Disclaimer: The characters, setting, background story, etc. all belong to JK Rowling.
Chapter 2
Altostratus Part One
Altostratus clouds are gray or blue-gray. They cover the entire sky, or patches of it, and precede rainy storms.
James felt the tension as soon as he stepped into the kitchen, like a thick fog hanging over the table.
"Sit down, son." said Charlus, unusually heartily, indicating the chair across the table from him.
Wiping the sweat from Quidditch practice off of his brow with the edge of his shirt, James sat. It was rare that Charlus gave James his full attention off of the Quidditch pitch. Dorea stood at her husband's shoulder. Her smile seemed oddly strained. James wondered, alarmed, if someone had died.
"Where's Sirius?" asked James instantly. It was odd for Sirius to be absent so close to lunchtime.
"He went out." Charlus said shortly. "Never mind that now, James. Your mother and I have some things we'd like to discuss with you."
"What things?" James asked stupidly. He suspected that there had been an argument that had ended just before he walked in. He shifted his gaze from his father to his mother, who looked suddenly at the table top.
"Regarding your Quidditch career." Charlus said, sitting up straighter, suddenly business-like. "Read this."
Charlus flipped through the morning's edition of The Daily Prophet, tapping a short, obscure article on the second page of the Sports section before sliding it across the table to James.
The top of the page was creased. James could tell his father had flipped to this page several times, possibly to reread the article repeatedly.
James Potter: Big League Material or Simply Uncommonly Good?
by Rita Skeeter
Despite the buzz created by the supposed up-and-coming Quidditch star, James Potter, we have yet to see if he is really all he's been made out to be. Several Quidditch greats have mentioned we can "expect great things" from the young Mr. Potter, who has been trained by his father, Charlus Potter, formerly Keeper for Puddlemere United. However, we must question James Potter's ability seeing as he has so far managed to prove his Quidditch talent only by being awarded Gryffindor Quidditch captain three years in a row. We have yet to see the younger Potter attract attention from any notable Teams, which provokes the question, is James Potter Big League material, or is he simply uncommonly good, a child prodigy? Although all evidence seems to point irrefutably towards the latter, it is the choice of every individual whether to blindly put their faith in Potter, or embrace a new talent, Ludo Bagman, who has already attracted plenty of Big League attention.
The article was accompanied by a picture of a blonde girl with heavily applied lipstick and bejeweled glasses.
James stared at the article for a moment, not believing the nerve of this woman.
"Well?" Charlus questioned, raising an eyebrow at his son.
"Wait. Dad, what's that?" James pointed to the front page of the Prophet, upon which his father was currently resting his arm.
"Its just the front page, dear." Dorea answered.
"Slide it over, will you, Dad?" James asked, his eyebrows knitting together.
"Hang on a minute here, son, we're discussing something!"
But James had leaned across the table and tugged the paper out from beneath his father's arm. He scanned the headlines, horror shooting through his heart in an icy wave of shock.
Muggleborn Killings near Cokeworth
Cokeworth...Lily...
"James!" Charlus thundered. "Where the ruddy hell do you think you're going?"
But James was already out of the kitchen, heading for the stairs leading to his room, without a plan, but with his mind whirling wildly.
"James? I need you to focus on what's important right now! See this is what I was talking about when I was telling you not to get distracted..."
As Charlus drifted off into yet another rant, James froze. I need you to focus on what's important right now... With an unpleasant thud in his stomach, James realized his father did not consider the muggleborn killings "important", at least not in comparison to the hidden article Rita had written about James. Charlus did not feel the mounting panic James had felt as he had noticed the Daily Prophet becoming increasingly peppered with news of muggleborn killings and discrimination.
"Dad..." James croaked, as his childhood innocence shattered, leaving him standing among the broken pieces. "People...people are dying, Dad. Isn't that important?"
Charlus sighed, and James detected a hint of impatience in his voice as he spoke. "Of course it is, son, but you can't let every little thing like this shake you. These things keep happening, James."
"What's up, Pro-oh. Awkward." Sirius had just bounced into the kitchen, apparently unaware of the tension-filled situation until about ten seconds previously.
James and his father stared at each other.
James turned and left, shoving the front page in Sirius's hands as he passed him.
"Cokeworth? Doesn't Evans live in-"
"Exactly."
They climbed the stairs to James's room in strained silence. James felt oddly contemplative. James had lived his life in unconditional adoration of his father. Now he was forced to question his father's very character. Meanwhile Evans could be...dead...
The door sprang open with a bang as they approached, courtesy of a spell muttered rather foully under James's breath.
James flung himself onto his bed and put his head in his hands, feeling an odd mix of anxiety for Lily, anger at his father, and overall confusion.
Moments later, he felt Sirius sit down beside him.
"Padfoot, what if-what if she-"
"Prongs. She's a smart bird. She wouldn't get herself killed."
James raised his head off of his hands. "Let's apparate over there."
"What?"
"Let's go see if she's okay." James said earnestly, wanting more than anything to put his worries to rest. Apparating to Cokeworth also provided the added bonus of getting out of the house, away from his father.
"Prongs, you can't just apparate into a Muggle town. Not even my unbelievable charm could get us out of that one. And Charlus would murder you for missing Quidditch practice."
James tensed at Sirius's mention of his father.
"Besides," Sirius continued, smirking. "If she had died, they'd be able to recognize her body. All that red hair."
James did not laugh. "The article says the bodies were unidentifiable. They were so mutilated it was impossible to tell."
"Oh." The smirk slid off of Sirius's face. "Sorry, mate."
James internally debated apparating to Cokeworth regardless of what Sirius said.
"I'll just write her a letter then." James muttered, realizing he was out of options. What else could he do?
He grabbed a quill off of his desk and scrawled as quickly as he could:
Evans,
You okay?
He paused for a moment, then added.
If I don't receive a reply back from you by tonight, I'm apparating to Cokeworth to see if you're all right.
James Potter
Hoping fervently that she would actually reply to this letter considering its content, he coaxed his owl (which he had named Snitch back when he had hoped to become a Seeker) to let him tie the letter onto his leg, and then fairly hurled the owl out of the window in his haste. Snitch let out a series of indignant hoots that would have undoubtedly been rather colorful cuss words had the owl spoken English, before flapping away.
The black speck of the owl against the blue sky, a no longer visible scrap of paper tied to his leg, seemed to be a pathetic solution to his worries.
James paced back and forth anxiously, cutting across the patch of sunlight thrown onto the floor from the window. From light to dark, light to dark.
"Mate, you're hyperventilating." Sirius observed.
"Am not." But James could feel the familiar tightness in his chest, like someone had squeezed all the breath out of his lungs. He felt suddenly unable to think, as though his skull was so thick, no thoughts could enter it.
James fumbled on his desk for the innocent blue bottle and took a great gulp. Instantly, calm spread through his body, relaxing his tightened muscles, easing his breathing. James took another swallow, and his brain seemed to be functioning normally again.
"What's that?" Sirius asked, gazing curiously at the blue bottle.
"Calms me down." James said, but did not elaborate.
"Shall we go downstairs, then?" James asked, swiftly changing the subject, though immediately realizing that going downstairs was the last thing he wanted to do at the moment.
He scanned the skies hopefully for a return owl.
"She can't reply that quickly, Prongs."
"Yeah. Well," James said darkly, "I wish she could."
He climbed distractedly down the stairs, trying to rid from his mind the image of Lily, dead, vivid red hair stirring feebly in the weak wind, green eyes, blank, unseeing... No. She can't be dead. She's safe. She's got to be safe. James forced himself to take deep breaths and resisted the urge to dash upstairs for another sip.
As they descended toward the kitchen door, loud voices issuing from behind it jolted James out of his dark thoughts.
"Don't you see what this is doing to him, Charlus? Don't you?"
"He's going to be an international Quidditch player, Dorea! He's got to learn to handle the pressure!"
"He's only seventeen! He's got time-"
"Time? Time? Ludovic Bagman is only in his fifth year at Hogwarts and Wimbourne is already taking an interest in him. We're only lucky he's a Beater and not a Chaser or he'd put James out of business-"
"There you go again, comparing him to Ludo Bagman and everyone else out there! You act like he's terrible, and we both know that's far from true! Would it kill you to lay off him now and then?"
"Do you think the media is going to 'lay off him'? Do you think the bludgers are going to 'lay off him'?! Then how, as his coach, am I supposed to 'lay of him', Dorea?"
"I don't know, Charlus, I don't know!" his mother was sobbing now. "I just hate to see him so...stressed...pressured. He shouldn't have to go through this!"
They were fighting again. And this time it was his fault. He felt Sirius's hand on his shoulder.
"It's not your fault, Prongs."
"Not my fault?" James snarled, the irrepressible temper he had never learned to control bubbling out of him at once. "They're arguing about me, Padfoot. Don't tell me it's not my bloody fault!"
"Okay, mate, okay." Sirius stepped back and lifted his arms in a gesture of innocence, concern and a trace of hurt in his gray eyes.
James immediately regretted his outburst. Looking at Sirius's face, he realized that Charlus and Dorea's arguments affected Sirius as much as they affected him. They were the only proper parents Sirius had really known, after all.
"Padfoot-"
"Don't worry about it, Prongs." Sirius said, grinning as both boys tried valiantly to ignore the continued argument in the room behind them. "C'mon. Let's go chuck some Bludgers around."
And as they soared into the air, wind on their faces, a Beaters' Bat in Sirius's hand and an evil grin on his face, James realized there was no one else who could quell his temper like Padfoot. Sirius was the only one who understood that James's anger could not be dissolved, only redirected or distracted. Quidditch had always been James's refuge because it did both, allowing James to vent his anger by shoving Quaffles into the goals, and letting him bury his fury in the wind that rushed past his ears in great gusts.
Dodging Bludgers, the Quaffle tucked under his arm, James relished the freedom of playing Quidditch simply for fun. Not for the Hogwarts Championship Cup, not for his father, not for the hopes of making it to the Quidditch Pro-Leagues, but for himself, purely for the pleasure of the wind in his hair and the sun on his face.
Suddenly, he broke away from the pitch, flying higher and higher, turning loop-the-loops, as though if he flew fast enough, he could escape all his worries, Lily, his father, his parents' fighting, Quidditch, the blue bottle.
"Show off." grumbled Sirius somewhere below him, aiming a bludger at him.
James swerved, diving back down to where Sirius hovered just below the goal hoops. "Ready to get your arse whooped?"
Sirius smirked. "I think not. You may be Mr.-Pro-Quidditch-Player-In-The-Making, but to me, you're just Prongs, with a head too big for his own good."
For a golden hour, they played Quidditch in the light of the setting sun.
"James! Sirius!" Dorea called.
James drifted lower. He always dreaded this moment, the moment in which he had to return to earth. When he flew, his head could be in the clouds, blissful and free, but now he was forced to return to the terribly inconvenient constraints of gravity and reality.
With a sigh, he sunk the last few feet to the ground and dismounted, and they walked back up to the manor, laughing and discussing the game they just played.
Dorea smiled affectionately at her boys. James noticed her slightly swollen eyelids and the unmistakable weariness around the corners of her eyes that all the charms in the world couldn't hide. He remembered the worry in his mother's voice as she yelled at his father, begging him to take it a little easier on their son. James hugged her briefly and wordlessly. Sirius followed, leaning down to wrap his arms around the woman who had taken him in on that stormy night two years before.
They leaned their brooms against the wall on the porch. James turned back toward to horizon, ruffling his hair absentmindedly.
Sirius read his mind with a roll of his eyes. "I'm telling you, Prongs, she's fine. And stop staring at the sky every few seconds, that letter isn't going to come any faster."
James ignored him.
"Who?" asked Dorea, looking from James to Sirius.
"Lily Evans." Sirius said, characteristically quick to embarrass James, though his voice lacked the gleeful tone it usually took on when they were discussing this subject.
"Oh." said Dorea, and her eyebrows crinkled.
"She lives in Cokeworth." Sirius explained, "There were some Muggle-born killings reported there last night. James owled her to see if she was okay."
"Oh, my." Dorea said softly, looking rather upset.
James ignored their exchange. He knew Lily disliked him, hated him even, and had rejected any attempt of his to communicate with her in the past summers. Surely though, she would reply if he only wanted to know if she was..alive? Safe?
When it became evident to Sirius that no owl was going to come hurtling into view out of the sunset, he grabbed James by the back of his shirt and hauled him in through the kitchen door. ("Ow! What the hell, Padfoot?")
Later James would reflect that it was in moments like these, innocent and light, that he least aware of just how much his life was about to change.
Author's Note: The second and third chapter were previously one, but I split them so that one chapter wouldn't be ridiculously long.
Here we get a little hint of James's calming draught addiction (did you catch that? ;) and...tension. This story is going to be different from my other ones. For one, I have a plan! Therefore there won't be any more sudden lacks of inspiration that would cause me to put this story on hiatus/abandon it like *koff*MISCHIEFMANAGED*koff*
Anyways, there is something a lot more serious that I'd like to get out there. I want to write this story as...real as possible. Okay getting a bit personal here, but I have never seen a happy marriage, and therefore I can't write fluffy romances realistically. Yes, Lily and James are going to have their fluff and their joy, but there will be a stark and intentional contrast between their relationship and that of Dorea and Charlus's. I see a lot of...to put this lightly-crap in my life and other people's and I will write stories that reflect it. It is my hope that if anyone else out there is going through something similar to anything described in this story, you know you are not alone and that there are people going through what you're going through and will understand you. If anyone is going through a tough time and you just want someone to listen to you, I'm always here. Shoot me a PM or something. My tumblr will be up soon as well so that can be a way for anyone to contact me anonymously if needed.
Oh, and review, please. :)
Yours,
VictoryNike
7/29/13
