Chapter Text
Before her death, his mother provided him with two basic rules.
Rule number one explicitly instructs him to treat his wounds immediately when they occur. Little James had the atrocious tendency to run around with his bleeding knees and elbows until they started to sting. Then, per usual, he was in a dire need of someone to kiss his boo-boos. And as it often happened there was no one around to do so, due to fact that Potter's estate was a large property and James, a lonely child that he was, didn't understand what 'don't venture too far' means. Which is why Ms Potter decided that her only, and arguably, a favourite son should know how to perform a simple procedure of applying a bandage.
Rule number two has a convoluted family history that involves years of resentment between three distant cousins, stolen blue-tailed parrot and a dodgy flat on Kember Street whose owner lays buried on the road to Ottery St Mary. The root of the matter is that no Potter is allowed to rummage through anyone's fridge without permission. Not if they want to keep their fingers intact.
James manages to live by those rules for almost twenty-two years of his life. Until one day his entire world, as he knows it, falls apart and within two days after his heart gets irreparably broken and his soul mercilessly sucked out of him, he finds himself on his knees, bleeding and cleaning out a dead woman's fridge.
All that because of his inability to deny anything to the people he loves and a misinterpreted tweet about a party that spiralled out of control.
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Sirius Black's First Annual End-of-the-World party was hosted on December 21st of 2013. Remus spent an inordinate amount of time explaining to him how 'how much of a misrepresentation of Mayan history and culture is to believe in that apocalyptic nonsense.' The only response to his tirade, he received was to shut the fuck up and enjoy the free booze. Which he was going to do anyway.
James has especially fond memories of that first party since he spent the bulk of it snogging living daylights out of one Lily Evans in every available space they could find. Unfortunately for other attendants, creativity was not something either of them was lacking. By the end of that night, they both earned a well-deserved detention from Professor McGonagall for public indecency.
This year, however, the Fifth Annual End-of-the-World party isn't held in their old boarding school, James doesn't have the opportunity to admire Scotland's sumptuous highlands, and Lily is far away, probably in a fervid embrace with an outrageously good-looking A-list somebody called Justin or some other Joe.
Nevertheless, James likes to hold himself as a supportive bloke who doesn't let his own feelings get in the way of his mate's celebratory spirits so on the fateful day of the party, after spending a substantial time in the shower, he is s ready to face the day.
If he had known about the events that are going to transpire this night at Grimmauld Place 12 he would have skipped standing in the queue in TESCO for nearly half an hour and run straight into the tube that would take him to Bloomsbury, he'd find a flat 4B, wait for Mary to open the door, and then bursting inside he'd demand (politely of course) to see Lily who apparently has been staying there for the past week. He'd got on his knees begging her to forget about the party and stay in.
Maybe then she would have lived.
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By the time he finally makes it to Sirius' childhood home, if anyone can call it that, everyone is already properly sloshed and the music is blasting from all the speakers he had installed. Sirius genuinely enjoys listening to his neighbours' complaints, claiming it's all a part of his research material for his never-to-be-finished book.
There's a moment when someone with familiarly red hair disappears behind the door leading to the library, but he quickly dismisses it. It doesn't register with him that it could be Lily because, in all honesty, she's not supposed to be there at all, she's not even supposed to be in Europe. Last he heard of her – not from her, not since that disastrous conversation they had over a year ago – she was doing some collaborative piece with Charlie Puth, or so he believes based on her numerous Instagram pictures.
It doesn't take him long to locate Sirius, who is casually leaning over the wall, a drink in his hand as his eyes are lazily scanning the floor until they land on James. With an effortless push, Sirius makes his way towards him, grabbing another glass from the tray, a frown on his face barely damaging the near-perfect proportion of his features.
"Where the hell have you been, Prongs? I've been texting you for almost an hour," he whispers hoarsely, shoving a drink into James' hand and grasping his elbow to lead him out of the room.
"You know exactly where. I was at TESCO buying your horrid Cocoa Orange Bars, your welcome by the way."
Sirius' eyes widen slightly and James is fairly certain he can spot a bit of drool escaping his mouth.
He swiftly reaps the goods from James' hand, tucking them firmly under his free arm. "Pitiful excuse Potter, you've got two hands." He takes a deep breath, a strange expression flitted across his face, and he says wearily, "I have to tell you something, and you're not going to like it."
James' heart unpleasantly lurches at his serious tone. He has been living long enough to know there was no point in anticipating to hear anything good. He starts to fiddle with his sleeve, suddenly overwhelmed with regret that he didn't choose a longer queue at TESCO.
"What is it?" he asks, shifting from foot to foot. He looks away from his mate in hope that he had a chance in spotting some other familiar face in the crowd, benevolent enough to take him away from whatever he's about to hear.
"Mary's here."
James blinks. That hasn't been the response he has been expecting. "Yes, I'm aware. I'm the one who invited her." His eyebrows shoot up in confusion, "What's the problem? We don't like Mary anymore?"
Sirius wipes his right hand across his face closing his eyes tightly, and James wonders if there was something he is missing. He knows things were always quite sensitive between those two, but for the past few weeks, they got without a doubt much more intense.
"No, you ponce. Of course we like Mary. The problem is, she didn't come alone."
"If you didn't want her to bring someone, you should've thought about it before you let me invite her." He's beginning to feel pressure in his bladder, so he glances behind his shoulder at the empty stairs leading to the higher level of the house where he hopes to find a clean and vacant bathroom to relieve himself in solitude. "Besides, from what I heard Reg is a swell fella."
"For fuck's sake, Prongs. It's not Cattermole, it's E-"
" 'eeeey! Where've you been?! The party started ages ago!" a slurred voice interrupts him and someone's body barrels into James. "I saved you a few drinks you know, but then you weren't showing up and I waited and waited and then I thought: 'You know what Peter? James wouldn't want you to waste a good booze for nothing.' So I consume- I consmenated- I drank them all, and then I realised that you know what I realised James? Do you? You probably do, because you're dead clever, so you knew before I realised."
James stares down at the completely smashed mess that was his friend, holding him steady at arm's length before looking up with a silent question at Sirius.
"Don't look at me like that, he hacked back into his Facebook account and saw Charlene's oh-I-am-so-blissfully-happy-pictures. I had to pry the laptop out of his hands by force and let me tell you something: this little guy has frighteningly lot of strength to him."
He nods absentmindedly, his mind horrifyingly blank, he pushes Peter into Sirius' arms. "Right. Since you've got that clearly handled, you won't mind if I will go to take a piss," he said and without hesitation quickly dashed upstairs.
Finding a room has never been an easy task in this house. James always believed that Walburga Black's angry ghost kept on rearranging the layout of the house to spite her son which would lay relatively low on the list of all the wrongdoings she committed against her oldest offspring.
When he's about to dry his hands, very faintly, from the downstairs, comes the sound of breaking glass, and then like clockwork, the music in the room stops and the screaming begins.
At some moment during James' search of a toilet and his own 5-minutes of vanity filled with some mirror-and-me time, Lily Evans was murdered in a library downstairs, alone and scared. Just like that.
Next few hours are a blur. There's more shouting, people cry, he's quite sure at some point someone hugged him, most likely it was Sirius. He goes through the rest on autopilot. The detectives hold him and Sirius detained for almost nine hours and by the end of it, all he can recall are insistent routine questions. How did he know the victim? (better than he knew himself) When did he last see the victim? (when she broke his heart by leaving) Why would anyone want the victim dead (because the world is a cruel place) Did he see anything? (just a glimpse of red hair at the corner of his eyes that he wished he had followed).
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The familiar sunken feeling he experienced when his parents died is finally starting to emerge as he's on his way home. Somewhere between leaving the police station while navigating past the swarm of blood-thirsty journalist and getting into a taxi, he went into a trance. The driver tries to pick up a conversation with him, but James just snaps at him, more harshly than he normally would have done, to drive faster. He just wants to go home, lay in his bed and never get up. James overpays him, mumbling a rushed thank yous and makes a mad dash inside to escape the rain since the weather clearly has a flair for the dramatic as well. His feet feel like they're made out of the lead and each step echoes soundly through the empty halls bringing unwanted memories of the time when an unfinished home assignment seemed like the biggest tragedy.
James fumbles for his keys that he can't quite get a hold of, finally grasping them and unlocking the door. The exhaustion of the day starts to creep in as he shrugs his jacket off, draping it over the back of the chair. Squeezing his eyes shut for a moment, he pinches down on the bridge of his nose and slowly shakes his head fighting off an oncoming migraine.
The lights in the living room are on, he must have forgotten to turn them off when he left this morning in a hurry. The voice of a news anchor reverberates through the walls, making James feel a bit less alone right now.
He's about to enter the kitchen when a theatrical-sounding cough makes him freeze mid-step. He turns questioningly and his breath catch at the sight of before him. Because right there on his couch, on the very same couch that they both got from the old Bathilda, sits the very same person whose dead body he has seen mere hours ago. The same red hair, the same blue sweater, and as he hungrily takes in her entire being, the most brilliant green eyes stare right back at him.
A dazzling smile slowly stretches across her face. " Hi," she says softly, sitting there as if there's nothing wrong in the world. But there is. He's seen it, he tries really hard not to think about it but it has happened. Today is the day when Lily Evans died. Officially. Permanently. And yet there's someone or something, sitting in his living room, looking like her, talking like her, trying to deceive him. But they won't do him in so easily. He is a Marauder after all.
"Thank goodness you left the telly on. I'd bore myself to death without it," she says with a goofy grin on her face as she leans on the back of the couch to take a better look at him. That's when he notices a huge bloody gash on the right side of her head, and the next thing he hears is a scream coming out of his mouth as his brain slips into unconsciousness.