Oh wow, it's been a loooong time since I posted. To atone for this, I've had a few marathon writing sessions and finished the story! There are five more chapters and I'll post them over the next couple of days. A note: some readers have expressed displeasure with the subjects explored in this story. I'm not fighting with anyone over what I choose to write about; if you're looking for light and fluffy, that's cool, but look elsewhere, it's only getting more serious from here. Onward...
"And then, she just kissed me!"
"Now that's a twist."
It was Thursday. Lily was at work and James was at Remus', excitedly catching him up on the weekend's developments while Remus prepared for work.
"So, are you two officially together now?"
"Yep. But I need your advice, Moony."
"Big surprise."
"Ah, come on, you know you'd pine for me and feel useless if I ever figured out how to function as an emotionally stable adult."
"I'd still have Sirius."
"True."
"Ok, fine, what do you need advice on."
"Well, she's staying with Sirius and me right now - "
"What?"
"Yeah, she and Snape had a fight, apparently, and she says they're not friends anymore and she's moved out for good."
Remus gave a low whistle and stumped back over to the table with a bowl of rice and beans for each of them.
"So Sirius invited her to stay - "
"Sirius did?!"
"Moony, you don't even understand how crazy this weekend's been," James sighed, mixing up his beans and rice to release some of the steam. "When Lily first came over, she and Sirius were talking about some fight they'd had – now I come to think about it, I meant to ask Sirius about that. Anyway, I guess they resolved their differences, because he invited her to stay."
"Either that or he wanted to stick it to Snape."
"I don't think that's what it was about, honestly. He wasn't around too much this weekend, but when he was there he wasn't moody or anything."
"Are you sure you'd notice through your haze of love?" Remus asked drily.
"Har har," James said, although he had to admit, he had been in something of a haze the last week. He couldn't seem to get enough of Lily, and, luckily, she seemed to feel the same way. "Anyway, then Sirius told her you were looking for a place, and suggested you two be flatmates."
"What?!" There was a crack in Remus' voice that made James look up.
"What's wrong?"
"He just invited her to live with me?"
"Well, no. He just mentioned it as a possibility."
Remus sank back in his chair, looking peeved.
"He shouldn't have done that. I wouldn't have expected that from Sirius, of all people."
"Why not? You know Padfoot can act without thinking sometimes."
"Yes, but he understands how hard it can be to make friends."
"Come on, Lily's not hard to get along with. You all liked her when we watched Sherlock together."
"There's a difference between casual acquaintance and flatmate."
"And what's that?" James asked, a tad defensively. He couldn't understand why all his friends were acting as though Lily was this big intrusion on their lives. Looking at Remus, though, he could see how tired he was looking. He backed off a little. "Look, Remus, I'm not trying to force you to do anything. You don't have to live with Lily if you don't want. I just don't understand why it's been such an uphill battle to get you lot to accept her."
"It's just…easier for you, James. To make friends. There's no big disclosures you have to dread further down the line. You don't have to hide some huge part of your life for fear of scaring someone away. You can just be yourself, without worrying. It's not like that for me, or for Sirius."
James couldn't meet Remus' eye. Remus had the tremendous power to make him feel ashamed of himself sometimes.
"Sorry mate."
"Don't apologize. Lily seems like an amazing woman, and I'm looking forward to getting to know her – slowly. But, it's just, things between you two have progressed quickly. All of us can tell that she's become very important to you, and we're trying to adjust around that. Especially Sirius. And he never deals with this stuff well. Look at how he's been treating Pete, just because he has a new job."
"It's not just because he has a new job."
"No," Remus agreed, dumping hot sauce on his plate. "It's because that new job represents a new life that's separate from the rest of us. And Sirius hates that."
"Yeah." James sighed heavily. "I've talked to Peter, though, and I'm hoping things'll get better there."
"You talked to Pete? About the whole Sirius thing?"
"And about how I ignored his advice not to go after Riddle." James smiled slightly, taking the hot sauce from Remus. "You were in the hospital, so someone had to carry the mantle of heart-to-hearts."
Remus smiled wryly. "And here I thought you still needed me for advice."
"Don't worry. The student has not quite surpassed the teacher. I still need you around, for the hard stuff."
James' alarm clock sounded much too early Saturday morning. He groaned and rolled over; Lily stirred, then reached across him to turn it off.
"James?"
"C'mere."
She snuggled into his arms, her face pressed up against his bare chest. He could feel himself being lulled back to sleep, so, with a noise of regret, he gently extricated himself from Lily's warm body and placed a kiss on her head before rolling out of bed. She pulled the blankets closer and buried her head in the pillow. His heart expanded at the sight of her, and he couldn't help smiling, bleary-eyed as he was.
He dressed and grabbed a banana, darting back to his room to kiss a sleeping Lily one more time before departing. The dim light outside did little for his sleep-fogged brain, but the thought of the day ahead woke him up. He couldn't help but feel apprehensive. What would it be like? Would he feel helpless, the privileged interloper on a reality he would never be at risk of experiencing? His pace quickened toward the tube stop, and he descended rapidly into the underground station.
Moody was waiting for him when he arrived. He was not a tall man, and his prosthetic limb made him stoop slightly. However, he was powerfully built, with sparse grey hair and a prominent nose under the false eye. He and James loaded the car with legal binders and pamphlets printed in multiple languages while they waited for the others to arrive. Emmeline Vance, Hestia Jones, and Edgar Bones arrived in short order. They shook hands all around, then Moody barked, "Right, in the van."
Emmeline, the oldest of the group, climbed into the front next to Moody. Hestia had a rosy complexion and black hair, and James reckoned she was only a few years older than him. She squeezed into the middle between Edgar and James.
"I was up half the night working on a case, so you'll have to forgive me if I nod off on one of your shoulders," she joked, as they trundled onto the road.
Despite her apparent exhaustion, Hestia was warm and talkative. James soon learned she was in her final year of a legal internship and very eager to be out and practicing. Edgar was in his mid-thirties, dark-skinned with a long, thin face, the father of two young children and also an solicitor. He and Hestia had been volunteering with Moody for several months now, and they caught up on each other's weeks, in between filling James in on what to expect at the detention centre. In the front seat, Emmeline was speaking quietly to Moody. Her dark brown hair was streaked liberally with gray and piled on her head in an elegant twist. When James caught her eye in the rearview, she smiled and broke off her conversation with Moody.
"I believe we've met before," she said.
James scanned his memory, "Uuuuh…"
"Your mother and I were colleagues," Emmeline explained. "When she taught at the university. I teach in the Middle Eastern and North African Department."
"Ah," James felt a brief flash of pain. As the years went by, he seemed to meet fewer and fewer people who had known his mother. Emmeline's face softened.
"She was a good woman. You must miss her."
James nodded. "Yeah. But, at least I've got Dad."
"And a fine man he is," Emmeline said.
After that, James lost track of the conversation a bit, watching the outskirts of London roll by the window. He must have dozed off, because next thing he knew the van was slowing to a stop outside a pair of tall gates topped with barbed wire.
"Everyone got their IDs?" Moody barked, and James fumbled for his wallet.
Moody waited until he had it out, then rolled slowly forward to the gate house. James eyed the gatekeeper nervously, but they made it through without a hitch.
"Remember Potter, don't open your mouth. You are here as a volunteer firstly, and an observer second. You are not here as a journalist, you are not here to ask questions. Anything you glean and decide to include in an article later – well, that's your prerogative and I know nothing about it."
Moody's voice was gruff, and he glared at James in the mirror until James had nodded his assent. Hestia and Edgar looked curiously at James now, and he wondered if Moody has passed him off as a naïve volunteer to them as well.
He gave himself a slight shake. He was here to observe, and he had to get on that. He peered out of the tinted window of the van. He knew the Manor had previously been just that – the home of wealthy landowners who went broke before the Second World War and sold their land to the state. Although the structure of the building was sound, there had obviously been no effort made to keep up the superfluous décor. The drive leading up to the front entrance, which had once been lined with gardens, was now gravel surrounded by badly kept lawn. Guards dressed in blue uniform were everywhere, as was barbed wire. There was an exercise yard, and James could see a few mothers sitting on a bench supervising their children, who appeared to be playing tag.
"How long can people be detained here?" James asked the car at large.
"Months," Edgar answered. "Years, even. They may be transferred to a different facility, but the feeling's the same."
James tried to imagine the childhood the kids in the yard had. Perhaps they had fled from war, travelled across continents in truck beds and oceans in flimsy fishing boats. Maybe they had been in a refugee camp before arriving here. And now, in the land their parents' had hoped would be a refuge, they were being held for an indefinite amount of time, waiting to see whether they'd be allowed to stay. Did they go to school in the detention centre, or did a bus come to pick them up outside the barbed wire gates, take them to classes where they may not speak the language, to be classmates with kids whose parents supported their incarceration?
Moody pulled into a small lot, and James and the others piled out, stretching their backs and cramming binders and pamphlets into their bags.
"You'll be taking notes for Emmeline," Moody growled in James' ear, shoving a yellow legal pad into his hands.
Any similarity to a manor house the building had retained on the outside stopped at the front door. The inside had been completely redone, so that, rather than a grand entrance hall with a sweeping staircase, they came into a small room where clerks behind bullet proof glass checked them in, then through a door to the left and down a long hallway with doors on one the right side leading off into private meeting rooms. He followed Emmeline into the third one down. It was bare except for three folding chairs. Emmeline put her coat on the back of one and began unwinding an emerald scarf from around her neck, addressing James.
"I'm not a solicitor, so I don't do any of the legal advice – that's Edgar and Hestia's job. Alastor and I try to gather people's stories, to learn about their situation so that we can glean what kind of council might be most useful to them. Then we refer them to Hestia or Edgar, who will see them next week. That way they can study the cases ahead of time and cut to the chase with the legal information, which can take a while to explain.
"This," she handed James a clipboard, "is the note taking system. At the top, you take notes on what they tell us. You'll notice that there's a pattern to the questions I ask, but different people will focus on specific questions that seem most relevant to their situation, and we have to adjust accordingly. At the bottom here, you check which area of legal counsel seems most relevant to them – criminal, employment, marital, etc. We'll fill those out together on the ride home, since you don't have experience yet. I think that's all…do you have any questions?"
"Do you have any translators?"
"Not this week. Trust me, it's a major issue. I think Alastor just wrote another grant to try and pay for consistent translators. It's hard to get volunteers because they have to be certified in medical and legal translating. I speak several dialects of Arabic and French, so if we get any interviewees who need to conduct the session in one of those, I'll take notes."
At that moment, there was a knock on the door.
"This is us," Emmeline said, indicating that James should sit and moving to open the door.
Their first client was a middle aged man, dark skinned with closely cropped hair and neat beard. He was an Algerian national, he explained, who had been charged with three crimes – absconding, falsifying documents, and working illegally. He obviously had an educated background, because he explained the English legal terms with ease. James was certain that Emmeline already knew what absconding and falsifying documents meant, but she never interrupted, keeping her gaze fixed on him. He ducked his head, running a hand over his hair as he explained that he had been tried and sentenced to twelve months in prison, of which he had served six. He had been slated for deportation, but he had left his homeland in a hurry and without a passport, and Algeria refused to take him back. Instead, he hung in limbo, shuffled from camp to camp for 18 months, refused bail, unable to work or see his family. He told all of this to Emmeline in a quiet, clipped voice, his English softly accented by French. At the end of the interview, Emmeline thanked him for his time, and told him he'd meet with a legal representative the following week. As the man stood to leave, he inclined his head at both of them, unsmiling.
And so it went. James and Emmeline were witness to person after person, testimony after testimony. A young man who had come from Somalia with his family when he was a few months old had been arrested on drug related charges several years previously with a couple of friends who were British nationals. They had all served prison time, but afterwards his friends were released and he was shipped off to a deportation centre, where he had been for almost three years.
"They told me it's too dangerous to travel in Somalia, so they can't deport me. I said, 'Great, I don't want to go there anyway.' But instead thy keep me locked up in this fucking prison! I served my time, mate, let me out."
One young Bangladeshi mother cried because she hadn't seen her children in months, and she was afraid the acquaintances they were staying with were mistreating them. A Haitian woman cried because her two young sons couldn't remember a world outside the detention centre.
Most of the clients were asylum seekers. Some had committed crimes unrelated to their citizenship status, but most were – working illegally, destroying and ID card, possessing false papers, failing to report to the police about their visa. Many were greatly distressed by the label of criminal they'd been given. One old man, who refused to sign his deportation papers because they assigned him to the wrong nationality, reassured James and Emmeline repeatedly that he had worked the entire time he'd lived in the UK.
"I pay taxes, yes I do, and I don't get help from the state. Not one pound! And they locked me up for trying to work!"
During their lunch break, James went out to the courtyard by the guards' tower, ostensibly to get some fresh air, but actually in an attempt to see more of the institution. A blue uniformed man was standing there, smaller than most of the guards James had seen, and bouncing from leg to leg as he scrolled through his phone. James walked over to stand next to him and proffered a cigarette box he had stolen from Sirius that morning.
"Smoke?"
The man took one eagerly, lit it with James' lighter, and took a deep draught.
"Ah, thanks mate." He stuck out his hand. "Stan Shunpike."
"James Potter," replied James, pausing in the middle of lighting his own cigarette to shake Stan's hand.
"So, you one of those charity folks who come here on weekends? The solicitors?"
"Yeah," James said, wondering what questioning strategy to use now that he'd established a conversation.
"Yeah, you all have been coming for a while. Not that I'm complaining – always been very pleasant, you lot have. 'Cept that bloke with the glass eye – he's scary, inn'e. Must be a good chap, all the same, comin' here."
James didn't know what he'd been expecting from a guard at a detention centre – someone scarier, he supposed. He decided to start with something open-ended.
"How is work here?"
"Ah, you know, it's all right. The pay's good. And it's not like workin' in a jail. Most of the folks here, they just want to get out as quick as possible, so they don't cause trouble."
"Do most people stay here a while?"
"Depends. Course, they're moving lots of them out now."
James' ears perked up. "Why?"
"Well, now, they haven't told the lowly grunts like me. But word is, management just bought another centre. I think it must be for the ladies, cause those're the only ones they're moving."
"Really?"
"Yeah." Stan tossed the smoke on the ground and stubbed it out with the heel of his boot. "Not that unusual. Lots of places separate the men and women."
"That's true," James agreed. "But it's odd, since the owners are a biotech company."
"Are they?" said Stan, who looked like he was losing interest.
"Another cigarette?" James offered, flipping the pack open.
Stan eyed it longingly, but shook his head.
"Better not. I'm trying to quit. Apparently the birds don't like a guy who smells like smoke."
James slipped the pack back in his pocket, finishing up his own cigarette.
"You got a girlfriend?" Stan asked.
"Yeah," said James, grinning.
Stan shook his head sadly.
"Some have all the luck. I better head back. Thanks for the smoke."
"Course."
James waited for Stan to move back towards the grand doors, then followed more slowly, his hands burrowed in his pockets. He could feel the edge of a letter in the right one. Once he reached the front entrance hall, he hesitated. It was worth a shot. It was what had brought him here in the first place, after all. He stepped up to one of the windows shielded by bullet-proof glass, behind which a woman with hair dyed platinum blonde was chatting with a coworker. He stepped up to the microphone and cleared his throat. She swung around and pressed a button and the speaker crackled to life.
"Can I help you?"
"I was wondering if you could deliver a letter to one of the, er, people here."
"What's the name?"
"Dorcas Meadowes."
The woman – Gloria, according to her badge – turned to her computer and tapped away for a few moments.
"Nope, sorry love, she's not here."
"What? But she was, I'm sure she was."
"She's been moved to another facility."
She looked at him with some pity, and he decided to press a little.
"Would you be able to tell me where she's been transferred to?"
Gloria hesitated, then turned back to the computer and clicked through a few pages.
"Azkaban Detention Centre."
"Thank you so much."
"Have a nice day, then."
James turned and began to walk back towards the hallway where he had been working with Emmeline. Perhaps Dorcas Meadowes had been among the women moved to the new detention centre purchased by T.M. Riddle. But what was going on here? It was strange enough for a biotech company to buy one detention facility, since it had nothing to do with their business; stranger still to acquire two.
"James," Emmeline's voice startled him out of his reverie. She was poking her head out from behind the door. "Come on, we're starting again."
That afternoon was more of the same. A university student who'd picked up an under-the-table job to pay the bills only to be reported by a spiteful coworker. A construction worker who'd already been deported and snuck back in three times. A home health aide who'd been tried for a DUI.
James slipped in and out of a doze on the ride home, mentally drained. He wondered how his companions did it – they were all going back home to cook dinner for kids, to work on cases, and to get up on Monday to start the work week all over again. He wondered if he would ever be able to juggle those responsibilities. He wondered whether Lily wanted kids.
He was incredibly pleased, upon reentering the flat, to find Lily's shoes kicked off next to the door and the smell of frying onions wafting in from the kitchen. He kicked off his own shoes and hung his coat by the door, entering the kitchen to envelope Lily in a hug from behind.
"Hi," he breathed into her hair.
"Oh good, you're back." She wriggled out of his grasp and turned around to face him, gripping the spoon she had been using to stir the onions rather threateningly. "You have some explaining to do."
James wracked his brains, but couldn't come up with any transgressions he might have committed that day. He tried to look innocent as he reached around her to steal a bit of onion out of the pan.
"Why didn't you tell me Remus is HIV positive?"
James choked on the onion. How did she know? And more importantly…did it bother her? James liked Lily. He liked her a lot. But he knew that if she was prejudiced against Remus, he would have to show her the door.
"Do you have a problem with that?" James demanded, his voice edging towards steely. Lily's eyebrows shot upwards.
"Excuse me? No, James, I don't have a problem with Remus. This isn't the 80s, I don't have a problem with people who have HIV." James let out a breath he didn't realize he'd been holding, feeling his body relax. But Lily was still talking.
"What I do have a problem with is Sirius implying that Remus was ready and willing to live with me, and then with you not letting on that Remus might have some reservations, or some aspects of his life he'd like to keep private. I go waltzing over there, all ready to talk about which part of town he'd like to live in, and he was really uncomfortable, James, because he felt like he'd been backed into a corner and he had to divulge his status to me without being ready to."
James had to acknowledge that she made a fair point.
"And what's more," she went on, her voice getting louder as she advanced on him a bit, waving the spoon. "He told me that he'd spoken with you about this earlier in the week, and he'd been hoping you would pass on to me that he might not be totally on board, in the politest way possible."
"He never said that!" James interjected.
"He said he wanted to get to know me slowly. As in – not live with me. Did he have to spell it out for you?!"
Her voice was getting louder, and James thought it was probably time to diffuse the situation. He took the wooden spoon and moved around her to stir the onions, which had started to burn. There were chopped vegetables waiting ready on a cutting board next to the cob. He tipped them into the pan.
"Don't ignore me, James Potter," Lily said, snatching the spoon back and stirring the vegetables with unnecessary vigor, so a few leapt out of the pan.
"I'm not ignoring you. I'm…collecting my thoughts."
Lily snorted but went silent for the moment, watching him expectantly.
"You're right. I probably should have read between the lines of my conversation with Remus and said something to you. But I guess it's second nature for me to conceal his status, and I didn't see how I could tell you he was hesitant to live with you without making it sound like he didn't like you."
"You could have just said he's shy and reluctant to live with a near stranger – I would have understood that."
It all sounded so logical when she put it like that. The truth was, James had been so carried away by the idea of his best mate living with Lily that Remus' request hadn't even registered with him.
"I-yeah, you're right. I should've done that."
"Damn straight you should have!"
It seemed like Lily wanted to continue the argument, but James wasn't playing ball.
"Listen, Lily, you have every right to be frustrated with me. I was an idiot. But don't worry about Remus – he's not mad at you or anything. He knows it wasn't your fault."
"I'm not worried about Remus, James. I'm frustrated with you. Sometimes you get this idea in your head of how the world should be, and you try so hard to fix everything around you that you ignore what other people are trying to tell you."
"I know, I know. But you and Remus can still be flatmates! Now that you know, he doesn't have anything to hide."
"No, James, we can't."
She turned off the cob and turned to face him, folding her arms.
"Look, James, I appreciate that you're trying to help me. But I can't live with your best friend. What if we break up? Will you want to visit Remus if it means seeing me? Will I want to see you?"
James hadn't thought about that; he couldn't really envision breaking up with Lily.
"And what if we're having a fight, and Remus feels like he has to pick sides between his flatmate and his friend? Obviously he would pick your side, since you've been friends forever, but how uncomfortable do you think I would feel going home then?"
"Why didn't you mention all this stuff before?" James asked, feeling stupid.
"I didn't think of it," Lily said honestly. "I've been kind of…caught up in you."
James' insides twisted. He was pleased because that was exactly how he'd been feeling, but her use of the past tense was glaring.
"Been? You aren't any more?"
He must have looked as pathetic as he sounded, because Lily's face softened somewhat. She uncrossed her arms and moved to sit at the kitchen table, gesturing for him to sit as well.
"I really like you James," she said, leaning her elbows on the table top and forcing him to meet her eyes. "And part of me just wants to bask in that – spend every moment with you and not think about anything else. But sometimes – like today – reality intercedes. This is all so…intense. We've just started dating and I'm already living here! I've barely lived in London three months and you guys are basically my only friends. I can't depend on you for everything."
James knew what she was saying, but it still felt like she'd punched him in the gut. "Of course not, I wasn't trying to manipulate you or - "
"I know," she said gently, reaching across the table to grasp his hands. "I know, James. You're just doing what you always do – taking me in, trying to fix things for me. It's what you did for Sirius, for Remus, probably for Peter too. It's just what you do. But this is different – we're dating. And–and I see a future for us." She was blushing now, but she went on. "I want us to be together for a long time, but even the best couple have fights and need time apart and I think we need our own space at the beginning, while we're getting to know each other. While I'm getting to know London."
James had to acknowledge, she had a point. Even if he didn't like it.
"I've been thinking about moving back to the hostel."
He fought his immediate feeling of revulsion, and forced himself to say instead, "Can you afford that?"
"For a bit. If Rosmerta lets me pick up extra shifts."
"That doesn't seem like a great long term solution."
"It's not."
"What if we compromise. Stay here for two more weeks, and use the time when you were going to pick up new shifts to just focus on finding a new place. If you move to a hostel now, you'll be stuck in an endless cycle of working to pay for your bed, and you won't have time to look for a flat."
Lily considered this.
"And I promise I'll ask all of my mates if they know of a place. I know a lot of people."
Lily cracked a small smile at this. "I know you do. I was at Peter's party, remember?"
"I do remember. Maybe you can live with Caradoc. You two certainly hit it off."
"Har har. I left him to talk to you, if you've forgotten."
"I haven't." He leaned forward across the table, and her lips met his willingly. She broke away too soon, however, saying, "We have to eat – I have to get to work, remember?"
James groaned.
"What are you whinging about, I'm the one who has to work! And you haven't even told me about your day!" She stood up to finish dinner, but James caught her around the waist.
"Are we ok, then?"
She leaned in close. "As long as you promise not to set me up to embarrass myself with any of your other mates, then yes, we're ok."
"Deal."