The wind cried out as it cascaded around the Owlery. Inside, James Potter snatched a tiny sheet of parchment from the supply kept there. He put the parchment and a communal inkwell onto a small, battered table that had been placed there for this purpose. Most people answered their owls in the less odoriferous privacy of the castle, but enough people wrote letters in the Owlery to warrant this little set-up. The ink in the inkwell was watered down and had more than a few unidentifiable bits floating in it. James unscrewed the top and dipped the tip of a feather plucked directly from the Owlery floor. There were certainly enough lost feathers here so that they were never in short supply, though they were not as nice as school quills.

Sirius leaned over James's shoulder, playing absently with the lip of the inkwell until his gloved fingers left black smears. He read what James wrote:

Dear Mum and Dad,

Why didn't you tell us before?

"I think you should make it say 'why the bloody hell didn't you tell us before,'" Sirius grumbled.

"Shut up."

I'm sure you'll be alright. Take care of yourselves and tell us if there's anything we can do. Here's Sirius. He wants me to add curses to the letter, so I figure I should let him get himself into trouble.

Love you. - James.

"Arse, I can't believe you wrote that."

James shrugged and handed the parchment and quill to Sirius. Sirius pulled his hands out of his gloves and let them go numb as he wrote:

I know how much it stinks, but the worst part is over, where you get the feathers. Then there's just the fever and stuff. And when you recover your hair will be all soft and feathery, so that'll be cool. Get better soon.

-s.b.

James secured the letter to a school owl, Baldr having left without waiting for a reply. Both boys watched the owl fly away. Finally, James punched Sirius on the shoulder and said, "Come on." Sirius nodded. Feeling helpless, he followed James out of the Owlery.

They met Lily and Remus on the stairway back to the castle. Both were worried, and James reported the news: that his parents were in St. Mungo's with the bird flu. There was nothing to do about it that the healers at St. Mungo's weren't doing, though, so the four of them headed back to the dormitory for a night filled with homework.

*****

A week passed. Sirius and James forgot their worries quickly enough as they slipped back into routine. They hadn't yet received a reply, but neither were they expecting one so soon. The Potters weren't always the most timely with their letters, especially when distracted. Surely being locked up in St. Mungo's with the bird flu constituted a distraction.

When a somber Professor McGonagall interrupted Professor Slughorn in the middle of Potions to call for James Potter, most students likely thought nothing of it. They probably thought that he must have done something to get himself into trouble- hardly a rare occurrence. When she turned back after a second and added, "Oh, and Sirius Black. Of course," this likewise seemed perfectly normal to most students. Lily Evans, though, was not 'most students'. Before Sirius had even stood to join James and McGonagall, Lily's potion was boiling over. She cursed at the foam, her voice echoing in the silent classroom. No one else spoke as Sirius rose from his seat, his face a study in stern stoicism, and followed James and Professor McGonagall from the room.

Remus, working next to Lily again today, was obviously trying to ease her worry. He kept distracting her with questions about the potion they were now re-doing. They were questions that she had already answered, and she knew for a fact that Remus was a better listener than that. Lily tried her best to concentrate, but found her attention wandering to the classroom door. Remus took care of their potion, even though potions was Lily's forte. Remus was in the middle of adding armadillo bile when he quite suddenly dropped the entire vial into the potion. It gave an underwhelming "glump" and emitted a cloud of dense purple smoke. Professor Slughorn approached and began a polite lecture on their carelessness. Afterall, they had ruined two potions in the course of one class.

But neither was listening to him. Lily's eyes were locked on Remus's. She could see his hands shaking. He looked like he was going to be sick. Without saying a word, without so much as asking permission from their professor, Remus rose to his feet, numbly gathered his bag, and left the room. Lily Evans followed moments later, and the pair silently walked to Gryffindor Tower.

*****

Lily and Remus were perched on beds in the boys' dormitory when the storm arrived. The door burst open and James and Sirius both entered. James sat on his bed, unseeing, but Sirius flung his rucksack. It skittered across the floor, but no sooner had it come to a stop than Sirius was leveling a punch at the wall, grunting in his exertion. Remus leaped to his feet, wrapping an arm around Sirius, trying to restrain Sirius's violent outrage at the stone.

"It doesn't make sense." James was the first to speak into the silence.

Sirius grunted.

"It doesn't..." James repeated.

"James," Lily whispered. "Did... what..."

"They're dead," James whispered.

Lily gasped, but Remus had already known.

*****

All week, the mood in Gryffindor Tower was subdued. Everyone was walking on eggshells, even the firsties who weren't sure what was going on. Those who did know what had happened were doing their level best to pick up the slack. Some did James' and Sirius' homework. Others brought food up for them. James and Sirius weren't grateful- they hadn't the energy to be- but no one begrudged them it. All of those helpful students had the singular luxury of walking away from the morose atmosphere that tinged the air around Sirius and James. All of them, that is, except Remus.

Not even Lily- still, incidentally, refusing to actually date James, not that he'd asked this given week- was as close to ground zero as was Remus. Remus was able to share in James' and Sirius' grief in an intimate, painful way. In a sense, he was glad. He knew the difference between personal hell and shared hell, knew the comfort brought by sharing your pain with another. If, by sharing their burden, he could ease it at all, he was warmed by the thought. Still, Sirius's grief left Remus with his own overwhelming sense of loss. Remus eased his own aching chest by holding Sirius, keeping Sirius warm. Doting on Sirius, though, made him realize how alone James must really feel. One afternoon while Sirius was sleeping, Remus popped over to James's bed and sat on the end of it.

"Prongs?"

"Yeah?" James was awake, but he was half under the covers and his voice came out muffled as a result.

"When are the, uh, arrangements-"

"Sat'day," James slurred.

"Right. How are you holding up?"

James fought out of the blankets. "I'm alive. I'm just so pissed, you know?"

"I know. So is Sirius."

"They didn't even tell us they were fucking sick until last week. I haven't seen them in months, Moony. We didn't even go home for Christmas. It's not- it's just the stupidest- I mean, Sirius had this same thing and he pulled through fine..."

Remus knew that logic would not work on James just now, so he did not attempt to use any.

"It's just- Argh!" James flung a pillow across their small room. Remus sighed.

"I'm sorry," James slammed his head back into his remaining pillow. "I'm so sorry. I didn't mean to yell at you. I just feel... it's like...it's like being cut loose. Like you've got nowhere left to turn in the world. I wonder if this is how Padfoot felt when he was thrown out of home, and now this? They're the only home I've ever known, Moony, and now I've got to 'settle their affairs'. I don't know how to do that! I don't even know what it means."

"Well, Lily is your friend, and you know she has an interest in wizarding law. I'm sure she can help you make some sense of it."

"Yeah," James' sigh was lifeless and empty, "I should ask her."

"Just make sure you take care of yourself, okay? I know it's what your mum and dad would want."

"Yeah, thanks." James didn't give much impression that he was listening any more.

"Alright," Remus stared out the window, trying to think of something else to say. "Just let me know if you need anything. Really."

"Thanks Moony." James rolled over and buried his head under the blanket again.

*****

By spring, the Potter affairs were settled. Sirius had secured, with his uncle's money, a flat for himself in London. James would be keeping his house and living there himself, though he confessed that he hoped to have his mates over often. And more than his mates, he hoped that his girlfriend, newly-appointed thus as she was, could also come once or twice. Her parents were under the impression that she was a fragile flower and not a witch with more hexes under her belt than James Potter, so they weren't keen on dropping their eldest daughter off with a boy living alone. It was still under negotiation.

Lily and James had never officially started dating. That first Hogsmeade after the death of Mr. and Mrs. Potter, though, James hadn't even asked her- nor anyone else- for a date. Instead, he'd simply intended to not go. He wasn't still moping in bed, but he didn't fancy running around downtown Hogsmeade either. He had memories of his parents there, and didn't think he could stand being around so many happy people. Lily barged into the boys' dorm (ignoring a naked Sirius sleeping on top of his covers) to drag James down to Hogsmeade. She stopped on the way to instruct Remus that he had better do the same, and without preamble or formal announcement, the two mourners and their two insistent partners were on a double date.

News of the event traveled swiftly through the castle, and James declared final victory when Lily stopped snapping, "I am not dating Potter" at inquiring students and starting snapping, "What's it to you?" instead.

James thought she was wonderful, beautiful, powerful, spirited, everything he would ever want in a woman. He loved watching her snap at people.

Sirius, who more frequently than not was the bloke being snapped-at, was less amused, but liked seeing James happy.

Summer of sixth year was spent largely in Sirius' London flat, in various muggle London clubs, and trying out muggle herbs and potions. Sirius spent a good four days on the couch by his reckoning, which Remus pointed out repeatedly could not be possible, as a bloke had to piss, didn't he? Sirius merely stated that, clearly, he did not.

Whenever Lily was involved in these japes, she hissed a lot about how irresponsible they were acting, and how very much they still seemed to need the Potters in their lives. They ignored her.

Peter participated about half the time, claiming that the other half of the time his folks wouldn't let him go. Sirius mentioned to James that the excuse sounded odd because Peter's foks had always been very premissive of him in the past. They shrugged it off.

Their summer spent in the fashion of bohemian wizards came to an abrupt end on the seventh of august, however, when Lily arrived at Sirius' flat holding a muggle paper (her parents had much less problem with her hanging about with gay friends in London than with her boyfriend out in the wilderness) at the same time the Prophet Owl delivered its paper. Lily was commenting on an article involving the mysterious deaths of ten muggles and how it sounded like a certain potion they'd learned about. Remus was commenting that Lily tended to see elements of the wizarding world everywhere in the muggle paper and it was probably just a coincidence. Sirius was asking Lily for the classified, as he had it in his head to get a muggle motorbike.

James held up the prophet. Right across the front page read the headline,

Muggle Deaths Attributed to Followers of Lord Voldemort

"Who?" Sirius squinted at the Prophet.

"That's the Dark Lord, you moron," hissed James.

Siruis blanched white "Oh fuck. No."