A/N: THIS IS NOT SIRIUS/JAMES SLASH KTHXBYE. Excuse the craptasticness and READ&REVIEW. Lyrics at the top are © Switchfoot the band.
DISCLAIMER: Everything except for the characterisation is Jo's.
Dare You to Move.
I dare you to move
I dare you to lift yourself up off the floor
I dare you to move
Like today never happened
Today never happened
The first thing he saw was the door. The door he had helped paint in the house that he and James had helped build. The door was stunningly blue, like the doors and shutters on the little Greek island he had visited his great aunt at last summer. It was the same colour of the tie he had worn at their wedding, the same blue as Lily's bridesmaids' dresses—Sirius shook himself.
The door was ajar.
He stood in front of it. He wriggled the doorknob—definitely broken. He went inside. The foyer looked normal—their coats hung on the pegs, Lily's handbag and a blue vase of daises on the little table. His pulse quickened; he was being unreasonably calm. He moved to the kitchen. There was a half-full coffeepot, magnetic poetry and pictures on the refrigerator. Sirius moved to these—one of Harry with their dog, one of Sirius, one of Lily and James on their wedding day, one of the four of them—Sirius, James, Remus, and Peter—when they were in school. Seventeen-year-old Sirius black waved and grinned up at twenty-one-year-old Sirius Black. Shivers ran down his spine.
He was avoiding the sitting room. He knew what was there—he cleared his throat, rubbed the back of his neck, and proceeded. What he saw was to shape the rest of his life—the single moment in time that he was most scared, and he was in a house that was the happiest place he knew at the moment.
First, he saw Lily.
Her eyes were open—he could see the emotion in them. It was the same look she'd given James when he'd caught her and Sirius kissing in fifth year. It was the same look she'd given Sirius when she told him that she knew about their Animagus secret. It was a look of terror, but overcome by courage—Sirius squeezed his own eyes shut as he pushed her eyelids closed. He stared at her corpse: her slender waist, her jeans, her blouse; her long, red hair splayed out around her head on the floor.
That was when he saw James. His best friend—his brother, stony-faced, wand in his fist, one hand lying over his chest. Sirius crawled to his head—he smoothed his hands over James's shirt—it was the KISS shirt they'd gotten at that concert and fought over so many times—Sirius tried to laugh at this, but nothing came out—and then he noticed that there was something wet on James's cheek. Sirius brushed a curl from his own cheek and realised that he was crying—tears were pouring down his face, down his neck, soaking his trousers. He'd never cried at a death before—not when his father was killed, not at his own brother's funeral just months ago—and he felt almost shocked. The tears were so strong, now, that he could barely see—he was lying next to James, wanting to be the one who was dead—why hadn't it been him? He was more accessible … he was the one who deserved to die … not this father, this brave, brave man who died for his true love and his son. He wanted James back—he was lost without his best friend, the one who told him what to do when his parents wouldn't lend him any support, the one who took him in when said parents decided he wasn't good enough to be their son … James Potter, the one who swore he'd never die on Sirius. When they were just nineteen, and had realised that they were in this war for good—they'd sat up eating toffee and beer, and they had promised each other that they'd always be there.
He was on the verge of just giving up when he heard the gurgle.
It was a baby gurgle—Sirius knew those from the numerous nights at this house. But Harry should have been dead—Harry was a year old, without a wand. Sirius wiped the excess saline from his eyes, his cheeks still sticky-wet, and wobbled over to the pen they kept in the room—sure enough, a small baby boy with a thin black fuzz and his mother's olive eyes lay there. Sirius bent to pick his godson up, smoothing that fuzz back—there was a scar there. A thin, red scar, shaped like a lightning bolt, in the exact centre of Harry's forehead.
"Shit," Sirius swore, and grabbed one of the blankets there to wrap the boy in. "Shit, shit, shit." He wiped his eyes on the sleeve of his leather jacket—the one James had given him—and rummaged through Lily's desk for parchment. He scribbled something about their bodies for the Auror department—he had to take Harry somewhere safe, but he couldn't leave the dead bodies of his two best friends lying there. He ran to the garden for James's owl, sent it off—Harry squirmed, and Sirius remembered that he was carrying a baby.
He ran back outside to his motorbike parked haphazardly, half on the curb and half on the street. He had started it up and had his finger halfway to the red invisibility button when he heard a voice.
"Dumbledore's sent me for Harry, Sirius," it said. Sirius swiveled, and in the darkness saw a huge figure who had to be Rubeus Hagrid.