back. And then all of a sudden she's running back toward him, flinging her arm around his neck and kissing him full on the mouth. He's so stunned that at first all he can do is stare wide-eyed. But then he snaps to his senses and wraps his arms around her waist, lifting her up off the ground. From the lake, the other marauders whistle and catcall. James flips them off behind Lily's back.

And, as they say, the rest is history.

…

In December Molly's brothers miss Christmas. It is the first time in all her life that they have not been there to celebrate. And what's worse, they wouldn't even tell her where they were. It's some top-secret business for Dumbledore himself, apparently. The Order of the Pheonix is swiftly gathering.

Bill is seven now, and Charlie five. They are old enough to notice when things are wrong, and they do. Charlie refuses to leave his mother's lap all the time they are at his grandparents, despite the fact that there is not much room for him there around her five-months-pregnant-with-twins belly. Percy squawks all night, pulling at his thick wool jumper until Arthur finally takes it off him, and then he squawks because he wants his mother, but she's already got her hands full with Charlie and the twins and Bill keeps wanting to know where the Uncles are.

The boys are all awake when they bring them home and tuck them into their beds. Arthur comes back from brushing his teeth to find Molly crying into her pillow because she's pregnant and the baby won't stop wailing and her brothers could be anywhere. All and all, it is not as merry of a Christmas as other ones have been.

And it is not just the Weasleys. Fabian and Gideon are holed up in some dingy apartment missing their nephews. Sirius sits at the Leaky Cauldron, making small talk with Tom over a pint because when he went over to James's house earlier, Mrs. Potter was crying. James lies on his bed staring blankly at the ceiling. There is no tree in the sitting room because his father always went out and chopped one down and his mother trimmed it and James and his mates decorated it because that was how it always was. Lily eats an uncomfortable dinner with Petunia and her boyfriend, who ignore her, wishing she could have gone home with James, but he said it was the wrong time. Remus is alone because his parents have gone to visit his dying aunt whom he hasn't seen since before he was bitten and whom he doubts wants much to see him now. Peter sits at the back of an office party his father is throwing to show off his wife and his successful eldest son and feels like he's wearing James's cloak because not once do either his father or his brother look his way.

It is a rather depressing end to the year. But it is nothing to the darkness looming before them.

A/N: I'm just starting college now and decided that right before I take my FF leave of absence so I can pass all my classes, I would spew out all the half-finished stuff I've been working on. Why did it seem like a good idea to post unfinished stories that won't be finished any time soon? Mostly because I just wanted to see what people would think of my ideas and also to maybe inspire someone to finish their own stories. I'm not saying take my stuff and finish it for me, but I know that a lot of my inspiration come off of stories I've read that aren't finished and I want to know what happens so badly, I finish it myself. Usually by the time I'm done with it, the idea that sparked my interest is nothing like what I post, but it's all out there in the creative pot, right? I don't know when, but I would like to eventually finish this up.

Anyway, I'll still be checking reviews in between classes to procrastinate just a tiny bit before I do my homework, so give me a little boost by reviewing!