December 10th, 1977: James Potter

The upshot to Emmeline being at St. Mungo's is that James's mum is a Healer there, or at least was one before she came down with spattergroit, and knows her way around. When James owls her after breakfast asking about psych floor visitation rules, she owls back later that day. He feels like kind of an arse for asking his mum to help him do a favor for somebody else when she's basically on her deathbed, but she doesn't seem to mind, laying out everything he needs to know and asking him to say hello to the other Gryffindors for her.

The deal is this: no one is allowed to enter the floor who isn't either a patient or an employee, but there are fireplaces available for Flooing. The patients aren't allowed to travel off the floor, and technically nobody can Floo their entire body onto the floor, but you can send just your head over during pre-approved times on evenings and weekends and request to speak with a patient. Floo visits are limited to thirty minutes each. Each visitor can only Floo their head in one time each day, and each patient can only have two Floo visitors each day. Patients also have to specify the names of people who are allowed to Floo them; if someone Floos in who isn't on the list, they'll be turned away and told that the hospital can neither confirm nor deny that the patient is in St. Mungo's.

It's visiting time right now, so James tracks down Peter at the other end of the common room and tells him what's up. He knows that everyone will want to visit, but they don't want to overwhelm her or clog up the fireplaces for the other patients. He figures that Peter is the most reasonable person to ask to speak to Emmeline first—he'll want to see her the most, and she'll be the most comfortable around him.

James always thought of Emmeline as being dependent on Peter instead of the other way around, but even though Peter has been spending plenty of time with the other Gryffindor seventh years since Em got sent to St. Mungo's, he looks to James like he's sort of—incomplete, or something, without her there. Of course, having Em gone means that Peter is more likely to spend time with James, Sirius, and Remus all together like old times. James knows that Sirius and Marlene being on the outs has been interfering with James's ability to spend time with the other blokes, but even though it's meant leaving Lily alone with Marlene some of the time, it's really nice hanging out just the four of them, even though the dynamic has shifted with… whatever is going on between Sirius and Remus.

Not that he feels like he can't be apart from Lily enough to spend time with his other friends. He's fine without her, and he knows she's fine without him. He's just—in the habit, he supposes, of being with her constantly, so it's an adjustment for him to change that. It's probably for the best that he does, really: Marlene and Sirius were horrifically codependent, and look what happened to them.

Honestly, it worries James a little to think that Sirius might be about to repeat with Remus the mistakes he made when he was with Marlene—primarily, letting another person completely hijack your attention and burying your problems underneath of sex and expressions of love. Things were really bad between Sirius and Marlene for a long time there, and then they were abruptly a thousand times better, and James doesn't believe for a second that them dating monogamously and spending all their time together made right what had been wrong.

And for that matter, James doesn't want to see Sirius jump into anything while he's still working through what he feels about Marlene. Out of fairness to Remus, Sirius ought to wait—but James knows he's not going to wait, and that's the whole problem.

He knows he should probably be telling this to Sirius, but he doesn't really know how to bring it up. Part of him doesn't want to be the guy who spoils Sirius's happiness by bringing him crashing down to reality, and another part of him—okay, if he's being honest, most of him—doesn't know how to talk to Sirius about boys, like, in that way. With Remus, James supposes it kind of makes sense that he'd end up being gay—it was still unexpected, but it made sense, with Remus never talking about girls in that way in any of James's memories. But Sirius James would have sworn on his life was one-hundred-percent straight and one-hundred-percent platonically interested in Remus.

That's the other thing: why did Sirius have to get an almost-boyfriend who was another Marauder? Is their whole group dynamic going to get thrown off if Sirius and Remus start dating?

He doesn't want to be a prejudiced arse, but he's afraid that those prejudices will creep in if he tries to talk to Sirius about his otherwise legitimate concerns, so James just—isn't bringing it up. Sirius and Remus are adults and can make their own decisions, and it's none of James's business anyway. Right?

Peter gets a mouthful of ash as he pulls out of the Gryffindor common room fireplace thirty minutes later. "She's okay," he says when James waves him over and Peter pulls up a chair by him, Sirius, and Remus. "It's not great over there, and they took away her wand, but as long as she doesn't have any active suicidal crises in there, it sounds like she can mostly fly under the radar. It's when people start having delusions or start trying to hurt themselves or somebody else that they start stripping your rights away, and Em's in control of herself enough not to do that. Even if she wants to hurt herself, I don't think she will, given the consequences in there."

Remus breathes a sigh of relief, and Sirius says awkwardly, "I should go visit her. I…"

"Lily wanted a turn next," says Peter, "and then Em will be maxed out for the night. Tomorrow, though, sure. I told her to put all of us on her Floo list."

Given how Sirius and Em used to be so close, but aren't anymore, James isn't surprised that Sirius seems to be feeling some degree of responsibility for what happened to her. Still, he thinks Sirius is being unnecessarily hard on himself. He didn't make Emmeline slit her wrists, and he didn't treat her with any cruelty that James can tell to drive her to it.

"This isn't your fault, Padfoot," Remus says, clearly thinking what James is thinking.

"Yes, it is," he says, anguished. "When she needed me, I turned her away."

"You never turned her away," says James, frowning. "It was her who stopped being mates with you in fourth year, remember? Because I can certainly remember how upset you were every night over one of your best mates suddenly being gone from your life."

"Yeah, because my cousin killed her parents and she thought it was my fault. She came to me and tried to make it right last year, and I just blew her off like I didn't care anymore."

Pause, rewind, pause again. What?

Remus interrupts, "Your cousin killed—?"

"Bellatrix," says Sirius disgustedly. "For the Death Eaters. She knew we were close and wanted to get to me by destroying someone I loved, apparently. Only it didn't exactly work as planned because Em didn't tell anybody until, you know, sixth year, when she admitted it to Peter and me. He reacted well. I didn't."

James's eyes flick from Sirius to Peter and back again. So this is the cement in the relationship Peter forged with Emmeline last year.

"We were almost… back in fourth year, we… not much really ever happened, because Bellatrix happened before it went too far. Of course I had to reject her when she wanted to pick things back up last year—I wasn't going to cheat on Marlene—but I could have let her back in as a friend, and I didn't. So, yeah, this is my fault, because Em has been drowning in grief for the last three years, and when she finally tried to tell me, I pushed her away."

"You couldn't have known," James reasons. "What happened to Em is not a normal reaction to grief. Most people don't… you know. There was no way you could have known what she was planning to do and stopped her."

But he doesn't think Sirius believes him.

Lily comes up to join James when she, too, reemerges from the fireplace. He kisses her lips and settles his hands on her waist. "Patrol time?" says Lily, and James nods.

One of the nice parts of being Head Boy and Girl is that they get to schedule all their corridor patrols together and then hang out on the job. They usually take the late-night shifts after curfew when everybody's supposed to be in their common room or dormitory, so they rarely bump into anybody and get to just talk and enjoy each other's company. Tonight is no different: the only other being that they encounter is Mrs. Norris.

"How's Em?" James asks her. "Peter said it's not so bad in there, but it can't be good."

"Yeah, I mean, she's definitely shaken up. I kind of get the impression that she's in a headspace where—she's wishing she had succeeded in… what she tried to do, but she's scared to try anything while she's in there because she's scared of the repercussions." She shakes her head, hair falling from behind her ears to cover her eyes. "I can't believe I'm having a civil conversation about my friend's suicide attempt. I mean, god… how did this become our lives?"

"Nobody saw it coming. Not even Peter knew how bad it was—she did that good a job of covering her tracks. Nobody should feel accountable for this."

"Maybe not, but we should all feel responsible for helping bring Em back from this," Lily stresses. "If everyone could accept me because I lost my best friend, then we all should be able to accept her now that she's… having such a hard time."

James nods. He feels like they keep using euphemisms to talk about what happened, like if they don't say the words it won't be real—or, perhaps, that it will minimize the pain Emmeline must have been in to do such a thing.

"Hey—unrelated question," says Lily, and James jumps on the change of subject. "How are your parents doing? Are you going home for the holiday when classes finish next week, or are you coming back to the flat with me and Sirius?"

"I'm going to your place, if that's all right. Mum and Dad are—not great. Dad doesn't think Mum has much longer, and I don't think he does, either, even with the Healer they hired taking care of them round the clock. They're not making any progress—the boils just keep getting worse…"

Lily stops walking and picks up both of his hands, squeezing them. "I'm sorry. I'm sorry that this is happening to you and your family, James."

He is, too. He almost lost Emmeline without having the chance to say goodbye, and now, he's losing his parents in slow motion and has no idea what to tell them in the owls he sends every week. He tells them how classes are going, how Lily and Sirius are doing, that he loves them, but it feels like just writing the words on parchment in spiky ink isn't enough to really make them understand that—he's going to be destroyed when they die, and he's terrified that it's going to happen at any moment.

Emmeline was right about one thing: maybe it is easier to deal with grief by escaping it the hard way. James isn't saying he's going to follow in her footsteps, but—well, he can see how she could be tempted.

xx

END OF PART NINE