Remus was sitting on his bed. Sirius went to join him.
"I still don't get why our stairs don't do the slidey thing," Sirius said, by way of making conversation. Remus looked interestedly at James, whose knuckles were white from clenching them so hard. Lily stayed by the door.
"Who's that?" Remus nodded in her direction. She waved and smiled as Sirius said,
"Lily Evans."
"Sirius's dealer." James spat the words, and Remus lifted his eyebrows.
"Really. That's nice."
"Sirius has been on cocaine and heroin for the past five years."
"Okay." Remus wasn't responding. James looked at him.
"Do you not know what that is?"
Remus made an impatient noise. "Of course I do, Prongs. Everyone does it."
"I don't. You don't. Peter doesn't."
"I have. Peter has. If you haven't I don't see how you could have missed it, buddy, because this is the seventies, everyone –"
James grabbed his hair with his hands. "You don't care, do you? You don't give a shit if your friend is collapsing in the halls, making a complete arse of himself –"
"That's nothing new," Remus said with a laugh. James seized a chair and flung it across the room. Remus got up; Lily moved forward to repair it.
"James, what the fuck –"
"You don't care that your best friend is a junkie! How can you not care? Do you want him to die?"
"He will anyway, sooner or later," Remus said. "If it's not this it'll be AIDs, or what, old age? Get over it."
James tried to calm down a little. "You're out of control, Sirius, you need to –"
"Fuck this," Sirius said. "I don't need anything. Get off my fucking bed, Remus."
"It's my bed and I'm not on it."
Sirius shut the curtains. James yanked them back open. "I don't think so."
"Yeah, well, I do."
"We're dealing with this, Sirius. Right now."
"Do whatever the hell you want, I don't care. I'm going to bed."
"Remus, why is he doing this? Is it his parents? I thought we got him out of there. I thought he was going to be all right."
Remus shrugged. "He might have tried to get off, I don't know. Why bother, though?"
"You don't get it, James," Lily said, putting a hand on his arm. "You've got a nice life, as far as they go. I don't know what his problem is –" She gestured to Remus "- but I'm on the streets, Sirius has no one, everyone's got plenty of excuses. You'll be fine, and you'd do better to ignore it."
James walked away.
Sirius was lying awake half an hour later when Lily crawled in next to him and rested her head on his arm, eyes fixed on his face. He didn't take his gaze from the canopy of the bed. She touched the bone over his eye.
"Are you alright?"
"Yeah."
"Will he get over it?"
Silence.
"Do you want to go get stoned?"
"Yeah."
"Okay."
"Let's go, then."
"James is still out. He'll know when he gets back."
"He never noticed before," Sirius said. "Where's Pete?"
"Sleeping."
"Is Remus here?"
"Yeah."
"Will he come?"
"I don't know. I'll ask."
Lily slipped out and went to stand over Remus. She touched his face, and he opened his eyes. "We're going out. Do you want to come?"
"No, I'll hang around here. Have a good time."
"I don't imagine we will."
"Have a good time," he said.