reaper's ring

Remus finds him first. He very nearly gets injured for it.

James furiously bats the bludger at a random space in Reaper's Ring, and Remus chooses that exact spot to apparate in. James watches in horror as the bludger hurtles in Remus' direction, all other fears momentarily forgotten. Remus recovers quickly and redirects his wand fast and accurate at the bludger. In the same string of fluid movement, he freezes the starkly black ball mid-flight — a solid hole in the tapestry of Reaper's Ring's bleak colors — and says, "I knew I'd find you here."

The bludger drops to the icy ground with a thud.

James realizes then that he's still got his Beater's bat up. His arm falls to his side. "Go away," he says, his heart still beating like mad. From this, from Peter, from everything.

Reaper's Ring is a sizable clearing in the middle of an equally sizable graveyard, a hidden one west of the Potters' manor. No one seems to bury their dead here anymore though; every tombstone and mausoleum remains as dusty, crumbling, and covered in a thick layer of pink-flowering vines as when they found it in their fourth year. In winter, impossibly, it seems even more desolate. Right now it just seems to gloat.

"I think I'll stay," says Remus simply. He then — he just sits there, on the cold ground, cross-legged. "Do you need me to throw things at you?"

James frowns at him.

"For the bat," he explains. "You want to hit things?" When James's eyes slide down to the bludger by instinct, Remus says, "No, except the bludger. I can Conjure stuff — "

"Why are you here?"

"Aren't you curious how I know you're here first?"

"No."

"So why Reaper's Ring?"

"What?"

"Why would you choose somewhere that we know you'd be in?"

James scoffs. "Because I thought my friends would respect my need for privacy right now."

Remus sighs. He pats the ground. "Come sit here, will you? I'm tired of looking up at you."

It's such a bizarrely out of place, nonchalant request, that for a moment James is unsure whether to stay stubborn and irate, or to just do as he's told. After some glaring, he walks over to him. He kicks the bludger on his way. He can stay irate while he does as he's told.

"I don't think it's wise for you to be alone," Remus tells him, once they're both sat on the clearing floor, side by side in the middle of the long dead.

"Do you know what they did?" asks James. He can't say their names.

"Yes."

"So why — how are you so calm about it?"

Remus thinks about it. "I don't know what to do about it yet, but I know freaking out won't help anything."

"I'm not freaking out."

Remus says nothing.

"Fine. Alright. So I'm freaking out. How can you not freak the fuck out? She could die, Moony."

"James, she's not going to die because of that." He said it with so much conviction that James actually eases a little for the first time.

Just a little. "How could he just..."

"It's Peter. If you think really hard about it, there's really nothing else you would expect."

James has thought of that, really hard like he said, in the short lone time his mates have allowed him. But still. "He could have fucking surprised us all for once. I thought he knew that I... Doesn't anything ever mean something to him?"

"I think he knows what Lily is to you," says Remus. "I think everyone knows at this point. It's just — Peter's always afraid. You know that."

James grinds his teeth in exasperation.

"You're mad at Lily, too," states Remus. He's just going to say facts out loud around here now, isn't he? That's just what he's gonna do?

"I am, yeah."

"It's her birthday." Ding. There goes one more.

"I know." He considers saying, so what? as well, but he remembers the boxed cake he left on the table, and then it goes from that to wondering whether Sirius took it to Lily's. To wondering if Lily knows that James knows now, and that, supposing she doesn't yet, if she's mad at him right now for missing her birthday. To wondering if she's alright. It's so fucking unfair.

"It's not even noon yet," Remus interrupts his thoughts.

"I can't go."

"Why?"

"Because I'm angry."

"We're going to calm you down then." Remus sounds so... so businesslike, in all of it, so didactic, but for some reason just his presence here works. James's hurricane thoughts have admittedly abated the moment he sat down here beside him. They have started to find some semblance of — if not quiet — organized noise. A steady buzz instead of the loud clangor of discorded, untuned instruments.

"What am I supposed to do?" asks James.

"What do you want to do?"

"I don't know."

"Yes, you do," says Remus firmly. "What do you want to do?"

"I want to punch Peter some more."

Even this, Remus just takes methodically. He nods. "What else?"

"I want to ask Lily what the hell is wrong with her."

"Right. Anything else?"

"I want to ask you what is wrong with you also."

Remus actually chuckles. "Okay, let's do that one then."

James glares at him.

"Why do you think there's something wrong with me?"

"Because! You're so... calm."

Remus shrugs. "I know we'd win."

James feels the fear surge up inside him, and he bites his lip to quell it. "You don't even play."

"I do."

"You don't even play well."

"You do," says Remus, then sighs. "Well, you did, anyway."

The fear tries again, rises up and bangs against the walls, and James reads the names on the nearest graves to distract him. "I don't think I could... Do you think she did that for me? Isn't that unfair? Don't you think she's gone too far?"

Remus doesn't have an immediate answer for once. He leans back on his arms and stares up at the sky. "The last time we were at the manor, you snuck out to the pitch," he says. James stills and looks at him. "You went to the broom shed. You tried."

"You saw."

"So did Lily."

James forgets to breathe for a second. "She was..."

"I couldn't sleep." Remus is still not looking at him while he starts to explain, but James has a feeling he's not doing it for himself. He's averting his gaze because — because he knows that James needs to process this with some extent of privacy. He's giving James breathing room. "I was just gonna go to your study, to read, and you — I saw you slip out the door. I... Prongs, it wasn't my first time to see you go out in the middle of the night. Not even the second time. I knew you were going down to the pitch. I'd gone after you before, and... I'm sorry." This, he seeks James's eyes for.

James fought to swallow the lump in his throat. "What are you apologizing for?" he asks quietly.

"Intruding, I guess."

"You never even let me know you were there."

"I am now."

"It's... It's fine. It's okay."

Remus watches the sky again. "I wasn't going to follow you that night, but I caught Lily out shortly after, and I was afraid she would... well, I don't know, really. But I knew you wouldn't want anyone to see..."

He did. James didn't want anyone to see. James doesn't want anyone to ever see —

"So I stopped her." Remus also pauses the tale then, thoughtful. "I underestimated Lily, James. That was dumb of me, clearly. I mean, sure, she's always been great, she's... She's unbelievably and genuinely kind, and she's so easy to hang out with, and she's... I guess I just never really looked at her as something any more than a good friend who's in on the secret, at first. Just someone that I have to worry about. She was just another girlfriend of yours."

"Any more than a friend... You like her? Lily?" asks James, surprised and nervous, not expecting the conversation to head this way.

"No, you idiot," says Remus, making a face. "You're going about it all wrong. I just meant — I thought she was just another Jung girl who happened to know more secrets. I didn't think... I mean, she's well one of us now, isn't she? She's not Jeanne. She's not another anyone. Even Sirius thinks so."

This is the point where James realizes he's relatively calmed down from the earlier events of the morning. He doesn't say anything, afraid he'd ruin it.

"She wasn't going to talk to you," Remus continues, of the night at the manor. "That night, when we went after you, I was worried she would march up to you and... I don't know. Do something that meant well but could upset you. But she was just... She just wanted to make sure you were okay. She knew you wouldn't want anyone to... Anyway, we both went after you, and she wouldn't come back in. She just watched you all night. She never said she wanted to go to you and talk, or ask you back in, or... She just stayed there. She was awake when I dozed off, she was awake when I woke up. We headed back a little before sunrise. I expected her to say something then — again, when you were serving breakfast — but she didn't."

When James doesn't reply, Remus goes on, "She asked me if I was good in Physics." He prematurely punctuated that sentence with a disbelieving chuckle. "That same night, while we watched you. And then she asked me what would happen if she flew up a thousand miles above you and just jumped off the broom."

"She what?"

"Crazy, isn't it," remarks Remus. "I think she was wondering out loud more than actually asking me."

"What... Why would she ask that? Why would she think that?"

"So you would wake up," says Remus. "At least, I suppose that's what she hoped. That Physics and adrenaline... She was wondering if it would take her jumping off a broom with you underneath so close to the shed, on a Quidditch pitch, for you to... if that scenario would make you forget everything else in a split-second and just — just grab your broom and fly. Or remember everything. Whichever brings you back."

Why don't you fly anymore? He hears her voice clear in his head, and if her incessant curiosity then aggravated him, now her (apparently more solid than he ever knew) insistence starts to seriously baffle him. "Fly. She wants to make me fly."

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Only she can tell you that." He said it like he knew why, he just can't say. But then this is often how Remus speaks.

James's hand, the one Remus can't see, curls into a fist. "So she does this? She just bets her fucking life so I could play Quidditch again? In what world does that make sense?"

"In this one."

"You know damn well it doesn't."

For a moment Remus seems close to telling him something, an explanation that would put all the absurd pieces together, but holds back in the end. "Look, I didn't tell you all that as an explanation for what she did. I told you that because... because she could have done it that night, walked up to you and confronted you about it, but she didn't. I expected her to do so many things, James, to say all the things Peter and I said when you... when we didn't understand. But she didn't. She cares about you. She understands in a way we took so long to do. Almost in the same way that Sirius does."

"Clearly she doesn't," insists James obstinately. "She didn't do it that night, but she did it now. This is her jumping off the broom. This is her confronting me about it. Forcing me to fly."

"You have to talk to her," says Remus. "Not even just because it's her birthday, alright? You just have to talk to her. I know what she did seems selfish, but it..." He sighs. "I can't explain it to you."

"Do you know something, Moony?" asks James, because after all that, James now thinks he's not talking like that just because he talks like that. He's talking like that because he knows something.

Remus won't look at him, and this time, it's for himself. "Just talk to her."

"What do you know?"

"More than I want to," he says, frustratingly cryptic. "I know, for sure, that Lily cares about you. She really does. I don't believe for a second that she would do anything to purposely hurt you."

"Purposely," echoes James. "She's being stupid then."

"We've all done stupid things."

"Well, I don't want to be on the brunt of her share of stupid things, alright? That's just... that's just unfair, and selfish, and — "

"James," Remus cuts in. Ever quiet, ever firm, as in all the times he had to interrupt him with his name. Never tired. Just... sad, sometimes. Like now. "You'd keep being in the dark if you just stay here in Reaper's Ring. Go talk to her."

James doesn't speak any more for a long time. Remus doesn't either.

The sky is bright in that gray, blinding, wintry way when James looks up and blinks fast at the unmoving clouds. "Sirius sent you, didn't he?"

"Hmm. Partly."

"Why couldn't he come himself?"

"Because he can't lie to you." James wishes the answers all came to him as quickly and easily as they do to Remus. "It's like he physically cannot keep things from you when you're involved. Hell, even when you're not involved, really."

"So he shouldn't."

"We don't share secrets that aren't ours."

James agrees, in spite of himself. He doesn't tell Remus that though. He figures after the events of today (and it's not even noon yet), he's allowed a moment of self-aware immaturity.

"You were no help, you know," he tells Remus, out of spite, relishing the pettiness of it.

Remus laughs. It wasn't really a happy laugh, but it wasn't sardonic either. He truly found that amusing, just within the realm of unpleasant events. "You're going to talk to her now, though. That's all I came for."

James raises an eyebrow. "How can you be so sure?"

Remus leaps gracefully to his feet. "Because you're not angry anymore," he says, without an ounce of doubt. He summons the bludger to him, and he staggers a little as he catches its weight with one hand. "Leave the bat. See you."

And then he's gone.