Author: evansentranced
Disclaimer: You know what? I am JKRowling! What are you gonna do about it? Try and prove I'm not, eh? Just try!
(Disclaimer for Disclaimer: You all know I was joking, don't you? Mr. Lawyer Man? What are those papers? Mr.Lawyer Man?)
Summary: Summer vacation...a few epiphanies. Should I warn you about the character death?
...naw...
The fallout from the Snape catastrophe was terrible and great. Lily cornered James and Sirius in the common room after the last exam, Transfiguration, and screamed herself hoarse at them. By the end, James was cowering in his chair, and Sirius was sincerely beginning to regret trying to take things into his own hands with James and Lily nearby.
He should have waited until they were out of earshot.
Sirius pondered all of this as he paced back and forth in his animagus form outside Zonko's. He was in Hogsmeade, on the last visit of the year, waiting for Bilius Weasley to show up. They had decided that only one of them needed to waste time waiting for the man, and so Sirius had elected to meet him and deliver him to the Three Broomsticks for the meeting and subsequent interrogation. His doggy face split into a grin as he thought about it. Soon they would have a solution to the TSHSD. Or at least more information, as Weasley had claimed to know a lot about it.
Speak of the devil, Sirius thought, eyeing a red headed, freckle faced man heading in his direction. If he wasn't a Weasley, Sirius would eat his own tail.
Sirius trotted up to the man, intending to lead him toward the pub. Weasley had stopped in front of Shrivenshafts and leaned against the wall, whistling.
Sirius came up next to him and nudged his hand, only to have the freckly man take one look at him and jump back in fear.
"I...you…" he stuttered, looking around wildly to see if anyone else noticed Sirius. No one else looked twice, having long since grown used to the black mutt. Sirius cocked his head in confusion, and the man whimpered in terror.
"You-you're a…a…Grim!"
And with that, he turned tail and fled, tripping over himself to get away and looking back several times to make sure Sirius hadn't followed.
Sirius started after him, perplexed. Weasley saw that he was following him and tripped over himself, sprawling on the ground, before jumping up and apparating away. Sirius shook his head and gave a canine equivalent of a shrug before trudging back to the Three Broomsticks, trying to figure out what had just happened.
"Well then," Sirius said, hoisting his trunk out of the luggage rack. "Wish me luck in Hell."
"Good luck!" Peter said dutifully.
"Mmm…" James muttered, staring out of the window distractedly.
"James," Remus said, waving a hand in front of his bespectacled friend's eyes. "James, are you alive in there? We're at the station; your parents are waiting for you outside."
James blinked. "What? Oh…yeah," He got up slowly from his seat and slouched toward the door.
"James!" Sirius called after him, "James! You forgot your trunk!"
"What's wrong with him?" Peter whispered as James slouched back to his trunk and tried halfheartedly to lift it without his wand.
Remus took pity on him and cast a lightening spell on it, then answered Peter quietly. "I think it's withdrawal. From the Billywigs, you know. Depression is a common symptom."
"But Sirius isn't depressed," Peter countered.
"Says who?" Sirius asked loudly. "I'm the one going back to those gits. I've more right to be depressed than anyone!"
James paused in dragging his trunk out into the corridor and said, "Hey, Sirius, you know you can drop by my place anytime, right? My parents love you."
"Hey, thanks mate," Sirius said fondly, ruffling James' hair and ducking the automatic attempted blow to the head that followed. "I might take you up on that, actually."
"Yeah," James said, giving him a feeble smile. "It'll be great."
James said goodbye to his friends and dragged his trunk onto the platform, searching for the familiar sight of his parents. Instead, his eye caught on red hair and he quickly turned away, feeling ashamed and upset as he always did when he saw Lily these days.
She still hadn't forgiven him for the incident with Snape. In fact, James didn't think she was happy with anyone involved in 'The Incident' as he had taken to calling it in his head. As far as he knew, she was still ignoring Sirius and even Remus, who she seemed to think should have acted as a prefect and stepped in. He'd even heard from Sirius who had apparently heard from Matilda that she wasn't talking with Snape, although why she had ever done so in the first place was lost on James.
He found his parents, who seemed happy to see him, but worried at his uncharacteristic silence and new introspective attitude. He barely spoke at all when they offered him the portkey home, and when he arrived he went straight up to his old bedroom and flopped down on the bed.
He wondered why he was so unhappy over the situation. He'd never been so miserable before, and Lily had been angry at him loads of times. They made a point of it, every so often, to find something to argue about. He supposed that was when the TSHSD had kicked in.
If only he hadn't baited Snape like that. He'd just been so tense about trying to get the Theory off his shoulders that he'd needed to take it out on somebody. And Snape had been that somebody, along with a few random people he'd strung up around school.
If only he'd had a way of relieving the tension. James thought about how relaxed he'd been before Lily had agreed to a date. Of course, that had been because of the billywigs, but –
But.
James sat up straight in his bed, eyes wide with revelation. He'd only agreed to quit because Lily had promised him a date. She hadn't fulfilled that promise, and with the way things were going, she wasn't planning on it.
Here he was, keeping up his end of the bargain for absolutely no reason at all. James shook his head, marveling at his own stupidity.
"Topper!" he called eagerly.
The family house elf appeared with a crack, and said, "Yes, Master James? Is you wanting something?"
"Topper," he asked, "Do you know what billywigs are?"
"Yes, Master James," Topper answered, straightening his tea cozy. "Why does Master James want to know?"
"Topper," Master James said carefully, "I want you to get me a jarful of them. Can you do that? There are some in the Forbidden Forest at Hogwarts if you can't find them anywhere else. And hurry, please."
"Yes sir," Topper said keenly. "Topper will have billywigs for Master James as fast as he can!"
And with that, he disappeared.
James sighed and lay back on his bed, already feeling better.
"James! Oy! James!"
"Mmph."
"Jamsie! Wake up!"
"'M not goin' to class today. Tell McGonagall I've died."
"James, you prat, it's me! Sirius!" Sirius tempered this statement by hitting James repeatedly over the head with a pillow. "I've run away and you said I could stay here!"
James opened his eyes blearily. "Sirius? It's two in the mornin'."
"Yeah, I know. Now move over, I'm knackered."
"Get your own bed," James mumbled, rolling over and hiding his head under a pillow.
"Well, what a proper host you are," Sirius said, voice dripping with sarcasm. "Well fine then."
He flipped the mattress, dumping James off with a yelp, and settled down on the now empty bed.
"Thanks," he said comfortably as James scowled at him from the floor. "You're a pal, you know that?"
The next morning, James brought Sirius down to say hello to his parents, who were surprised, to say the least.
Sirius explained that he'd grown tired of his family's expectations of him, and after loudly declaring that they were all racist bastards who deserved to have a bowtruckle shoved where the sun doesn't shine, he packed his things and left.
"Reggie was kind of upset," Sirius said over breakfast. "But I told him we'd still see each other at Hogwarts, and that I didn't mean it about the bowtruckle thing." He stared darkly at his plate. "For him, anyway."
Sirius spent the rest of the summer lazing about, ordering Topper around and racing his broom in the fields behind James' house.
James did much the same thing, but with the added distraction of finding ways to sneak away from Sirius in order to sting a few times a day. He hadn't told Sirius because, much as he'd like to share the fun, he figured that the more of a secret it was, the better chance he had of convincing Lily to change her mind after they'd gotten back to school and she'd calmed down a bit.
"So I was thinking, James," Sirius said, digging into his waffles. "We should try and contact Weasley again when we get back to school next week."
"Do you really think he thought you were a Grim?" James asked curiously.
"Must have. I mean, he ran really fast." Sirius shrugged. "Mrs. Potter, these waffles are delicious, could I get some more if it's not too much trouble?"
"Of course, darling," James' mother beamed at the compliment to her cooking and offered Sirius the latest batch. "Fresh from the stove, dear."
"You're a goddess, ma'am."
Mr. Potter looked up from his newspaper and frowned. "Sirius, those were my waffles! Honey, why did you give him my waffles?"
"Charlus, when you compliment my waffles like Sirius does, maybe you'll see them on your plate more often."
Mr. Potter folded up his paper and stood, giving her a kiss on the cheek. "I'm sure your waffles are lovely, Dorea. Unfortunately, I haven't tasted them in a good long while, as you insist on giving them all to charming scavengers, so I can't judge properly."
He winked at Sirius, who grinned back and stuffed a large bite of waffle into his mouth.
"So Bilius Weasley," James interrupted, grinning at the put out look on his father's face as Sirius took another large, mocking bite.
"Oh those poor Weasleys," Mrs. Potter said, "I hear they're still in mourning."
James' head snapped, startled. "Over what?"
His mother looked at him in surprise. "Why you said it yourself, dear. Bilius Weasley."
"What happened to him?" Sirius asked, forgetting about his pancakes for a moment.
"Why, he passed on," Dorea Potter said sadly. "They say he saw a Grim, and died twenty four hours later."
Sirius went white. "A…a Grim?"
"Yes," she went on, unaware of his shocked expression. "Just before you two got back from school, in fact."
James was staring between her and Sirius in horror. "How do they know it was a Grim?" he asked fearfully.
"Well, I was talking to Cedrella Weasley, his mother, you know, and she said he'd gone to some kind of business meeting," Mrs. Potter shook her head sadly. "He came back, terrified, whispering about having seen a Grim, then fainted. His heart just couldn't take the strain, and he died."
She dabbed at her eyes with a napkin and said, "That poor woman. A mother should never have to bury her child." Mr. Potter put his arms around her and whispered comfortingly to her.
James shifted uneasily in his chair and darted a look at Sirius, who was looking very pale and horrified.
"That…really is terrible, mum," James said, jumping up and pulling Sirius with him. "C'mon, Sirius."
"So what did you do over the holiday?" Remus asked James and Sirius, back on the train and hoisting his luggage into a rack.
Sirius stared sadly out the window, scuffing his foot on the floor. "I killed a man."
Remus nearly dropped his trunk.
"Excuse me?" he asked in disbelief. "You're joking, right?"
Peter's eyes were wide. "He didn't sound like he was joking."
"He didn't," James said. "I mean, he wasn't. I mean, it wasn't his fault. I -"
"It was all my fault!" Sirius cried. "I'm so terrifying, the very sight of me causes people to drop dead where they stand!"
"Wait," Peter began, but Sirius cut him off, shouting now.
"I'm a menace to society! My very appearance causes hearts to stop! And not because I'm so attractive, either!"
"Sirius," Remus tried, but Sirius was having none of it.
"Remus," he returned, spinning around to face his worried friend. "I'm a murderer. I won't be able to stop myself. I'll be locked up in Azkaban before we're out of school!"
"Sirius, calm down!" James yelled, slapping his friend in the back of the head. "We've gone over this, you idiot! Weasley was superstitious, you were in your dog form -"
"Ooohhh," Remus and Peter said together, eyes wide with sudden understanding.
"Sirius, that's not your fault," Remus said consolingly. "You can't help looking the way you do, or being the way you are. Trust me."
Sirius sank down onto a seat and looked at Remus desperately. "If I'd just met him normally, if I hadn't been messing about as Padfoot, he wouldn't have died."
"But you couldn't have known that," Peter said reasonably. Remus and James nodded, and Sirius looked a bit better.
"You could never have predicted that he'd react the way he did," James said reasonably. "Now, I've got to go to the loo."
Sirius looked up at this strange change of topic, but James was already out the door.
"He does that far too often," Sirius muttered.
"He seems happier than when we saw him last," Remus commented. "Good job, Sirius."
"I didn't do it," Sirius said, shaking his head. "He was already back to his usual self by the time I showed up at his house."
"I wonder what did it then?" Peter wondered.
James darted into the little bathroom down the hall from his compartment and hurriedly locked the door. Fumbling through his pockets, he pulled out the small vial he carried around with him at all times and pulled the cork, releasing the small, vivid blue insect from its confinement. He pressed it against his arm, sighing in relief as it stung him.
James floated lazily in midair as a dopey grin spread across his face. He hadn't been able to sting since early this morning, and he'd been getting antsy.
James sighed and leaned unnecessarily against the top part of the door.
Thank heavens for billywigs.
A/N: James. You stupid, stupid boy...Oh well. Here is chapter... whatever chapter this is...seventeen, I think...well. I'll ask you to review, but you know and I know that my begging isn't going to do much. If you're going to review, you're going to review, regardless of what I'm saying down here. In any case, I shall attempt to entice you toward reviewing by offering the Moony plushie I stole from FA a few months ago. First review gets an ear, second an eye, and so on. I've got a knife, and Moony's got a death wish. His jaws were getting a little too close to Cheese, my stuffed sheep, for my comfort.