July 17, 1980

Calandra flipped through a photo album on the table by the couch. She'd seen many of the pictures before; photos of James in school. She was even in some of them. She flipped through pictures of him and his friends playing quidditch and flying their brooms over water.

The pages grew less organized as Calandra flipped through the book. Polaroids were stuck to the page haphazardly, little scribbles written along their white bottoms. Calandra peered down at the page, watching as Remus and James herded cats toward a sleeping Sirius.

She remembered these photos. It was the end of fourth year and Peter had just gotten a new camera. He took photos of everything. Mary had gone to find her cat and James overheard Alice tell her to check the seventh floor because she'd seen the elves feeding a bunch of the felines up there. A few bits of salmon later, and James and Remus had coaxed about twelve cats to perch on and around Sirius.

Calandra smiled at the memory and flipped the page. She looked up, startled when she heard a noise coming from the fireplace. She grabbed her wand and sat silently, waiting for more noise. Suddenly, the fireplace glowed green and flames filled the space.

James stumbled through the fireplace and collapsed on the sofa next to Calandra. His arm was bloody, and he cradled his wrist close to his body. His face was scratched all to pieces, his glasses cracked, and his eye swollen and black.

"Thank Merlin you're still here." He said. "Pads said you'd be here for a bit; he's with Lily right now."

Calandra gingerly pushed his hair back from his face and examined the scratches.

"What on earth did you get into, James?" she asked, waving her wand over his face to cleanse and close the scrapes.

"Death Eater trap." He said with a grimace as she leaned him back on the sofa.

Calandra vanished his jumper and peered at his arm. It had a pretty decent gash, but it wasn't anything she couldn't fix. She summoned the box of healing supplies she knew the Potter's kept in the kitchen. She dug around in it until she found murtlap essence and rolls of bandages. Calandra set to work, closing the wound while she soaked the bandages in the healing liquid.

"I was meeting with Diggle in Hogsmeade." James said as she healed the worst of his injuries. "I bought a great lot of invisibility cloaks for Moody to pass out. We were supposed to meet at the edge of the village, near the apparition point, but a few Death Eaters had gotten there first. They cursed the area around the apparition point to explode when someone without a dark mark approached."

Calandra shook her head, horrified.

"We're lucky no one really uses that apparition point. The one beside Rosemerta's is much more convenient."

"The apparition points are a waste of time if you ask me." Calandra said. "If Death Eater's show up everyone funnels to one spot. It makes no sense."

"Yeah, well the Ministry only listens to so much." He said. "Maybe now they'll give up on the idea."

He gestured to his injuries.

"Oh, James." Calandra said. "I'm so sorry."

He waved her off.

"You're making me right as rain. Diggle is checking the rest of them." He shrugged. "No real harm done; just a few scrapes. I've had worse than this at school."

Calandra smiled and shook her head, wrapping a bandage around his arm.

"I remember." She said.

"You taking a little stroll down memory lane?" he nodded towards the open photo album.

"Yeah." She said. "You don't mind, do you? It was already laid out on the table."

James rolled his eyes.

"You're in half the pictures, Cals. I don't care if you go looking through them. It's not as if I'd keep naughty pictures out on the coffee table."

He glanced at the page she'd been looking at.

"You could've jumped ahead a bit, though. I'm much better about two years down the road."

He winked at her and she laughed.

"Do you mean your looks or your personality?" she asked.

"Ouch!" James laughed, then shook his head. "Both. I was a right prat there for a bit."

Calandra watched as regret flickered briefly across his eyes.

"What changed?" she asked.

"Sometimes someone makes you want to be a better person." He said wistfully. "It just takes something to open your eyes."

"What did he do?" Calandra asked.

James's eyes shot up to hers. He studied her, a bemused expression on his face.

"I know it was him." She said. "What did he do?"

James shook his head and sat the picture down on the couch.

"He left home." He said. "Or, he came home, is how I always think of it."

Calandra nodded and continued wrapping the material around his elbow, waiting for him to continue.

"You saw him that day." James said. "You saw the look in his eyes. Well, it was ten times worse when he first showed up. It was like he was dead inside."

James shook his head and frowned at the floor.

"I've seen him look a lot of different ways, Cals, but never like that. It was like he was a shell; like something had sucked all the life right out of him."

James gave her a rueful smile.

"He didn't need a prat of a mate to get him into trouble and help him break the rules. He needed a brother."

Calandra watched his face soften and felt some of the tension leave his body.

"Someone to be there. Someone to show him kindness and compassion and everything he never got."

Calandra waved her wand over the bandage on James's arm and sat back on the couch. She rolled up his other shirt sleeve and set to work healing his hand.

"I always wanted a brother." James said wistfully. "I kind of considered Sirius my brother since about second year, but never really said it out loud. He had Regulus. But when he left, I knew. I knew that whatever had happened, had been enough to make him leave him. I knew he'd lost Regulus. And I knew that he needed a brother; one who would always have his back. One who would always be there."

"We still got into scrapes, but that was the start of it. I started thinking about who I was. Wondering if I was doing good enough to have him call me his brother."

He laughed to himself.

"Mum sat me down that Christmas and told me what it really meant to be an older brother. Even though Sirius was older than me. Told me it was a privilege I shouldn't take lightly."

He met her gaze.

"And I didn't."

Calandra smiled at him and squeezed his good hand.

"How'd you know?" James looked at her curiously. "Everyone thinks it was Lily. Even Remus and Pete."

Calandra raised her eyebrows.

"If it was because of her you'd have stopped what you were doing that day by the lake." Calandra said.

James bit his lip and looked a bit shamefaced.

"But it's more than that." She said, softly. "Sirius loves you more than anything on the face of this earth. More than his parents, more than Remus or Peter, more than me."

James opened his mouth to object, but Calandra held up a hand.

"He does." She said. "I'm perfectly fine with that. I know I'm a close second. And if you're honest with yourself you probably love him a little bit more than you love Lily."

"It's just different." James said. "I don't want to shag Pads."

"You should." Calandra laughed. "He's a great shag."

"He loves you, Cals." James said intently. "He does. He loves you so much."

"I know, James." Calandra said. "I know that. That's what I was getting to before. Sirius loves you, more than anything, and I know you feel the same about him. He might have left on his own, but he came to you a bit shattered and cast out and you opened up yourself and said take what you want. Not just your home, but you. You offered him safety and love and kindness."

Calandra swallowed and continued.

"He might've gone back." She said. "He might've gone back. If you had not welcomed him in, shown him what it truly means to be a family, he might've gone right back. But he didn't. You both grew up a bit and started improving yourselves. You can pretend like you did it for Lily. Sirius can pretend like he did it to distance himself from his family."

"But you did it for each other. You both wanted to be the brother that the other deserved."

"When I look at the two of you." Calandra eyes focused on something in the distance. "I count myself so lucky that I get some of that. I know he loves me, but even if he only loved me half as much as he cares about you it would be more than I deserve."

"You're wrong." James said softly. "Not about me loving Pads or him loving me or any of that mush."

He reached over and lay a hand on her knee.

"He loves you just as much. That day in the alley he begged me to stay to help look for you. Every other time he's told me to go on. He's stepped in front of Death Eaters for me before and I know he'll probably do it again. But that day, he didn't tell me to leave. He asked me to stay. To find you."

Calandra felt her heart thud loudly in her chest. She swallowed the lump that formed in her throat and patted James's hand.

"You're a great brother, James." She said.

He smiled a devastating smile at her, and Calandra found herself wondering, not for the first time, what on earth she'd done to deserve the presence of James Potter in her life.


July 24, 1980

Callie, Frank is probably going to write to you and tell you I'm crazy. I'm not crazy. I AM NOT CRAZY.

Why does he think you're crazy?

We just had a huge row over whether we should get a cat or a dog. I cried on him, Callie. I don't even want a pet. Neither does he. What is wrong with us?

Nothing, Alice. You're pregnant. It's normal to be emotional.

No one ever said it would be like this. I'm sick all the time, I have to pee all the time, I fall asleep in the middle of meetings.

You'll have to tough it out for a few more months. Come on! Buck up and show this kid whose boss. Babies can smell weakness, Alice!

He gets this from you.

Who?

The baby.

He? You know it's a boy!? When did you find out?

Just this week. We went to the muggle doctor and they showed us a scan. Frank read about it in a book.

I'm so excited! Was it Babies: Everything you Need To Know? I read about it, too. I was going to tell you at dinner.

Why are you reading that-

Callie! Are you pregnant?

No! Of course not! Unlike some, I take a potion and use a contraceptive charm faithfully. I was reading it because my best friend is having a baby, of course.

I almost peed on myself Callie. You can't do stuff like that. I have to go to the loo. Come over around seven. XOXOXOXO

XOXOXOXOXO


July 28, 1980

Calandra cleared her throat and ran a hand along her neck. Her throat was tingling again. She sighed and leant against the counter. It had been a while since this happened. She'd hoped that whatever it was, had just been a fluke. But apparently it wasn't just a fluke.

She set her tea down and reached for a bottle of tequila. Alcohol usually numbed it. She tilted the glass up and grimaced as the familiar heat worked its way down her chest. She had no idea what to do about the feeling. She was sure it had something to do with the Siren in her, but she didn't have a clue what it meant. It did no good to let her mind linger on it now. There were more important matters at hand.

She swigged another mouthful down and looked over the items spread out on the table. Occamy skin lay folded over on itself, bottles of Acromantula venom held down patterns of cloaks. Bundles of thunderbird feathers and bits of unicorn horn lay with Demiguise fur and dragon scales.

She and Sirius had been working on magical cloaks for the Order of the Phoenix. They'd soaked Occamy skin in a mixture of crushed unicorn horn and dragon's blood and were testing out the effects on the cloaks ability to shrink or expand to fit the wearer. The cloaks they'd made with the thunderbird feathers proved very useful. They hummed and vibrated when the wearer was in danger, but the humming was too loud to use stealthily. They were working on silencing charms for all of them.

Calandra sat down and ran her hands through her hair. She pulled a parchment forward and read over the notes they'd made. The tingling in her throat persisted and she tried to wash it away with the alcohol. She pulled the latest copy of Magical Beasts out of the box of books on the floor and flipped through it. Calandra read until the words started swimming together on the page. She took another drink and laid her head down on the table.

Sirius found her like that when he came home. Hair fanned out over the magical materials; book still propped up in front of her. He shrugged his jacket off and picked Calandra up. She woke just enough to wrap her arms around his neck as he carried her to bed, then was asleep again almost before her head hit the pillow.