So maybe James shouldn't have sprung his time travel revelation on Sirius, but his tired mind had the occasional bad idea, and without any impulse control in the form of Peter, James had walked straight up to Sirius, after weeks of avoiding him, and uttered the first words that had occurred to him.
"How dare you keep the fact that you time traveled a secret from me, you bastard?"
That was probably not the best thing to say.
Sirius had slapped a hand across his mouth and glanced around their dorm room like his paranoid grandfather, and Remus had blinked with comically wide eyes at both of them. Peter was surprisingly the only one who took it well, merely frowning disapprovingly at both of them.
James wasn't sure what was going through Peter's brain, except that something had to be checked out there. His friend was clearly not reacting to the right things in the right ways. Time travel required a minimum amount of excitement and Peter was just not reaching that level.
"What the hell?" Remus said, scowling at the two of them. "James, what on Earth have you eaten in the past few days?"
James pouted. He couldn't exactly call the expression anything else. Looking expectantly at Sirius, he waited patiently for about ten seconds before licking Sirius' hand.
"Why do you have to assume that I've ingested something?" he asked, slumping onto his bed morosely. "It's a very valid theory for Sirius' behavior change."
Said Black was muttering a string of curse words, interspersed with 'ews' as he ran to the bathroom to wash his hand. Remus blinked at the lack of Sirius, Peter's lack of reaction, and James' apparently serious demeanor and then sighed.
"He was not participating in any time travel experiments, James," Remus explained with the weariness of a thousand people. "He was just completing an assignment for his family."
Which sounded plausible. Sirius was the heir to the Black family, and he had turned 16 a couple of months ago. He could've been asked to complete the coming-of-age task early, or something like that.
"Well, now that you put it like that…"
"How did you figure that out, James Potter," Sirius demanded, stalking back into the room and throwing up powerful wards that James didn't recognize. Probably family magic then, damn. No wonder people couldn't find the Blacks. "Where the hell did you go snooping?"
"Snoo- what?" James asked, blinking at him in confusion. "I thought you were doing your coming-of-age thing. That's what Remus just said."
"I was doing that, but how did you… the time travel?" Sirius said, expression turning into one of utter confusion as well.
A few years later, James would probably look back at that moment and wonder how comical the four of them looked, staring at each other in confusion. But at that moment, the only thing going through his mind was 'am I sure I didn't ingest anything?'
To make matters worse, that was the moment the universe chose to send James his very own, super special time travel letter. A bright flash, followed by muffled curses from Sirius, and an envelope was sitting innocuously between James and Sirius.
"Well, I suppose you should read that first," Sirius said, eyes narrowed at the letter. "That would explain a lot of things, I'm sure."
James stared at the letter and blinked at it a few times. "If this is a fever dream," he said, picking it up, "I'm going to be really sad."
Remus sighed, muttering something that sounded suspiciously like, 'that's not how you use that phrase,' but when James looked at him, Remus just shrugged.
"Read it out loud to us, Jamie," Sirius said, plopping himself onto James' bed as if they were back to being best friends again. James was willing to play along. He had missed Sirius.
James Potter,
For all that you were a war hero, not a lot of people can claim to have known you. At least not those who are still alive. I suppose at this point, we are all just guessing what you would believe. If you are the first to get this, or if you don't already know, this is a letter from the future - 1998 to be specific. If the spell works out, then you'll be an impressionable young adult at this point, perhaps about 18, if we got our timing right.
Regardless, we're unraveling pieces here, and this is one part of a five-piece puzzle.
Your invisibility cloak holds a story and that could be a key factor that will allow you to defeat You-Know-Who. It might not work, but it is something you should research. Your son had a plan based on the story, and it might have worked for him, except he never got the chance to implement it. I would tell you more, but I'm afraid none of us have the details.
I guess my letter to you holds more personal information for you than most others, since I have met you once and you seemed like the type to change the world. You-Know-Who is winning the war now because he has the support of the werewolves, vampires and most other magical creatures. He's offering them power that the Ministry of Magic kept from them on purpose. If you can get them on your side, then you will have won half the war.
You-Know-Who is an unstoppable force here. We don't have any legendary witch or wizard to help us out. You have Dumbledore on your side, and for all that I can't agree with his choices, he was strong enough to defeat any enemy. Even if you don't tell him about this quest, do use his help in anything you need.
I suppose sometimes you wish that we could just tell you the answers directly, rather than leading you on this wild goose chase. And I wish we could. It would make it so much easier if we could just travel back in time ourselves and solve all the problems. But that's not how magic works, and even if we were to create such a spell, we wouldn't have the time.
Genuinely, I hope you have a longer life with none of the tragedies that you faced before.
Wishing you luck on your quest.
"Huh," Sirius said, when he was done scrutinizing the letter. "That was a lot less helpful than even my letter. Besides, who else do you think will get a letter?"
James shrugged. "It's not mentioned, is it?"
"Nope," Peter said, flopping backwards so that he was lying on his bed. "It would be more convenient if they would've told us, but 'time travel doesn't work that way'."
The last bit of his statement was sufficiently mocking, and James quirked a smile. "We don't exactly know how much time or resources they had, you know? Can't just accuse them like that, Pete."
"Sure," Peter muttered sarcastically, "I'll be nice to the guys who're sending us doomsday letters from the future."
"Doomsday letters that don't have anything substantial at that," Remus added, "and they didn't even manage to get the timing right. We're barely 16 this year, and the letter was intended to reach when we were 18."
"Are we just nitpicking the letter then?" Sirius asked, tossing said letter back to James. "Or do we have some sort of plan or idea?"
"Perhaps we should start with what you guys were up to, while you were avoiding me?" James replied, getting an eye roll from Remus. But then again, Remus had always and would always be an annoying guy. Especially if he had to pick between James and Sirius, James knew who he would pick in a heartbeat, and it wasn't him.
"Secret family business," Sirius said, giving James the 'I genuinely can't tell you this' look, and then added, "and I got a letter, which I burned. The children died a bit after that. They're related, I think. One of the children there must have sent a letter from the future."
"And what have you been up to?" Remus asked, because if anyone in their group kept track of what happened everywhere and to everyone, it was Remus.
James sighed. "I was creating a map of Hogwarts."
"A map?"
The incredulous looks from all around, including Peter was not encouraging.
"A map that can track the progress of everyone in the school," he continued, "while they are moving."
"It's a live map?" Remus asked, sounding a little impressed, which made James feel much better. Impressing Remus was extremely hard these days.
James shrugged. "It's supposed to be. I haven't yet applied the spells because I wasn't sure how much magic would be needed."
It totally wasn't the fact that he wanted all four of them to make the map together, using all of their magic. That would simply be unreasonable. No, James had no such sentimental reason, and he didn't want their group to leave their legacy behind in a very permanent way.
"Sure, how about we do it next week?" Sirius suggested, with a bright smile and an eager look in his eyes. "What kind of celebration should we have for it?"
And just like that, their little spat was forgiven, if not forgotten. James wasn't going to accuse Sirius of things that were out of his control, and Sirius wouldn't avoid James. Or at least, James trusted that he wouldn't. That's how friends were, right?
"Not another one of your pranks," Remus groaned. "I can't stand the amount of judgemental side-eyes I keep getting from Minnie."
"And I can't stand the detentions," Peter added, glaring at the three of them.
"Just try not to get caught then," James teased.
If he relished the laughter slightly more than normal, no one would know.