"I fucked up," Sirius says, his voice cracking. "James, I fucked up really bad."
He's shaking—his hands, his legs, the long black hairs that frame his lean face. James, sensing that it's not the time, has to resist the urge to cradle those cheeks in his hands. "What happened? Talk to me. I'm sure whatever you did—"
"No, you don't get it. It's Snape—he—and Remus—"
The corridor is deserted other than the two of them, but James still lowers his voice. "What are you talking about? It's a full moon. Remus isn't talking to anybody right now."
"That's exactly my point. I sent Snape—I told him—he's going down there right now, James. He's going down, and he's going to find that Remus—"
James wasn't ready to hear this. James so wasn't ready to hear this that it takes a full few seconds for what Sirius has just told him to register. Here he was, his brain full of pranks and charms and the Animagus chants he's been doing twice a day, and, meanwhile, underneath the Whomping Willow, an emergency has been brewing. It's been brewing all this time, and James is not prepared.
His first instinct is horror that Sirius would use Remus like that—but then he looks into Sirius's face, sees the fear lining his creases in his forehead and the downturn of his full lips, and James realizes that Remus and Snape aren't the only ones who need saving tonight.
"Have you still got the Map on you?" he asks Sirius urgently.
"Yeah, that's how I found you, but—"
"Good. Use it to find Dumbledore—tell him what's happened. I'm going to fix this, Sirius, I swear."
"You don't—but—how—?"
James is already taking off his school bag and thrusting it into Sirius's chest. "I'm going after him," he says simply.
Sirius's jaw drops. "You can't—Remus is going to tear you both apart—"
"Get Dumbledore," James insists. "I have to go. There's no time."
"James—"
He's already started to sprint down the corridor in the direction of the nearest stairwell, but at the sound of his name, he pauses. Sirius's cheeks are tinged pink; he's clutching James's bag like a lifeline in his hands. "What?"
Sirius doesn't say.
"What?"
"You're the most important thing in the world to me." Sirius's voice is cracking again. "Don't get killed."
James nods once and is gone.
xx
Sirius gets docked a hundred house points, kicked off the Quidditch team, and given weekly detentions for the rest of the school year. The consequences will be worse, of course, if Snape doesn't wake.
It's a long night in the Hospital Wing. It's raining. At the first crack of thunder, James's hand flies to his robe pocket—but the phials that are going to turn them into Animagi are light-years away in Gryffindor Tower, and he and Sirius are rooted to Snape's bedside, unable to move.
They look at each other.
Snape doesn't wake until half an hour past daylight. When Sirius and James return to the dormitory, they find Peter sitting upright in bed with one empty phial and two whose contents are not clear like they were, not even blood red like they must have been last night, but black.
xx
"We're going to have to stay at Hogwarts for Easter."
To say this, James has to maneuver his Mandrake leaf from the roof of his mouth into the space between his teeth and his left cheek. Two more weeks, he reminds himself, and this thing will be out of his mouth, and he and Sirius will be one step closer to helping Remus.
Peter, of course, is already there: he drank his potion right on time in February, the night of the lightning storm, the full moon before last, when Sirius almost got Snape killed. James and Sirius have stayed up late many a night asking Peter to describe what it feels like to transform. Uncomfortable, he says every time. My clothes literally fused to my body. Felt really stiff and weird. Take it from me: it's better to do it naked.
After the last time James spent a month with a Mandrake leaf in his mouth, he'd thought by the end of it that it was a good thing it was finally coming out because he couldn't stand one more minute tasting the damn thing—and now he's got to do it all over again, all because he and Sirius couldn't get to their phials when it was time.
"Man, we already stayed here over Christmas because of these stupid things," sighs Sirius. "Are you sure we can't just—?"
"Do our chants at home?" James reminds him, "We leave this castle, and there's a Trace on us that will tell the Ministry that people in our households are doing Animagus chants without having registered for them. We'll be worse than expelled: we'll be shipped off to Azkaban."
"I'm going to be in hot water with my mum and dad if I go the entire school year without seeing them," Sirius groans. "Believe me, I'm not exactly chomping at the bit to go back, but—"
"You know," says Remus, "you don't have to stay here. You don't have to go through with any of this."
"Shut up, Remus," James and Sirius chorus in unison. Remus rolls his eyes and throws up his hands.
"If you're doing this, you're going to have to commit to it now," Peter says. "McGonagall's sending around the list for Easter break signups tomorrow."
James looks at Remus again and sighs. The next full moon, when they can take these stupid leaves out of their mouths and resume their chants, will take place only two days before the Hogwarts Express takes the student body back to London. Unless they get incredibly lucky with the weather, it's pretty unlikely that there will be another lightning storm in time for them to become Animagi before the start of break.
"And there's no way we can convince the two of you to stay here with us?" asks Sirius.
"Sorry, mate," says Peter. "You know how overprotective Remus's parents are, and mine already aren't very happy with me for having stayed over Christmas the first time around."
James and Sirius look at each other. "Well," says Sirius, "it looks like it's just going to be you and me."
"Yeah," says James, "a whole week without supervision."
He looks away quickly.
xx
By now, James has come to accept that his massive crush on his best friend isn't going away. It's just a part of life, like the sky being blue or Lily Evans being hot or Snape being a greaseball. He's not in love with Sirius or anything, but when he thinks about what it might be like to come home to Sirius at the end of the day for the rest of his life, not just when they're at school—to share a bedroom without Peter or Remus around—to fall into bed with him and never come back out—all it is is a fantasy, sure, but it's a nice one, that's all James is saying.
He covers it up with complaints, but, the more time passes, the more James is getting unreasonably excited about the prospect of a whole week alone with Sirius. Hell, they're going to have an entire castle at their disposal with no lessons or homework or other people to get in their way. The only trouble is that Sirius can't know how excited James is because, if he reveals it, he runs the risk of revealing why, and that… cannot happen. It would ruin everything, James is sure of it.
Still—a whole week to themselves. Easter couldn't come sooner.
xx
The first day of break is just about as glorious as James has been hoping. They say goodbye to Peter and Remus, then spend the rest of the day in Hogsmeade after sneaking out through one of the secret passageways out of the castle. By ten o'clock that night, James is stuffed full not just from dinner but from all the sweets they scored at Honeydukes and subsequently have spent the last two hours devouring, but the food isn't the only reason he feels so satisfied.
"I ate so much I could puke," he declares, bounding onto Sirius's bed and rolling onto his stomach.
"Gross. Don't do that here. Get your own bed if you're going to hurl."
"But this is so much more comfortable," James argues.
It's not, really. Their mattresses have the same thickness, the same sag; their pillows are equally feathery; their sheets are equally soft. If anything, it's a bit less comfortable sharing with Sirius, since these beds weren't really built big enough to hold two teenage boys who both hit their growth spurts this past year.
Sirius, however, doesn't point any of this out. He just says through a grin that James can hear in his voice, "Well, then, get under already. You're pulling the blankets off of me."
Hastily, James complies. And then—then—Sirius rejiggers the sheets, and when he allows them to settle, he lies back on his side with his hands resting in front of his chest just millimeters away from James's shoulder.
Sirius is just a touch away, James thinks. He's just a touch away, and if James would only pick himself up and shift a little to his right—
He doesn't, not even when he hears Sirius start to snore. He's in Sirius's bed, and his best friend's hands are almost touching his shoulder, and that's enough.
For now.
xx
By the second day, they realize that it's a lot less fun to go around the castle without anybody around for them to dodge. There's no risk of getting caught; there's no need to sneak around; there's nobody to eavesdrop on and nothing to do. "I'm bored," Sirius announces around four o'clock when they've eaten their way through the last of their Honeydukes stash and are sitting in the otherwise empty Gryffindor Tower with nothing to do.
"We could go flying?" James suggests.
A little of the haughtiness seeps out of Sirius's face. "I'm not supposed to. Dumbledore said—"
"Dumbledore said you're off the Quidditch team, not that you're never allowed to set foot on a broomstick again."
Sirius deliberates with himself for a second. "Okay," he finally says. "One hour."
An hour turns into two. James is a Chaser and Sirius is—or was—a Keeper, but it gets old after a while just hovering by the goalposts practicing their respective positions with the Quaffle, so they eventually put it away and break out the Bludgers and Snitch. James is no good at Seeking—his vision is too bad—but he gets out a bat and whacks the Bludgers out of their way while Sirius scans the pitch for flashes of gold.
They get too comfortable—too cocky—and when they're coming up on three hours out on the pitch, James swings and misses and takes a Bludger to the side of his head. "OW!"
"James?"
Sirius is doing figure eights in the air below him, but at the sound of James shouting, he immediately flies up to meet him—but the Bludger is too quick for him, too, and collides with his bicep. Sirius goes spinning out into the air. "We should—down—" James hollers, wincing in pain, leaning forward and goading his broomstick into a dive.
They end up in a heap on the ground; the Bludger gets another good hit in, this time to James's shoulder, before Sirius manages to wrest it back into its crate. "You okay?" Sirius grunts.
Everything is spinning. James rolls from his back onto his stomach and promptly vomits all over the grass.
"Too bad Pomfrey isn't here," mutters Sirius. "I'd say you've probably got a concussion, mate."
"Great," James mutters, "just great…"
Sirius fishes out his wand and casts a couple of quick Episkeys. The pain in James's shoulder lessens, and he can see the bone in Sirius's arm straighten itself back out again, but the charms don't do anything about James's head.
"We should get back to the dormitory. Can you walk, James?"
It's slow going, migrating from the Quidditch pitch all the way back to Gryffindor Tower. James isn't in pain anymore, exactly, but he still leans heavily on Sirius all the way across the grounds and into the castle. Sirius is probably right that James has got a concussion because he can't seem to stop babbling about Bludgers and Animagi and badly behaved rabbits.
"James, I love you, but please shut up until we make it back up there," Sirius says. "If anybody hears you, we're going to be in hot shit."
"Why?" James slurs. "Nobody's around."
"Yet," says Sirius darkly. "Be careful—trick step, remember?"
Too late: James has already gotten his foot caught in it. Sirius rolls his eyes as he takes his wand out again.
James has puked two more times, including once all over Sirius's feet, by the time they finally, finally get up to their dormitory. "You shouldn't try to move any more than you already have," Sirius advises him as he gets James settled in bed and tucks the sheets around him. "Dinner's probably almost over by now, but I can hit up the kitchens and bring something back for you."
"But the chants—"
"Sunset's not for more than an hour. I'll be back in plenty of time."
"Don't go far," says James helplessly.
"You don't go anywhere," Sirius replies. "I'll be back before you know it."
Sirius is gone for about half an hour, but, to James, it feels like a lot less than that. He's had a concussion once before—last year, also a Quidditch accident—but it doesn't remember it having sped up the passage of time quite so fast. Last time, Sirius and Peter made fun of him for days for rambling on and oversharing every thought that popped into his head. He hopes he has the self-control not to do that again this time. It was embarrassing enough even when he wasn't totally in love with Sirius and didn't have that secret to try to keep hidden.
Not in love, James reminds himself. Just a crush. What he's feeling isn't anything serious.
Is it not serious when James doesn't want to spend even a day away from Sirius? Is it not serious when James was secretly pleased to spend Easter break stuck at school because Sirius would be there with him? Is it not serious when he stared death by werewolf in the face two months ago so that he could save Sirius from his mistakes?
Sirius is his best friend, James reminds himself. They're as close as brothers. The fact that Sirius is a gorgeous bastard is just incidental.
His stomach turns over again. Somehow, this time, James doesn't think it's because of the concussion.
xx
Sirius brings back from the kitchens a goldmine of shepherd's pie, vegetables, and biscuits. "I bloody love asparagus," says James with his mouth jammed full of the stuff. "I love you so fucking much."
"You're welcome," Sirius replies with a bit of a grin.
James can't help himself. "No, I mean it. I love you. I love you so much. You're perfect. You're such a good friend—more than a friend."
Sirius doesn't point out that James is babbling. "I'm not," he mutters, eyes downcast. "I'm not a good person, James. The shit I've done…"
"So you messed up with Snape," says James, waving this off with his free hand as he stabs the last mouthful of asparagus with the fork in his other hand. Mouth full, he continues, "You made a mistake. You also owned up to it and did everything you could to make it right, remember?"
"I seem to remember you making it right for me."
"Yeah, 'cause I could tell it was going to tear you up, and you needed my help. I'm always going to be there to help you out. I don't care how bad things get."
Sirius is actually—he's not crying, at least not yet, but he swipes at his eyes. "You wouldn't be saying any of this if it weren't for your concussion. Are you sure you want to—?"
"Well, maybe I should. Maybe I ought to be telling you how much I want you."
Sirius reaches forward and claps James on the shoulder. It isn't anywhere near enough. "Our friendship matters to me, too, buddy."
"I told you," James rambles. "You're more than a friend. You're more than that."
He's teetering right on the edge of spilling the thing he knows he's going to regret spilling, but Sirius seems to realize this, too, and says quietly, "You should try to sleep. You're not yourself like this."
He Vanishes James's empty plate, but James puts a hand on Sirius's knee before Sirius can get it. "Don't go. Stay right here. Please?"
Sirius's mouth falls open. "James, I…"
A sudden, isolating thought occurs to James. "Don't you want to?"
Sirius gapes at him for a second. "I… yeah. Yeah, of course. I just… you're not yourself like this, and I don't want us to… make any mistakes."
"But I feel this way about you all the time," James mumbles.
So slowly, Sirius (who's been perching on the edge of the bed next to James's stomach all this time) lowers himself down into bed, facing James and clasping James's hands in his own. "It's almost sunset—we've just got to do our chants—and then you can go to sleep. You'll feel better after you sleep."
"But I'm not tired."
"I think you're more tired than you realize," says Sirius with some humor.
"But you're not tired."
"I'm okay right here," Sirius whispers.
James tries to fight it, but he's out within minutes of their sunset chants. When James wakes up in the dead of night, Sirius is in his own bed, and the space where he used to lie is cold.
xx
James insists that he's fine, but Sirius insists on waiting on him hand and foot for the next three solid days. He feels bad for basically ruining Sirius's break with this injury, but Sirius doesn't seem to mind, keeping James entertained by reading to him from Peter's novels and carrying the conversations whenever James is eating. The only moments James doesn't like are the ones when Sirius heads to the Great Hall without him: the dormitory feels way too big and way too empty without Sirius in it.
By Wednesday, James feels well enough that things can probably go back to normal—but he stays in bed, allows Sirius to pamper him just a little longer. The spell's going to be broken the second that Remus, Peter, and the rest of the castle traipse back in, and can you really blame James for wanting to cling to what little domesticity with Sirius he has left?
James isn't under any illusions: he knows he's never going to get the life with Sirius that he wants. A week alone together in the dormitory is the closest James is ever going to get to having Sirius all to himself, and he knows it well enough to milk it while it lasts.
O.W.L.s are coming up in under two months, and, as much as James had wanted to relish his break with Sirius, with them stuck in the dormitory anyway, they figure they may as well spend some of that time studying. Sirius has never looked more beautiful than when he's laughing, even when what he's laughing at is James trying to decipher the half-arsed notes from last month's dream diary.
And then, on Friday, two days before the Hogwarts Express is scheduled to return, there's a lightning storm. The jig is up: they're going to have to leave the sanctity of the dormitory if they want to fill up their phials with rainwater before their first transformations. James is pretty sure the spell isn't going to go horribly wrong—if Peter managed it without getting stuck as a half-rat mutant forever, James and Sirius should certainly be able to do it, too—but, for the whole walk down to the ground floor and out to the Forbidden Forest, James finds his head swimming with all the shit he knows he's going to regret not saying if it all goes wrong and he never gets the chance again.
It takes him until they've reached the edge of the forest to summon the courage to say any of it. "Sirius?"
"Yeah?"
Rain is pelting their whole bodies, blurring James's view of Sirius through his fogged-up glasses. James's feet are soaking wet, and his cloak isn't doing much to protect the rest of him, either. He grabs Sirius's hand and tugs until Sirius stops walking.
"What, James?"
It's now or never, James decides. "I love you."
"What?" Sirius yells over the rain.
"I said I love you! You're not just my best friend; you're my… you're my whole world, and I—"
Sirius laughs. For a horrifying moment, James thinks Sirius is laughing at him, but then Sirius clarifies, "This whole time—all that shit you said on Saturday—I thought it was just because of the concussion. I thought I was going crazy reading double meanings into everything you were saying."
"It was because of the concussion," James hollers, "but that doesn't mean it wasn't true. Sirius—"
And Sirius strides forward and kisses him hard on the mouth. His hands glide up to cup James's cheeks; strings of his wet hair fall into James's face, but James doesn't care; he grabs the front of Sirius's cloak and drags him as close as he can.
It's over way too soon. "We should do the thing before we get distracted and miss our opportunity, again," Sirius reminds him. "We can snog after."
"Yeah," says James breathlessly. "Let's get this done."
xx
It's not every day you turn into a giant stag. It's definitely not every day that turning into a giant stag is only the second most noteworthy thing that happens to you.
"What are we going to tell them?" James mumbles around one in the morning, carding a hand carefully through Sirius's hair—wet from the shower this time instead of the rain.
"You mean Pete and Remus?"
"Yeah. Well, everybody else, too, but especially them."
"We don't owe them any explanation," Sirius reminds him, pulling James tighter to him underneath the covers. "We'll just say that we're together and that… and that we're happy."
"Yeah," James mumbles. He presses his lips to Sirius's collarbone. "Happy."
xx
A/N: This was REALLY damn hard to write. I am not good at happy endings. But I've been torturing Prongsfoot readers with angst for long enough, and I really wanted to give you guys this!
