Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

“Good! Evans, that’s right, that’s good.”

“Don’t talk to me like I’m your pet flobberworm and I’ve just managed a grand fart.”

“I’m just—”

“Impressed? You didn’t think I could do it?”

“—proud,” James finishes, looking tired and stressed and ready to flick her between her thick, dark eyebrows. “I’m proud, because you hated Arithmancy last year and now you’re doing it entirely correctly.”

That shuts her up.

“This is nice and all, but will someone help me,” says Remus from Lily’s other side.

“Anything for you, m’dear,” James says, leaning behind her to snag Remus’s parchment. “Keep that book open, mind you.”

“Sure,” Remus says, but he can’t focus. That’s the whole problem, there’s no focus, not for him, none to be found. He looks at the charts and they swim before his eyes. He picks up his quill and all he can do is put it back down. James is three feet away and yet too warm. Lily is even closer, even warmer, and Remus has the sudden urge to scratch himself right out of his skin.

“See that parenthetical section?” James says. “That needs to be foiled first—”

“Remus, are you alright?” says Lily.

Too warm—

“—and then you distribute this variable—”

“Remus?”

His head is spinning. One ear is ringing, it’s too loud, it’s too warm, his chest is tight, fever fever too hot too hot

“Remus?”

“I think I’m bent,” Remus says suddenly.

Quiet.

James leans over to look at his equations. “No, that’s balanced. See? Same result on either side.”

“No, I,” Remus says. He clears his throat, which has gone suffocatingly tight. Why oh why is he saying this. But everything—he said it, and everything went quiet. Quiet is good, and this has been eating him for months—he should’ve learned sooner, with The Wolf, that he needs to snap the necks of things that wound him before they have the chance to snap his. “I’m bent.”

“Oh,” says James. His eyes bug out. “Oh! Erm. Alright, mate. I’m not going to lie to you, I already assumed as much.”

“Oh,” says Remus. He frowns. “Oh.”

“That’s not a bad thing, dear,” Lily says, patting his hand, a smile on her lips—true, even if exhausted. Maybe the constant stress of waiting for news from Mungo’s is grating on them all. Remus, for one, has clearly gone certifiably insane. “It just means we know you. And we don’t mind.”

“Of course we don’t mind,” James says, offended at the notion that they might.

“I, erm,” Remus says. “It’s just. Well, I don’t even know why I bothered to say it.” He has gone spectacularly hot in the cheeks. “The Wolf, probably. Impulse. It was on the mind, so… said it.”

“Would you stop thinking so hard about it?” James says. “We’ve listened to you whinge about how we don’t color-code our pencils for four years now. This is far from the thing that will drive us away.”

“Really, screw you for even thinking it could,” Lily says.

“Doesn’t matter if you like blokes or birds or neither.” Lily keeps petting Remus’s hand. “All that matters is you finishing your part of the equation so we can move onto the next step. You’re not making me fail this class, mate, no matter how bent you are.”

Lily smacks him over the head with her notes, but Remus smiles, which makes James wink at him as he adjusts his hair.

Class is over soon after, but Remus remains stricken. Generally, stricken. And maybe specifically stricken, too, because James lives with him in a way only two other people do, knows him in a way the vast majority of people will never know him, James is bone-deep to Remus, he’s muscle-memory, and now James is in his mind, too.

The bell rings, and Remus jumps about a foot into the air.

James and Lily share a look (?!). James collects Remus’s books alongside his own, like he almost always does, and then he collects Remus, too.

Lily gives them a silent wave as James drags Remus away by the elbow, right out into the hall, where he wrenches Remus out of the path of students filing out of the room. Remus lets himself be pulled down the corridor, around a corner, up a staircase, and into a tapestry nook, where James whirls on him and catches his face between his two cold hands.

“It is a pleasure,” James says fiercely, “to know any part of you that you want to share.”

Remus has absolutely no idea how to react to that. His eyes start to sting like the room is full of smoke.

James gives Remus a little shake, then runs a palm over his head, pushing his fringe back. “Just,” James says, frowning with concentration. “You never tell us anything. When you do, it must be important. I know it is. So—thank you. For telling us. For trusting me.” James meets Remus’s eyes and, to Remus’s utter bafflement, James’s seem wet too. “God, I hope I’m doing this right. Am I being too much? I didn’t want to be not enough.”

Remus reaches up and squeezes James’s wrist, right under the palm that presses to his cheek. “You’re so fucking stupid,” Remus croaks. “You wonderful bastard.” He drops his forehead on James’s shoulder. “I knew—I knew it’d be fine. I just—I’ve never even said it out loud before, until now. And it felt right, that it would be you and Lily to know first.”

“Sirius doesn’t know?” James says, palming the back of Remus’s head.

“Absolutely not,” Remus says, knotted stomach making a valiant attempt to jump out of his mouth. He shudders. Sirius can’t know. “No, not Sirius, not now.”

“You want me to keep it a secret?” James says.

“Not—not a secret,” Remus says. “Just—don’t bring it up. If he asks, don’t lie, I’d never ask you to lie for me—”

“I’d do it,” James says. “If you wanted me to. For you. Besides, I lie for you plenty already.”

Remus sighs, a huff. “Yeah, you’re right about that, I guess. God. Sorry. I didn’t mean to bring you into my mess.”

James’s arms come around Remus, hesitant, then, when Remus leans into it, crushingly tight. When he speaks, it sounds like it hurts. “Please bring me into your mess. You’re so lonely, you always look so lonely, let me into your mess. I’m so good at folding things and putting them away. Maybe I can neaten things up for you, too. Or—or make it so you won’t be looking at it all on your lonesome.”

“James,” Remus says, face scrunching up against a sudden, startling sob. “Shut your stupid mouth. Oh my God.”

“Okay,” James says, swaying both of them in their embrace. “Whatever you need. I’ve got you, Remus.”

Generally, as a rule, Sirius spends the free period between Herbology and lunch—during which Remus, James, and Lily all have Arithmancy—becoming inconsolably high.

It’s good timing: as soon as he starts getting hungry, it’s time to meet them in the Great Hall. They’re often bickering, which makes for perfectly humorous mealtime entertainment. He can shove as many sausage rolls down his insatiable gob as he wants, and he doesn’t have to deal with Peter, nor with the strange Darwinian urge to clobber him that Sirius tends to become privy to when they are alone together for any extended period of time.

But today, three-quarters of the way through his pre-lunch spliff, Sirius is given cause to nearly shit the bed: a raging, horrid lightning storm.

Peter is immediately on his feet. “My vial,” he says.

“You’re not vile, you’re only average levels of disgusting,” Sirius says.

Peter gives him an unimpressed look. “My spitty moth vial, you unwashed arsecrack.”

“Oh!” says Sirius. “Oh, my.”

“Close your eyes,” Peter says.

“Why? Did you hide it somewhere weird?” Sirius’s jaw drops. “Peter. Peter. Please tell me you’re about to extract that glass vial from your actual human bum hole.”

“I’m not!” Peter cries, face going red.

“Well, then, I’ll bloody well keep my eyes open,” Sirius says, crossing his arms over his chest.

Peter glares. Lightning cracks. Sirius jumps. Peter slumps.

He goes to his knees below Sirius’s bed, pulls out three dusty jumpers, a notebook Sirius lost two terms ago, and then, in perfect condition, his vial of blood red potion.

“Oh, do explain,” Sirius says.

“The space under your bed is like a pocket dimension,” Peter says, tilting the vial, watching the potion move. “If there was one place you’d never look, it’s there.”

“Why would I go looking for your vial?” says Sirius.

Peter gives him a most unimpressed look. “So my potion would fail. So it could be just you and James and Remus on full moon nights.”

Sirius blinks, surprised but unguilty. It’s funny how Peter does that. Reads them. Maybe it’s why he’s so good at chess.

“I’m no idiot, Sirius,” Peter says, uncorking his potion. He presses his wand to his heart. “Amato Animo Animato Animagus. Besides,” he doubles as the pain hits him, “ow, bloody ow, fucking bloody ow—besides, you’re so obvious that I’m baffled they haven’t realized by now.”

“Realized what?” says Sirius.

As he pants through the knifepoint pain he must feel in his chest, Peter’s lips quirk in a smile. The worst part is that the smile is true. Good-humored. “That you’re always the dog,” Peter says. “Staking your claim, baring your teeth. You’re always the bloody dog, Sirius.” Peter chugs the potion and makes a sound of pain, arm spasming. The vial falls to the floor and shatters.

Sirius slides unsteadily to his feet. His wand is across the room, on James’s bed, but he feels a strange impetus in his chest, so he holds a hand up and says “Reparo,” and the vial jumps together, healing along every seam.

Peter gives another whine. (Weak, Sirius thinks.) He stumbles backwards onto his duvet. He gasps, and his body starts to shrink, bones retreating into the warmth of his softness, fingers shortening, spine curling, nose lengthening, and then Peter is gone.

Sirius stares. “Peter?” he says. Thunder rumbles so violently the room shakes. “Balls.”

The duvet cover writhes just slightly.

Sirius approaches to investigate. If Sirius was the only one here to watch Peter vaporize himself, he’s fairly certain James will be at least slightly cross with him. He shifts the duvet with a single finger, revulsion wrinkling his nose. There are very particular moments in which he doesn’t mind touching Peter. Peter in ambiguous animalia form is not one of those moments.

Then he sees it: a slip of pink, long and thin, like a thread of yarn left loose, wiggling against the deep red of the sheets beneath it.

“Oh my God!” Sirius says. “You’re a fucking worm!” He laughs aloud, head falling back. “I literally don’t know how to make this sound better! I’m sorry, Peter, this is so fucking funny that I could die perfectly happy right now!” Peter squirms out from under the sheets, and—“Oh!” Sirius cries. “Not a worm after all! Just—a wormy tailed-rat. I’m going to be honest, Pete! I’m really trying here! This is just so fucking funny to me!”

Peter rolls on the bed, turning smoothly back into himself.

“Hey, that was impressive,” Sirius says. “You transformed so easily! The rat has been within you this whole time!”

“I wish your animagus was an ant,” Peter mutters, scowling. “Then I could smother you with—”

“With a single rat turd, yes, I’m sure,” Sirius says. “Wormtail. Wormtail.”

“Absolutely not, Sirius.”

“Absolutely yes, Sirius!”

Peter’s glower is—okay, actually, it puts Sirius on edge. He didn’t know Peter could glower. He’s usually so mild-mannered. Docile. Harmless. Heedless and awkward and fly-on-the-wall.

It makes it seem all the more like a threat when Peter says, “Think what you want, then, but don’t forget, with the right sort of inspiration, even a worm will turn.”

August dies on the first Sunday of May.

It’s sudden. It’s in the papers.

FIRST VICTIM TO SUCCUMB TO NEW DRAGON POX: EVEN OUR AURORS ARE NOT INFALLIBLE.

The Great Hall is silent, and then it is shaking with sound. Outrage, tears, confusion.

James can’t move.

“I thought,” Marlene is saying. “I thought you said—”

“He did say,” Mary says. “But maybe it’s different in everyone?”

“S-someone should go check on Frank,” James says. “His Da—”

“James,” Remus says lowly, face ashen.

“—was there, too, he’s in Mungo’s with mine, they’re mates,” James says.

“James,” says Mary, leaning over the table towards him.

“They said it’s dormant,” James says, that bubble of dread in his stomach expanding. He drops his face in his hands. “They said it’s dormant, the strain he has is dormant, maybe they released more than one strain that day? Maybe—we know August, he wouldn’t sit around in a bed all day, maybe he made it worse, maybe he—maybe the symptoms were worse—”

“Your dad is fine,” Lily says, and James’s gaze snaps to hers. “He’s fine,” she repeats. “Just because August is dead doesn’t mean your dad is dying.”

“God,” Marlene whimpers. “August is dead.”

“Another one bites the fucking dust,” says Sirius. He tears a strawberry off its stem with his teeth. “That’s four in four years.”

Everyone looks at him.

“Defense teachers,” he clarifies.

“Fucking hell,” Remus mutters.

“I didn’t even think of it like that,” says Dorcas, twisting her hair around her finger. “I never gave a shit when the others were gone. August was different. He was real.”

“We learned with him,” says Peter. “We’ll fail without him.”

“We never got to the dueling unit,” Sirius says, a frown on his lips. “I was depending on that, heartily.”

“How are we going to sit exams now?” says Mary, scowling at her toast. “He couldn’t have held out another month?”

James shoots to his feet, stomach burning, and leaves the Great Hall without a look behind him.

Exams. They’re worrying about bloody exams when the man is dead. How could they—don’t they feel it in every inch of themselves? Like their atoms are on fire? Like they can’t breathe? James liked August as much as the next student, the man was brilliant, and now he’s gone, so young, so brilliant, so dead.

Fighting Voldemort. In whatever quiet group no one will admit has been formed. Some anti-Dark Magic group, anti-blood-purity group. James wants in on the group. James wants to fight properly. James wants—

He wants to know if his dad is okay.

But he called yesterday—James was even allowed to speak briefly with Eli Jordan, who graduated the war-expedited Auror program in a year and was visiting the group in Mungo’s, having been stationed in Edinburgh during the Scarborough event and therefore is safe from the disease. He was solemn but smiled at James, asked about Lily and derailed each of James’s political inquiries in favor of questioning the quidditch team’s current success. Button told James before shooing him back through the hearth that they’ll owl next time they can save Dad a few minutes off the machines for a chat.

A shoulder jostles James’s as he walks. Startled back into himself, he jerks to look, but it’s no one. No one that matters anyway. A faceless smudge on his periphery: a black robe and a cherry-blossom-petal where features should be.

These days, when he walks away, his friends let him. He doesn’t know what to think of it. He supposes he is making a silent bid to be left alone. He wants to be alone. He does. If he says it enough times, he’ll believe it.

He changes into his practice gear and grabs his broom, then takes to the pitch.

The wind clears his mind immediately. He lets his eyes fall closed, lets his hair dance against his forehead, lets his shirtsleeves whip around his wrists. His stomach sinks pleasantly, like free fall in reverse.

James takes a deep breath. In the air, there’s nothing. There’s not even him. There’s just wind and space and cutting clarity. Like he’s been drunk, he’s been sunken, he’s been beneath his skin and inside his veins and now, now he’s finally cleared the epidermis again, wind, this fucking life within him, he could vomit, he could sing.

He flies, full-tilt, from one end of the field to the other. Turning and turning and around again, head splittingly clear, feeling every millimeter of himself against the air. Heart and liver against wind, cold inside him more than against him, like an electric storm atop his skin because he is here and no one else is. Being he is so much, after all.

He is so intent upon his flying, breathless upon his own trail, upside down and corkscrewing and feinting, that he must stop shortly upon the brickish presence of Carter Cole, who is his keeper, who is there suddenly, who is one with the air and then one with nothing at all, for James will absolutely level Carter if he keeps on keeping on.

“Potter,” says Carter, and James thinks, for a moment, he might faint.

“What do you want?” he says, pulling his broom sharply aside, stopping so short that his head tosses, neck wrenches.

“Stop,” says Carter, tired rather than annoyed as he usually is. “Pitch. Let’s go.”

James sighs, pained, then lands sharply, hitting the ground with a jolt up his legs. He flexes his hand around his broom as he follows Carter across the grass, toward the stands, the fence to which Carter hops over before sitting heavily on the lowest row of benches. James follows more clumsily. Carter is built like a brick in a sock, but he carries himself like a ballerina. James is built like a ballerina, but he carries himself like a brick in a sock. It’s the Gryffindor way, being a contrarian to one’s situation.

Carter sighs heavily at James’s right shoulder. James looks at him, but he seems thoughtful, so James turns back towards the pitch. The sky is grey, like dusty cotton balls, the cloud cover soft enough to scoop, to wear, a jumper, a scarf. James closes his eyes and listens to his heart.

Carter bumps his shoulder.

“Mm,” James says, rocking with the motion.

There’s the funny sensation of something being forced into the space between his fingers—smooth, but not in a wooden way, not like a polished wand. He opens his eyes.

It’s a cigarette. It looks sort of graceful there, jammed between his knuckles.

“Are we not talking, then?” James says.

“Fuck, no,” says Carter, gruff. “I don’t want to talk to you.”

James thinks there might be an underlying sentiment there: I don’t want to talk to you, but I don’t want you alone either. It’s disconcertingly sweet.

“What do I do with this, then?” James says.

Carter lifts James’s hand to shove the fag between his lips. It feels weird. Papery.

“I’m going to light it,” Carter says, “and then you inhale like you’re sucking through a straw.”

“I know how to smoke,” James says.

Carter gives him an unimpressed look. “Do you now.”

James flips him off.

Carter snaps, and the tip of the cigarette flickers to life. On instinct, James inhales.

It tickles down his throat, warm, prickly. It tightens his chest. He wants to cough. He holds it in. When he exhales, it’s bitter and sweet and minty and strange.

“Good,” Carter says quietly. He shucks a second cigarette for himself from his crumpled little cardboard packet, then lifts it to his lips between wide, squarish fingers. He pulls long, hard, and his eyes fall closed, like saying grace before a meal.

They smoke in silence until the fags are stubs, the heat close enough to James’s fingers that it burns. Carter smacks it out of his hand, onto the metal stands, and snubs both butts under his muddy trainer.

He stands. Cuffs James around the head. Hops over the fence and walks back towards the castle, broom in one hand, the other shoved into his back pocket.

James watches him go.

After a moment, James stands, tightens his shoelaces, jumps the fence, and starts running. Slowly, then faster, lap after lap, until the grounds are a glaucous blur around him, until he feels he might never stop. A tearing pain in his legs, a pressure on his chest, nose dripping and ears aching and eyes watering, hands in loose fists, shoulders back, the thud of his trainers on the grass, the rattle of his teeth, the sting of breathless, rising bile.

Running and running and running. So long as he keeps moving, nothing can catch him up.

Lily skips classes the next day.

She doesn’t leave the girls’ dormitory, actually. Not for breakfast, not for lunch. When five in the afternoon hits, Sirius decides to take matters into his own hands. Fucking everything is always left to him to fix.

He Confounds the staircase and marches up, already in his quidditch practice gear. He doubts this will take long. He’d like to think he has handling Lily Evans down to a science.

“Knock knock,” he says, traipsing through the door to find her sitting in her window seat, curls matted, fringe greasy, eyes red, lips downturned. In the lavender light of sunset, she seems waxen. “Aren’t you a treat this evening.”

She turns her head to look at him, all emotionless like a porcelain doll, then looks back to the window. “Fuck off,” she says.

Sirius shuts the door. “I will do no such thing. I need you.”

“You need me,” she says.

“Absolutely,” he says. “Irrevocably.”

“Ask Potter.”

“James is useless. I need you.”

She knuckles an eye, then drops her forehead against the windowpane with a dull thunk.

“Cut my hair, will you?” he says, shaking his overgrown locks out. The ends hover around his jawline, these days. Not a good look. He wants his bone structure on full display, and Lily, whether she realizes it or not, needs something to do, something to fix, someone to help. “I’m artistic, I’m very crafty, but one thing I have never been able to do properly is cut straight lines, so I need your help.”

She stares at him blankly. Not blankly. Hollowly. In the way a field of wilted yellow wheat stares through your eyes and into the confines of your chest.

“No,” she says.

“Yes,” he says.

She scoffs, then sort of drags herself away.

Sirius blusters into the bathroom after her, so sure, so confident. He knows exactly what to do, always.

He does not question that. Not even when he is beaned in the face by a flying projectile soap bar.

He claps a hand to his cheekbone, the POI. “Is that almond-scented?”

“Yes,” she says, glaring at him from under her eyebrows, arms crossed over her chest, looking like a furious little elf.

“Nice,” he says.

“Leave me alone,” Lily says.

“Say please.”

“Absolutely fucking not.”

Sirius hums. “In that case.” He sits on the edge of the sink vanity, kicking his legs, leaning back against the cool surface of the mirror.

“Sirius,” she says, hands fisting.

“Yes?” he says, all faux innocence.

“Sirius,” she says again, and her eyes are glossy. She’s always been a frustrated crier. “Leave me alone. I want to be alone.”

“That’s what you think,” he says.

“No, it’s what I feel!”

“It’s not.”

“I’m telling you it is.”

“And I’m telling you you’re wrong.”

“I’m wrong about my own feelings?” She takes a step closer, tears clinging to her lower lashes. “I’m wrong about my own mind, Sirius?”

“Yes,” he says simply.

“You are—insufferably arrogant,” Lily gasps. “You think you’re some great puppeteer, you think you’re in the heads of everyone around and that you can make things play out exactly the way you want them to, you think you know e-everything before it happens, you think you’re so brilliant, Sirius, you’re not always right. You’re not—you’re not always right!”

Sirius barks a laugh. That’s the stupidest thing he’s ever heard. He’s all that and more, and she knows it, because she is, too.

But Lily—she looks skeletal. She looks cornered. She looks, perhaps, like a starved lioness, all canines and arched back. Ready to pounce.

So he says nothing. Instead, he reaches a hand out. He grabs her wrist and tugs her into a hug—the first one he’s ever initiated with her, surely, because he still doesn’t know how to fucking do this, except to close his eyes and hold his breath and pretend it’s James in his arms.

For a moment, she is stiff. Then she crumples, arms around his neck, chin over his shoulder, shuddering with sobs. She’s warm, and wet, and soft in places he’s not used to feeling softness. His dangling knees press into her hips. Her turtleneck sort of smells like sweat.

He runs a hand down the curve of her spine. Plants the other in her messy hair. Holds her. Says nothing.

He has learned, slowly, through two more nights in the Astronomy Tower with his brother, that people do not always need words. Regulus doesn’t need to hear the story of Snuffles. James doesn’t need Sirius to wax some bullshitted poetics about how he’ll be there forever. Lily doesn’t need to hear that he has her. She just needs him to do it. The having. That’s reassurance. The real sort.

Contrary to all assumptions, Sirius Black knows when to hold his tongue, just the same as he knows when it’s something else he should be holding.

“M’fine,” Lily sniffles. “Good, I’m good.”

“Yeah?” Sirius says, following the arc of her vertebrae like mapmaking, like rock-climbing.

“Mhm,” she says. She wipes her nose on the shoulder of his jumper, which is eighty-seven different types of abhorrent. “I’m good. Maybe I needed that.”

“I think you did,” Sirius says.

“And you know everything, so,” Lily says, pulling away, a funny sort of smile on her lips.

“Precisely,” Sirius says. He reaches out and catches her hand. It’s cold and small. “I know you. Did you know that? That I know you?”

Lily twists her hand in his to knot their fingers together. “I do know that,” she says, and even though her eyes are swollen, there’s more life in them. She looks better. Sirius doesn’t understand crying, can’t remember the last time he really cried himself, but if it can fix Lily Evans so succinctly, there must be something to it. “I forget, sometimes. That you know me. And I know you.”

“You do,” he allows, though he’s wary to think anyone knows him, really, except, perhaps, his mother.

Lily’s free hand tousles his hair. “It is rather long.”

“I’m starting to look like a bum,” Sirius says, “and not in a cool muggle way.”

“No, just in a stringy way.”

“Mhm. Fix it?”

Lily exhales from between pursed lips. Curls that strand of his hair around her finger. “Yeah, alright,” she says. “No promises it’ll look good, though.”

“Rubbish,” says Sirius, scooting closer to the edge of the counter so that she can reach better. “I trust you.”

“You do?” she says.

Sirius nods. “That probably causes a lot of stress for you to know.”

“It does,” she says. “I want you to trust me, though. Don't stop.”

“Don’t give me a reason to,” he replies.

“Maybe I shouldn’t touch your hair, then,” she says, flicking her brows. “If I muck up—”

“You’ll just regrow it with a spell,” Sirius says. He wants to fix this, so he’s going to fix this. He wants his hair cut, so she’s going to do it. “I’m baring my neck to you, Evans, literally. Soak that in. Enjoy it.”

Sirius closes his eyes and waits.

A drawer opens and closes. Lily’s warmth comes nearer, pressing against Sirius’s knees. The soft sound of metal against hair rustles by his ear.

“No turning back now,” Lily says.

“Rock and roll,” Sirius says, grinning wolfishly. Even with his eyes closed, he can feel her giving him a tiny grin back. It’s like the temperature of the room rises with it.

She turns the sink on, then runs her wet hand through his locks. “Rock and roll, that’s precisely it, darling.”

Sirius strolls onto the quidditch pitch exactly one minute before practice commences, hair now shorn to the top of his neck, still longish, still lucious, but now stylish, too. That Lily really does have an eye for art.

James gives him two gentle punches when he jogs to his side. “Appointment at the beauty studio run overtime?”

“I skipped dinner to make Lily Evans happy,” Sirius says. “I feel like you. Altruistic. Fucking disgusting.”

James’s eyebrows plummet on his forehead like kamikaze fighter jets. “Is she alright, then?”

Sirius stands taller. “She is now.”

James sighs, long, as Frank shouts at them all to start stretching before their imminent four-lap warm-up from Hades. “Good,” James says, bending in half in a poor attempt to touch his toes. “I bet you both needed that.”

“Both?” Sirius says, offended, with both palms flat on the damp grass. It turns out sunrise fucking yoga is good for something, other than catching Remus’s eye.

“You like feeling needed, too,” James says sagely, squeezing Sirius’s ankle. His cheeks are dark with blood rush. He looks like a fucking mosquito in those awful flying goggles. “I know you.”

Sirius quirks his lips. “I know,” he says. He knows Lily, and Lily knows him, but James knows him, too. Sirius sometimes underestimates James, but James is always too brilliant for his own good. “You know? I don’t even mind that you do.”

“Nancy,” James says fondly.

Sirius flicks his elbow. They straighten to stretch their shoulders. “Says you. Go on, stretch. Your old man muscles need it.”

“I’ll chop you into bits and feed you to Mary’s cat.”

Sirius lets out a sigh as his shoulder wrenches in the most perfect, painful way. “You do that, Jamie,” he says. He knows what James is really saying, after all, because he knows James.

He knows all his mates. Of all things, he is most proud of himself for that.

“Regulus?” Emerald says softly, prodding him.

He looks sharply up. “M’fine.”

“You look exhausted,” she whispers. Her eyes are big and worried and locked to the side of his face as they walk. “Did you sleep last night?”

“Yes,” he lies, knuckling his nose, sure that if he were to admit to her that he’d spent the night reading and rereading the section on skin-sewing spells in the healing manual Poppy gave him, she’d shout at him and shake him by the shoulders and make him promise to do something awful, like drink a cup of broth and take a Sleeping Potion and Have Sweet Dreams. So he lies, but that doesn’t make his eyes stop stinging, nor does it assuage the subtle but inexorable feeling that he is slowly losing his entire mind. Shadows cling to every corner. He’s always been afraid of—well, most things, but today everything makes him jump.

The corridors have been an absolute disaster to take on. A faction of Slytherin house threw a secret party when the Prophet announced the Dragon Pox infection landed. Some Slytherins are distraught. Some have infected family members. Some are so tired of the looks they’re all getting in the Great Hall that they’ve decided to live up to the expectations and celebrate the news, too. They’re all getting cursed, jinxed, shoved and tripped and jeered at, as if it was their fault, as if they’d done it. Sirius and James Potter flank their mudblood friends everywhere they go, wands raised carelessly, hexes fired at whim. Protection.

Nothing is protected anymore. No one is safe. Auror August Campbell is dead, and Regulus carefully, carefully feels nothing in response. There will be no public ceremony, because of the risks of congregating in public. Nearly thirty government employees are in hospital beds or home quarantining and Regulus does not say a word either way. The Dark Lord is rising, he is outside the castle walls and within them, too, and Regulus is here, and he is not, and August’s seat at the staff table is left empty, whether out of respect or as a game of numbers, who could say. Defense classes have been monitored study halls all week since the announcement. Regulus is making a list, alphabetical, of every dark creature they have studied, and going down it, definition by definition, Abarimon, Acromantula, Alizor of Westacottus, Ashwinder, Augurey—

“Reg,” Emerald says, giving him a shake, and the plummet of his mind into his body is so sudden, so sharp, so distinctly reminiscent of freefall, that he gasps raggedly, pressing a hand to his too-tight chest. Mortification rises into his cheeks. He knows how these things work. He just needs to gasp and sputter his way through the drowning until it passes, and Emerald—she has never seen this. Sirius is the only one who has seen this. No one else should see this. This is strange and sacred and necrotic, this is wallpaper pulled back to unveil festering wood beneath, oh God, he can’t breathe.

She grabs his hand and squeezes, pulling them away from where a potential stream of students could come marching were this place not absolutely abandoned echoing lonely, and Regulus can’t focus on much other than a truly hideous tapestry behind him and, across the way, three portraits empty of contents. Poetic, that. Empty empty portraits, ha ha, that hits home. He is a frame, ghostless. A skin, heatless. A smudge on a drinking glass and ink-stained knuckles. He gasps, stuttered, and hunches over his knees.

“What do I do to help?” Emerald says, leaning with him.

Bloody fucking Hufflepuff, always thinking there’s something to be done. Regulus likes her so much.

He gulps, nearly chokes on his own saliva, and then lurches into motion, deciding maybe pacing will tire him out, and then maybe he will faint, and maybe he will be calm. A film of white noise surrounds him like a cloak. His every footstep is lilted. His chest is so tight, the furl of a parchment scroll. He turns on his heel. Emerald is watching him. He turns again. He can’t bear to look at her.

He walks, lifts his arms behind his head to stretch his torso, already sore from a bludger accident that ended in rib-misplacement two nights ago, and he wonders if this pressure, this breathlessness, could shove the rib out of place again. Logically, he knows it couldn’t, but there is nothing logical about this. He needs—what he needs is his brother, but somewhere to hide would suffice. Somewhere he doesn’t have to think about dead August or bedridden Aurors or bedridden Slytherins or any combination of the prior.

A gasp from Emerald has him turning again, sharp, trembling hand flying to his pocket, groping for his wand. But no one is there. She is staring at the wall, which is opening. Like a mace flew through, like Charybdis and her maw.

“Oh my God,” Emerald says.

Regulus pants vaguely, massaging his chest. A lance of shock spears through the murmur of static, tearing it to shreds, a frayed white flag of surrender. Unmitigated access to his brain once more.

Then she grabs him by the elbow and yanks him right into the room.

“Oh don’t be stupid,” Regulus croaks. “There could be things in here!”

“Fraidy-cat,” Emerald sings, and then there’s nothing else to say, because the room is breathtaking: lofty ceiling, tall windows that surely must be enchanted for the weather outside could never be as clear and bright as this, indubious Rococo influence with gold and pale pink accents against the perfect, unblemished walls, but the rest is pure comfort—all crowded bookshelves and thick rugs and squishy couches and a great tea set on a spindly cart, save for one corner, in which stands a beautiful white grand piano, a pottery wheel with a brick of clay, a rack of drawing supplies, and what Regulus knows with a tingling certainty in his fingertips is a case holding a trumpet.

His shock opens into some sort of tentative calm—an exhausted calm, a near-tears calm, the water receding after the sonar spill of a pebble through its still surface.

“Are we on the seventh floor?” Regulus asks.

“Yes?” says Emerald.

“Then this is the Room of Requirement,” Regulus breathes. “Of course.”

“Oh,” Emerald says. “Oh, my goodness. I’ve read about this place.”

This is what they needed: a sanctuary, a place that is theirs, a convoluted reminder of their fancy pureblood homes made into something comforting. The walls say Black and Shacklebolt, but the contents are something distinctly personal.

“Pottery,” Regulus says, gesturing at the wheel with a knuckle, elbowing her.

“I know,” she says. Behind them, there is a thud. When Regulus turns, he sees the wall has closed. Somehow, he doesn’t feel trapped. Doesn’t feel afraid anymore. Like the castle is granting him a gift, hushed tones, gentle fingers, Come here, I have you.

Like gravitational pull, they approach the corner of canvases and music stands and tubes of acrylic paint and gouache.

Emerald lowers lightly to her knees, examining the clay brick. Regulus leans, too, and pulls the black case closer. He flicks the silver tabs open, reverent, and stares at the perfect shining horn inside. Untouched. Untainted. His, he supposes.

“Is trumpet your instrument?” Emerald asks, eyes luminous as she looks over at him.

“Yes,” he says, picking it up, weighing it in his hands, the cold metal familiar under his fingertips. “What was yours?”

“Piccolo,” she says.

“Of course it was,” he says. Thoughtful, then, he asks, “What about your language?”

“Latin,” she says, squinting at him, so good at knowing what he’s asking even when he hasn’t asked. “You know, my family was in Europe before yours was.”

“Back as far as—?”

“The eighth century,” she says dryly.

Regulus gives a bleating blow on his trumpet. “Hell.”

Sometimes he thinks about muggles, who need great ships and flying machines to travel, and he pities them. Then he considers the earliest dark-skinned magical immigrants, who had to create secret hidden communities, craft and arithmance Muggle-Repelling Charms, as to not be questioned or hung or diagnosed with diseases of the visage to explain their foreign features and tongues before the time of great white muggle conquest, and he decides the point is moot.

“I see it in your nose,” Emerald says, still looking at him. “And your dark hair. Maybe your eyes?”

“I’ve grey eyes,” he says. “Like my brother and my cousins. None of us look like we’re—”

“Egyptian people look all different ways,” Emerald insists. “You are Egyptian, so you look Egyptian.” Regulus shrugs. They are a great deal of things. It is purely coincidental that almost half of it sires from Egypt. What matters is his perfect, mountain-runoff clean Black blood. It’s why most purebloods are of mixed race: that which lives and bleeds under the skin matters far more. “And your cousin Narcissa,” Emerald says. “She looks like she could be an entirely different family, she could be a Yaxley, but she has your nose, doesn’t she?”

Regulus nods. “Her mother is fair like her. She’s a Rosier, and they carry the gene for metamorphmagi, so we used to tease her, saying she could let down the charade and show us her black hair, that we wouldn’t tell.” Regulus looks down at his lap, nostalgia hitting him like hunger pains. “But the three of them—Bella, Narcissa, and Andromeda, that is—they all have the exact same face. Lucky for them it’s a rather nice one.”

Emerald smiles faintly, humorlessly. “Keeping the bloodline closed does seem to have benefitted them, yes.”

Regulus stands—unsteady, weak like he’s pumped full of Dreamless Sleep potion—and sits in the closest armchair: a poofy, chintzy velvet thing in chartreuse with hickory brown wooden arms. “You know, I do wonder where Meda got her brown hair more than I wonder where Cissa got her blond. The rest of us, we’re all bad copies, smudged copies. Black hair, same nose, same eyes.”

“I presume the gene is in your mix somewhere.”

“Yes, well, we’ve somehow managed to collect some Bulstrode and Burke in us, which would account for the Mediterranean influence,” Regulus says, like talking about something inane. Like what he has left in his potions kit.

“That could be the French, too,” Emerald says. “You—” She makes a thoughtful sound, then stands, crosses to Regulus, and smushes herself into the chair at his side, hips pressed and knees knocking. “You wish you knew more, don’t you?”

“We can trace our family by the tapestry,” Regulus says. “I know all there is to know.”

“About the culture you came from,” she corrects. “If you did, there would be something about your home to love.”

Regulus looks at her. Tinged with desperation, he asks, “Do you talk—at home, do your parents teach you—?”

“No, Regulus,” she says. “And yours don’t, either. My parents may have different politics than you and yours, but they’re still purebloods, still traditional. And we both feel as if we’re missing out, don’t we.”

Regulus looks away. Like a moth to a flame, he looks back. Nods.

She doesn’t answer. She just leans her head on his shoulder and tucks her knees to her chest.

“I,” he says, “am glad every day that you were the only one with big enough bollocks to sit next to Barty and I in Charms last year.”

She rubs her palm over his thigh, comforting. “Will you play something for me?” she asks.

“What would you like to hear?” he says.

“Do you know anything muggle?”

“Of course not.”

She sighs. “I need to get you onto Louis Armstrong.”

“Who’s he?”

“Trumpet player. Sings, too.”

“A real Renaissance man, isn’t he?”

“How do you mean?” Emerald says.

“His talents spread over a wide range of—erm, applications?”

“Reg.” She looks up at him. “Who—what, exactly, do you think Louis Armstrong does?”

“Isn’t he the one who walked on the moon?”

Emerald bursts into loud laughter. Her shoulders bounce against his side. With every rasp of their sleeves, he feels more like he’s swallowed the sun. “That’s Lance Armstrong, Reg.”

“Muggle names are too similar,” Regulus says.

“And there are only twenty-eight pure wizard names left, so look who’s talking!”

Regulus bats her ever so delicately on the head with the horn. Already, a bit of peace is squirming its way into his chest. Emerald is, perhaps, a miracle. “I have Charlier’s thirty-six Études memorized, if you want to hear those.”

She looks up at him, nose wrinkled. “Boring.”

“They’re classics.”

“Bo-o-oring.”

He tugs on one of her thick braids. “You’re the one who asked me to play. Beggars can’t be choosers.”

She drops herself sideways across Regulus’s lap, facedown with her feet kicked up and arms dangling over the side of his thigh. “Play me a song, trumpet boy.”

He honks the horn obnoxiously.

She laughs, the sound muffled by the seat cushion.

He thinks, then, about what he could play.

He presses the cold metal mouthpiece to his lips, takes a breath, and plays the opening line to a Mussorgsky piece he was never supposed to know—a sheet of music that must have fallen from the bag of one of his many teachers when he was about nine years old, when he was confused and afraid and Sirius was gone at school, so he picked up the sheet and told Kreacher to set an Imperturbable Charm around the room and he learned it, that one page, the lilting melody meant for piano, the Russian music that was his one little rebellion. Now, he shares it with her. Come with me, wherever I am going.

Emerald strokes her fingers over the velvet of the chair and listens to Regulus play in this one place, this one corner of the world where nothing else at all can touch them. For the first time in a long time, Regulus feels calm. Feels sure. Feels as if, perhaps, he isn’t alone.

Lily doesn’t know how long she’s had Wuthering Heights open across her knees. It could have been hours, and she hasn’t read a single line in that time. She can’t make her eyes focus. She hadn’t been able to stomach the thought of lunch, hadn’t been able to walk all the way down to the dungeons in search of Sev, hadn’t been able to find Remus in the Common Room. She thought about returning to bed, but the walk, and the cinderblocks she’s sure are attached to her feet, and the weight behind her eyes.

It aches. She does.

Instead, she has stared out the window at the flowering trees and Hagrid’s begonias and a pair of wandering deer near the greenhouses. The grounds are soggy, the sky grey. The world and all her inhabitants are particularly grim.

She takes a sharp breath and sends a sweeping look across the library, unable to stare at the sop any longer, and, by mere chance, meets Potter’s gaze.

Without a pause, not even to think, a crooked smile jumps to his lips and he crosses his eyes at her.

Lily finds the energy to flip him the bird as something defrosts a fraction in her chest.

He sticks his tongue out, then looks back at what seems to be an essay, scratching his chin with his quill tip, leaving a loose-thread scrawl in navy blue.

She looks at her book. It stares despondently back.

She closes it with a thump, shoves it in her bag, and stands. She’s suddenly feeling rather hungry after all.

It’s only that night when she finds an opportunity to return the unspoken favor.

He’s in the Common Room when she walks in from dinner, perched upon the very edge of a chair at the study table, where he sits alone, raking a hand repeatedly through his hair and reading furiously, knee bouncing like it may never stop. His teeth cut ultra-white into his lip, rolling it to the point of a bruise.

Lily wants to go upstairs. She wants to tuck into bed and hide and sleep and think about nothing at all.

But.

She crosses to him. Plants a hand on the tabletop. Reads over his shoulder.

“Dragon Pox,” she says.

James jumps like he’s been electrocuted, pulling at his hair as he looks up at her. The bags under his eyes, she realizes, are heavy. Eclipses. “Erm,” he says. “Yeah.”

“Studying?” she says.

He nods.

She hooks an ankle around the leg of the chair beside his and falls into it with a little huff. She rolls the sleeves of her itchy jumper and leans over the book beside him.

“What are you doing?” he says.

“What I probably should have done ages ago,” she says. “Learning about Dragon Pox.”

“Oh,” he says.

She glares at him, unimpressed, but he looks so on edge that she can’t maintain the attitude. “Tell me, then.”

“Tell you what?” he says.

“Everything you know,” she says, turning her chair so she can sit in it backwards and face him, elbows crossed along the unyielding wood backing between them.

“It’s a virus,” James says, and she rolls her eyes. “You said everything! I’m assuming you have zero prior knowledge.”

“I have so much prior knowledge about so many things,” she says, defensive.

He flicks an eyebrow. Just the one. She wonders how many hours he spent in front of the mirror perfecting that move.

She acquiesces. “About so many things, but not this thing.”

“I thought as much,” James says, pulling his knees to his chest and sitting the book across the shelf they make. “It’s a virus the same way herpes is. It stays in the body forever, but can show symptoms in waves.”

“Shit,” she says heartily.

“That being said, it doesn’t have too many symptoms,” James continues, hand yanking on his hair, gaze far away, “other than fever, tightness in the chest, raised blood pressure, and headaches, but the fire specifically could ignite at—at any time, it’s a bastard of a dormant symptom, and when the fire ignites,” James gives a weird, breathy laugh, “that’s it for him. His lungs are shot. His throat is shot. Can't breathe. It’ll crisp him from the inside out.”

Lily thinks it sounds rather like wizarding Tuberculosis. Lung-sluicing cough. Christ.

“Well,” she says at length, scratching her wrist. “I finally understand that bloody school motto of ours.”

James looks at her, brow knit.

“Never tickle a sleeping dragon,” she recites. “We’d much rather the dragon remain dormant, hm?”

James stares for a long moment, something complicated pulling at his lips, before he buries his face in his hands and starts to laugh. Soft, true laughter from the pit of his stomach. It makes Lily want to smile, too.

She lets herself.

And when James looks up, still smiling himself, and sees it, he starts to glow.

Lily would never admit it, not under torture or at threat of death, she wouldn’t, she couldn’t, her pride wouldn’t survive it, but there are few things in this world that make her feel so much like herself again as James Potter does without even bloody trying.

“Everything is going to work out,” Lily tells him. “Okay?”

“Did you Divine that?” James says, lips still upturned, dropping his chin into the spine of the book across his knees. “Because, if so, there’s no way in hell I believe it.”

“No, I didn’t Divine it, arsehole,” she says, delicately kicking his shin. “It’s a gut feeling. You trust those, don’t you?”

“I do,” he allows. “And you.”

“Me, what?”

“I trust you.”

The proclamation hangs in the air. Lily thinks it is supposed to make her uncomfortable. To make her feel smothered. But she’s learned there are far worse things in this world than the prospect of James Potter trusting her.

“Good,” she says. “I’m very trustworthy.”

“I know,” he says with a nod that has his hair flopping in his eyes. “For the record, I am, too.”

She kicks his shin again, but doesn’t disagree. Sometimes she thinks she wouldn’t trust him as far as she could throw him. Other times, she thinks she would trust him beyond all others to be at her back in a wand fight. It’s the way he is: this sense of care oozes out of him like sun-baked pollen off wildflowers in summer. But it scares her, because she can trust him in all the wrong ways. He would kill anyone who hurt someone he loves. That scares her. The intensity. The depth of feeling. It is unfamiliar to her, and dubiously possible.

“Read to me,” she says. “We’ll learn together.”

That, at least, she can give him.

Regulus drops his feet onto the table, crosses them at the ankle, and holds the trumpet to his lips, just feeling, just metal and teeth.

“Hungry,” Emerald says, lifting her foot from the pedal of her pottery wheel, pushing her braids back with her forearm. “Have we got snacks?”

“We will,” says Regulus. He lays his trumpet down and shoves to his feet. He checks the drawers of the enormous desk that dominates the space, asking politely in his mind for sustenance. The Room is a miracle. It gives them anything at all they ask for, so long as they’re nice about it. He pulls out a tin.

“Oh, yes,” he says. “This is the best day. I’ve never been as blissfully content as I am in this moment.”

“Nuts,” says Emerald.

“There is no delight tantamount to that of a perfectly roasted lightly salted deluxe mixed nut!” Regulus says.

Emerald rolls her eyes as a new song starts out of the record player. It’s some muggle singer, something Regulus has never heard, something he’s challenging himself to play along with by ear to brush up his listening skills. It’s jazz, a genre that was always too common for Regulus to touch as a child, but now he has a funny silver trumpet mute that he’s learning how to use, and this feels like, perhaps, the advancement of his little rebellion into a far greater one. He wonders what Mother would shout. How Father would sniff and turn away.

“I get along without you very well,” the woman sings in her coy, gritty voice, melodious and lilting, “of course I do… except when soft rains fall and drip from leaves, then I recall the thrill of being sheltered in your arms.”

Regulus raises the trumpet to his lips mindlessly and plays a little trill, a filler, as he gets a feeling for the key, for the swung beat, for the singer’s phrasing. He then crosses to Emerald, drops the container of nuts in front of her.

“Feed me?” she says, showing him her clay-caked hands.

“Hmm,” he says.

“I've forgotten you just like I should, of course, I have…”

“Fine,” he says, prying the lid off with one hand. “The things I do for you.”

“Except to hear your name, or someone's laugh that is the same…”

He peels back the aluminum, pulls out an almond. She opens her mouth. He drops the almond inside. She grins hugely as she chews it. “Thank you.”

“Mhm,” he says, looking at her, strangely fond. He’s just glad to know her. He has her, and that matters. That he has someone, and that the someone is her. Merlin forbid his someone ever having to be Barty. It’s bad enough enduring his presence in class, in the Great Hall, in their dormitory. Bad enough pretending to enjoy it in intermittent bursts. If it were constant, Regulus really might consider the Astronomy Tower with more honesty.

Regulus looks down sharply. He doesn’t like thinking around other people. It makes him nervous. Like a performance.

“But I've forgotten you just like I should…”

He plucks up a pistachio and offers it to her. She opens her mouth, and he drops it in. He watches her merrily spin her damp clay, crafting a little bowl from nothing, with his trumpet dangling loosely from between his fingers and his eyes locked on her hands, messier than he’s ever seen them, grey clay eating the dark spread of her skin halfway to the elbow.

“What a guy—what a fool am I! To think my breaking heart could kid the moon… What's in store should I fall once more? No, it's best that I stick to my tune…”

There is, James feels, a sort of divinity in this: the dappled rooftops, the spread of night plum purple above him, star-speckled, painting the face of the lake in its image. He, a bottle of firewhiskey, and Sirius tucked under his arm.

“What on earth are you two doing?” comes Remus’s voice through the window.

“Having a rooftop romp,” James says, not turning.

“A wee caper,” Sirius agrees.

“Are you liquored up?” Remus asks.

“Yes,” says James as Sirius says, “Noooo.”

They listen to Remus wiggle himself out the window and clamber to their side. He wedges himself directly between the other two, hip to hip to hip, three narrow boys with armfuls of each other and hearts full of all the warmest of things.

Remus grabs the firewhiskey—almost emptied—and takes a swig. “That’s nice,” he says, lips downturned in a comical wince.

James leans his head onto Remus’s shoulder. “This is nice,” he says. “I feel brilliant. I feel so brilliant right now. Everything is falling to bits, but we’re drinking. My stress ulcer is on fire and I can’t even feel it.”

“James,” Remus sighs. His hand slides up to hold the back of James’s head.

“No, really,” James says. He watches his breath fog up before him. He laughs a little. It’s trading air with the universe. That’s what breathing is: time condensed into lung-sized moments, history in memories that fill him between the bones, that whisper into the marrow of him that he is made of this stuff too. All of that fits into Remus’s palm. “I’ve never been better.”

“This is sorta nice, isn’t it?” Sirius says. His voice is so soft, smooth. The same polished sort of voice James was raised to have. It sounds empty. Both of them are. Marble busts with no meat inside.

“Yeah,” Remus says. He grabs Sirius’s head too, knocks their temples all together. “This? It’s better than nice. This is all that matters in the end.”

“Us,” Sirius says.

“Being one with the world,” says James.

“A moment of quiet,” says Remus.

“A drink,” Sirius adds.

“Family,” James says firmly, grabbing a handful of Remus’s jumper. “We’ve got everything we need.”

“Look at this sky,” Sirius says quietly. “Look at the bloody sky.”

“It’s stunning,” Remus says.

James pushes himself clumsily to his feet. He throws his hands in the air and imagines he can touch those stars. Stroke their faces, grow luminescent himself. Become that sort of stuff. Eternal.

He shouts, gutturally, like pulling knotted clown tissues from the pit of his stomach.

The sky rings with it. For a moment, he is like it.

Remus stands. Yells.

James looks at them, lips numb and mind utterly drunk.

Sirius gets up, clenched fists over his chest, and pulls at the air like it’s his skin, like it’s the zipper of him, like it’ll make more space. His cry echoes off the shards of night around them, I am here, I am here, I am here.

James’s eyes, as is common with him, brim.

He shoves his glasses up the slope of his nose and he sniffles. “Alright, lads,” he says. “We’re alive, aren’t we?”

“We are,” says Remus.

Sirius marches across the roof and grabs James around his shoulders, slapping his back, squeezing him.

“We are,” Sirius says, voice strained. “We’re all bloody alive and we’re all going to stay that way.”

“Promise,” says Remus, coming to them. He drinks more. “Promise me.”

“I swear,” says Sirius, holding an arm out. He pulls Remus into their embrace. It’s all elbows and stiff ribs and alcohol stink.

“I swear, too,” James says. He presses their foreheads together, right at the centers. “We’re all living. And we’re all together. And that’s how it’s going to stay.”

James hopes the universe hears him.

“Hello, you all,” Remus says, bundled to the chin in a great big turtleneck, a hat pulled low over his forehead and tucked behind his ears so that they stick out quite funnily, a pencil and a notebook clutched in his grip.

“Morning, Remus,” says Marlene with a smile.

“Ay, duck,” Lily says, squinting up at him against the sun’s silver glare. “Sit down.”

“Have we snatched you from the boys?” Dorcas asks, moving her books to make room for Remus’s lanky legs.

“If you’ll have me,” he says, grunting as he lowers himself. “They’re being stupid, and not in the usual exhilarating way.”

“What are they doing? Eating dragon manure?” Mary says, straining to see them across the clearing.

Lily turns for only a moment. She watches James fall backwards off the wooden fence and Sirius laugh handsomely in response.

She looks back at her mates. They’re too bright this morning. The boys. Too loud and brilliant. Her eyes hurt. She feels fractured.

“That’s, horribly enough, not far off at all,” Remus is saying, opening his sketch pad. “They’re tossing it at each other like dive-bombing grenades and I’m quite positive they’re going to smell like shit all day. Unfortunately I would do a great many things for those morons, but that is not one of them.”

“You’re a martyr,” Lily tells him, their shoulders knocking together as Remus scoots closer, shivering in the early-morning chill.

“You’d know better than most,” he replies.

Lily arranges her skirt over her thighs to have something to do while she listens to Mary tell Marlene about the date she has in the Astronomy Tower tonight with a Ravenclaw named Riker.

“Riker,” Marlene repeats.

“Riker,” Mary says solemnly.

“Do you,” says Marlene. She gives a surreptitious look around them. They share this period with the Ravenclaws, anyhow. “Do you think, with a name like that, he sounds like he’s… expecting things?”

“Well, he ought not to,” Mary says, affronted. “It’s nineteen-seventy-five! A date doesn’t imply anything at all, other than a date!”

“Of course not, dear,” says Marlene, “but you know how boys are… always thinking with their pants…”

“Is it always like this?” Remus leans over to whisper in Lily’s ear.

She turns towards him, leaning back on her palms, and says, “Not always. Sometimes we sleep.”

Remus grins. “You know what? I don’t mind. I rather like gossip. Did you know Peter heard from the Fat Lady that Alice and Frank didn’t get back to their rooms until two in the morning yesterday?”

Where Lily might have normally gasped in delight, all she can manage is a twitch of her brows. “You don’t say.”

“And,” says Remus, “according to the Lady, of course, they both seemed flushed.”

“Maybe they had a game of tag around the hallways.”

“That’s about what Peter said,” Remus says, smirking. “But, allegedly, Frank’s shirt was untucked.”

“Wow,” Lily says.

Remus’s smile wavers. “Lily, are you feeling alright?”

“I’m good,” she answers.

Remus scrutinizes her. “Chocolate,” he decides. He reaches into his rucksack and pulls out a bar of Honeydukes’s Finest. “Here you go. Eat up. You’ll feel better.”

Lily takes the row of squares proffered by Remus and looks at it.

“Eat,” he says, poking her with his elbow as he hands pieces off to Marlene, Mary, and Dorcas as well.

“You’re welcome to sit with us whenever you want, Remus,” Marlene says feelingly, eyes closing contentedly as she drops a square on her tongue.

Lily takes a small bite of the chocolate. She chews and swallows. She hadn’t thought she’d be able to, frankly, with her mouth as dry and her chest as tight as it is.

Remus pats her hatted head. “Finish that. I’ll pester you until you do.”

Lily slowly gets it down, the row gone just as Kettleburn comes marching into sight, carting crates full of what he says are bowtruckles for them to draw.

Her chest feels a bit lighter as she watches Remus merrily unsheathe a pack of colored pencils one by one and lay them out on the grass. She isn’t sure if it’s the chocolate that’s done it, or just his unusually chipper presence, but she’s grateful either way.

Care of Magical Creatures is nice mostly because no one ever knows when anyone else is truly working or not, and, these days, Lily far prefers buggering around to actually completing what they’ve been asked to.

“Have you finished your drawing?” Remus asks, hooking his chin over her shoulder.

She holds her page up. “I’ve done a cow in a silly hat.”

“Very nice. And not at all what the assignment was.”

“Well, what did you expect, really?”

“Exactly that, I suppose.”

“What have you drawn, then?”

Remus holds up his page. “A shark.”

“Is it wearing a scarf?”

“Yes. Polka dots.”

They grin at each other for a moment.

He reaches out, tilts her head forward, and gives her a kiss over the eyebrow. “Very good. I’m quite proud.”

“You can keep it,” she says, wildly uncomfortable and face-flushingly pleased at once.

He scowls at her. “You know what I meant. But I’m definitely keeping that drawing, anyway. I’ll put it right on the wall beside my bed. It’ll be lovely.”

“It will be?” she asks.

He tucks a strand of hair behind her ear. “Of course,” he replies, “because it’s from you.”

“Will you pass me another scarab beetle?” Severus says, jabbing Lily lightly in the side with his elbow.

She jumps a foot into the air, knife almost slipping off the cutting board. “God, Sev, don’t do that!”

“What, don’t touch you?” he says. He frowns. “What is up with you?”

She gapes at him. What is up with her. Ha ha.

She shakes her head, then drops a scarab beetle on his cutting board.

“Thank you,” he says in the tone of someone who feels they are in the presence of someone quite immature.

This is why she prefers to spend Potions in silence, these days. It’s been five months of this. Five bloody months of him expecting her to just jump back into shape, of no help from him, of arguing at every step. Lily thinks he feels like his very presence should fix everything. That standing beside him at their desk—rubbing elbows, shredding Chinese Chomping Cabbage or measuring doxie blood—should make her snap right back into herself, the way she was, before the explosion and her father and the arm. Severus does not put her at ease. He gears her up for battle, for arguments. Sometimes, if she sees his robes before she sees his face, she pulls her wand out, thinking it’s someone out to hex her, to bleed her dry in the corridors, she is so tired, she is so tired.

She is so fucking tired. None of this is worth anything anymore. Why is she pretending. Why.

She knows what she should do. She knows exactly what she should do, in fact, she knows it so well that it hurts, that she has to nurse the knowledge like an ulcer or a child, because it is draining her strength, voracious.

She needs to let go. Of the things that hurt her, scare her. She needs to let them go like smoke on the wind, and she needs to surround herself with people, with blankets, with cushions and shared spliffs and mugs of tea.

She needs to let go of him.

Sometimes, the thought hurts. Like a knife. Sometimes, the thought makes her feel so free, so light, so… mortified.

Maybe there’s something wrong with her. No, scratch that, there is definitely something wrong with her, because she is clinging like hell to the singular thing she knows she must drop. It is the stupidest thing she could ever do, maybe. And she is doing it anyway. Knowingly, purposely.

Severus, after all, spends so much time reading those books, the Rune books and the spell-making books and the secluded corners of the library that smell heavy with centuries passed. She knows he’s slipping, slipped, sinking. She sees him read the Prophet with this detached expression on his face, like he isn’t hurt, like the reported deaths and illnesses and missing-persons don’t make his stomach twist. She hears him say mudblood and boot-licker and mugglefuckers. She sees it. She knows. That the people who exploded Diagon Alley, who infected dozens of Ministry workers, who have done a hundred terrible things and will do more, are Severus’s people.

She just thinks that she, perhaps, might be the cliff he is clinging bloody-fingernailed to. She thinks that she, maybe, will save him this time. Finally. And that she owes the lingering goodness in him the chance to prove itself.

“That’s going to overstew if you don’t add the bone,” Severus says. His brow is knit as he crushes his last beetle, precise, focused.

The single human radius sits between them, laid before their cauldron like a quill at the top of a desk, waiting to be used.

Arm. Ha ha. An arm laid between them. And isn’t that just the most poetic thing she’s ever seen.

She gingerly lifts it, skin touching bone from the wrong side. She never never wanted to. And here she is. She knew bones were white. She did. But it looks—it’s so—

Severus snatches it sharply from her hand and slides it into the cauldron. It bobs in the orange liquid, then sinks below the surface.

“What is wrong with you,” she says.

“Hm?” he says. He’s already back to powdering his beetle. “Stir that, will you? Six clockwise, one counter-clockwise, repeated f—”

“Four times, I know,” she says, and, God, there’s this bubble of anger expanding in her stomach, this cautious tumor, this strange thing, this second life, and Lily actually has to take a step back from her cutting board so that she doesn’t punch Severus in the face.

She runs her hands through her hair, giving the room a sweeping look, and catches accidentally on Sirius’s gaze. He is working his radius between his fingers like a baton twirler, leaning on his desk with one hand, while Remus dozes, facing the little flame beneath their cauldron. Their potion is a perfect pre-marrow clementine orange. He flicks his brows up. She shakes her head minutely.

He reaches behind his ear for his wand.

She shakes her head again, but some of the anger diffuses from her stomach in the form of a huffed laugh. Takes to everything with fists raised, Sirius does.

“Lil?” says Severus, then, looking over his shoulder at her. “Come on, what are you doing? This needs to be stirred.”

“Oh, suck my toes, Severus,” she says. She gives a great heaving sigh for Sirius across the room, shaking her head at him again as he glares at Snape through the hovering cauldron-steam, and then she does as he says, stirring through four sets, watching the potion lighten to the precise pale yellow it ought to be now, before they add the final red spider, which will darken it.

“Do you have a problem today?” Severus says, wiping the last remnants of dust off his cutting board and into the rubbish bin beneath their desk.

“Today? No, not today,” Lily says. “No worries, Severus, you just focus on the bloody potion.”

“You should, too,” he says. “Skele-Gro is going to be on our final exams, you know.”

Lily thinks she’d like to Skele-Gro herself another ribcage, a big, brilliant one, and use it to hide from Severus, like a silent, scheming canary. Bloody talons. That’s what she promises. Bloody talons and the hot kiss of jagged scrapes right across the jugular vein, take that, Severus Snape, and we’ll see who has a problem then.

She drops the red spider into the brew and watches Severus give it the final set of stirs with an idle sort of half-attention. Any more than that and she might shove his head into the cauldron.

She is so disinterested in the results of their work that she is lobbing her frizzed-up curls into a knot at the nape of her neck, eavesdropping on Peter and Dorcas’s weird, stilted attempts at flirting, when Slughorn approaches to give it a lookover.

Severus’s gaze is locked intently to Slughorn’s hand as he skims the ladle through the brew, as he wafts some of the smoke close for a sniff, as he dips a small litmus paper inside to test the acidity.

There is a moment of quiet, then Slughorn smiles brilliantly. “Perfect! It’s perfect, really!”

“Thank you, Professor,” Severus says stiffly, shoulders relaxing, as Lily tilts her head.

“Perfect?” she says. “Nothing to improve? I didn’t… let it stew too long before adding the bone, you think?”

“Not at all!” Slughorn says earnestly, small eyes wide. “No, not at all, my girl. As far as I can tell without having a sip, it’s a perfect Skele-Gro!”

“Would you look at that,” Lily says under her breath to Severus, tilting her head pointedly. He rolls his eyes.

“Really, perfectly done… And that’s no easy feat for a fourth year, brewing this well, this steadily… It takes intelligence, yes, but also a good gauge of how the elements affect the brewing, you know! I tell you, my girl, just the same as I told Niam Natas—a student of mine back in the day, you know, he went on to win six awards for potioneering—six!—you would have done well in my house… with my students… You would look good in green, Miss Evans!”

A wave of something like fucking fury wallops her, sudden, hot.

“Next time I feel like sympathizing with the cause that killed my father, I’ll let you know,” Lily says sharply, turning to him. She watches the realization hit him. Watches the horror come to his face, then the warring sense of pride, the desire to defend himself, what he meant. Watches the guilt win out. Watches him open his mouth to give some sort of apology, but covers her face with her hands before he can, heat rising to her cheeks, stomach dropping like a rock into a lake, all ripples. “I’m sorry, Professor, I really don’t know where that came from.”

“Your heart, my girl,” he answers. “I was a fool to say it.” He raises a hand as if to pat her shoulder, but drops it before he manages to make contact. “Good work, today.”

He walks to the next desk, the sound of murmuring in the classroom continuing around them. No one else noticed. This is her tiny terror.

“So now you think we’re all Knights of Walpurgis?” Severus says coldly, crossing his arms.

Lily does not have a goddamn word for him. She has words—so many, so many words—for poor Professor Slughorn, who always pays her attention, who always compliments her, who challenges her when she needs to be challenged and backs off when she ignores his dozens of invitations to his galas and parties and whatnot, who may be an oily sort of bastard but is nothing but a sweet, well-intentioned geriatric under that. He wants to be appreciated the way he appreciates so many others. Lily can’t fault him for that, and she can’t believe that she would say to his face what she did—to him, who is one of so many Slytherins that are good, and she threw it in his face.

She does not answer Severus. She does not look at him for the rest of class, actually. The moment the bell rings, Lily scoops up her rucksack and marches to the front of the room, where she approaches Slughorn and says, “I am so, so sorry, Professor, truly. That was wrong of me to say. Slytherins obviously aren’t all bad, and you are the least bad, I am so sorry.”

He goes pink in the cheeks, shaking his head, as Sirius, Remus, James, and Peter linger in the doorway, looking at her funnily. She rolls her eyes and waves them on before turning back to Slughorn, who still seems to be masticating upon a reply.

“You are allowed to be hurt, Miss Evans,” he says eventually, “and you have every reason to… generalize, you, who went through the things you did…”

“But I have no right to take it out on you or anyone else,” she says, realizing, with horror in her chest, that she has been inadvertently doing just that for months. “Goodness, I’m sorry. I won’t do it again, I promise. I’m—I’m going to fix this.”

“You don’t need to be fixed, my dear,” he says, surprised.

“No,” she says with a rueful smile, “but I think…” She looks around the room, at the vials and ingredients in cabinets, at shimmering brews and bottled emotions and power, and, oh. “I think I could use a little—” she says the next word a bit like someone might say ‘inverted testicles,’ “—help, and I know what to do to get it.”

“Get it, then!” He puffs up a bit, and says, “I have contacts, you know, all over the place, if you ever need! At Saint Mungo’s, in the Ministry, wherever!”

She reaches out and squeezes his elbow, feeling unbearably fond of all his pomp for a moment. “I know,” she says. “Thank you. So much. Really.”

He waves it off, cheered. “For you, my girl, my most promising pupil—” a wink, “—anything!”

Comforted in knowing she now has a plan, Lily marches out of the room, up the stairs, and to the Hospital Wing, where, frankly, she does not expect to walk straight into Sirius.

Both her and him go flying to the ground with the force of their impact. Lily’s breath jumps from her chest with the force of her arse hitting the stone.

“Oof,” she says. “Watch where you’re going, dingbat.”

But then Sirius looks up, rubbing his elbow, and it is not Sirius at all.

“Oh!” she says. She has never met Regulus Black. She knows exactly nothing about him, other than that he is lauded as his parents’s golden boy because he is silent in the face of their ploys for blood purity and Dark Magic and whatever else. She wonders if he hates her already. If he always has. It’s a strange thought, mostly because he looks so stunningly similar to his brother, except, of course, that Regulus is wearing these pale green robes not unlike hospital scrubs, and his hair is shorn shorter. Maybe their bone structure is a little different, maybe, but Lily doubts many people look close enough to notice. “Hello,” she says, untentative. Sirius would have punched her, if they met tentatively. She wonders if Regulus is the same. “I’m Lily. Sorry, I thought you were—”

“Sirius, yes,” Regulus says. His voice is somehow more musical than Sirius’s, for how much quieter it is. Gentler. “A common mistake.”

“One I won’t make again,” she says, offering him a hand. They pull themselves to their feet together. He’s taller than her. She leans onto her toes a bit to even out the difference. “Is Madame Pomfrey here?”

“Yes,” he says.

Loquacious.

“Alright,” she says awkwardly. “I’ll—go, then.”

Regulus does not say a word—just straightens his robes and all but disappears into a storage closet.

Lily hums to herself, a sound of slight bafflement, then goes hunting for Pomfrey, arms crossed over her chest.

She finds the woman washing her hands at a sink in the back corner of the room, white robes rolled to her elbows, gaze far away. “Good afternoon, Madame Pomfrey,” she says.

The woman startles. “Oh! Sorry, dear, I was—never mind. What’s hurting?”

“Erm,” she says. “My emotional stability, mostly.”

Madame Pomfrey gets this terribly understanding sort of look on her face. “Mm. Come with me, dear.”

And so Lily winds up on a purple plastic lawn chair in Poppy Pomfrey’s narrow little office, eight times taller than it is wide, as Poppy pulls out clipboards and asks questions like How long have you been having these dreams? and How is your family dealing with this? to which Lily says things like Five months and We’re not.

As Poppy bustles around in the cabinets, Lily, whose brusqueness has faded now that the job is done, who now feels wholeheartedly mortified, stares through the window at Regulus as he patters about neatly, his expression one of someone deeply sunk into their own mind. He looks like a little bird, considering and flitting and, unless her eyes and ears are deceiving her, humming under his breath as he passes the window, arms full of trays of vials of potions.

When Poppy leads Lily out into the main room again, skimming a chart with Lily’s height and weight and dosage sizes listed, Lily is still holding him in her periphery, mostly because he, as a concept, is very intriguing to her, but partially because he is keeping her in his periphery with equal intensity.

Poppy is head-first, waist-deep in a cabinet, mumbling to herself about owling Lily’s mum, so Lily looks right at Regulus and sticks her tongue out.

His eyebrows knit.

She holds her hands up, thumbs at her temples, and wiggles her fingers at him, crossing her eyes.

A tentative smile bursts to his lips. Confused, clumsy, a little crooked, like he isn’t used to doing it, but just as brilliant as his brother’s, right from its inception until the moment he looks away to hide it.

Satisfied, she turns to Poppy just as she comes to her feet from within the cabinet, a small cardboard box with neat rows of vials arranged in hand. “Give us a second, Regulus?”

“See you around, Betelgeuse,” Lily says cheerily.

For a moment, his unimpressed look is so Sirius-like that Lily's stomach hurts. Then, he wrinkles his nose in an expression entirely his own.

It makes Lily snort a laugh as he disappears into another storage closet, shaking his head as he goes.

“Are you two friends, then?” Poppy says, and she seems hopeful.

“This is the first time we’ve met,” Lily says with a strange inclination to apologize.

“Ah,” Poppy says. Brisk, then, “Here’s a set of potions for you: Dreamless Sleep, that’s this purplish one here, and these are Draught of Peace—don’t take them any less than eight hours apart or the effects will interact—”

“And cause possible coma or fatal slowing of the heart,” Lily recites dutifully.

It’s only when Poppy’s eyebrows jump that she realizes she was not supposed to answer that like a question in class.

“Sorry,” she says. “I’m all about Potions, so.”

“No, no,” Poppy says, “I’m impressed. Have you got a penchant for healing, as well? I’ll take you on, if you’re interested.”

Lily, taken aback, thinks about poor, limping Remus. She thinks about Regulus in those mint green robes. She thinks about the arm.

“I wouldn’t make a good healer,” she says, nose wrinkling slightly. “I’m not nurturing. I’m brutal.”

“At least you’re self-aware,” Poppy says, lips quirking. “Alright, Miss Evans. You come back weekly for refills, alright? And I can trust you won’t go handing these around willy-nilly?”

“Of course,” she promises.

“Good,” Poppy says. “Off you pop, then. You can tell Regulus to come out of that closet now.”

“I heard you,” Regulus’s voice pipes, muffled.

Lily finds a smile on her lips. It lingers as she tosses a goodbye to Poppy, as she knocks a farewell on the lintel of the cupboard—Regulus jumps in fright—and all the way to Gryffindor Tower, which she gives a sweeping look, armed with her new arsenal of rest and calm, and she thinks, It’s about fucking time I get back to myself.

“Do you think I could carve my own fate line into my palm?” James asks, frowning at his hand, turning it in the dim light of the Divination Tower as they cram ceaselessly for their encroaching exams. The room is a mess of low sunlight and harried voices around them. Apparently no one feels prepared for Divination. “Just take a knife and make one?”

“You don’t want fate,” Lily says, looking up at him from atop her folded arms, embroidered tablecloth digging into her chin. Her legs are static, feet numb. She feels like she’s watching all this. Not living. Watching.

It’s the potions. They make her feel like she’s drowning, a little. A lot. A lot, they make her feel like she’s drowning, she can see the bubbles, she grasps and it’s all water. She stumbled into the Hospital Wing in tears this morning, begging Poppy to fix it, fix it please, but Poppy just hugged her and said to give it a week before they make a decision to adjust the doses. That her body needs to get used to it. That she will make it work.

“So I’m just going to feel like soup forever?” Lily had wailed.

“No!” Poppy said, petting her hair. “No, sweet girl, no, I’m sorry. It will be worse before it gets better. That’s honest. I’m telling you, it will be awful for a little while, and it will hurt, and—guess what? You’re still going to be okay. And imagine how proud you’ll be, how bloody proud, when you are better.”

“I will be better?” Lily had said, sniffling, swallowing, desperate.

“Yes,” Poppy said fiercely. “Yes, I promise.”

So Lily is in Divination, with James, and all either of them can focus enough to do these days is kick each other in the shins and make faces over the crystal ball. It’s easy. God, it’s so easy, she could be furious, the old her would be furious, but she’s doing this right, she’s taking things as they come, and James is coming, so she’s letting him.

“I don’t want fate?” James repeats, looking at her through his thick lashes, pouting his lips. “Says who?”

“You hate fate,” she says.

“I don’t hate fate,” James says, mirroring her position, chin down. “I hate when fate is a bitch.”

“She’s always a bitch.”

“Not always,” James says, looking at her. Gentle. She wonders if he’s always been gentle. If she’s always been angry and blind. If things always look nicer when one is made of soup. Or if these months have doused them both.

“Mm,” she says, because she doesn’t know what else to say.

He holds a hand out.

Lily looks at it.

“May I please hold your hand?” he says, innocent, coy.

She scowls at him.

“To read your palm,” he adds, waving his own around.

Lily smacks her hand down against his.

He turns it over. Holds it like a piece of ancient pottery he’s absorbing, runs both thumbs down the length of her palm from base to curved top, reading by touch. His fingertips are cold, but they grow warmer, knuckle by knuckle, and the stretch of his palm is hot, almost too hot, in this stuffy room. His wrists are thin, dainty, bony. The forearms they lead to are long, a little veiny, like the back of his hands. James is all long, really, all stretched, all over. Long legs, long neck, long nose, long long long. He hums to himself. Traces a wrinkle near her pinky with his fingernail. Hums again. Wiggles his head.

“What is it?” she says.

James smiles to himself. “Nothing.”

“Then what?” She smushes her foot on top of his under the table. “What?”

He purses his lips thoughtfully. “Well,” James says. “There’s been an interesting development, at least.”

“And what’s that?” Lily says.

James hoists their hands, which Lily realizes are knitted together, her short pale fingers between his long dark ones.

She slowly, confusedly, works her hand free. He lets it go, no fight.

A vague, disconnected sort of anger rises in her stomach, stings behind her eyes.

“Sorry,” James says, gaze darting down to his lap, cowed, then back up. “That was probably…”

“It’s fine,” Lily says, frowning, confused, confused.

“It wasn’t,” says James, stronger, looking up at her with this crystal blank expression that she doesn’t know what to do with. “I won’t do it again.” An impish quirk of his lips. “Unless you ask me to, of course.”

Lily wants to shove him off his pouf.

She does it.

He hits the floor with an “Oof.”

She doesn’t feel better. Worse, actually. More soupy. Separate. Single alphabet letters in broth and no words.

She extends her hand to help him up.

He squints at her strangely as he rights his seat, drops upon it, fixes the rolls of his sleeves. “I think you need to do something fun.”

“I don’t,” she says.

“You do,” James insists.

“I do?” she says.

James nods surely. “Mhm. You very much do.”

“Oh,” she says. “Like what?”

“Like run down the hallways, screaming at the top of your lungs,” James suggests, leaning close. Gold in the low light. A fire spirit. Sin wearing a smile.

“That doesn’t sound fun,” she says.

“Then what does?”

“What does what?”

“What does sound fun, you doofus.”

“Oh.” She thinks. “I dunno.”

“Hm,” he says. “You could paint my nails.”

She glares at him.

“I’m flying blind here, Ginge,” James says, raising his hands in surrender, the nickname a surprise she isn’t sure if she should welcome. Lily has always reckoned one should be careful who they accept a nickname from, because they’ll have a hand on your neck for the rest of your life. “I know you like reading and Charms and sliced pears, if you want to do any of those things.”

“How would one do sliced pears?”

“With cinnamon. Maybe some muesli.”

Lily drops her chin into her palm.

She doesn’t really know what she likes anymore, she’s realizing.

Sirius and Remus and Severus usually decide for her, when they spend time, and she lets them. Lets them drag her to the forest or the Astronomy Tower or the Potions room or the quidditch pitch. Lets them huck dungbombs or mist little houseplants or have sneaky cigarettes behind the greenhouses.

No one often asks her what she wants to do. And she—well, she doesn’t often ask herself.

“I don’t know what I like to do anymore,” she says, a whisper, one eyebrow climbing up her forehead in dismay.

“Okay,” says James, like that’s fine. “How about we start with lunch, and see where that takes us?”

“I’m not hungry,” Lily says on instinct.

“Evans,” he says, quiet.

She looks at him. He seems sad, the way he looks. Not a soupy sad. An intense sad, a hot sad, a fresh burn sad and the blistered flesh, broken from prodding it. He runs a hand through his hair. She looks down at their crystal ball and runs a fingertip along the cool curve.

“I’ll come with you,” she says at length, “but I’m not hungry.”

“Okay,” James says, relief thick in his voice, in his satisfied smile, as if she’s promised him the world. “I suppose that’s a start.”

James Potter and Connor Kelly secure the final quidditch match for Gryffindor in a sequence of brutal, sunshine-backed, sound-shattering, simultaneous motions that send the crowd into bonafide hysterics.

“I mean, I believed in them, of course I believed in them, I believed in them so much that if belief in them alone were enough to make miracles happen, the miracle would’ve fucking happened even if they were the bollocksest team to ever play, but—wow, I did not see this coming,” Lily says.

“We still didn’t win the Cup,” Peter reminds her. “We came in third fucking place.”

“Bah humbug,” says Remus, who is feeling unseasonably chipper due to some combination of weather and Lily and the one-and-a-half spliffs Marlene and Mary shared with him in the biggest stall of the ladies’ toilet before they came down to the pitch. “Don’t be a stick in the mud, Petey. We all needed this win.”

“You can say that again,” Mary says, between jumping up and down and screaming. Her excitement pullulates, and Gryffindors rise one by one, joining in, laughing, cheering, never the type to skip an opportunity to make a ruckus. “Goodness, everyone has been so depressed! We all need something to celebrate! Something to make us feel normal again!”

“There’ll be a party tonight,” Marlene says, clapping extra loud as the team takes a not-very-gracious victory-lap of ego-stroking. Sirius is tossing kisses one after another at the Slytherin section. Frank Longbottom seems cheerful, at least, waving and laughing. “That’ll do it, I bet.”

“Hopefully someone shags,” Mary says. “Hopefully it’s me. Hopefully I shag.”

Remus whirls to look at her. “You’ve shagged before?”

“No,” Mary says, “but I’m ready! I’m hot! I’m a fucking catch!”

“You—yeah,” Remus says. Then, demanded, “What happened with bloody Riker?”

“Ugh, Remus, you’re so behind on gossip,” Mary says, waving a hand. “He was boring. He was what the Old Mary wanted. The New Mary wants different things! I’m looking for a man who will be outright! Bold! Who will see what I’m worth when he sees me!”

“Hi,” says Peter.

Mary purses her lips and pats his cheek. “No, sweetheart.”

“You’ll find someone, Mare,” Dorcas says, lips quirked, shaking her head. “I really don’t think you need to worry about that.”

“Oh, I know I will,” Mary says, adjusting what Remus supposes is her bra with two hands. He looks away, wincing, unsure if he’s allowed to see that. “Come on, let’s get out of these stands. I’ll look much more striking on the grass.”

Remus sets his sights on Sirius, freshly landed, and follows Mary down the bleachers. Lily clambers behind him, holding his elbow for balance, and Peter follows her, hand-in-hand with Dorcas—a new development, a tentative one, and one that they’re all waiting to watch fall through, poor Peter. It’s not that Dorcas is out of his league, but that they’re both so tentative. Sirius had joked that the only way they’d ever snog is if someone told them to, as they’d both be unwilling to not comply with a direct command. It was a mean joke. Remus laughed. James flicked them both on the forehead and told Peter, bracingly, that Dorcas would be daft to let him slip by just because he’s too shy to start anything. This, obviously, was not the comfort Peter wanted, as he disappeared, red-faced, from the dormitory and was not seen again until breakfast the next morning.

It’s the polar opposite of what’s been happening with James, recently, who is slowly calming down, becoming like his old self again after the combination whammy of splitting up with Lucy, worrying about Lily, traumatizing himself fighting with Snape, and almost losing his father to the Pox. In becoming more like himself, however, he’s been a bit… well, there’s no words, really.

It’s just that he’s been sneaking off to snog all around the castle in the night, not telling his best mates about it, and acting as if nothing at all is amiss, as if they can’t see him in the quidditch equipment closet with a bird via the Marauder’s Map.

The rest of them are letting him have his secret for now, mostly because it’s fucking hilarious to spy on him as he returns from his rendezvous looking rumpled and wide-eyed, like he still hasn’t quite gotten used to the sensation of snogging, like he’s the same entirely unflippant James he was as a second year puking over quidditch. It’s almost adorable, that he thinks they don’t know he’s Hogwarts’ resident man-whore. Sirius, in a wholly un-Sirius-like display of patience and tact, says James will tell them about it once someone finally reaches down his trousers and he realizes what dicks are for. Remus supposes he’s right about that: James would have no choice but to tell them once he’s gotten his rocks off on account of the fact that he’ll be so shocked it happened the rest of them will have to scrape him off the floor and reassemble him like soggy clay.

Ah, young love.

Speaking of.

“Sirius has absolutely disappeared,” Lily says, tugging Remus’s jumper at the elbow.

“Huh,” says Remus, pointedly unbothered. “Maybe he ran to the showers.”

“Perhaps,” Lily says, unconvinced.

“I could go look?” offers Mary with a sharkish smile.

“Oh, honey,” says Lily. “He doesn’t… he…”

“He’s queerer than David Bowie on Guy Fawkes,” Remus supplies.

Lily claps a hand over her mouth as she sputters with laughter.

“Hmm,” Mary says. She scratches her eyebrow. “Yup, that’ll do it.”

“There’s James,” says Marlene, pointing to where he stands only a dozen feet away. Even through the thick, rowdy crowd, Remus can see he’s talking to some Ravenclaw with pink cheeks and big brown curls. She’s staring at him like he’s Jesus Christ incarnate. It’s sort of funny.

“Potter!” Lily calls, hands cupping her mouth.

James whirls around and, upon seeing them (her), smiles, huge, eyes crinkled at the corners, hair sticking up in all directions with those stupid goggles pushed onto his forehead, cheeks pink and temples sweaty and the game quaffle tucked under his arm.

Remus watches Lily literally freeze mid-step while looking at him—like some sort of short-circuited robot toy, like she can’t compute the sight—and then stutter back into motion, clumsy, blinking rapidly.

“G-good game,” she says.

James gives the quaffle a hearty smack as he falls into place before them, Ravenclaw all but forgotten. “It was, wasn’t it? Perfect flying conditions, perfect team chemistry—a solid shooting rally by yours truly.”

“Yes, solid,” Lily says dryly, coming back into herself. She clears her throat. “Potter single-handedly secured the Gryffindor victory, hm?”

“When you put it that way,” James says, pretending to toss his hair over his shoulder.

Dorcas and Mary and Marlene are off prowling. Peter is giving Frank a detailed rundown of what he thought of every fucking play. It’s just the three of them, now: Remus, James, and Lily.

Remus almost slinks away, in the effort of forcing them to have a moment, except James sees him move and lurches forward, tugging Remus into place against his side, because he is a sweetheart, but an absolutely thick one. Remus goes along like a rag doll. James smells like sweat and the leather of his gloves, and Remus’s tender stomach doesn’t particularly enjoy that combination, but it’s James, and James looks incandescently happy, and Remus could not bring himself to ruin that if he tried.

“You had fun, Moony?” James says, looking right at him, like Lily isn’t there. It warms Remus to his bones.

“Yes,” he says. “Was watching you, wasn’t I? How could I not enjoy that?”

James beams. “Jolly good. A grand old time had by all.”

“Have you seen Sirius?” Remus asks, lower, trying not to wince.

“Mm, he likes showering first. Alone, you know,” James says, raising one eyebrow pointedly.

Remus understands the feeling. Of course he does. He’s just the same. “Shall we go meet him?”

“I believe we shall,” James says imperiously, waving at the rest of their mates. “Peter? Coming?”

Peter points to the hand he has knotted in Dorcas’s.

James gives him a big, obvious wink. “Moony, my boy, it seems it is just the two of us.”

“And Lily,” Remus says, looking at her.

“And Lily?” she says.

“And Lily!” James cheers. “Come on, then.” He pulls Remus off, and Remus reaches back to grab Lily’s hand, because she does not get to escape. No, she does not, not when James is putting up such a good front for whatever he must be feeling, knowing this is the first match of his that his parents, now quarantining at home, have missed in two years. James is always everywhere for everyone, and lets himself be forgotten in the dregs. He has to go kissing strange birds in closets to feel like he’s got people there for him. It’s unfathomable. No, they’re going to be here for James, properly and entirely, whether Lily likes it or not.

The sun is warm on them as they come to the tent. It seems to be doing both James and Lily good, as they’ve got their faces tilted back identically on either side of Remus to soak it all in: glowing profiles, noses lined with light like they’re gilded, eyelashes gone blond at the tips. Caravaggio couldn’t dream them up. They’re seraphic.

James tugs Remus and Lily right into the tent with him, into the melee of elbows and knees and towels and hot-water steam. Frank Longbottom is standing atop a bench and serenading the group with some new Hobgoblins song Remus hasn’t heard yet, a spliff in one hand and the other holding his towel in place on his hips. Carter Cole is sitting in a corner, still in his gear, smoking a fag, smiling absently. Gwendolyne has an arm in a sling and an arm around Fez, and Connor must be in the showers or out in the crowd still. There’s a cheer when they enter—likely just for James, but Remus doesn’t mind standing right behind him and feeling, for a moment, a part of the group.

Sirius saunters out of the showers just as James is accepting his applause with little waves of gratitude and bows, all pomp, bouncing on his toes, smiley little bastard. Sirius is all done up, hair tucked behind his ears, big loose jeans cuffed and shirt unbuttoned to show off his pearlescent, shower-damp collarbones.

Remus’s mouth goes dry. Like, embarrassingly dry. Like, Lily has to elbow him to get him to realize they’re in the way of the entrance, blocking the team as they try to walk back to the castle for the party dry.

“Hey,” James says, tugging Remus’s shirt like a child to their parent while lost in a crowd. “You should go up with Sirius. I’ve got to shower.”

“So shower fast,” Lily says.

“Oh, poor naive Lily,” Remus says, wistful. “I have never met a bastard who takes longer showers than James does, Sirius included.”

James shrugs gingerly. “I’ve got to loosen my old man muscles somehow. Hot water helps.”

“Anyway,” Remus says, still watching as Sirius lopes his winding way over, hands tucked in his pockets, politely disinterested. “We—are you sure? We can wait.”

“No, you go,” James insists. “I’ll be okay alone.”

That has Remus ripping his gaze off Sirius in favor of James. He scowls. “Don’t say shit like that.”

“I’ll be fine,” James says. He gives Remus’s chin a little squeeze. “Bye, Wolfie. Bye, Ginge.”

“See you inside,” Lily says, and James retreats to the showers, tugging his shirt off as he goes—windmilling it through the air to jeers and catcalls (thank God. There’s James. There’s their sonuvabitch.). James and Sirius smack each other on the arse as they pass, and then Sirius is before them.

“Good show?” he says.

“Mhm,” says Remus, as he has, apparently, lost access to his capability to form words.

“You looked like an avenging angel,” Lily sighs, planting a palm on Sirius’s chest, looking up at him through batted lashes.

“Of course I did,” Sirius says, leaning towards her. “It’s all for you, my love, my light.” He scoops her in his arms and dips her, making her squeal.

Remus tucks his hands into his back pockets, watching, fond. Lily has a leg kicked up for balance, a hand on Sirius’s cheek and an arm around his neck, and he is simpering something into her ear that has her laughing aloud, snorting and squawking and so herself it makes Remus want to dance a little jig.

The feeling carries all the way up to the castle, as Lily holds Sirius’s hand and spins herself like they're dancing, only for her to then bounce over into Remus’s personal space and smile up at him like she is everything devious in the world just in time for her to yank his hood over his head and pull it closed, making him flop blindly into the banister of the moving staircase. Sirius has to catch his arm to right him. Lily laughs as she pries the tightened hood open. She says, “Congratulations! It’s a bouncing baby boy!”

Remus shakes his head and tugs her into his arms, planting his chin on her shoulder, squeezing her with all he’s worth.

Sirius leads them through the portrait hole. The party is in full swing already, alcohol being passed out in bottles and cups and cans, spliffs letting off sweet-smelling smoke, clothes discarded and hands roving and hips swinging to It’s Hard to Be a Saint in the City.

“I’m going to get so fucking drunk,” Sirius says, giving it all a sweeping, calculating look. “This has been the longest fucking month of my life.”

“It’s only the tenth,” Remus says.

“Fuck,” Sirius says emphatically. “What the fuck.”

“I’m going to go up to bed, I think,” Lily says in a soft little voice, and they both whirl on her.

“Huh?” says Remus.

“You can’t,” says Sirius. “You shan’t!”

“I shall,” she says. “I can’t drink while… I can’t drink.”

“You’re pregnant?” Remus gasps.

She claps a palm over his mouth while Sirius laughs. “Good Godric, you’d be a shit Mum!”

“Eat a dick,” she tells him. Then, to Remus, “No, I just—oh, don’t tell anyone, but I went to Pomfrey for some potions, to see if they… help.”

“Help?” says Sirius, smile slipping off his face like oil.

“I’ve been batshit crazy for five months!” Lily says. “Five months went by so quickly that I don’t remember a single thing that happened! You’re goddamn right May is long! Because it’s the first time I’ve been awake since seventy-fucking-four!”

“I bloody love you,” Remus says.

“Finally,” Sirius says briskly. “It’s about time you do something about all that.”

“Thank you! I thought so too!” she says. Her cheeks are brilliantly red. “So I am going to go to bed now! And I hope you have a lovely time! Here! Without me!”

“And you promise you’ll be alright?” Sirius says, eyes narrowed.

“I promise,” she says. She squeezes Sirius’s hands. “Go on, then. God only knows what James will get up to without you there to keep him safe.”

“You’ll be okay?” Sirius says again.

“Yes, Jesus H. Christ,” she says, and it sounds like she means it.

“Okay,” Remus says. He jostles Lily, just a little. “Alright. You can come hang out with us later, if you want. After the party. If you’re not asleep.”

“We’ll see,” she says, smiling like she knows something they don’t. She chucks Remus under the chin, pokes Sirius’s cheek, and disappears into the crowd.

Sirius turns to him, eyes dark like tarnished silver. “It’s you and me, then, Remus.”

“Merlin protect me,” Remus says.

Merlin does a shit job protecting.

An hour later, Springsteen has been swapped for T. Rex, but even that is only background noise to the shouting and singing of the crowd surrounding the study table, upon which Sirius, Mary, Marlene, and Remus are standing, the lot of them roped into Sirius’s newest ploy for maximum intoxication: a drinking song.

“Weeee… like to drink with Remus, ‘cuz Remus is our mate!” Sirius cries, and half the house is joining in, and Remus is drinking with such fervor that a drop of Firewhiskey leaves a stinging trail down the side of his chin. “And when we drink with Remus, he gets it down in eight!... Seven!... Six!...”

Remus gets it down with four to go, shakes his head vigorously, and then crushes the cup in his hand, to the general thrill of the congregation.

“You good?” Sirius asks, taking the cup and vanishing it with his wand.

“That whiskey is very… very whiskey,” Remus says eloquently.

“Oh, you,” Sirius says.

“How are you?” Remus says, fisting a hand in Sirius’s oxford sleeve and giving him a light shake. “Good?”

“Mhm,” says Sirius, giving one of those glimmery smiles. “Yes, having glasses of ancient gin foisted upon you at Christmas balls from the ripe old age of eight does wonders to one’s constitution. Mine is made of iron, now. Gridlock.”

“Sure,” Remus says, and then he runs a thumb over the hem of Sirius’s cashmere vest, because it looks very soft. “Wow.”

Sirius looks very amused. Mary and Marlene are tossing their hair to Cosmic Dancer. The lights make everything amber, crystallized, eternal. They’re all mosquitoes, frozen.

“Fuck off,” Remus says. “Fuck right off, so entirely, with your whole body, fucking buggering fuck off.”

“Where should I go?” Sirius says.

“I think,” says Remus, swaying a little now. “I think we should go to the Astronomy Tower.”

“Right now?” Sirius says.

“I have the map,” says Remus. He claps a hand on his arse cheek. “Right there. In my pocket, not my bumhole.”

“I would hope so,” Sirius says.

Remus pulls it out, as if giving Sirius proof.

Sirius snags it from Remus’s hand, gives it an intent once over, then relaxes and says, “Let’s off, then, Moony, m’boy.”

They slip off the table as surreptitiously as they can. Luckily, Marlene and Mary make good distractions.

Somewhere between the portrait hole and the broom closet they hide from Filch in, Sirius pulls an entire Firewhiskey bottle out of his waistband.

“What the fuck,” Remus says.

“Shh,” says Sirius. He cracks the top and takes a gulp. “I made a little magical pocket dimension for it.”

“You’re shitting me,” says Remus.

“Shh,” Sirius says again. He takes another sip, this one bigger than the last—this one more of a glug, really. Then he drinks more.

“Are you trying to die?” Remus asks.

“Shh,” says Sirius, making a face as he swallows. “Alright, come on.”

He keeps sipping all the way up to the tower.

“Are you drunk yet?” Remus asks, when they hit the top of the staircase and that crisp outside air huffs over them, making their fringe dance and goosebumps rise along their arms.

“Maybe,” Sirius admits. “Maybe… hm, a little too much.”

Remus bursts into laughter. “You deserve it, then. Dumbass. You have wrought the wrath of hell unto yourself this night. Good riddance.”

Sirius just smiles, devilish, and saunters, stumbling, to the banister, where he tilts his head back on his neck and looks up at the stars, dazed.

Remus follows him, then does the same. The sky is so enormous, so clear, so dark, and Remus has a momentary pull of dread, for it feels as if it could swallow him whole.

Sirius bumps their elbows together. Remus bumps again.

“Visibility is good,” Sirius says. He’s gripping the banister with white knuckles. “‘Can see everything.”

“Yeah,” says Remus.

“Polaris.”

“Good eye. I like… I like that you know the names of things.”

Sirius looks at him. “How so?”

“We name things we like very much,” Remus says. “Things we want to talk about. You know all the stars. I like that you know them. Not many people would bother.”

“Remus?”

“Mhm?”

Sirius looks at him. His cheeks are ruddy, even in the moonlight. “How are you, really?”

Remus exhales. Scratches his chin. “Fine.”

“Stop doing that,” Sirius mutters, looking away.

“What?”

“Not answering properly.”

“That was a very proper answer!”

“Oh, so if I answered that same question that way you’d just take that as the truth?”

Remus presses his lips together. “That’s different,” he says, hoping Sirius doesn’t ask why.

Obviously, the only thing Sirius could possibly say next, because he is Sirius, is, “Why, then?”

Remus groans.

“You’re like this big deep well of feelings,” Sirius says. “We shout down into it, the rest of us—Lily and James and Peter and me, I mean, we just keep shouting and shouting at the dark and the stones and the water at the bottom—and all we get back is what we put in. Give us some of you. Where’s the fucking… bucket.”

Remus thinks Sirius is, perhaps, most certifiably insane when he speaks in metaphors.

“I,” Remus says. He takes a deep, fortifying breath. “I don’t know what you want me to say. I’m fine.”

“You’re not sad?” Sirius pushes. “Or angry? Or. Happy.”

Remus thinks.

“Not really,” he says at length.

“None of them?”

“Nothing much at all. Just fine.”

Sirius tosses an arm around Remus’s shoulders and pulls him close. “A big ol’ pot of water, you are. Half the time you seem like you’re boiling over the edge. The rest of the time, you’re just a pot of fuckin’ water.”

“I think that offended me,” Remus says.

“There’s nothing wrong with a pot of water,” Sirius says. His neck smells distinctly of black pepper, a very intrinsically Sirius sort of scent, but his breath stinks of whiskey. Remus thinks Sirius is a very graceful whiskey-haver until the moment when the grace melts into a listless sort of incoherence.

“You’re absinthe,” Remus says.

“What d’you know about absinthe?” Sirius says.

“Alcohol,” Remus says. “Makes you hallucinate, apparently.”

“Mm,” says Sirius. “Artemisia absinthium. Grand wormwood. Tastes like anise. And fennel. I like it with cucumber water.”

“You’ve had it?” Remus says. “Why do you know so much about it? Jesus.”

“The choice drink of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black is served at debutante balls, courting events, and especially our Christmas extravaganza,” Sirius says, like reciting a monologue, less slurred than anything else he’s spewed, like a trained fucking dog.

“Bollocks,” says Remus.

“I’m not absinthe,” says Sirius, shaking his head solemnly. “‘M just drunk.”

“Are you—?”

“Prob’ly going to vomit, yeah. Just a tack yack, though”

Remus—giggling, mortifyingly enough—moves them to the other end of the tower, so Sirius can vomit in sight of the cosmos.

“Right over the lip, darling,” Remus says, rubbing Sirius’s spine. “There you go.”

Sirius dangles his arms loosely over the edge, head tilted toward the grass, his whole body bobbing with drunkenness. So much for his iron constitution.

Remus feels something ignite in his chest.

Sirius turns his face into the moonlight, towards Remus. A moth to the white-tipped flame.

All of this, the washed-out colors and the distant crow calling and the hush of the lake lapping at the stone shore and the dance of wind and the whisper of the universe singing her favorite favorite song—all of it consolidates in Remus’s mind as the specific realization that he and Sirius have always wanted the same thing: something that will stay.

Sirius lost his family, himself. Remus lost himself, his family. They clung to the first shred of affection they could find, James-Potter-shaped as it was, because they were starved. Shaking with it. Lightheaded with wanting.

A good book. A slow-growing plant. A sweater Remus can patch and darn and layer and rewear. These things cannot leave. Remus holds on to them.

A pillow at night. His fancy handwriting. His languages, instruments, insane doodles, carefully-crafted nonchalance. These things cannot leave. Sirius holds on to them.

Remus is starting to think that, despite his wispiness, his wildness, his predictable unpredictability, he can add Sirius to his list of constant things. That Sirius, too, can add him.

Wisps are forever, after all. Even when you can’t see them.

Remus, with a sudden shock of drunken bravery, reaches out to tuck Sirius’s hair behind his ear.

Sirius’s eyes fall shut. A breath puffs from his loose lips. He leans into Remus’s touch.

Remus’s next breath stumbles, his ribs are steps and he is drunk, and Sirius is under his skin and in it, too. His thumb brushes along the length of Sirius’s cheekbone.

Sirius’s lips quirk.

He turns his face, sticks two pretty fingers down his pretty throat, and pukes over the edge of the balcony.

Remus jumps to attention, patting his back, trying to sweep the hair off his sweaty forehead.

“You’re fine,” he says.

“James is gonna… hafta’ put us to bed.”

“That’s alright. He won’t mind.”

“‘Course he won’t. He’s… a prince.”

“Yeah,” Remus says, looking at Sirius, lined in silver moonlight. Everything Remus is afraid of, knotted together. That last cup of whiskey was really very whiskey. “He really… he is, he doesn’t mind, he’s… he’s so good.”

“So are you,” Sirius says, turning to Remus, and the air around them turns to molasses.

“Yeah?” Remus says.

Sirius nods, eyes falling closed, throat bobbing as he swallows.

“Oh,” Remus breathes.

Sirius hums. “Sorry you had to watch me throw up.”

“S’okay.”

“No, really. That’s pretty gross.”

“You watch me turn into a werewolf every month. It’s a fair trade.”

“No, no, that’s not—don’t be stupid, Remus, that’s not—”

“Hush,” Remus says, the way people say Honey. “It’s okay. You always—you always take care of me. Let me. Let me.”

Sirius’s eyes open, finally, and he looks at Remus with a hundred words, in an epic poem, of a thousand lifetimes.

“I don’t know how—” says Sirius.

“I know,” says Remus. “But I do.”

“Oh,” says Sirius. He looks down again, wrapping his arms around the banister, straining clumsily upright with its help. He moves with the wind. “I,” he says.

“Spit it out,” Remus encourages.

“They made me better at hating,” Sirius says. His throat bobs with what must be a drunkenly sour swallow. “I hate things, and also I fucking hate things, and by and large am an intense bloodlust in—” he gestures loosely to his body. “In this.”

“You think I don’t know that?” says Remus.

“I think you do,” Sirius says, “or you wouldn’t be here.” His smile is arrogant, cutting, nauseous, brilliant, because he is Sirius Black, even when he is a very drunk, very Firewhiskey-having person. “I also think you don’t give a good goddamn about it.”

“Why would I?” says Remus. “How could I, when I’m just the same?”

Sirius hates to be even a little like James, mostly because he so desperately wants to be a lot like James, but he grasps at a single thought like a paper slip clings to the wind while he works himself clumsily into James’s bed beside him that night. It’s a terribly romantic, horrendous sort of thought that Lily would aww about. It’s just. Well.

He feels. He feels a lot, all the time, but, right now, his thoughts are unseasonably clear, and they are certain that the Sirius who went up into that tower with Remus tonight is not the same Sirius who stumbled his way down after.

And that, he believes, is a strange and precious sort of thing.

“Are you hungover?” a squinty Remus asks as James falls bonelessly onto the couch cushion beside him on Sunday morning.

“No,” James says, frowning. “I smoked with Frank and Alice instead of drinking. Why?”

“You’ve got the hangover jumper on,” Remus says.

James looks down. The jumper in question is a fair isle monstrosity in navy blue, khaki, olive green, and chocolate brown. It’s so worn and pilled that the pattern is incomprehensible. It belonged to James’s mum, once upon a time, but James stole it at some point and never saw reason to give it back. It’s got a bit of Mum knitted into every stitch. Now that he thinks, he does tend to wear it on recovery days.

“Huh,” he says. He shrugs, tugging the sleeves down. “S’comfy. Everyone should have a hangover jumper.”

Remus looks at himself. He is wearing a pale grey sweatshirt with the hood pulled over his puff of hair, hiding his sallow cheeks and glazed, red eyes. “If I had a hangover jumper, I presume I would puke-stain far fewer articles of clothing.”

“Precisely,” says James. He tugs Remus’s head onto his shoulder. “You should sleep. You look like shit.”

Remus gestures weakly at a mug sluggishly steaming on the coffee table. “I’m working my way through a ginger tea and Pain Potion.”

“No rush. Rome wasn’t built in a day.”

“Rome wouldn’t have been built at all if the slaves were this hungover.”

“Do you want some toast? Porridge? You should eat something hearty. Settle your stomach.”

“I’m fine, Mum.”

“Bugger off.”

Remus turns his warm nose into James’s neck. “Love you too, Jamie.”

It’s late-May and everything feels tapered: the whole of the universe forcing itself down the throat of a narrow plastic straw.

This is, perhaps, why it takes James two weeks to realize he hasn’t heard from his parents. Not his mum’s rare but lengthy letters nor his dad’s weekly recount of everything from the newest muggle film he’s seen to the most recent laundry accident he’s caused. No words describing the new high-vitamin diet Dad’s been put on by Mungo’s and that he claimed will make him drop three trouser sizes, no update as to the strange one-night fever Mum had on the fifteenth, no complaints about the Cannons’s fucking disaster show in the quarter-finals two nights ago. No communication at all.

Dad owls him weekly without fail. Like clockwork. He hasn’t missed a week in two years.

James pulls his lips off the lipstick-tacky ones of a Ravenclaw named Sera or Sara or Sarah with a sound like a plunger and immediately says, aloud, “Fuck.”

She looks up at him, shocked. “What is it?”

“It turns out I have a prior engagement that I was unaware of until this very moment,” James says, heart pounding, as he pats his pockets to check for his wand and his cloak. Finding both, he sets down the corridor at a run, giving her a last wave over his shoulder. “I really must be off.”

James runs all the way to Gryffindor tower, through the Common Room, and throws the door to the dormitory open without stopping. “I haven’t had a letter from Dad or Mum in two weeks.”

Sirius stands immediately, gaze locking onto James’s. “Okay. What’s the plan?”

For a moment James is so overcome with utter gratitude for Sirius, for the way he reads James’s mind and the way he knows exactly what to do in any given situation, that his throat closes.

Then Peter says, “Plan for what?”

James and Sirius both turn to him with perhaps not the kindest looks on their faces.

“What?” Peter snaps, looking between them. “What?”

“They could be anywhere,” Sirius says. “Do you read the paper? Someone new disappears every week, fuckhead.”

“Shut up, Sirius,” James says, massaging his chest. “He—he writes every week. Every week. He doesn’t miss. He would’ve contacted me somehow if he had to. He would have. They’re—something is wrong. I know it.”

Sirius is already collecting his trainers, tossing a jacket at Peter. “Come on. We’ll ask someone. McGonagall.”

“She won’t tell me,” James says. “She wouldn’t even admit there’s some sort of—some organized resistance, she wouldn’t admit it—”

“Breathe, James,” Sirius says tersely.

James gasps, heart hammering, coughing weakly.

“There’s a resistance?” Peter says, gaping.

“Keep up,” Sirius snaps at him. “Put on your fucking jacket.”

Peter does, sharply, looking between them. “What is the point of us asking anyone? What would they know about your parents?”

“We just have to,” Sirius says for James. “No more questions.” Then he straightens, expression blank. “Actually, I have a question.”

“Do you need a written invitation?” James says, desperate. He can see himself trembling, like he’s watching a film, but he’s not cold, he’s sweating, he’s alight, cognitive dissonance.

“I think we should ask someone on the inside,” says Sirius.

“That’s not a question,” Peter points out.

“Oh,” James says. “Regulus.”

“Bloody Regulus,” confirms Sirius.

“Oh!” says Peter. “He must hear everything, living with all of those Death Eaters.”

“It’s a start,” James says. He drops his face in his hands. Dark. He needs—he can’t—“We can try the Floo, after. Floo call. We’ll go to Minnie’s office, her fire is on the network, I’ve used it. We’ll call home, we’ll call Mungo’s, we’ll call my aunt I haven’t seen in ten years—”

“Breathe,” Sirius says.

“I can’t,” James helplessly. “Not until—” He turns on his heel and marches out of the dormitory, down the stairs. He hears Sirius and Peter thundering behind him. At his back.

His eyes are locked so intensely to the portrait hole that he smacks right into Lily, who steadies them both with hands around his wrists.

“What?” she demands. “Is it Remus? Is something wrong?”

Remus. James—it completely slipped his mind—he whirls to look at Sirius, who is supposed to go down to the Shack in three hours to meet The Wolf. Remus is down there, languishing, shaking and sweating and so ill that he had skipped the whole day of classes.

Sirius presses his lips together.

James turns back to Lily, who looks near tears. He gasps another raw breath. “He’s fine, Remus is—it’s not, it’s not about Remus.”

“Oh,” she says, but she’s still frowning. “Why are you having a panic attack, then?”

“Oh, this?” James says, giving a breathy laugh, waving her words away like stubborn gnats. “This is nothing, it’s nothing.”

“James’s mum and dad have been M.I.A. for weeks,” Peter says.

“Peter,” James and Sirius snap at once.

“What?!” Peter says, throwing his arms up.

“Your—” Lily says, eyes falling wide with dread. “Oh, goodness. I haven’t heard from him in ages, either.”

“Heard from who?” says Sirius, squinting.

“He’s been—oh, I never told you,” she says, clapping both hands over her mouth. “He’s been so kind, I didn’t even think to bring it up, James’s dad has been owling me to check on me—”

“When was the last one?” Sirius demands, pushing Peter’s face aside.

“Mmph,” says Peter, flailing.

“Maybe—maybe three weeks ago?” Lily says, curling her hair around her finger. “Why, what are we doing? Where are we going?”

“We are going nowhere,” James says, pressing on his chest, trying fruitlessly to dislodge the weight bearing upon it. “You are staying here, don’t worry.”

“You’re insane,” Lily says with a hard laugh. “There’s no way I’m staying back to wait while you find out what happened.”

“It’s not just,” James says, then grunts in frustration, yanking his hair. “I think we’re going to have to do something about it.”

“Like—go somewhere?” Lily says. “You think he’s in trouble? Really?”

“With everything happening around the DMLE, with Mungo’s full up, with all the rumors…” And Mum kipping off on some sort of vigilante missions under the guise of her book club… “There’s too much hell in the news to assume anything else.”

“Of course,” Lily says, pale.

“Sirius,” James says, because now that Lily is invested it’s going to take effort to make her stay behind, and the sooner they find Regulus, the better. “Go ahead. We’ll meet up at McGonagall’s Floo.” He pulls the map out of his pocket with clumsy, shaking hands and gives it to him. Sirius immediately makes a break for the portrait hole and is gone.

“You can’t come,” James says to Lily, turning back to her. There are a million reasons. His dad was owling her. He certainly didn’t put him up to that. He’s going to yell at him about it someday. “You can’t.”

“What, because I’m a weak girl and I’m going to get in the way?” she demands.

“What? No!” James says. He coughs, shakes out his hands. He thinks he might die here. “You need to stay for a million reasons, but not that one. You’re being impulsive, you’re just getting back to yourself and now you’re going out putting yourself in danger, that’s stupid, it’s insane—”

“I can make my own decisions!” she cries with a stomp.

“You hate me,” James says angrily. “You hate me, why would you even bother?”

“Even if that were true, I couldn’t let you do this alone! Especially without Remus here to watch your back.” She pokes his chest, hard, then draws up with a sniff. “So what’s the plan?”

James growls with frustration.

“I think we should let her come, personally,” Peter says. James buries his face in his palms. “If we have to do something crazy, I trust her to scare anyone evil away with a single look.”

“Thank you!” Lily says.

James marches past her, towards the portrait hole and then through, into the corridor. They scramble behind him—he hears them calling for him to slow through muffled ears, but he can’t stop, can’t waste any more time, he can’t—

Sirius and Regulus are waiting outside McGonagall’s locked door.

James whirls to walk backwards, facing Peter and Lily, both pink-cheeked with the exertion of keeping up. “Wormtail. Pocket of dungbombs?”

Peter claps the side of his jacket. “I’ve got ten left.”

“You know what to do,” says James.

Peter salutes, slumping with relief, and peels away. James knew they couldn’t bring Peter anywhere. Not if they’re leaving the castle.

They need a distraction, anyway. Cue Peter, who, boy or rat, will not get caught.

James is close enough now to Sirius and Regulus that the sound of their voices carries: they’re arguing, but in their similar, musical tones, they are countermelodies to the same song. They’re hunched together, jabbering, and Sirius keeps slipping into harsh, throaty French, which Regulus replies to in English, until he looks up, sees James and Lily, double-takes, and falls silent.

“Hi,” James says, because it’s too quiet and his parents are—ha ha, oh God, they’re probably dead, he can’t besmirch their memory with poor fucking manners now. “I’m James Potter.”

“I know,” Regulus says, licking his lips nervously. “Hi, Lily.”

“Ay up, Betelgeuse,” she says with a nod, shoulders tensed but expression softened, and, huh?

“Huh?” says Sirius.

Lily smacks her forehead. “Fuck! I forgot to tell you that, too!”

“Don’t,” Regulus says softly.

“Don't what?” Sirius says, looking sharply between them.

“Later,” says James, flexing his hands. “Please. What have you found out?”

“You tell them what you told me,” Sirius says to Regulus. He looks at James and Lily, then. “See if you can be more fucking bipartisan than me. I’d believe anything the bastard said.” He says this derisively, which means it comes from a place of intense care.

“I haven’t heard a thing,” Regulus says, voice steady, eyes shining somewhere between imploring and distressed. “Really. I swear.”

“Of course we believe you,” James says, brusquer than he means to be. “Alright. Alright, what’s next?”

“Who would know?” Sirius says. His gaze snaps onto Lily. “Snivellus,” he says.

“No way,” Lily says vehemently. “He won’t know, and I’m not going to ruin what’s left of our friendship by implying he would have heard.”

“This is worth more than your fucking friendship with Snivelly! This is two lives!” Sirius says, eyes flashing. “This is James’s family, James’s father, would you orphan him because of your fucking friendship with that oily snake?”

“Sirius,” James says weakly.

“How dare you!” Lily exclaims.

“I don’t know where you come off weighing lives, Evans, but your measuring system is fucking buggered—”

“Can we stop fighting,” James says, panic encroaching again.

“—and if you think he’s worth the same as any other life in any universe, Evans, then you’re delusional!”

“You’re delusional! And an arsehole!”

“Please, stop—”

“If you’re so obsessed with yourself that you really look at that slimeball and see the reflection of your own goodness, then I truly don’t know what to do with you!”

“I cannot believe—”

“Kreacher!” Regulus cries.

There’s a crack like bone. The rest of them fall silent. A hunched house elf stands before them, tall as their knees, with flopping ears and clothes made of a white silk pillowcase.

“Master Regulus,” the elf croaks, bowing deeply. “You have summonsed Kreacher.”

“I didn’t even know that would work,” Regulus says blankly.

“Elf,” Sirius says, kneeling on the floor before him, still with that blood-curdling look. “What have you heard of the name Potter, around the house of my parents?”

The elf wrinkles his nose at Sirius in disgust. “The delusional blood-traitor, breaker of Kreacher’s mistress’s heart, addresses Kreacher as if he is worthy, how arrogant, how disrespectful…”

“What’s happening?” Lily whispers, tugging James’s sleeve, rubbing the cotton anxiously between her fingers.

“That’s the Black family’s remaining house elf,” James says, just as quiet. “He cleans the home, he’s everywhere at all times, if anyone could have heard a mention of anything at all, it’s him.”

“Good boy, Regulus,” Lily breathes.

“Good boy,” James agrees, fierce.

“You will obey my demand,” Sirius is snarling, “as I am your master, whether you like it or not.”

“Bloody hell,” Lily says. “Is that normal?”

“Unfortunately,” James says grimly.

Regulus shoves Sirius out of the way, kneeling before Kreacher himself. “Kreacher,” he says, quiet.

Immediately, Kreacher relaxes. “Master Regulus,” he says, eyes shining. “The home is empty without you.”

Regulus softens. “I’m sorry, Kreacher. Would you please help us? We have a very important question for you, you know. Only you could possibly help me, and I need you very much.”

Sirius scoffs, which means he’s impressed. Subtle manipulation. It’s a shame Sirius has never been one for subtlety.

“Anything, for Master Regulus,” Kreacher says, giving eyes to James and Lily. He adds, at a murmur, “Even when surrounded by riff raff and filth, with blood-traitors and the most unnatural sorts—”

“Look at me,” Regulus commands in that quiet way he has. The elf listens. “Has there been word of the Potters carried through the house?”

Kreacher squirms. “Mistress has her secrets.”

“Yes, but I, too, am your master,” Regulus says. “Whose command supersedes the other?”

“Master, your command, Master—”

“Then please,” Regulus says. “Tell me what you know.”

Kreacher twitches, then says, “There are mumblings… of activity at the cousins’s estate.” Sirius shoots to his feet. “Kreacher has not heard the name Potter, oh, no, he would have remembered that, Mistress would have been most emotional… but there are mumblings,” Kreacher says, looking into Regulus’s eyes, “between the elves in the market, Master… that there are prisoners being held at the cousins’s estate.”

James’s blood goes cold. “What does that mean?” he asks, too loudly. “Please, Kreacher, which cousins? The Malfoys? In Wiltshire?”

“No,” says Regulus.

“Bella,” Sirius says grimly. He turns to face James. “Lestrange Estate.”

“But why?” Regulus says, jaw slack.

“Because they have come after the mistress first,” Kreacher says. “Because they are intruders on her property, snooping on her private business.”

“Fuck,” James says. He takes a sharp, steeling breath. “Okay. Okay, so, we have to go. We have to go there.”

“Not Regulus,” Sirius says immediately.

Regulus does not look like he is going to complain.

“What if we need to split up?” Lily says, grabbing Sirius’s sleeve. “What if—you know your way around, don’t you?”

“Of course, I’ve gone every year since Bella was—”

“And Regulus knows his way around,” Lily interrupts, “which means—I’m sorry, it means both of you should come. Just in case we need to split up.”

“Absolutely buggering not,” Sirius snaps, scowling at Lily. “What the fuck is wrong with you? He’s thirteen, he’s a child—”

“She’s right,” Regulus whispers.

Sirius whirls on him. “Don’t you start, you know you can’t be found there. You know that. And I don’t know any Glamour Charms yet, not any good ones, so I can’t disguise you unless you’ve got a Polyjuice in your pocket. Do you have a Polyjuice in your pocket?”

“No,” Regulus says, worrying his knuckle, “but I—I don’t want anyone dying—”

“The only dead one will be you if you come!”

“Let’s just make a decision,” Lily says shortly, looking at James with this weird, anxious expression that has James questioning what, exactly, his face looks like right now. “Are we going? Or are we trying the Floo first?”

“Should we not just tell an adult?” Regulus says. “Let them handle it? We’re kids.”

“You’re a kid!” Sirius yells. “Stay!”

“We already decided he can’t—”

“He has to—”

“It won’t matter if I stay or go if we just tell a Professor!” Regulus cries.

“Dumbledore was missing at breakfast,” Lily blurts, wrapping her arms tight around herself.

“And McGonagall clearly isn’t here, or she would’ve come running out to see what we’re doing by now. Going on a wild goose chase to find anyone else is a waste of time,” Sirius says, furious, and James feels so fucking bad, putting him in this position, so he says, “You stay. You all stay, Kreacher will take me, I’ll go—”

“Shut the fuck up,” Sirius says with a look like he’s about to punch James right in the face. “Come on. We’ll just… we’ll be quiet, Kreacher will take all of us.”

“But me first,” James insists, holding his hand out to the elf. “Go on, Kreacher. The Lestrange Estate. The closer you can get me to the prisoners, the better.”

“Now?” Kreacher says, eyes flicking to Regulus.

“Yes, Kreacher,” Regulus says, quiet.

“Don’t go doing anything fucking stupid,” Sirius says offhandedly, looking away.

“I won’t,” James says, fingers crossed behind his back.

He shakes the hand extended to Kreacher insistently.

Kreacher reaches for it.

Kreacher’s eyes widen with shock—panic.

Fingers two inches away from James’s, he disappears with a CRACK, leaving James behind, arm out, hand empty.

They all stare.

They descend into shouts all at once. James crumples to the stone, despair unfolding in his stomach like Venomous Tentacula, clutching around his throat, he closes his eyes and thinks his father must have used up all of his close calls, thinks his mother has always been meant for bigger things, they’ve never been restrainable, they’ve always been good.

“Kreacher!” both Blacks are shouting. “Kreacher!”

“Fuck,” says Sirius. “Buggering shittering bollocks.”

“Kreacher!”

“What happened?” Lily keeps saying.

“Fucking Merlin’s fucking taint.”

“Kreacher! Kreacher, I command you as the Master of House Black! Come back!”

James presses his hands over his ears so all he can hear is the rasped echo of his own breaths. He isn’t—he’s not ready.

“What is going on here?” comes another voice, and that’s not one of them, that’s—

“Professor Flitwick,” Lily says, breathless.

Flitwick is rumpled, stinks faintly of Dungbombs in a way that implies Peter was successful, and seems harried at best—panicked at worst. “What is going on here?” he repeats.

“James’s parents are missing,” Sirius says through gritted teeth, and James is offended that he’s narcing for a moment before being relieved, because Flitwick’s jaw clenches and his hand twitches towards his waistband like he’s grabbing for his wand, “and have been for weeks, and no one has done a damn thing about it.”

Flitwick opens his mouth to reply, then closes it. “My office,” he says shortly.

Regulus is offering a hand to James, who isn’t certain he can stand, really, but takes it anyway on account of the fact that he almost dragged the kid into a completely unplanned rescue mission in the house of his batshit cousin. Sirius shoves Regulus aside almost immediately, taking James’s arm and slinging it around his broad beater’s shoulders. Regulus rolls his eyes, then lurches forward to follow at Flitwick’s heels.

“It’s fine,” Sirius says under his breath, harsh, like he’s reprimanding James.

James just sets his jaw and follows Flitwick.

Flitwick’s office is small, full of spindly instruments and great stacks of books, with the distinct rainstorm scent of finicky magic hovering in the air. Flitwick waves his wand and summons them a set of four matching wooden chairs—a far cry from the chintzy monstrosities McGonagall favors—and, with a jab, locks the door. He climbs onto the stool at the far side of his desk and considers them.

“What do you know?” he says.

“There’s some sort of Resistance, and my parents are involved,” James croaks. He clears his throat, looking down at his lap, then back up. “They didn’t tell me that. Just… in case that’s not allowed.”

“Well,” Flitwick says. He squirms. “You’re not wrong.”

“Balls,” Sirius says. “Sorry, Professor. Buggering balls. That was going to come out whether you were here or not, I couldn’t help it.”

Flitwick and Regulus pinch the bridges of their noses at exactly the same time.

“Tourette’s, probably,” James explains.

“There was a time,” Flitwick says, eyes closed, ignoring, because he has sense, “when the Resistance could continue in secret. Secret from students, at least, who would, oh, I dunno, make pigheaded decisions to go throwing themselves into danger under the guise of helping, perhaps, but, apparently, students need not know about the Order’s existence to go tossing themselves into mortal peril for kicks! No, that impulsivity exists independently of wisdom, apparently.”

“It’s Euphemia and Fleamont Potter, it’s two of the most powerful land-holding wizards in the country, it’s my parents,” James grinds out, suddenly furious at the implication that he could think logically in a situation like this.

“And your youth binds your ability to be impartial, to be logical, when considering their state!” Flitwick cries, enthusiasm nearly sending him sideways off his stool.

“Where’s my elf, Professor?” Regulus says quietly.

Flitwick double-takes, as if he had forgotten Regulus was there, or, more likely, had thought Regulus and Sirius were an instance of double-vision. “Your—your elf, Mister Black?”

“My elf was summonsed, but then he was forced away,” Regulus says, not cold, but emotionless. “It was unnatural.”

“The elf was going to take us to save the Potters,” Sirius adds, scowling. “Whatever happened bunked our rescue mission.”

“Rescue mission,” Flitwick says faintly. He clears his throat. “The castle has been armed, this evening, with wards against all forms of coming and going, including that of an elf’s Apparition and the Floo network.” He says the latter pointedly, as if he’s noticed James inching his chair ever closer to the fireplace.

“And why has the castle been shut down?” Lily asks. “Sir,” she adds belatedly.

Flitwick looks between them, then slumps, as if admitting defeat. “The headmaster is on business. We thought it safest if the castle were secure in his absence.”

“He’s out, then,” Sirius says, intense. “Looking for the Potters. He’s looking for them?”

Flitwick waves his hand noncommittally.

“Where are they, Professor?” James says through clenched teeth. Now they’ve got their adult, and they still have nothing. If they all could’ve stopped fucking fighting for a moment—

“There are reports,” Flitwick says evasively, eyes flitting to the door.

“Lestrange Estate, we know that, too,” Sirius says.

Flitwick winces.

“What were they doing there?” James demands, leaning forward in his chair, with a knuckle-numbing grip on either wooden arm. “How long have they been gone? My father is ill—”

“We know that, Mister Potter,” Flitwick says shortly, and James remembers suddenly that Flitwick was friends with his parents, back when they were young. He’s not the only one who cares about their corpses rotting in Crazy Cousin Bellatrix’s basement.

“How many have been captured total?” James says.

“I can’t tell you that,” Flitwick says.

James makes a frustrated sound.

“What mission were they on?” Sirius tries. “Did Bellatrix do something? Did my family—is my family involved?”

“Again. I can’t tell you.”

“What can you tell us?” Lily says.

“There was a mission,” Flitwick says, and Sirius lurches to his feet, running his hands through his hair in exasperation. “There was a mission to the Estate, a rescue mission to recover a spy we expected was compromised, and there is,” Flitwick’s eyes dart away from them again, “the possibility that the mission went wrong.”

“Don't bullshit us, Professor,” James says bluntly, empty. “I’ve been here before.”

Flitwick meets his gaze head-on. “It’s gone tits up. No communications for nearly three weeks.”

“And it took this long to go look for them?” Sirius demands, dropping back into his seat.

“No,” Flitwick says. “It’s just that everyone we send looking… disappears.”

James, in the absence of anything at all else to do, laughs helplessly.

“But the Headmaster has gone, now,” Flitwick says with a blunt sort of certainty. “He’s there, and everything will—” Flitwick suddenly jerks straight in his seat, a strange look on his face. “They’re back.”

The rest of them mimic his jolt, looking around. James half-expects to see his parents standing in the doorway, but no one is here.

“They tripped my alarm,” Flitwick says breathlessly, hopping off his chair and scrambling to the door. “The ward was broken, I felt it, that means Albus is back, and he wouldn’t come without—” He freezes mid-step and looks at them warily. “I don’t suppose I could tell you to wait here.”

“No,” they all say together at varying volumes, with varying degrees of insolence.

So all five of them go hurtling down the corridors, arms windmilling, shoes sliding, and James’s chest is so tight that he feels like he hasn’t run in years, or maybe like he has been running for years without pause, or maybe as if the carton of cigarettes Carter gave him has tied his lungs in knots.

They skid to a stop at the hospital’s double doors. They’re locked, shimmering as if covered with a spell, and Flitwick raises his wand and starts reciting an incantation under his breath, long strings of Latin that wind together like braids.

“I should go,” Regulus gasps, clutching a stitch in his side. “I shouldn’t…”

“Of course,” Lily says.

“Go,” Sirius says lowly.

“Thank you,” says James, trying to infuse his heart into it.

Regulus shrugs one shoulder, backing away. “You can’t thank me for something I wasn’t a part of.” He disappears around a corner just as the warding spell falls from the hospital doors, effectively reclaiming James’s attention.

Flitwick pushes them open with a horrible creak. James doesn’t think to stop. He plows through the opening, nearly running, while Poppy barks at them all to hand in their wands, but—

“Oh good God,” James says weakly, freezing in place.

A dozen beds are filled with bodies in all ranges of soot-streaked, bloody half-consciousness, moaning and crying and hyperventilating and shoving at mediwizards in Saint Mungo’s uniforms. It’s cacophony, it’s bedlam, and James zeroes in on his mum through it all, easy as anything; she is a beacon, a homing-signal, tired and dirty and skinny and alive—

James is running, shoving past healers and Aurors in uniform, “Mumma?”

Her gaze snaps onto him, wide-eyed, wet, and she relaxes. “My boy.”

“Did they hurt you?” he demands, reaching for her, and she’s reaching, too. “What did they do? What did they do?”

“Nothing, baby, nothing,” Mum says, but James is so busy climbing onto her cot and tossing his arms around her that he doesn’t hear it.

“You’re okay?” he says, high-pitched with worry, ears filled with this breaking-wave roar of sound. She smells like smoke and stale clothing, feels bony under his hands, his mum, he’d fucking tear the earth to powder under the feet of anyone who looked at her wrong, and she was in that place for weeks, doing Merlin only knows what.

“I’m okay, I’m fine,” she says, stroking his hair. “I’m not hurt, not at all.”

“Oh, bloody hell,” James says weakly, scrunching his eyes shut, holding tighter. “Dad?”

“Right here, Jamesie,” comes a croak, and James sees him, one cot over, with two healers and fucking Odyssean heart-stopping Eli Jordan in full Auror’s leathers taking notes on a yellow legal pad, but it’s different, it’s weird, they’ve all got Bubblehead Charms on and there’s a strange shimmer around his space like a cubicle, like a ward—

“Dad?” James says again, voice thin.

“Quarantine,” Mum whispers, stroking her fingers through James’s hair, looking at him like she can’t get enough. “He’s okay, just being careful, give them a minute to settle him in, he’s feeling sniffly.”

“Sniffly,” James echoes.

“Missus P.,” comes Sirius’s relieved voice, and Sirius’s body follows, pale and harried and holding a handful of Lily’s jumper sleeve.

“Both of my boys,” Mum says, mustering up a smile. “What a lucky old bat I am. Scoot, James, make room for Sirius. Hi, Lily, dear.”

James does as he’s told, and Sirius clambers over, and Mum squeezes Lily’s hand, and everything is such a lot, Poppy is yelling and waving her wand and blood is smeared across the floor and Eli Jordan is calling for order in his Captain Voice and Dad is coughing, coughing, coughing, and James—

It’s like being in a fucking medical tent on a muggle battlefield, wounded soldiers and not enough hands. A blur of sound and color and indistinguishable movement. It’s bodily trauma and fear lingering in tight muscles and a belly-deep instinct to do something, to help. Sweat and piss and burned skin, the echo of flying spells and the cut of shrapnel and Dad’s whooping cough.

For James, the war is real, now.

James swears it. He’ll never leave someone waiting for rescue again.

“We didn’t end up doing it,” James says for the seventh time. “No harm, no foul!”

“But you would have,” says McGonagall, trembling with white-lipped fury on the other side of her desk. “You would have broken into my office, stolen Floo powder, and gone looking!”

“Actually, we were going to commandeer House Black’s elf and bastardize him as a means of travel, but that was a plan at one point, too,” Sirius says carelessly, checking his pocket watch. The insanity has since lulled to general disarray. Dumbledore and the Auror team he brought to the Estate have given their statements; the worst-off of the prisoners have been shuffled to Mungo’s for more direct care; the Lestranges are in hiding, their land abandoned; every missing person predicted to be involved is accounted for. It’s nearly moonrise, now; from one problem to the next, Sirius is. He swears he won’t leave Remus alone. It’s just that this talk with Minnie is taking an eon.

“Worse!” McGonagall cries. “You were going to involve a creature with ties, direct ties, to the very family you knew to be at large! A creature with, if you’re telling the truth, questionable ties to you, and therefore a tenuous sense of duty to serve you, Mister Black, which would only open you to the possibility of being abandoned, left in that place with the prisoners to rot!”

“Yes,” Sirius says, “because we weren’t going to leave the Potters there to, as you so eloquently and tastefully phrased it, rot. What kind of people would we be, then?”

“And what are you now, having done it? Impulsive imbeciles!” She shoots to her feet, starting to pace. “Did it not cross your mind to ask an adult for help?”

“It did, multiple times,” James says through gritted teeth, knee bouncing sharply. “Your office was empty. Dumbledore was off the premises. We felt we had exhausted our options.”

“You don’t trust a single other adult in this school?” she demands. “It was me, the Headmaster, or child soldiers to the rescue?”

“Yes, that’s precisely it,” Sirius says cheerily, sharp.

“Your egos will get you killed,” she hisses, furious, a boiling teapot and the spit of burning steam. “You cannot throw yourselves into situations such as these as if you are equipped to handle them. You are not.”

“But we need to be,” James says, gaze far away, jaw set. “War is here, Professor. We’re inheriting it. We need to be ready.”

“You need to be fifteen!” she shouts with so much emotion her hat topples to the ground. She kicks it out of her way mid-step. “You need to leave these things to the adults. You cannot kid yourself into believing this is your war when it isn’t.” She rubs her knuckles with the fingers of her other hand. “Not yet, at least,” she amends, quieter.

“Not yet, at least,” James echoes, folding his hands on his stomach, like that settles things.

McGonagall buries her face in her hands, that same rage billowing off her like energy incarnate, like raw magic, the sort that leaks off children when they haven’t the endurance to hold it in. “I need to punish you,” she says. “You need to learn.”

“What do we need to learn, exactly?” Sirius says, thumbing his pocket watch again.

“To trust the adults to handle these sorts of things!” McGonagall shouts, throwing her hands up.

“I’ve never met an adult who could handle something I couldn’t,” Sirius says, gaze intense in a way that screams he’s trying to be nonchalant.

McGonagall takes a sharp breath, looks away. Runs a hand over her hair, smoothing down errant flyaways. She turns back towards them with an expression like stone. “Twenty points from each of you. Ten more from Miss Evans.” Who isn't in attendance, as the pair of them had immediately insisted it was them instigating the situation and her trying to stop them. “And three detentions for each of you. With Mister Filch.” Who will likely make them scrub grout with their toothbrushes, and McGonagall knows that.

“I accept your terms,” James says.

“This is not a negotiation!” McGonagall sputters.

“Minnie, dear,” James says, shoving to his feet. “Everything is, and you know it. Now, respectfully, I am going to visit my half-dead father before half becomes three-quarters and father becomes corpse. I know you love our chats, but he’s really my priority,” his gaze is sharp, “now, and no matter what. Thus, I must be off. Have a good evening.” James pushes his chair into place at the edge of McGonagall’s desk, then goes, the door falling shut behind him with a thud.

“He could’ve lost both of his parents today,” Sirius says quietly, “and you’re worried about giving him detention.” Sirius stands, adjusts his sleeves with a series of cutting, precise movements, shakes his head. “And you wonder why we tried to handle this ourselves.”

Then he’s gone, too, and McGonagall sits at her desk, head in her hands, suspended in ringing silence.

“Never you,” Mum keeps whispering into James’s hair. “Never you. This is real now, and it will never be you.”

“That’s the most hypocritical thing I’ve ever heard,” James mumbles, half-asleep, not giving her the gift of opening his eyes. Dad finally fell dead asleep an hour ago, stable, breathing without a ventilation spell, and James’s bones feel carved of concrete. “You’ve been getting arrested for everything under the sun eight separate times since you were my age. Felon mother.”

“But not you,” she says. “You won’t. You’ll protect yourself. You’ll be safe.”

“How could I do that. How could you ask me to do that.”

“Because I’m your dearest, darlingest Mumsy and you love me so much.”

“I do,” James says into her shoulder. Every brush of her fingers through his fringe is another breath closer to sleep. The steady whooshing of monitoring spells, the light footsteps of mediwizards on rounds, the heavy huff of sleepy breaths. Some twisted, sick lullaby. “And those are all reasons exactly why I have to help.”

“You’re too young.”

“There’s no such thing anymore.”

“You’re not ready.”

“I am. I was ready to Floo over right away, with Sirius and Lily—”

“And Regulus,” Mum whispers, “who is barely thirteen and would’ve been killed by his own family as soon as he was seen. Were you old enough and experienced enough to think of that?”

James sighs. He shouldn’t have told her the full story, not when they didn’t even admit Regulus’s involvement to McGonagall. Now he certainly isn’t going to sleep, with that image in his head. He thinks, for the first time, it’s for the best that Flitwick caught them. He thinks, for the ninetieth time, that his old fucking parents shouldn’t have been the ones sent on a futile rescue mission. “I can’t not do anything,” he tells her. “You and Dad taught me that. If there are people in need, we help them. Mum, there are hundreds of people in need. Thousands. What am I supposed to do, leave them to languish?”

“You’re fifteen,” she reminds him. “I’m still making decisions for you yet.”

James rolls his eyes. “I’m old enough to see the danger in things and want to act anyway. I’m old enough to decide what’s worth it and what isn’t. I’m old enough to risk… the things I decide are worth risking,” he says, unwilling to say risk my life in front of his mother. “When I can help, I’m going to. That’s that.”

Mum sighs. It sounds wet. “I don’t want to trade my son for a better world. Is that selfish?”

“Yes,” James says. “It might be the first selfish thing you’ve ever said to my face.”

“Do you hate me for it?”

“Are you kidding me? How could I hate you for it?” He curls tighter against her. “I’d hate you more if you said Okay, Voldemort, here’s my only son, the single progeny my dusty old loins have managed to produce, come and get him.”

She chuckles, exhausted, and it turns into a cough.

James’s eyes fly open. He looks at her.

She waves him away. “Calm yourself, sprog. I’m fine. Just a tickle.”

“Hmm,” James says, narrowing his eyes.

She clicks her tongue and palms his cheek, eyes tracing his every feature like the starved to a table bowed at the center under bounty. “When did you get so old and mature?” She pinches his chin. “What happened to my silly little boy, banging pots and pans with wooden spoons and transfiguring all my nice throw pillows into hairless cats?”

James looks at her right back, just the same way. He shrugs one shoulder. “He grew up,” he says.

The double doors fly open near two in the morning, and Lily comes blustering through them like an avenging angel.

“Came to visit me, have you?” James says briskly, awake and on his own cot now that Mum is asleep like Dad in his bubble.

“No, I came for Sirius,” she says, not even bothering to look at the cot with the pillows laid to look like Sirius’s form balled beneath the sheets. She walks over to James’s bedside and plants herself at the foot of the mattress, facing him, her legs crossed before her.

She looks at him for a long moment, visibly unsure of what to say, so he blurts, “I’m sorry for all the shouting earlier.”

Lily blinks. “What do you mean?”

“We were all on-edge,” James says, tugging on his sleeve. “And I’m sorry for the yelling. I’m sure it wasn’t… anything you wanted to hear.”

“I’m not fragile,” she says sharply, guarded. “I don’t care what you’ve seen of me since… I’m not fragile. Never think that.”

“I don’t, bloody hell,” he says. “I know you’re not fragile. You’re a brick shithouse, Evans, I know better than anyone. All I’m saying is I’m sorry for the yelling.”

“You weren’t even the one doing it,” she says. “It was Sirius and I.”

“Well, I didn’t stop you,” he says, suddenly bitter. “I acted like a fucking fool.”

“What, you’re embarrassed?” she says, eyes widening. “Embarrassed of being upset when—Potter, you should ask Eli, someday, what I was like in Diagon Alley, after the—the explosion. I was catatonic, muttering like an asylum patient—”

“Yes, but you were there, you were part of it.” He can’t look at her. “You saw it. You must’ve been terrified, for yourself, for your father, for everyone around, because you knew exactly what happened. You had reason to be scared.”

“Yes,” she says, and her voice sounds funny, unseated, so he scoots down the length of the mattress, close enough that their crossed knees almost touch. “Yes, I was, I was terrified, but—you didn’t know what was happening, and I reckon that’s worse, is all. Especially for someone with an imagination as overactive as yours.”

“Well,” James says. He takes a sharp breath. Sits taller. “Well,” he says, and it almost sounds as chipper as he means for it to, “it’s over now. Nothing to be scared of anymore.”

“I didn’t even know you could be scared, you know,” she says, a teasing smile playing at her lips, sharp, smart. “I didn’t think you, of all people, were afraid of anything.”

James thinks uncannily of his boggart. He thinks of Snape, and of silence, and of summers when his owls go unanswered. He thinks of how, for the first time, he was worrying for his parents—his indomitable, incredible parents—rather than the other way around. He thinks of his stomach aches, the way his fear is always so physical, shaking hands and short breath and vomiting until he’s sure his throat is blistered. The very idea of him not being afraid of anything—delightful idea as it is—is hysterical. He wishes Sirius were here, only because it would have given him one hell of a laugh.

“Evans,” James says. He considers making a crack about how she’s the scariest thing he’s ever known, or maybe that the scariest thing in this life is her blindness to her obvious love for him, but. He’s tired. “If you don’t think I’m scared every second of my life,” he says heavily, “then you don’t know me at all.”

“Am I supposed to?” she says.

He squints at her, genuinely surprised by that answer. “And what, may I ask, do you mean by that?”

“Potter,” she says. She huffs. Gesticulates. “Just because—just because I don’t loathe your very existence anymore doesn’t mean we’re friends.”

James swallows once, then twice, while his stomach caves in.

She’s fucking belladonna. She’s unbelievable, and he will never be enough, but damn it all if she gets to know he’s feeling right now. Frankly—frankly, she doesn’t deserve to know she makes him feel.

James Potter, more than anything, is a professional actor, it seems. “Fine, then. Leave.”

She blinks, surprised. “W-what?”

“You can go,” he says. “We’re not friends. You have no reason to be here. Go to bed. Go on, go.”

“And what are you going to do?” she says with a sniff, visibly uncomfortable with his dismissal. “Sit here, awake and alone?”

“Mhm,” he says, “and riddle out my master plan to seduce you, obviously, obviously that’s all I do.”

She scoffs, rising to her feet as the tension in the air falls. James is an artist, when diffusing around her. She smoothes back her hair with both palms. “You,” she says. Laughs humorlessly. “You, James Potter, are an insufferable pig, you know that?”

He shrugs. “Step one of the master plan: convince Evans I am, in fact, human, since I have not, apparently, been able to do so in four fucking years.”

She turns on her heel, takes three steps, then turns back. She’s so animated, all hands and big expressions and fire. “You infuriate me.”

“You should go, then,” he says with a humorless grin. “Bye bye, Ginge. Go on now. If you hate me so much, it shouldn’t be this hard, should it?”

She scowls at him. “Toerag,” she mutters.

He pulls his pillow over his head. “Begone, wench.”

He waits for the thunk of the door closing to remove it.

And, really, it’s like James has always said. He has loved her from moment one. But, for the first time, he thinks he really, truly fancies her, too. Butterflies in the stomach, stutter in his chest, pins and needles in his fingers style. Mad about her. Mad for her.

Just in time for her to step on him, a cigarette butt ground into the pavement. No, they’re not friends. They were something else, something undefinable, if you were to ask James. Something that didn’t need a name.

Something that never will have a name, it seems, because it’s dead before it had a chance to live.

Remus comes to for the first time in a state of exhaustion so complete he feels he’s falling apart, certain, at least, that he is alone, which is good, because Madame Pomfrey arrives only moments later. He leans on her shoulder, mostly asleep, for the whole trek to the hospital, and endures her planting him in a cot with an uncharacteristic lack of complaint. He’s asleep in seconds.

Remus comes to for the second time with a strange, pointed pressure on his wrist and a weight on his eyes like a hangover.

He groans.

There’s a prod to his cheek, now.

“Hey,” Sirius’s voice says. “Moony.”

“F’ck off,” Remus mumbles.

“No, this is fucking important,” Sirius says. There’s another poke on his wrist. Remus squints one prickly eye open to see Sirius jabbing his finger into a bright starburst bruise halfway up Remus’s arm. It’s certainly not numbed, so he supposes it can’t be too bad.

“Ow,” says Remus.

Sirius is funny like that. When Remus is hurt, he touches every ache like he’s checking it’s there, like he’s making sure Remus feels it, like he might miss it otherwise. It’s unlike how he treats James—whose every injury is a personal insult to Sirius, who would nurse James a dozen weeks straight for a singular hangnail—and especially unlike how he treats Peter—who is rarely hurt as it is, but is ignored entirely by Sirius when the event does arise, as Sirius is infinitely and intimately annoyed by reminders of the corporeal existence of Peter Pettigrew.

Now that Remus is looking, he notices Sirius has a hand in a funny cast that cements his pointer and middle fingers straight out.

“What’d I do,” Remus breathes, dread sinking in his stomach. “Oh, God, Sirius—”

“You tossed me into the bloody bed,” Sirius says, waving his good hand like swatting the thought away. “I told Pomfrey I fell down the dormitory stairs. But that’s not important.”

“Yes it is! Oh, fuck, I’m sorry—”

“Hush up,” Sirius says, pinching Remus’s lips shut.

Remus makes a sound of outrage.

“Look around you,” Sirius says, eyes wide.

Remus squints at him.

Sirius gestures with his head.

Remus looks. Then he frowns, because the beds are all full. All of them, with the curtains drawn, with the distinct glimmer of Imperturbable Charms lingering around them. How did he not notice that.

Sirius releases his lips. “I’m going to explain this fast. Okay?”

Remus opens his mouth to answer.

Sirius pinches his lips again, saying, “Ah-ah-ah!”

Remus rolls his eyes. It feels like an enormous expenditure of energy.

“These are prisoners that were kept in the cellars of Bellatrix and Rodolphus’s estate,” Sirius says measuredly. Remus feels a hemorrhage of panic burst in his stomach. “They all lived, Dumbledore and a handful of Aurors went in and saved them, and Mister and Missus Potter are among the liberated.” More panic. “They’re going to be fine. Mister Potter was moved to Mungo’s this morning for monitoring. James is in one of these beds, but he’s just sleeping, poor lamb.” Sirius takes a deep breath, eyes widening just slightly, then continues. “James, Lily, Reg, and I almost went with my house elf to try and… save them. To do something. But Flitwick found us before we could go.”

Remus wrenches Sirius’s hand off his mouth. “Are you fucking insane?” he snaps at a whisper. “What the fuck good did you think you’d possibly do?”

“Don’t give James shit for it,” Sirius says, rubbing his chin, looking away. “I thought he was—I don’t know what I thought. He was losing his brains.”

Remus takes a deep breath. “Where’s Peter?”

“Still at breakfast.” Sirius shoves Remus over—never mind that Remus’s body feels like a limp noodle, of course—and climbs onto the cot beside him. “He told me he’d bring food for everyone.”

Remus releases the breath slowly, through his lips. “Lily went along with you all?”

“She was an instigator, really,” Sirius says, grabbing Remus’s arm and prodding the bruise anew, an expression of deep focus wrinkling his brow. “Jamie and I took the fall for her, but she was as bad as us. Had a big row in the corridor about how to handle the situation. I thought she was going to hex me, or punch me in the bollocks, at least.”

“And talking to an adult never came up in your grand planning phase?”

Sirius exhales, looking angrily at Remus. “You, too, with this adult thing. Ridiculous.”

“Ridiculous?!”

“You heard me. Ludicrous, even.” He tosses Remus’s arm down and takes up tracing the seams of the folded sheet with an intense focus instead. “No one was around. Dumbledore was gone before we noticed the Potters had been missing, and McGonagall wasn’t in her office.”

Remus sighs, knuckling his eyes. “Stupid. Stupid, stupid.”

“I get it,” Sirius says sharply, still not looking at Remus, petulant. “Stupid. I get it.”

“Stupid,” Remus says again, elbowing Sirius until he looks up. When his storm-bright eyes are locked on Remus’s, Remus says, softer, “And brave.”

“Hm,” says Sirius, and the corner of his lip curls. He’s really very close, all eyelashes and cheekbones and stupid, broken fingers that Remus wants to poke, to see if they hurt, if Sirius hurts too, but the hospital doors fly open, and Sirius jumps like he’s been shocked.

It’s Peter, looking repentant, likely because he’s followed by Lily, Mary, Marlene, and Dorcas, all of whom are flitting nervously, leaning on their toes, checking the charts at the foot of each cot. Mary has an armful of her cat, who looks around like a little fluffy periscope.

Peter comes right over to Sirius and Remus, however. “Sorry,” he says, depositing paper boxes of muffins and toast and apples and pancakes that smell of lemon, which makes Remus so immediately ravenous he could weep, “sorry, come up with some excuse quick, before they ask why you’re—”

“Remus! Why are you in a bed?” Marlene’s voice comes, a frown on her lips, brow knit.

“Pushed Sirius down the stairs, but he took me with him,” Remus says, lifting Sirius’s casted hand.

“Ruthless, that Remus is,” Sirius says solemnly, giving Mary a wink.

Lily and Dorcas grab chairs, and Peter folds a pancake, so Remus abandons all pretense and tears into a blueberry muffin with earnest, certain he could not possibly eat enough to fill his stomach. Sirius’s hand brushes him between the shoulders, just a passing glance, before he’s off to help Marlene wake James—James might have a soft spot for her the size of a small galaxy, but he’s a real grouch when shaken from sleep.

Lily slips right close to Remus’s cot, helping herself to a slice of toast, looking tired and rumpled, hair lobbed into a knot, no makeup on her eyes, in her usual brown-and-green corduroy and jumper combination. She flicks her brows at him: a question and a challenge.

“M’fine,” he warbles around his mouthful of luscious, God-sent muffin.

She hums, dropping her heels on the edge of the mattress.

“Sorry Sirius dragged you down the stairs,” Dorcas says, smoothing her skirt as she sits. “I can’t help but figure he might have deserved it, but really can’t imagine a world in which you would have.”

“You’d be surprised,” Peter says, clambering onto Remus’s bed. “Alright, Remus?”

“All good,” he says, shoving more muffin into his mouth. This is the best muffin he’s ever had. He needs to talk to the elf who made this muffin. He needs to shake their hand. Maybe promise them his firstborn child.

“He rises,” Sirius announces from across the way, where he’s perched on James’s mattress, where James is shoved up onto an elbow, knuckling his eyes. His hair stands up in all directions, even worse than usual, and he seems disoriented, blinking squintily around the hospital wing at the rest of them, brow knit.

“Hey, you,” Marlene says, grinning cheekily at James, climbing unceremoniously onto the Sirius-less side of his cot.

“Marley,” he says, voice rough with sleep. “What are you—?”

“Came to see you,” she says. “You’re in hospital, aren’t you?”

“Only for my parents,” he says, still looking between them like they’re a mirage. “I’m just—”

“Sitting in hospital, yes.” She swipes his fringe back off his forehead. “You did the same for me when I was in a bed, idiot. Why wouldn’t we come for you?”

James stares blankly for a moment, then gives a humorless, shocked little laugh. It sounds like a weak sob.

Mary’s cat promptly jumps from her arms and climbs onto James’s bed, crawling along his legs and into his lap.

“How’s your mum, James?” Peter asks, tearing a banana open.

“She’s—” James says, scooping the cat into his arms. “She’s… not hurt.” He buries his face in the cat’s shoulders. “I think she’s shaken up, is all. She’s right over there,” he points to the bed next to his, with the curtains drawn, “still sleeping. Poppy was passing around Dreamless Sleep with about as much restraint as Rosmerta has when foisting whiskey upon the underaged.”

There’s a series of snorts, and a bark of laughter from Sirius, who leans back and tosses his arm around James’s shoulders, tugging him close. There’s this peculiar smugness to Sirius’s expression, and it takes Remus a muffin-mouthed moment to riddle it out, but it’s—good God, it’s pride, pride that he’s wrangled this little parade for James, pride that James is bearing his fright with a stiff upper lip, that bastard. Remus likes him so much.

“I’m not half sure Poppy didn’t take a dose herself,” James is adding. “She’d been out for a few hours already when I knocked off. I think she’s trying to keep everyone else out longer than her, though. So she doesn’t miss anything.”

“We won’t wake her,” Peter says, raising a pinky as if he’s swearing. “We’ll be very quiet and well-behaved.”

“How about your father?” Dorcas asks with an anxious expression. “He has Pox, doesn’t he?”

“Yeah,” James says. “He’s at Mungo’s, but Poppy told me eight times not to worry, so. I dunno. I can’t tell who’d be honest with us anymore, out of all the adults we know. Dad’s strong, he’s been through worse ordeals with the DMLE, but… Dunno.”

“Sorry, James,” Remus says quietly, hoping James gets what he means: Sorry I wasn’t there for you, when you’re always here for everyone else.

If the sharp way James looks up, sends Remus a warning glare, is as obvious as it seems, then he heard it.

“Don’t even, Remus,” James says with a brutal softness only he could ever manage.

“This is fucking depressing,” Mary says suddenly, crossing her arms, leaning against the foot of James’s bed. “God, someone give me a muffin. What do you want, James? Toast? You toast-eating heathen?”

“An—”

“End piece, we all fucking know. Sadist.” Mary retrieves a lemon-poppyseed muffin for herself and two end pieces of toast for James. “So. Are we just going to sit silent vigil here, or what?”

“Mary,” Dorcas hisses, horrified, but Sirius is laughing and Lily is grinning and even James seems to appreciate her bluntness, as he’s smiling into the cat while he gives it proper long strokes down the back.

“I brought my study cards,” Lily admits, digging into her pocket for them. “It felt weird that we would miss a day of preparing for exams. Tradition, you know?”

“Oh, thank Merlin,” Peter says around a pancake. “I’d fail exams without you, Evans.”

Remus, on his second muffin, pats her ankle and hopes that communicates his gratitude. The pounding in his head is abating now that he’s eating, and a strange lightheadedness is taking its place. He’s going to need two more of these muffins and a full lunch to make up for what The Wolf burned off in the other body. Sometimes he wonders if his spite-fueled vegetarianism was, perhaps, a shitty idea, just because it takes a hell of a lot of salad to fill him up the way a chicken breast did. But eating flesh. Flesh. The thought makes him want to gag. Muffins it is.

“Here,” Sirius is saying, and then “Locomotor,” and James’s cot marches on its short legs until it’s across the room, end to end with Remus’s, and all of them are far closer together. James is grinning, a bit of that shine back in his eyes, and Marlene is laughing, on her knees, declaring sailorly commands, “Land ho!” and Sirius still looks proud. Lily is passing around notecards and Dorcas is smiling at Marlene when she isn’t looking and Remus is right here in the middle of it all.

“What is at the heart of each Jovian planet?” Sirius reads, flapping his notecard like a little fan.

Peter, in the midst of crawling onto James’s bed and laying down flat beside him, stealing his pillow and all, says, “A core of compressed gas.”

“There you go,” Sirius says, flicking a brow. “You don’t need Evans, after all.”

“What variables are relevant in Cross-Species Switching Spells?” James reads, letting the cat climb onto his shoulders so he can free his hands.

“Bodyweight of each creature,” Marlene says, brow knit with concentration.

“Viciousness,” Remus adds.

“Wand power, W, and concentration, C,” Lily finishes. “Which all equals T, the transformation.”

“Well done, Evans,” James says, floating the card to her with a muttered Hover Charm.

“Stick your foot up your arse,” she replies, snatching it out of the air. “Dorcas? You go.”

Half-looking at Peter, who has, it seems, promptly fallen asleep (so much for studying with Lily’s cards), Dorcas reads, “What property does wielding Wiggentree Wood grant the wielder?”

“Protection against dark creatures?” Mary says, tapping her lip.

“Correct!” Dorcas says cheerily, handing the card over. “Well done, Mare.”

“Yes, well, I’m very smart, you know.” Mary unsheathes a notecard, then rolls her eyes. “What magical creature did Potter colloquialize under the name Sentient Dildos?”

“Bowtruckles,” Remus says immediately. He shivers, then gags. “Oh, God, I’d forgotten how visceral that was.”

Peter, still face-down in James’s pillow, gives a honking snort. Remus watches fondly as James drops his notecards on Peter’s arse and sighs, burrowing himself under the sheets, eyes closing like the song of their voices in a lullaby of some sort.

With that sufficiently soppy fucking thought to fuel him, Remus hushes the others, and they continue to study, together, the way they always have. He’s comforted by the fact that nothing can get in the way of that.

The moment their parchments are collected after their Defense exam, Remus breathes.

He can let August go, now. He can let this fucking year go, now. He thought nothing could compare to last year. To that ache.

This one gave it a run for its money.

He stands and cracks his tight spine, twisting. In front of him, James shakes out his head, an absent smile playing on his lips. Sirius, to Remus’s left, runs his hands through his hair, an expression of post-exam euphoria smoothing his forehead. To Remus’s right, Peter chews anxiously on a thumbnail. When Remus meets his eyes, he gives a one-shouldered shrug, a wry smile.

James stands, roughs his hair up, and turns to Remus. He winks.

Remus rolls his eyes. Unbearable.

They keep on with the silent conversation—Sirius squeezes the back of his neck, Peter elbows him when he walks too close, Remus kicks James’s ankle when he ruffles his hair again—filing out of the room, taking their time, so that they’re almost the last ones to leave. There is a tenuousness to finishing exams: it is era-ending, enormous, and has the potential to slip, an Atlas-handful crumbling to the floor. They’ve almost escaped with the sensation intact, they’re filing out of the back door, when Yaxley swings into their path, rucksack nailing Sirius, sending him stumbling back into Remus, who catches him and shoves him away before anyone can make a lewd comment.

“Would you fuck off?” James says tightly, his good humor gone.

“No, we won’t,” says George Goyle, still leaning back in his seat, staring up at them, lips pursed. “I have a question, first.”

“Didn’t know you could even formulate verbal coherent thought,” James says, “but alright. Go ahead.”

Goyle scowls, fingering his wand. “Heard your dad is falling to bits in Mungo’s right now. He’s ancient, isn’t he? How long has he got? Two weeks? Three?”

James’s hand is on his wand so quickly, but it still isn’t quite quick enough, because Remus has a handful of Goyle’s hair.

He wrenches Goyle’s head back, then smacks his face down onto his desk, easy as anything, anger in his veins like boiled blood. Goyle’s crushed nose gives a sickening crack.

“What the fuck!” Yaxley squawks, groping for his wand, and Sirius is reaching for his, but James, ever impulsive James, is kneeling down beside Goyle’s chair, this grave, delicate look on his face. It’s almost peaceful. It makes Remus’s skin crawl.

“Let go, Remus,” James says quietly.

Remus does, and realizes his chest is heaving with breath.

James lifts Goyle’s face by the chin, just two fingers. Goyle has blood dripping into his mouth. His nose is swelling, the skin broken, the tip crooked. Remus did that. This vague absence separating Remus from his body—it’s his brain, he thinks, incapable of holding this much fury.

“You will keep my father’s good name out of your dirty fucking mouth, you twisted, weak-willed bastard,” James says, soft, soft, head tilted, dangerous. “You and your little bitch over here will let us out of this room, and you will not follow us, or I will hex you so innovatively that you’ll be able to eat your own arse. Do you understand me?”

“Fuck you,” Goyle spits, face red.

James just smiles. He waves his wand, and Goyle grunts, eyes widening in horror, hands clamping onto his crotch.

“What did you do?” Yaxley demands. “Stop it!”

“Don’t worry,” James says, rising to his feet as if he’d done nothing at all, watching Goyle cry out in pain with idle curiosity. “Pomfrey will put it right in a moment. You won’t have to miss out on his sensual loving, Yax. And, of course, you’ll never want anyone knowing it was James Potter—ilk and heir of a poor, helpless, decrepit old man—who stole your bollocks, will you?” James smiles charmingly. “Of course not. Good day, lads.”

And, with that, he walks out of the classroom.

Remus turns, gaping, to Sirius.

Sirius has been laughing for a solid minute and seems to have no plan to stop, wearing a face that is pure pleasant surprise. Peter, Remus notices, is missing—likely escaped before the wands were drawn. Remus shakes his head in bafflement, anger all but dissipated, and walks out of the room, knowing Sirius is following only by the sound of his hacking laugh.

“James,” Sirius wheezes. “James. What the fuck was that.”

“Taught him a lesson, I reckon,” James says puffing out his chest. “Minnie should take notes. That’s how you get people to stop fucking around. Teach him to talk about my father.” He looks at Remus, then, as if remembering he’s there at all. His voice is firm, though he’s choking back a smile, when he says, “Thanks for the assist, mate.”

Remus nods heartily. “Teach him to keep your name out of his mouth. Right?” He claps James on the back. “C’mon. I reckon Peter went to hide in the kitchens, and I have a hankering like hell for another one of those heavenly blueberry muffins.”

James cracks up, head falling forward as he laughs. “Unbelievable. C’mere, King Arthur. Agrippa’s sake. You’ll get your fucking muffin. You’ll get four fucking muffins, as many muffins as you want, you wonderful bastard.”

The last day of term is spent trying to soak up a rare spot of Scottish warmth.

Gryffindor’s year fours sun themselves on the shore of the lake, laid out in cut-off shorts and sleeveless shirts, shoes discarded on the sand. James is teaching Marlene to smoke a cigarette, and she follows each step with an expression of almost comical earnest attention. Mary plays with her cat until it bores her and she turns to Dorcas, who had been watching Marlene cough with an absent smile, asking her to braid her hair.

Sirius tosses stones into the water. He had planned on skipping them, graceful, six jumps and a spread of ripples, but he is, apparently, furious. He should not be furious. He should be relaxed, he should be smoking with James, but, Godric’s sake, he has to go home tomorrow. He has to start thickening the skin of his back. He has to—prepare himself for all the things he’s done this term that could earn him punishments: his new record for detentions, his perfect Muggle Studies score, the Gryffindor Quidditch final placement, his points off for somehow entirely missing the summer triangle on his Astronomy exam. That’s just off the top of his head. He plans to tack up posters in his room, this summer, to miff them off even worse than the Gryffindor hangings James had so innocently given him back in first year. Maybe he’ll bring his record player home, plaster it with shields and Aversion Spells and whatever else to hide it from dear old Mother. If they find it—

Well. That will keep all eyes off Reg for the season, he’s sure.

Sirius tosses his stones sharply down into the shallows, nearly trembling with anger.

James has Mary’s cat walking along his back like a tiny prince surveying his kingdom. Peter is intently lighting a purple wildflower on fire, which Dorcas watches with vague mistrust. Remus is absently rubbing his wrist, eyes closed to the sun. Lily has waded knee-deep into the water and now has a fat frog in her hands, which she gives a sweet kiss on the head. It croaks gravely in response.

“I’m calling a meeting of the Council,” says Sirius. What the fuck is wrong with them.

“What’s the Council?” asks Dorcas.

“The four of us, of course,” says James. “Double, Bubble, Toil, and Trouble.”

“Who’s who?” Lily calls, shading her eyes from the sun with one palm, which allows her frog to jump free. “Shit!”

“Irrelevant,” Sirius says while Peter says, “I’m Bubble!”

“Anyhow,” says Remus lazily.

“Yes, precisely, Moony: anyhow.” Sirius paces, brow knit. “We haven’t pranked in ages. It’s the last day of term. Everyone is in a fucking terrible fucking mood.”

“You are in a fucking terrible fucking mood,” James corrects. “We’re quite serene, actually.”

“Well, I am not,” Sirius says. “I am not serene. Summer. Disgusting.”

“So you’re going to make it worse for everyone else, Anubis?” says Mary.

“No, dear, we’re going to boost morale,” Sirius says, raising a finger imperiously. He brightens the same way light catches on a shined silver platter. “I know precisely what we’ll do.”

Which is how the entryway is filled with technicolor, unburstable bubbles with the Duplication Charm applied, so that every touched bubble multiplies into two, and those into two more, and so on, until great waves of students found themselves submerged in iridescent bubble soap, slipping and sliding and tossing perfect spheres of all sizes like snowballs, the corridors filled with great shouts of laughter and gleeful thrill, the four boys watching from their perch on the staircase with satisfied smiles, even knowing that they’ll be starting their fifth year with a ripe heap of detentions to be served.

James has not been home for five minutes before there’s a rap on the door and Minerva McGonagall is standing in his foyer.

“I didn’t do it,” he says immediately.

She rolls her eyes and bustles past him, a blur of tartan even in fucking June. “Mia! Teach your hellion to start using security questions when he opens the door.”

“You’re his professor! You do it!” Mum calls from the kitchen. She’s spent her weeks since returning home trying to teach herself to cook for the dozenth time, since Dad went from bed rest right back to work the moment he had a clean bill of health from Mungo’s: he’s nearly never home, now, and, when he is, he’s—understandably—far too tired to cook, which has James and Mum facing the very real threat of starvation head-on. James is already scouring the rows upon rows of old-country cookbooks from the bloody twelfth century his mother inherited, making a list of simple meals, restaurant phone numbers, and people he could owl to ask how to cook if things get really dire. He’s proving to be a better chef than Mum—better at tossing spices in a pot with some vegetables and tofu and broth or coconut milk, throwing on a lid, and praying—but that’s not saying much.

It’s lucky there’s a cafeteria in the Ministry, or Dad would’ve dropped dead of famine by now. He never bloody leaves the building, sleeps there half the time. The DMLE is a mess, with aurors working double hours to scrounge up information about Death Eater movement, about incidents muggles have begun to report that sound less like freak accidents and extreme weather conditions and more like Bombarda Maximas and Fiendfyre. After substantial begging, desperate not to sit around the house and do nothing, Dad has agreed to start bringing James along to the office, ‘like an internship.’

In all honesty, James just can’t stand to leave his father out of his sight these days, and Mum spends most of her hours—when not setting the kitchen ablaze—volunteering at Mungo’s or following Minnie all across the country for protests and “secret” Resistance meetings, so.

“I thought the point of the Fidelius was so we wouldn’t need extra security,” James says, padding after McGonagall into the kitchen, relearning the nicks in the hardwood on the soles of his bare feet. “No Aurors stationed, no attacks in the night, no vampires climbing through my window.”

“Is that a fear you have?” Mum says, pattering from the gurgling soup on the stove to the spice cabinet to the ice box, not retrieving ingredients or doing anything all proactive about the bubbles slowly rising towards the lip of the pot. “Vampires climbing through your window? Why didn’t I know that?”

“Do any teenage boys cry to their mother about their irrational fears?” James asks.

“I think that fear is one of the more rational things you’ve ever claimed, rather,” McGonagall says with a shudder, seating herself upon a stool at the island. “I graded your exam last night, you know.”

“Oh, tell me more,” James says, sitting across from her, dropping his chin on his knuckles, batting his lashes angelically.

“You scored so well it made me viscerally, deeply angry,” she says. Mum snorts, then squawks, clapping a lid onto the now-vibrating pot. “Highest marks in the year for Transfiguration, I gave you a one-hundred-and-ten percent for that brilliant essay response calling upon Gamp’s Law—I could not fathom how you’d thought of relating Cross-Species Transfiguration to that of differing foods—”

“I peruse the upper level textbooks when I can’t sleep. It’s my greatest shame in life,” James admits.

“It was…” She shakes her head. “Brilliant. Infuriatingly brilliant. You wrote that essay for me, and, in the same week, you filled the dungeons with bubbles and, if I’m not mistaken, hid George Goyle’s manhood.”

“You did what?” Mum says, whirling to glare at him while James demands, “What did Goyle say, that rat?”

“Mister Goyle admitted to nothing,” McGonagall says, one eyebrow steadily climbing, “but I do possess the skill of deductive reasoning.”

“Term’s over, Min,” James reminds her, wagging a finger. “Can’t punish me now.”

“Trust me, I don't plan to,” she mutters. She adjusts her spectacles. “There are always some who make me wonder if Mister Filch’s pining for the days of stringing students up by the thumbs isn't so insane after all.”

“George Goyle can suck my toes,” James says by means of agreement. “He’s athlete’s foot personified.”

McGonagall gives an uncouth snort of laughter.

Mum bangs a biscuit tin onto the counter between them, brushing back the loose strands of her hair. Who knew boiling vegetable stock could be so traumatic. “Have a biscuit, Min.”

James believes it’s the strangest, nicest afternoon he’s had in a long while. He watches his mum and McGonagall prepare the Fidelius, tracing the house with lines of glimmering blue magic, and spies through the crack at the edge of the door to Dad’s study while Mum performs the spell. McGonagall stays for tea, and James tries to mirror-call Sirius to join in on the chat—may no one ever accuse him of being an un-thoughtful friend—but Sirius doesn’t answer. Not particularly surprising, but worrying nonetheless.

Evans (back to calling her Evans, pain of pains, and when did he even stop?) had a point, when she mentioned his overactive imagination. He always expects the bloody worst. Sirius flat on his stomach, splayed like a dropped stone, bleeding or bruised or trembling under the Cruciatus. Fucking hell.

Sirius was right. Summer. Disgusting.

Lily’s house is quiet, these days.

Dad was never around during the light hours, working that factory job that had him up early and home late, but still. The house feels like it’s holding its breath, curtains trembling in anticipation, for the moment he’ll toss the doors open and fill the space with his jolly laugh and swing Lily around until she threatens to sick down his back.

His slippers still sit by the front door. His bathrobe still hangs in the loo. There’s still a Christmas garland draped along the mantle. He’s nowhere, but he’s also everywhere.

The house feels hostile without him.

“Hey, you,” Mum says, padding into the kitchen in a fluffy bathrobe, hair piled atop her head in a damp towel. “Did you get any rest?”

Lily shrugs, idly stirring her tea. Poppy asked if she wanted to wean off Dreamless Sleep. She said yes. Last night, with the low dose, felt more like Sleepless Dream: it was all snow and blood and blur and arm. “And you?”

“Oh, you know,” Mum says, dropping into the old chair across from her. It gives a creak, even bearing her negligible weight. Mum is all hard lines and fractal wrinkles these days. Her fifty-eighth year hit her like a Volkswagen van going full-speed ahead.

“Yeah,” Lily says, because she does know. Fifteen hit her the same way.

“Is Petunia out already?” Mum asks, pulling the teapot closer. She removes the lid and gives the contents a sniff, as if she hadn’t made the tea herself, before her shower.

“Yeah,” Lily says with a little frown. “She’s spending the week with Vernon Dursley’s family in Brighton, isn’t she?”

“Right,” Mum says. She shakes her head. “Of course. How silly of me.”

“No, it’s alright,” Lily says, reaching forward to pat her hand. “Everything is a bit strange, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” Mum says, heavy, almost as if she’s relieved Lily thinks so, too. As if she needed confirmation from her child that she’s allowed to feel crooked without her husband. These are the sorts of conversations they have. The only ones they have, before Lily Latchkey runs to lay in the grass and peel sunburn off her nose like squeezing the skin of an overripe peach from the fruit. “Yes, it’s terribly strange.”

“It’ll be alright,” Lily says, though she feels ever unseated: like that bravely lingering garland.

“Mm,” Mum says. She pours herself a cup of tea. “Why don’t you go out and play with that boy from Spinner’s End, hm? You always liked him, didn’t you?”

“His name is Severus,” Lily says, staring hard into the contents of her mug. Milky, thin earl grey. “You know that. We’ve given him rides home from King’s Cross.” She looks back at her mother, who is frowning, mouthing Severus to herself like it’s unfamiliar. “Do you—do you want me to go?”

“Sure, Lily,” Mum says.

“No, do you,” Lily says. She laughs a breathy, cracked thing. A porcelain cup of cream, sitting at the edge of the table, and she has picked up these shards before, sopped up the spill. “Do you not want me here?”

Mum’s brow knits. “Don’t make me sound like that. It’s a good day. Don’t sit around with me.”

“Oh,” Lily says. The air has gone still with all the things neither of them can say.

Mum waves her hand, urging. “You go on out, you have a nice day. Enjoy the…” she peers out the window. “Pleasant overcast?”

Lily gives a wavering, false smile. “My favorite weather.”

“At least it isn’t Scottish rain,” Mum says bracingly. She lifts her mug slowly to her lips. She needs to use both hands so her trembling doesn’t send a sip sloshing over the side. Lily can’t stop staring. Seismic shaking. The ground when the first cold night rolls in.

“Right,” Lily says, before the silence can become unbearable. “Right.” She stands. At least it isn’t Scottish rain. Perhaps that’s a metaphor. “Alright. I’ll go see Severus. You’re right.”

“I’m really quite wise, you know,” Mum says.

Lily gives her a humorless sort of smile of thanks, then whirls up the stairs. Her summer uniform is one of beige jumper and greenish shorts, her always-colors, because seasons do not mean a change of favor, a change of personality, and she likes very much staying herself. Especially in this world that tries so hard for her to be otherwise.

She half-runs out the door, because being in Cokeworth is quite different than being in Scotland, and she jogs down the hill to Spinner’s End, where she physically bumps into Severus, because he is idling outside his house, as if he is awaiting something—perhaps awaiting her.

“Oof,” she says. “You.”

“You,” he replies, catching her by the elbows.

“I miss you,” she blurts, looking between his button-black eyes, searching his pale, drawn face. His hands are cold on her arms. “You’re so shitty and I miss you.”

“Does missing me matter more than me being shitty?” he asks.

“Yes,” she says, relieved that he understands her so fundamentally, pulling him into a hug which has him gasping, startled, until he settles into it. Into her.

He squeezes. “We’re good, then?”

“Yes,” she whispers, not knowing if she means it, but feeling it heavy in her stomach. This. This stays the same, even if Mum forgets where Petunia is and shakes holding her mug.

“Good.” He sighs. “Good, good, I’m glad. Let’s go loiter around the lake, yeah? I’ll show you a spell I’ve been working on.”

“Okay,” she says.

He pulls away, looking at her quite curiously. “You’re okay, now?”

She chokes back a laugh. “Yes,” she says. “Yeah, yes, let’s just go.”

“Perfect,” he says. “You and me. Back on the large. Let’s off.”

“You and me,” she repeats. “Ha. Severus.” She takes a deep breath. Nearly chokes on it. He just looks so happy to see her. “Yes, let’s… off.”

“He’s been owling with Snivellus this summer,” Sirius says, laying himself out across his duvet like a fainted dandy. “I’m sick of hearing his quill scratch through the wall.” He thunks said wall with his fist for good measure. “Fuck knows it’s all simpering and disgusting: Oh, Snape, I’ve only heard tales of your brilliance when it comes to spell-making. I only wish it were my sweet purist head inventing such wonders!”

“Silencing Charm?” James suggests, looking very brown and content as he chomps down on a bagel stuffed with that green avocado stuff he likes so much. No cooking necessary, he’d chirped cheerily when Sirius liberated his mirror from that secret cabinet in his desk—where his parents won’t find it.

“No wand,” Sirius says with a lemon-pith smile. “Mother says if I really want to spend my O.W.L. years learning about the way muggles live, then I should live like a muggle myself, so. No magic all summer.”

“But then you’ll fall behind,” James says, frowning, a singular sesame seed on his lip. He tongues it away, then continues. “It’s the punishment that keeps on punishing.”

“Surely,” Sirius agrees. “Well. At least I’m bright enough to understand the charms we’ve been assigned without performing the practical elements. And, occasionally, without reading the texts. Did I tell you? Yesterday evening, I dropped the Divs text off my bed at arse o’clock. One moment I was reading that enthralling section on burning entrails, and the next the book was hitting the floor with a sound like fucking Armageddon. I truly cannot express to you with words how loud the thunk was in this abandoned, corpse-filled cathedral of a house. I was sure I was going to be rinsed. Of course, Mother came storming in, silk bathrobe and curlers in her hair and all, mad as a randy Horntail, and she takes the book away.” Sirius sighs, rolling onto his back, holding the mirror above him. “At breakfast this morning, Father asks my plans for the day. I didn’t even open my bloody mouth to answer before Mother was going on about how silly I am for losing my textbook somewhere around the house, how irresponsible and frivolous of me, how ever will I complete my schoolwork at this rate, yes, Father, I’m sorry, Father, I’ll find my book, Father, so that I am less a waste of your precious time and space.”

“What the fuck,” James says, cheeks bulging with bagel.

“I’m just relieved Reg let me borrow his wand to fix the mirrors,” he mutters, unwilling to even say such things at full volume when this house is made of ears, full of stalking presences. Grimmauld Place, it seems, was the one place in which the connection between mirrors is severed, due to the dozens of complex enchantments warding the house from Ministry monitoring, Stalking Spells, et cetera ad infinitum. He and James are now very, very intimate with the comings-and-goings, the inner-workings, of Number Twelve. And the mirrors work, which is a miracle in itself. Without James, Sirius would’ve gone mad by now. Tossed himself out the loft window, maybe. “Dunno what I’d do all summer without you to distract me.”

“I could show up and rip arse on your couch if that’ll make you feel better,” James says with a shrug.

Sirius almost drops the mirror laughing at that.

“Seriously,” James says. “I’ll just fart like there’s no tomorrow. Eat a fuck-ton of beans the night before and turn the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black into a chamber of flatulence and depression.”

“Shut up,” Sirius chokes, grinning, close as fuck to crying.

“Then come here,” James eggs, the same way he does every morning, every afternoon, every evening. “Mum misses you, you know.”

“Ah, sweet Euphemia,” Sirius says. “There’s no one like her.”

“Come on,” James says. “Why do you always insist on not leaving? No one likes a martyr. And it’s not like your parents will ever reward you for toughing it out.”

The only reward he's had this summer was one beautiful day his parents spent at the unicorn races, all done up in fineries and floppy hats, Father wielding a cane that wasn’t made for hitting and Mother wearing purple—as close as she ever gets to a summer color. He and Regulus passed the hours people-watching at the center of town-square, all the windows gaping and curtains thrown open so the corridors filled with crystal sunlight, chasing the dust away and fighting the chill and drinking Kreacher’s lemonade over ice. They played catch in the loft, and Sirius tried to convince Reg to fly in the house, which had seemed a hopeful endeavor until it wasn’t. Reg made a good referee, though, while Sirius chased a snitch with undeniable grace and no skill and Regulus taunted him from the Marble Ballroom’s floor, laid flat on his back to watch, smiling absently—present for the first time in months, it seemed like—and running his fingernails along the grains of the tiles. It was the most Sirius had laughed in what felt like eons.

If only the portraits hadn’t tattled on them. If only Sirius didn’t insist on taking the fall for their spoiled, ruffian behavior. If only they weren’t an embarrassment. Sirius’s cheek wouldn’t still be stinging with a bruise.

“Hey,” James says. He rises, his picture blurring in the mirror as he does. “Talk to me, or talk to Mum. Come on. Talk to my mother, come on, I’m bringing you into the kitchen and if you disappear before I get there I’ll fucking choke you. C’mere. Mu~mmy?”

So Sirius talks to Missus P.

And, on a Tuesday, James comes to Number Twelve, Grimmauld Place.

Sirius is fairly sure it’s meant, for his parents, to be one of two things: a source of new material with which to torment Sirius: blood-traitor, lacking manners, was he raised by animals?; or a way to rectify the family name in the eyes of wizarding society after dear Bella so entirely shat upon it by breaking primary rule number one: never let the plebs know. It’s been the family summer project—saving face. That’s what had Sirius’s parents at the races, and it’s, too, why Sirius has attended two balls, three auctions, and a handful of dinners with Bulstrodes, Greengrasses, Burkes, Malfoys, Notts, and Averys, which has been quite the blow to his pride, as he’s had to make nice with people he was Trip Jinxing down staircases only last month.

Fucking summer. Fucking Blacks. Fucking Bella, insane wench, fucking Mother, fucking hell.

Father stands at the mouth of the Floo, while Sirius, Regulus, and Mother hover behind him. James drops through with more grace than Sirius thought him capable of, standing tall and proud with perfectly smoothened robes and crisp new loafers. His hair is gelled in the front, though the back stands in its usual rat’s-nest style. He looks excellent in burgundy and greys: the counter to the Black family uniform of green and greys that even Sirius has been bullied into donning today. James could almost fit right in with them. Almost.

He even gives Sirius the same sick feeling in the pit of his stomach—standing in the study with the fireplace poker and the Holloway Rods and the tomes of Sirius’s punishment lines (I will not talk out of turn, I will not speak of muggles before my brother, I will not set the portraits on fire)—that Regulus gives him, standing here. Agrippa’s sake. This was a terrible, awful idea. No lesson James could possibly learn, no greater understanding, no peace, is worth the sting of bile in Sirius’s throat, imagining James’s choked sounds of pain echoing between these walls.

He gives James a tour of the sitting rooms, from the Tapestry Room to the Purple Room to the Small Library, the shelves of which are filled, mostly, with jarred heads, embalmed elf parts, cursed trinkets, bloodthirsty potted plants, and a mirror that regularly tries to trick the onlooker to lean too close, at which point they will be charmed, Narcissus-style, unable to look away. He tells James how old everything is, knowing he’ll like the history, the depth; James likes things that last. He doesn’t mention the fact that he’s been punished to clean the cursed objects to various results on multiple occasions; James does not like things that hurt.

When they leave the Small Library, Sirius stops short in the corridor. He could swear this room was in the West Wing, but the wallpaper here is midnight blue, and midnight blue is in the East Wing. He blinks, frowns. Touches the wall. Frowns more. Blinks again, dizzy.

His memory, when here, is at its worst. He does not get so confused—

He does not feel—

He does not—

At Hogwarts, everything is level. Here, it is on a slant. At Hogwarts, Sirius feels like the master of his mind, his impulses, his life. Here, he is none of that.

“Lost again?” Great-Great Uncle Altair’s portrait asks conspiratorially, mustache quivering with his smile.

“Stuff it, you,” Sirius mutters, scrubbing his cheeks with his fingertips.

“You get lost in your own house?” James asks, candlelight flickering on the lenses of his glasses.

“You stuff it, too,” Sirius tells him. “The house is… dastardly. It’s a carnival fun-house. Nothing is as it seems. Come on, then.”

“What d’you mean, nothing is as it seems?” James says as Sirius drags him down the corridor, taking turns at random, hoping to recognize something.

“I mean the house is Ancient, darling, and so is its magic.” A huff. That’s the Mural Room. How did they end up at the Mural Room? “I think it’s because my mother spends so much time inside, doing nothing, you know. It’s begun to mirror her behavior.”

“The—the house has.”

“Yes, do keep up, Jamesy. Ah!” There are the severed elf heads: Topsy, Ellis, Albireo, Alain, Coty, and—bugger. The one who sang while he worked, the one who was offed during one of Mother’s tempers, when she couldn’t bear the noise. Marcel. He made the best quiche Lorraine with smoky ham and great gobs of cheese. Sirius used to ask for it on—his birthday? Christmas morning? He can’t remember. Ah, well. Gehenna will always be Gehenna. “I expect tea is prepared. Care for a nosh?”

“A nosh,” James echoes. He gives a snicker like sun on a brook, then shoves Sirius into the wall. “Fuck you. Yeah, I’ll nosh. I’ll nosh with you happily.”

The Small Dining Room, where tea is typically served, is another one of the indescribable, time-defying rooms of the house: its decor is almost art-deco, in the twenties-style, with black walls, black-and-white tile floors—but, rather than the traditional checkerboard rows, swirling around a central axis like a tornado—black full-body statues of the ancestors in all sorts of ridiculous poses, a dripping, tiered chandelier, porcelain tea cups with genuine silver lining. James’s laughter is all but extinguished in favor of a perfect aloof mask, a flicker of snark and snobbishness in his eyes, shoulders back and crisp robes and Sirius has to turn around to hide the manic bubble of laughter rising in his throat. He’s so used to his James that he’d forgotten James can be like this, too, when the situation arises. Smart boy: making a silent statement that he is of their ilk, that Potters have fineries like these, that James is worthy of the Ancient and Most Noble best. Sirius’s parents will respect someone who projects that sort of character. They think respect ought to be demanded, after all.

“Might I ask what courses you are currently enrolled in, Mister Potter?” Mother says, dabbing her lips with her napkin, a smooth mask of vague disdain on her face.

“The core seven, of course, I’ll be seeing those through O.W.L.s,” he says, placing his teacup on the saucer with gentility Sirius didn’t think him capable of. “I’m also enrolled in Divination, Arithmancy, and Care of Magical Creatures.”

“And which do you favor?” Mother says, sharp enough to cut.

“Arithmancy,” James replies. A truth, and one Sirius is grateful for: the tirade Mother would have given had he chosen Care of Magical Creatures would have sent tremors through the floor. “Divination is an art I respect but have little knack for, unfortunately.” Now that is a lie. James has never respected Divination, not once in his life.

“You are unable to reach a higher plane of thought?” Mother says. “The bounds of your magic are more worldly, more human, I presume. How… unfortunate.”

“Not at all, Lady Black,” James says. Sirius is ready to throw his macaron at his mother, but James is so cool. “I’ve top marks in the year for Transfiguration, which, when you think about it, is a course entirely dependent upon one’s ability to ascend, mentally, as the magicks must take a corporeal form based upon a hypothetical image; it’s like painting by means of a stamp, where one’s thoughts are the ink and one’s magic is the vehicle and every mental misstep means the transference becomes imperfect.”

Sirius’s mother blinks once, then hums, lips pursed. She’s impressed. Sirius flicks a glance at Regulus, who is idly stirring his tea with a hazelnut biscotto, looking curiously at James.

“He’s understating it,” Sirius says belatedly.

His parents look sharply at him.

Sirius sits taller. “He’s not best in the year.” He takes a sharp, crackling bite of bruschetta, then smirks, cheek bulging with tomato and bread. “He’s best in the whole bloody school.”

“Language, Sirius,” Father says lowly while Mother sings, “Mind your manners, Sirius.”

“I’m interested in Arithmancy,” Regulus says suddenly.

All eyes jolt onto him.

Hilarious. Even Regulus would speak up to keep James from looking like an outsider today. Sirius feels a familiar impulse to clamp his hand over his brother’s mouth.

Regulus’s brow knits. “Is that really so surprising? Goodness. Sorry, didn’t mean to make the sky fall.”

Mother huffs. Father returns to his smoked salmon finger-sandwich.

“I’m sure you’ll enjoy it,” James says, facing Regulus.

It’s like following a snitch, this table-talk, except the stakes are, somehow, higher.

“Will I?” Regulus says, polite, tearing a lemon wedge off the rind. He drops the fruit into his tea.

“Yes, I think so,” James says. He rubs the tips of his thumb and forefinger together as if knocking off crumbs, but Sirius thinks it’s likely a nervous tick. “Sirius is always going on about how brilliant you are.”

“Is he,” says Mother.

“Absolutely,” James says firmly. “He has us thinking Regulus is the great mind of our generation, the way he goes on.”

Oh, Jamie. Bless you.

“Then he's overstated it,” Mother says with a tinkling laugh. Ha ha, Mother, truly, a hilarious joke. Father chuckles along. Regulus, pink-cheeked, turns to stone. “Sirius has always been prone to exaggeration and fabrication, you know. Our Regulus, stubborn as silver, has a memory like a cheese cloth, don’t you, darling?”

To this, Regulus only gives a sharp nod of acknowledgment. Sirius doesn’t blame him. It’s Mother’s fault their memories are a redacted document, a mossy swampland of loose stones and pits of mud.

“Perhaps that’s wisest of all,” James says, because he has never stumbled into a moment, a conversational landmine, he hasn’t wanted to strong-arm into submission. Meeting Mother’s eyes directly, he says, “Forgetting, I mean.”

Sirius wants to laugh.

Mother does laugh—a tinkling, pleasant-company sort of sound. “Exactly my thoughts, Mister Potter. Exactly my thoughts.”

If James only fucking knew.

The moment he’s able, Sirius excuses James and himself from tea. It feels like—it feels—

Sirius doesn’t have to use too much of his imagination to picture what the Potters felt like after being freed from the Lestrange catacombs, is all he’s saying.

Sirius herds James into his bedroom. It's a mess. He’s not particularly embarrassed by it, and James has seen little chunks of it when they talk using the mirrors, but it’s an entirely different experience for James to perform a gobsmacked three-sixty and take in the glory of what is three hulkingly tall walls papered top to bottom with every society page publishment scorning the blood-traitorhood of one Sirius Orion Black since September of nineteen-seventy-one. The fourth wall bears a narrow window, upon the sill of which sits a chipped porcelain tea cup Sirius uses to collect spliff ashes. There’s an empty firewhiskey bottle he bought off a sixth year in the rubbish and his Gryffindor hangings are sagging: he almost tugged them down last week, though he couldn’t say why. The desk is littered with smudged charcoal doodles: all skeletons and gaping eyes and hollow faces and twisted wrists. Sunlight sends it all into stark relief. It looks like the hovel of a madman, the cage of a boy with a plagued mind. It looks like it’s his.

Sirius grabs the doorknob. “Sound-proof this, would you?”

James peers into the corridor, then stands outside the room and murmurs a spell.

Sirius tests it by saying, “I once shoved a whole plum in my mouth just to see if it would fit.”

James gives a clueless thumbs up and comes back inside, closing the door with a click.

There’s a moment of quiet, then James bursts into laughter.

“Oh my God,” James howls, hunched over, in hysterics. “What the fuck. What the fuck.”

“I know,” Sirius says.

“Your crockery is a thinly veiled assassination attempt.”

“You’re quick for catching that,” Sirius says. “Solid silver. Yes, meant to kill any and all sneaky werewolves in attendance. The fault, legally, could not fall on us. Even if we did it knowingly, it’s self defense. Or worse: a mercy killing.”

“Sirius,” James wheezes. “Sirius.”

“I know,” he says.

Somehow, so smoothly it’s almost frightening, James’s laughter turns into sobs. His hunch turns into stumbling towards Sirius. His grip on the doorknob turns into arms around Sirius’s neck, a fist in Sirius’s shirt, a sniffle against his shoulder.

“You’re so fucking sheltered,” Sirius says.

“How do you even function,” James says. “I was so confused the entire time. I can’t fathom it. I don’t understand.”

“I’ve told you. Landmines. I’m the expert.”

“How.”

“I don’t have all the soft bits you have.”

“You never had a chance to.”

“I’m not cut up about it.”

“If you had soft bits, you might be!” James pulls back, this pinched scowl on his face, tears on his cheeks. He takes Sirius’s head between his hands and stares at him, palms cold enough against Sirius’s temples that his hair stands on end. “I’m cut up about it for you. I’m cut up enough about it to make up for everyone ever who hasn’t known but would have been cut up anyway. Can I take you for good?”

“No.”

“Regulus, too,” James says dismissively, smoothing his hands over the round of Sirius’s skull. “Bring the bloody elf for all I care, just don’t stay here.”

“James,” Sirius says, tender. What a fucking piece of work. He holds onto James’s elbows. Rubs his thumbs along the knobby joints. The two of them talk through touch and words in equal measure. “I’m going to explain something to you very clearly. Okay? I feel like I’ve said it a hundred times, a hundred ways, but I should’ve known you’d be too fucking thick to understand. Are you listening?”

“Yes,” James says, big eyes more brilliantly brown for their wetness, thick lashes colored darker for the tears still clinging.

“I cannot leave until I am seventeen,” Sirius says. “I need to wait until then. Once the sun sets on that fateful November fucking day, James, if I can just hold on until then? Nobody, not my parents, not my grandfather, not cousins, not my brother, not the family fucking magic, nobody and nothing can keep me from leaving. Nobody and nothing can herd me back here after the door closes. Not when I’m of age. Not when I am the master of my life. Not when I dissolve myself from my duty as heir. My parents have a Wizengamot seat. They have all of high society sipping out of their palms. If I wrecked things now? It would backfire. I’d be back in a minute, and everything would be hushed up, and then I’d never be free. Everything would be worse. It would be hellfire. So I have to wait until no one can—they can’t take away my freedom, James, my freedom, the freedom I have fought long and hard to so much as dream of, as soon as I’m seventeen. You call me impulsive. I know I am.”

“You’re the impulsivest motherfucker alive,” says James.

“Don’t interrupt me,” Sirius says, not unkindly. “My point is that I’m impulsive, and I’ve waited years for this. Since the first day of third year, when you all—” he turns away, breathes, breathes, then turns back. “When you told me no normal parent punishes their children like my mother does. I’ve known since then that I need to get out. Okay? I have put myself through hell to make sure the split is as amiable as possible. Do you understand why, James?” Sirius clenches his jaw. “Do you realize why my family cannot be enraged when I finally go?”

“Because of what you’ll be leaving behind,” James says.

“Because of what I’ll be leaving behind,” Sirius agrees. “Sweet, soft Regulus could never take it.”

James’s expression is curdled or else crumpled like a used map. He leans forward and presses his lips to Sirius’s forehead. To either cheekbone. The touch is warm, heartbroken, like rolling a blackberry over his tongue, rubbing his jaw along satin, a cupped palm full of sun-warmed sand. They’ve kissed, but never like this. Never like a blessing. Never like they’re silently swearing to love each other most, longest, meanest, truest, most wholly, most entirely. James can snog whomever he wants in closets and cabinets and empty classrooms, but Sirius is comforted, smug, with the knowledge that James will never kiss anyone else the way he kisses Sirius. Horatio to Hamlet. Sweet, sweeter, sweetest fucking prince, good night.

“Sirius,” James says. “You are the stupidest, strongest person I know. Please. Please, don’t let her do this to you. Will you be quiet. Will you be good. Will you protect yourself.”

“I can’t,” Sirius says, palming the side of James’s neck. James is so cold to the touch in this house. Sirius hates it. “You know I can’t. Don’t ask me for things I can’t give you. It breaks my heart.”

“Don’t let her make you harder,” James pleads, and he’s crying again, just a little. “She keeps taking pieces of you away. I want them back.”

“Everything I’ve got is for you,” Sirius says. “You know that. You have all of me.”

“I’m supposed to,” James says, “I know, I’m supposed to, but she’s taking what’s mine, and I’m fucking done with it.”

“Are you asking me to lock myself in my room, then?” Sirius asks, furious, flint. “To hide? To show them my fucking belly?”

“No,” James says, and then he makes a small, unintentional keen of desperation. “Yes? Yes! Sirius! I’m sorry!”

“Make up your mind! You don’t want me to lose myself, you want me mummy-fucking-embalmed, you want me waiting like a corpse for you to collect me—”

“I don’t!” James says, giving him a shake. “I don’t, of course I don’t, Sirius, I want you to live, I want you to have the most brilliant of lives, I want you to be lightning, I want you safe!” He’s almost bellowing, breaths shorter, faster. “I want you, please, I want you forever, do you understand? Forever, and happy, and you need to be safe for that, do you understand what about this is fucking killing me?”

“What is it? What’s killing you?” Sirius says. He wants to take this from him. It was his to start with. This was the worst fucking idea they’ve ever had.

“How could I ask you to give yourself up to be safe?” James says. “How could I? But I have to! I have to, because what the fuck would I be without you?”

Sirius tugs James sharply into his arms, chins over each other’s shoulders, and now they’re both fucking crying, the national convention of nancies is meeting right here in Sirius’s childhood bedroom, what pieces of fucking work, they lower stuntedly to their knees on the hardwood, chest to chest, thighs pressed, breaths stuttering against each other’s. They are a slip knot. They are the sails in the wind. They are so fucking tired.

“I love you,” Sirius snaps, so, so angry. “I love you.”

James is holding him like he’s trying to shove Sirius into his chest, to cage him, to keep him safe. “Fuck you,” James croaks. “I love you. Okay? It’s you. You’re everything to me.”

“If I believed in soulmates,” Sirius says, and James interrupts, “Shut up.”

“I mean it,” says Sirius. His head hurts, that impossible pressure on his temples like two knuckles digging, like a hangover. He would drink James dry. He would let James drink him dry. “I mean it. It’s you.”

“I love you,” James says, wrecked. “Say it again.”

“Jamie,” says Sirius. He shuts his eyes and buries his nose in the shoulder of James’s jacket. It’s like a rock in his throat. The words on his tongue, sitting ducks, damp-winged, of course they can’t fly.

James pulls back just enough to hold Sirius’s head between his hands again. Like a full moon cycle. Start to end and start again. “You and me,” James says. His lips are bruised from biting. His cheeks are dark, salt-stained. In another world, they’d look debauched. “You understand? That means you stay alive until then.”

“Of course I will,” Sirius says, palming James’s cheek, offended by the implications. “It would have been a waste for me to work this hard to stay this alive for this long only to get myself killed at age fifteen.”

“Mm,” James says. He sniffles. “God. What the fuck is wrong with us.”

“Many, many things,” Sirius says, relieved as the pressure lifts. He closes his eyes and leans his forehead against James’s. He rubs his hands through James’s hair and grins. A bark of helpless mirth slips free. James snickers, then chuckles, then belly-laughs, this rich, low sound, this almond-paste boy, his, his, his.

Sirius shoves James into his bed soon after, because James looks exhausted and the prickly discomfort of being as emotionally bare as that makes Sirius itchy. James curls himself around Sirius’s pillow and dozes fitfully, sometimes watching as Sirius restlessly patters around his room, sometimes with eyelids fluttering heavily.

Sirius sits at his desk. Grabs a quill, inkwell, and scroll of parchment.

Remus,

Regulus is ghosting through the hallways, out of his brain, when he bumps bodily into James Potter.

They both fall hard to the floor, knees and elbows and tailbones, and Regulus feels caught.

“Sorry,” Potter says, rubbing his head where it seems he’s thunked it on the hardwood. “Here, let me help.” He grabs Regulus by the forearms and pulls them to their feet together, both of them grunting as new bruises twinge. Potter squints in the dark, and a smile flutters onto his lips. “What are you wearing?”

Regulus looks down at himself, then back up at Potter, defensive. What he’s wearing is a blanket-sweatshirt hybrid monstrosity Emerald made for him by cutting up pieces of fleece and flannel throw blankets and sewing them together, a Frankenstein’s monster of mixed patterns all in shades of mossy green, cream, and deep brown. It has a hood, and falls past his knees, and he wears it literally every day underneath his robes because he catches cold like a flagpole in January. “Warm,” he says, which isn’t an answer, but seems to satisfy Potter, who nods shrewdly.

“Colder than hell in this place, I must say.” He cocks his head. “Why are you up and walking about, then? It’s half-two. Are you exploring?”

“What could there possibly be to explore in my own house?” Regulus says, disgruntled. “Also, it’s none of your business.”

Potter makes a face. “Everything can be your business if you make it so.”

Regulus makes a face back, but it falls fast, because the shadows are taunting him, tonight, too long and swift behind Potter as they creep across the wallpaper, over picture frames, under the muted light coming off the candelabras. Folded in half, quarters, like Sunday morning crepes, lemon curd spoons and powdered sugar coughs dyed black. Palindromic. Every bloody thing this year has been.

“Did the house move again?” Potter says sympathetically. Regulus just looks at him. “Sirius says the corridors change on him when he isn’t paying attention,” Potter clarifies.

“The house has ears,” Regulus says under his breath. “Don’t.”

“Merlin,” Potter says.

“What are you up for, then?” Regulus says, crossing his arms. “Prowling the corridors alone.”

“I didn’t want to wake Sirius, but I—”

There’s a creak.

“Shit,” Potter breathes.

“I can’t imagine there’s a reason for soirées at witching hour,” Mother says, coming around the corner with a ball of light like a pearl on her palm, tossing her silk robes and heavy rings into eerie relief. She approaches Regulus, holds his chin in her hand, and looks into his eyes. Somehow, beyond the pounding of his pulse in his throat, he notes that she carries the distinct smell of gin on her breath.

She doesn’t drink often, hardly ever, but Mother flirts most with Memory Charms when she stinks of gin. Regulus knows they ought to get out now, the both of them, while they can.

“I was showing our guest to the loo, is all, Mother,” Regulus says, ducking respectfully out of her grip. He grabs Potter’s elbow perhaps a bit too tightly. He’s not used to all of this: being looked at, participating in table conversation, drawing attention away from anyone else. Being the target—making himself as much. “The corridors are indecisive this evening, and the portraits… they’re not being helpful.”

“Blood-traitors everywhere,” Great-Great Aunt Adhara hisses helpfully. She’s always found deceit to be fun, though her loyalties are unpredictable and fickle at best.

Mother hums, eyes narrowed to slits. “Fine. Don’t linger.”

“Of course not,” Regulus says, bowing his head and tugging Potter down the corridor sharply enough that he almost trips on the narrow stripe of carpet that runs along the center of most of the corridors like a homing beam.

Potter is giggling shrilly.

“Shh,” Regulus says. “Oh my God, shh.”

“Sorry,” Potter chokes, pressing a hand over his mouth. “Sorry, I’m a nervous giggler.”

“Ridiculous,” Regulus mutters, depositing Potter before the loo. “Go pretend to pee, or something.”

“I’ll pee for real,” Potter says. “I am, unfortunately, besides a nervous giggler, also a nervous pee-er. Besides, I was up to use the loo in the first place.”

Regulus rolls his eyes to the ceiling beseechingly as Potter disappears into the bathroom. Just before the door closes, Regulus hisses into the crack, “Don’t lean too close to the mirror, it’ll suck you inside.”

“Wicked!” Potter says.

Regulus is going to have an aneurysm.

He leans against the cold wall in the dip between two portrait frames and presses his face into his hands. He sighs heavily. Not even a second of silence elapses before Sirius barrels around the corner, harried eyes and half-buttoned and no trousers, silent sock feet and hair a rat’s nest. He skids to a stop when he sees Regulus.

“He’s pissing,” Regulus says.

Sirius makes a sound in his throat and sags against the wall. He meets Regulus’s gaze head-on, unabashed, and—well. It feels like they’re addressing, for the first time, that this is abnormal. That walking around this house is a cause for panic.

Potter exits the bathroom, then, still giggling, ruffling his hair, looking far more like the careless mischievous menace of Hogwarts Regulus knows him to be. He sees Sirius and he freezes, wincing. Smart man.

Sirius says, “What the fuck, James.”

“I needed to pee!” Potter hisses, gesticulating wildly. “My bladder is the size of a pygmy puff’s bladder, and my piss was the volume of the Black Lake.”

“Pygmy puffs pee?” Regulus says, blinking.

“Yes, they pee, they’re satanic,” Potter says, crossing himself. “Fuck pygmy puffs. They’re plotting, their beady little eyes beneath all that fur, they’re plotting something, I don’t trust them.”

Sirius has his face buried in his hands. “Did you at least bring your wand with you.”

Potter pats his waistband, then his pockets, then bats the space behind his ear. “No, I did not,” he says cordially.

“Idiot,” Sirius says. “Idiot. Come on. Back to bed, idiot, before you go doing more idiot things around the Idiot Murder Factory.”

Potter sighs dramatically. “Oh, darling. You’re so demanding.”

“I feel like I shouldn’t be seeing this,” Regulus says.

“Probably not,” Sirius says, squinting at him. “What were you up for, anyway?”

Regulus shrugs. Sometimes he just can’t sleep. Tonight, uncannily, he dreamt of a surf-slick pier and his foot slipping over the edge, but he woke up before he hit the water. He reckons he really should start taking that Dreamless Sleep potion he and Sirius have been prescribed since childhood but avoid like the plague.

“Well, go to bed, then,” Sirius says, frowning. “Alright?”

“And you. Keep a closer eye on your…” Regulus says.

“Husband,” Potter says dreamily while Sirius deadpans “Incubus.”

Regulus covers his ears and turns to walk away, the shadows of Sirius and Potter whisper-shouting, giggling, and grappling as they head down the corridor towards Sirius’s room lingering on the walls as he goes. Once they’re gone, Regulus stops, and shivers.

It’s this place. It’s the cold, but not the cold; it’s the night, but not the night.

He heads up to the loft as silently as he can manage. Lights the candelabras with a flick of his hand. A lingering pillow fort with bedsheet-walls and couch-cushion-floors devours the center of the room, like it’s caving in, like that is the place in which to fall. Silver light streams through the windows, casting the years of his and Sirius’s sketches tacked to the ceiling into relief: moments of the bustle of the street outside, constellations, running dogs, the lofty rooms of the Marseille property, their cousins, the elves, what they imagined book characters to look like.

Regulus approaches the pillow pit, drops to a crawl, and settles inside. Dust rises. Time has passed since they’ve been here, he and Sirius. This place is lonely, without them.

“Sorry,” Regulus tells it, dragging a palm over the cushions, staring up at the sheets. “Sorry, room.” His hand nudges something. He looks at it. “Salazar’s sake.”

Snuffles the dog.

He weighs the stuffed thing in his hand. Holds it straight up above him. Floppy and faded and so soft to the touch, with one eye larger than the other and five legs and one ear. He drops it onto his chest, then wraps his arms around it.

Regulus curls onto his side and closes his eyes, trying, desperate, really, to feel safe the way this place used to make him feel.

“You are an absolute nag, you know that?” Dad says, swatting James’s hands away. “Come off it, James, really.”

“Your vest was crooked!” James says shrilly, wagging a finger. “You come off it, do you think I would let you go off to bloody who-knows-where to do who-knows-what with your protective vest crooked? That would be wildly irresponsible! You could get hit with something nasty! You could get killed! Or grow tentacles out your ears! They should have someone stationed at the door, examining you all before you leave!” He scoffs, shaking his head. “Aurors.”

Dad is squinting crookedly at him.

“What?” James says.

“I always thought you were me, you know.” He shakes his head. “Dunno how I ever believed that. You’re just like your mother.”

“I’m going to take that as a compliment,” James sniffs. “Now go, save the world or whatever.”

Dad rolls his eyes, chucks James under the chin, and strides out of his office, wand in hand, chital patronus corporealizing beside him.

James sighs, leaning back in Dad’s wheelie chair, feet on his desk, hands folded across his chest. It’s been two weeks since Sirius’s—two weeks that James has spent simmering in the bluster and hubbub of the DMLE, making a general nuisance of himself—and he’s grown bored. Nothing new has exploded. No Death Eaters have left trails. The attacks are rare, the same as they’ve been since the gang first arose decades ago, but their effects are more devastating with each instance: more casualties, less evidence. Graffiti colors the walls of London, slogans that would go over the heads of muggles: BLESSED BE THE LORD, FOREVER PURE, BLOOD IS THICKER, MAGIC IS MIGHT. James would like, for one bloody moment, not to think.

As if answering a prayer, there’s a knock on the lintel.

“Monty’s gone?” Eli Jordan says, leaning against the doorframe like the best, most devastating sort of casanova. Godric. Yeah. Two weeks of hubbub, sure, but too two weeks of James finally realizing the toss in his stomach he always had when looking at Eli is precisely the same one he felt when snogging Lucy. Not exactly a world-shaking realization for James, who would love to be loved by anyone who will love him, but it certainly did put a lot of things into context. For example: Shankar Patel.

“Just left,” James confirms, jumping to his feet, cheeks coloring. “You hungry? Or just bored, you torpid bastard?”

“Starved, mate,” Eli says, massaging his stomach. “Come to the cafe, would you?”

“If they serve another bland fucking chicken tikka masala,” James warns, “I’m going to off myself right there in the middle of the tables, no shame, wand to my throat, blood everywhere, and you’ll have to clean it up, because it will have been your fault. For having exposed me to the bland fucking chicken, I mean.”

Eli slings his arm casually around James’s shoulders, leading him down the corridor, his dragon-leather protective uniform scuffing against James’s worn denims and Springsteen tee-shirt. “If they serve another bland fucking chicken tikka masala, I’ll be right there with you, bleeding on the tile.”

This is not, after all, the first day Eli and James have spent eating lunch together, catching up, talking quidditch, talking Lily Evans, talking war and rain-headaches and Eli’s auror partner—some bloke with a twitch and a long blond ponytail who smells, reportedly, like soggy cement and manure.

“That’s so specific,” James says, taking a big bite out of the vegetarian club sandwich he found at the very back of a refrigerated shelf. It’s unpleasantly soggy, but at least it isn’t bland fucking chicken tikka masala.

“Specific and correct. I trust my nose.” Eli proceeds to systematically destroy his lunch, sucking up chips like a human black hole, inhaling his drink with equal fervor.

“Tell me again,” James says, picking at his wet wheat bread. “What to expect, I mean.”

“Attempted coup,” Eli mumbles around his mouthful of sandwich. “Annoying little second years who imprint on you like you’re their mother duck and never leave you alone again.”

“Fuck off, you berk,” James says, grinning, sunrise. “What else?”

“You have an entire year before Frankie graduates, you know,” Eli reminds him, jabbing a chip towards him for emphasis. It sags limply. “You’ve got time to prepare.”

“Yeah, well,” James says. “You know me.”

“That I do,” Eli allows, rolling his eyes. “Alright. Really? You want to know the truth?”

“Yeah,” James says, putting his sandwich down so he can hear better. “I do.”

Eli takes a loud slurp of soda. “You’re going to have to think about the game in an entirely different way than you ever have before. You think of playing as an exercise in how to be the best you, how to best work with others, but, when you’re captain, it’s more like—” he gestures vaguely, “—how can you make everyone become one being with seven bodies and one brain? It’s how to make every position work around the others, it’s clockwork and chess and strategy and practically Divination. No one will ever trust your decisions. You can put all the work you want into it, and you could still fail. Failing is mortifying. Nothing is worse than putting in that much effort, being so close, and still losing. You have to fight for respect. You have to fight for attention. You have to fight to make the team trust you, to trust each other, to trust themselves. It’s grueling, it’s physically and emotionally exhausting, you’ll hardly have time to think about anything besides flying, drills, strat, critiques, training, and booking the pitch.”

James nods slowly, absorbing. “When you’re captain,” he says, “how does it feel to win?”

The smile crawls across Eli’s lips from one corner to the other. His eyes crinkle and a huff of laughter slips free. He shakes his head. “It’s like swallowing the sun. It’s the most brilliant feeling in the world.”

James grins back. He steals one of Eli’s damp chips and makes a face when he discovers how grainy it is. “The hub of wizarding government and they couldn't splurge to put a Wimpy in here. No wonder we’ve got fascists out the ears.”

Most days pass like this. When Eli grows bored of paperwork detailing fruitless neighborhood watch sessions and expenses sheets that roll on for feet and feet of parchment, they play catch in the corridors or empty interrogation chambers. They pass paper airplane notes back and forth—long-distance rounds of hangman and dots and boxes. They eat their sandwiches and James makes sure his father comes home every day alive and healthy and unmaimed.

The summer eats away like a shrinking moon.

Speaking of.

For nearly three-quarters of a year now, James has been holding his wand to his chest, reciting Amato Animo Animato Animagus, morning and night. He’s furious with himself for not being faster: he can’t understand why other things, other matters of Transfiguration and imagination come so easily to him, while this skill evades him.

He’s made it through a month with Mandrake leaves on his tongue: with all the practice he’s had talking around the sour thing in the past, it was a piece of cake. No one noticed, not even when he talked less, with Mum at meetings for the Resistance and Dad working and Eli getting swept into investigative work. The lads knew, of course, but they’re all plenty distracted with their own lives.

Peter is distracted less so than the others, this summer, strangely—Peter usually turns to smoke for most of the season, but he’s been owling James with more regularity than Remus and agrees, quickly, to come stay with James when an electric storm is predicted to come rolling towards the Hollow.

“What are you thinking about?” James says, rolling his head on the grass, feeling drowsy and sun-baked and satisfied.

“Magma,” Peter says, one hand laying loosely on his stomach, eyes closed. Having him around has been nice. Calm. “And how it really looks like it ought to be edible.” Strange.

James huffs a laugh, thinks about it some more, then snorts. “I don’t half miss you over the hols, you know, Pete.”

Peter grins. “Pouf.”

James gives him a sound tweak to the ear for that one.

As soon as lightning comes streaking across the sky, petrichor heavy in the air, humid wind making their fringe dance, they go running to collect James’s vial of potion from a clearing in the thin woods behind the cottage, where it sits in a warded bubble beneath an umbrella James planted in the dirt.

The evening goes fast once James, body burning with nerve-ending pain from the potion, sees the animal in his mind. After that, it’s only a matter of clarifying that image enough to bring it to life, which is far from a problem for him.

Where Peter’s body shrinks into animal form, James’s grows, longer and thicker and stronger, head heavier, arms longer. He struggles to his feet, knees trembling, weak, new. He looks at Peter, who is gaping, who is delicate when he pets James’s head between the antlers.

“You’re a deer,” Peter breathes. “A buck. A—a stag.” He mimes antlers of his own with his hands.

James makes a funny, unintentional noise in his throat. The vibration of it feels uncomfortable along the column of this newly long neck, but he’s done it, and that’s all that matters—that he can help Remus, now, no matter how long it took to get here.

“I’m going to transform,” Peter says. “So you can meet Wormtail.” He folds down upon him, smaller and smaller, and James tilts his head to the grass so Wormtail can climb on. The rat squeaks, then does a little four-legged waddle, like a joyful jig.

Rain starts dumping down in droves, then, clapping sharp against the packed dirt and pinging like dropped knuts off James’s—back? Hide? Lightning cuts, and thunder rumbles, and Godric’s Hollow is deep, heavy grey.

The stag honks something that sounds vaguely like “Thrilling,” into the night, then starts to run, chest heaving, muscles pulling in new and exhilarating ways. The underbrush is his path, now. The forest is his—theirs. James is in his body, and he feels strong. He feels sure. If there’s one thing he’s always loved, he supposes it’s running.

So, yes. Things, for once, are good.

James supposes he shouldn’t be surprised, not now, not anymore, when things fall to absolute shit.

It’s the end of August, the new term is so close, and the rain has passed, but the day is awful. James is tossing a rubber ball against the ceiling when the DMLE explodes in a rush of color, sound, and movement, shouting and warnings and barked commands. An alarm sounds, wailing like the Weird Sisters, the sort of desperate keen of earth-shaking horror. Mad-Eye Moody points aurors in every direction, a train conductor. Dad takes James’s face between his palms, kisses his forehead, gives him a tender look of dread, and disappears with the crowd.

“Oh, fuck,” James breathes, shooting to his feet. He runs out of his father’s office, skims along the walls of the corridor, away from the traffic, calling, “What can I do?”

Kingsley Shacklebolt—a subdued but unassumingly hilarious and regally handsome twenty-something who trained Eli for the program—hears James first, makes a face, and tugs him into his office: four cubicles, each shared by two people, the entire space covered in paperwork, but nobody else in sight. “It’s an emergency call,” Kingsley says lowly. “Large-scale attempted escape from Azkaban. All you can do is stay out of the way. Keep an eye on your father’s Floo for messages, and, for Salazar’s sake, keep your wand on you.”

Then Kingsley is gone, and James is alone, watching bodies shove themselves haphazardly into their dragon-leather armor, pull their wands from their holsters, send harried patronuses who-knows-where.

James takes a deep, settling breath, then straightens. This is his chance to do better—to fight off that encroaching panic, to kick Evans and her dead dad out of his mind, to forget the Damoclesian threat of Dragon Pox. To help properly. To grow up and into himself. To prove he’s worthy of being a Gryffindor, and, more than that, worthy of being a Potter. Of being his parents’ son.

He strides into the corridor, fighting against the crowd, and does what his dad would do: ignores a direct order for the greater good. Potters are underestimated, consistently, constantly, historically, because they keep their roots bared on their cheeks, and James will be the one to change the way history looks at them if it kills him, for his parents’ sake: it’s what they trained him for—to fit in, to be so good—and, too, what James taught himself—to blow expectations out of the water.

He rolls his sleeves, marches down to the central meeting room, and stands beneath Barty Crouch and Cornelius Fudge as they relay messages to be sent via magical paper airplane, as they command hit wizards to go to the island as backup, as they tell the trainees who have been left behind—not many of them, and not Eli—to collect medical supplies, to prepare for the worst, to watch the entry grates and the apparition posts, to go to Mungo’s and make use of themselves.

James elbows up to Fudge, feeling fire in his chest, like his every exhale sings with smoke. Fudge is short for a grown man, the same height as James is, and has a distinct wateriness to his eyes, tremble to his voice, that reminds James of Peter—which means, really, that James knows exactly how to handle him.

He grabs Fudge by the wrist. “I’m here, I’m top of my year, and I’m going to help,” he says, unmistakably a command. “Tell me what you need.”

Fudge blinks, looking between James and Crouch, who is still barking instructions. “Erm. Who are—who are you?”

“James Potter,” James says, “son of Fleamont Potter, head of—”

“Of the Department, yes,” Fudge says, cottoning on. He scrunches his eyes shut, shakes his head, and says, as if it pains him, “Join the others sending messages, do you know—?”

“Yes, I know how, a second-year could send a message plane,” James mutters, dropping Fudge’s arm and going to the far corner to join those in the process. Not particularly heroic, but doable.

“Give me something,” James says to the group, pulling his wand out of his waistband and getting to work.

It takes almost half an hour to finish informing those who need to be informed, requesting backup from those who can give it, contacting the legal department, and checking for attempted contact from those on the scene—of which there is none. The moment there are no more letters to send, James is on his feet, approaching Crouch, this time; Crouch will see him for what he is: a pair of hands.

“Go with the next batch of interns to Mungo’s,” Crouch says, before James can even ask.

So he follows them, the overgrown teenagers all lanky with youth and ruddy with nerves, into the fireplace grates, and falls into the hospital, which is the best place he could be: he’ll be here first, he’ll be here waiting, when Eli and his father come home. He’ll know. He’ll help them. He’ll be so good.

“Potter?” comes a call.

James wheels around, still getting his bearings. Someone comes through the Floo grate behind him and shoves him away so they can pass.

It’s Balsam Button who’s yelled, wearing an expression of bafflement which melts quickly into exasperation.

James jogs towards him, through the throng of bodies, healers and mediwizards in minty green and DMLE employees in a range of dragon-hide and denim. The air is thick with calls, commands, “Collect all the O-neg and blood replenishing potions we can get our hands on!” James is jostled by shoulders and elbows, and every blink is spotty from the burn of the bright white lights lining the ceiling.

“Why are you here?” Balsam hisses, taking James by the elbow and leading him down the corridor, away from the hubbub. “You—child! James!”

“I’m helping!” James says. “Tell me how to help.” Balsam makes a funny choking noise. “You’re hardly older than me, and you’re a whole healer,” James says. “I’m here to learn, and to help, because that’s what you need, you’re busy and I’m hands and I’m here!”

“Okay, okay, fine,” Balsam says, raking fingers through his green hair. It’s gone limp, as if it responds to his nerves. “Shit. Be quiet and follow me around, alright? I’ll use you.”

“Perfect,” James says, following Balsam as he books it towards what seems to be the emergency bay, where the new bodies will be collected. The ceilings are high, the windows are broad, and everything is very white, very clean. Each bed has a curtain around it and a tray-table beside it, upon which sits a lot of shiny instruments of the likes James has seen Poppy attach to the tip of her wand when completing complex procedures on bloody bodies. Potions are being carted en masse, and muggle bandaging supplies are being positioned at each bedside—likely a precaution, but one that makes James itchy, anyhow.

James takes a deep breath, chest tight.

“With me,” Balsam says, tugging James. For a waify guy, he’s quite strong, and quite demanding.

James winds up acting as Balsam’s muscle: he carries crates of potion for Balsam to arrange, and moves cots, and gives people angry eyebrows until they move out of Balsam’s bustling path. He’s given gloves and one of those mint-green protective smocks and he redirects emergent patients to other wings, and, when the aurors start arriving in droves, he’s in the thick of it.

“Medic!”

“How many?”

“A dozen on the way, maybe seven here now.” That’s Dad. “James?”

“Whoops,” says James, caught.

Dad is sooty, bleeding from his cheek, smoking delicately from his hair. His eyes are harried, his wand drawn, and he’s holding someone upright—blond, male, indistinguishable from any other. Dad haphazardly hands the man to a mediwizard and lurches forward to pull James roughly into his arms.

James scrunches his eyes shut and laughs weakly, helpless, pressing his face into Dad’s shoulder. He gives himself the count to three to feel a potent relief pool through him, a tide of honey rising and falling, then shoves away. “I’m busy,” he says. “Helping. Go sit down.”

“I need to go back,” Dad says, voice thin. Now that James is looking better, closer, he sees how colorless his father is—clammy, all but swaying on his knees. Textbook effects of dementor exposure. And, in his state. After the infection and then sitting in the damp of Bellatrix’s cellar. Even if it weren’t his father, even if it weren’t anyone he gave a shit about, even if it were Snape, James couldn’t allow them go back to the brine and bleakness of Azkaban, not for anything.

“Someone else will,” James says, grabbing him by the elbow and leading him to a bed. “Someone younger, someone with less to lose, someone without a dormant fatal infection that will present itself when exposed to incredible stress.”

“James,” Dad says roughly.

“Someone else,” James says, a little furious. He shoves his father onto a cot. It wheezes under his limp weight. James tosses up a round of gold sparks with his wand, like Balsam told him to. “Someone is coming to check you out,” James says, kneeling before his father, looking up at him. “You did your job. Alright? You did your job, you’re done, let someone else take it from here.”

Dad takes a heaving breath. He looks away, eyes wet. “We got them all,” he says. “Not one escapee.”

James squeezes his father’s knee. “Of course you did. I expected nothing less.”

“I think…” Dad meets James’s eyes. “I think we lost some men, so. Be prepared.”

James swallows roughly. “Battles have casualties.” He stands. “Stay here. Promise me. I need to go help, promise me you’ll be here when I come back.”

Dad shakes his head. He’s looking at James funny. Like he’s an oasis in the dust and heat of this. “Alright, Euphemia. I promise.”

James throws himself back into the throng. He performs minor healing charms when necessary. He vanishes smoke from lungs. He splints some fingers, administers liberal doses of Skele-Gro, monitors vital signs. Aurors and hitwizards arrive in pairs and threes, disarrayed and torn and bloody and weeping and staring blankly into space, because even training for DMLE programs, intensive as it is, does not pit trainees against real dementors. For many of them, this is their first experience face-to-face with one. It makes James dread the moment he’ll meet a dementor like this.

He breaks chocolate bars and hands out the pieces. He fetches Balsam a bottle of water, and a cup of tea for his father. He’s opening a vial of Dreamless Sleep for a hitwizard who can’t stop shaking, when he realizes, in passing, that the trouble has elapsed. That Dad is here, that everything is fine. That he’s done the hard part. That it’s over, and he just needs to push through this part, and then he can go to sleep. That he stepped up, that he did well, that he can be proud, now.

He supposes he damned the day with that thought, because that’s when the dead bodies arrive.

In the arms of blank-eyed aurors. Limp, cold, cut, bruised, bloody.

“They stole wands,” someone is sobbing. “The inmates, they got our wands. They—they—”

“Step away from the bodies,” someone else says.

“Four?” says someone.

“Four dead.”

“Merlin’s sake.”

“How’d they get their hands on your wands? They’re emaciated.”

“Did they use Unforgivables?”

“How long have they been…?”

James cannot hear any of it over the ringing in his ears.

Eli’s body is laying loosely on the linoleum tiles. Peaceful enough to be sleeping.

“No,” James says. Muffled. “No, no, no, no—”

“Alright, Jamesy,” comes Dad’s voice, soft, and Dad’s hands are warm around James’s shoulders, and James realizes he’d started to run, to go to Eli, who looks—who looks—

“He can’t be dead,” James says wildly, “he can’t, he can’t—”

“He is,” Dad says. “He is.”

He was everything, he was Eli, he was James’s captain, he was brave as a noun, he was exactly what James wanted to be. What he strived to be. What he ached for. And now he’s dead. So lifeless that James can almost picture his chest rising and falling, his back heaving with a laugh. “How?” James says, cracked.

“War,” Dad says.

War. The word no one would use.

They can’t deny it now, can they? Not with this golden boy, this eternal youth, splayed on the floor like God’s discarded, like a fickle forgotten plaything.

“What do we do?” James says, desperate, heart in his throat, copper-mouthed, fire in his belly. “How do we… how do we move past it?”

“We don’t,” Dad says, a prophet in a hospital wing that is now a morgue. “War is here, and it’s time we’re prepared to meet it.”