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1.
When he got on the Hogwarts Express at the start of his third year, Sirius barely had time to find a compartment and stow away his luggage before he was being accosted by James, who shoved a hastily-wrapped parcel in Sirius’s hands before Sirius could even get out the word ‘hello’.
“What’s this?” he asked, his total confusion very apparent in his voice.
James didn’t answer, just flapped his hands at him impatiently, so Sirius sat down and tore away the paper to reveal… a small rectangular mirror.
“Alright,” he said, a little indignantly, “ha ha, very funny — I get it, I spend too much time on my hair—”
“No, you git,” said James, still acting far too impatient for someone who was being so utterly baffling. And then — he pulled out an identical mirror.
They weren’t even particularly nice mirrors — they didn’t even have handles, not to mention that they looked rather old, what with their tarnished frames and the thin layer of grime across the surface of the glass — and the fact that there were two of them didn’t make Sirius any less confused. Before he could say anything, though, Remus entered the compartment, raising his eyebrows at the sight of James and Sirius sitting around holding matching mirrors.
“Hello,” he said mildly. “Worried Evans will suddenly burst in? Both of you look fine, by the way.”
“Shut up, Remus,” said James, who had flushed bright pink. “They’re not — ugh, both of you just — look!”
He held the mirror up to his face and said, in a commanding tone, “Sirius!” Then, before Sirius could respond, he gestured emphatically at the other mirror, which Sirius was still holding in his hand. He glanced skeptically back down at it — and jumped when, instead of his own reflection, he saw James’s face staring back at him.
“Two-way mirrors!” James said gleefully — and Sirius heard him through the mirror as well, clear as day. It had the tiniest delay, making the experience sound weirdly like James had some kind of ghost. “My aunt Jeevitha sent them to me as a gift, aren’t they brilliant?! We can use them when we’re stuck in detention!”
Sirius was about to respond that they were completely bloody brilliant — he could see all the possibilities expanding in front of him, all the pranks they could pull and the rules they could break — when he realized that James hadn’t accosted Remus with a parcel, nor did he seem to have one for Peter, who had just slid open the compartment door.
“There’s only two of them?” he frowned. (His voice came out of James’s mirror, too, which was slightly disconcerting.)
“Well… yeah.”
“But there’s four of us,” said Sirius, slowly, waiting for James to notice the obvious problem with his gift.
(“Two-way mirrors,” Remus said under his breath to Peter, who was looking rather lost. “Gift from James’s aunt.”)
“Do you really think McGonagall is going to be able to convince three other teachers to take us for detention?” James responded dismissively. “That’s why she so rarely splits us up as it is, it’s not like she hasn’t thought about it.”
“There was that time in April where you were repotting those horrible things in Greenhouse Two — what were they?” Sirius said, waving his arm in a gesture meant to convey James’s detention.
“Bubotubers.”
“Yeah, bubotubers, and then Peter had to muck out the hippogriff stalls and I had to clean Moaning Myrtle’s bathroom. And Remus was in the hospital wing.”
“Yeah, but that doesn’t happen regularly. Apart from Remus being in the hospital wing I suppose.”
“Why can’t you get your aunt to send you another set?” Peter piped up.
“Well they’d not be on the same frequency, would they?” Remus said from where he had been watching the conversation, seated nearest the door.
“The same what?” Sirius frowned.
“The same frequency. It’s — Muggles have this thing where it’s like a — ugh, you don’t know phones either, do you.”
Remus was greeted with three identical blank stares.
“Telephones? You know, in little red booths?” he tried.
“Tephelones! Yes!” Sirius looked very proud of himself, so Remus didn’t bother to correct him.
“I… alright. Anyway, Muggles have things called two-way radios where you and someone else have little machines you hold in your hands, and then when you press a button you can make your voice come out of the speaker of the machine someone else has. But the way you make sure it’s only the person you want to hear your voice is that you both use the same frequency. So if James got another set, they’d only be able to communicate with each other, not these ones James already has.”
“But surely we could fix them?” Sirius said, flipping the mirror over to inspect the back and see if he could spot this so-called ‘frequency’. “Or — or take some regular mirrors and enchant them?”
“Well…” James seemed a little embarrassed, now — it appeared to Sirius that he hadn’t thought having only two mirrors would be a problem. “The thing is, Jeevitha Chitthi said that they’re really old, and that the enchantment is… I don’t know, built into the glass, or something? I didn’t really understand everything she said in her letter, but… I don’t think getting, or making, two more would be that simple.”
A dejected silence fell over the carriage until Sirius said at last, “I guess it’s just motivation to make sure we aren’t in more than two places at the same time. Although—” and here Sirius’s face lit up, his grin crinkling his eyes, “—imagine the pranking opportunities this’ll give us. No more enchanting paper birds! No more pranks foiled by unforeseen interference we couldn’t communicate! This year is going to be the best one yet.”
“My cousin gave me some of Zonko’s new and improved dungbombs,” Peter said, mirrors temporarily forgotten in favour of his contraband. “They won’t be out until the new year at least, and apparently they’re twenty-five percent smellier. That’s what he said, anyway.”
“Excellent, can we put one in Mulciber’s bag?” James said eagerly. “I’ve still not forgotten when he tripped Remus on the stairs last term—”
“You can stop bringing that up any time now, James,” Remus grumbled.
“No I can’t! It was undignified—”
“It was not that big a deal.”
Sirius and Peter rolled their eyes at each other as the other two bickered, but all four of them were distracted shortly by the welcome arrival of the snack trolley. The rest of the train ride was taken up with planning for the glorious year ahead, their heads full of the new heights of mischief they could achieve.
2.
Sirius was convinced that James Potter was the luckiest prick in the world.
“Reshelving books” was one of the softest detentions one could possibly be given, especially considering that, after previous instances of mischief-making, the Marauders had been made to go into the Forbidden Forest to help clear out poison ivy, muck out Hippogriff stalls, and polish every trophy in the trophy room by hand. And tonight, here Sirius was, fertilizing the most foul-smelling plants he had ever encountered with Peter, all because James had happened to be the one standing closest to Pince when she caught them in the restricted section (they had hit a tricky step with their Animagus project and the books in the rest of the library had proven useless) and assigned them all detention. Apparently she only needed one person’s help in the library, and when she handed Peter and Sirius over to McGonagall she’d smiled in an ominous fashion before saying that Professor Sprout needed some assistance.
It was really unfortunate that Sirius had Herbology first period the next morning, because he never wanted to see a greenhouse ever again.
With a loud groan, he shovelled more hippogriff manure onto the Stinking Thistleworts, a deeply unpleasant plant made even worse by the fact that he was currently up to his shins in literal shit. He went to take off his dragonhide gloves with his teeth before he realised the grievous error he was about to make and made do with pulling them off with his fingers. At last he was free and he put his hand in his robe pocket to retrieve the mirror.
“James Potter,” he said desperately, and the mirror went black but he could hear James humming to himself as he shelved.
After about ten seconds (ten long, long seconds) James pulled the mirror out of his pocket and said quite cheerfully, “Hullo!”
“Don’t ‘hullo’ me, you wanker,” Sirius snapped. “I’m up to my knees in Hippogriff manure while you’re over there in the manure-free library, flirting with Madam Pince. And it’s all your fault.”
“It’s not really all his fault,” said Peter from the other side of the greenhouse. “You were the one who she spotted first.”
“He’s the one who picked the time!”
“I thought it would be safe! Pince usually has tea in her office after lunch,” James protested. He did it quietly though, looking behind his shoulder at something Sirius couldn’t see.
Sprout had confiscated his and Peter’s wands so they couldn’t speed up the thing with magic (which was such nonsense, what was the point of making things purposefully inefficient just for the sake of punishment? It was all, in Sirius’s humble opinion, completely silly). If he’d had a wand, Sirius would probably have written a note detailing all his feelings regarding Madam Pince, put them in a paper swan and make that swan repeatedly run into James’s skull.
“Last time we trust you to know where teachers are. I wish we could, I dunno, have some kind of... thing that tells us where they are all the time. And if they start moving, preferably with an alarm because you’ve proven yourself incapable of being on watch. Dickhead.”
James rolled his eyes. “Like you’re so much better at it. Anyway, what would be really helpful would be a list of all the secret passageways in the castle. Would make it much easier to get away quickly.”
Sirius paused in his shit-shovelling to consider this. "We could kill two birds with one stone, make it a map that has all the teachers and the passageways."
"How would we manage that? The staircases are constantly changing, it would never be up to date," Peter said. "I guess if it has the locations of the teachers it could also have the locations of the stairs."
"Now you're talking," Sirius said. "Peeves, too."
"It could always be watching and collecting data on likely movements — that would cut down on all the reconnaissance. Especially when we want to dungbomb the Slytherin common room again," James said in an extremely enthusiastic whisper.
“How will it know who’s who? It’s not like your name is innate or anything,” Sirius asked, though it sounded more to himself than directed to the other two people in the conversation.
James waved his hand, unconcerned. “Eh, that’s a problem for future us. I think this is a stellar idea, lads. Moony might have some ideas about the actual implementation — I wonder if there are any existing maps of Hogwarts we could work off, I’ll have a check while I’m here in the library.”
“Good. I’ll save some hippogriff shit for your bed.”
“Shove off,” James replied, and then glanced over his shoulder and startled. “Oh hell, I have to go, Pince is coming over.”
Before Sirius could even say goodbye, the mirror went blank. Sirius pouted at it, but didn’t call James back, knowing that if he got caught they’d both be in much deeper shit. No pun intended.
“Are you really going to put hippogriff dung in his bed?” Peter asked, his nose crinkling up as he pressed manure into the soil of a particularly large and awful-smelling Thistlewort.
“Nah, then we’d have to spend all night smelling it. I’ll just spike his breakfast with some of that hair colour-changing potion we got last week.”
“Wicked,” Peter said, and they resumed their shovelling.
3.
It had been four days and seven hours — give or take — since James had heard from Sirius.
As the winter break had drawn closer and closer, James had tried everything he could think of to prevent Sirius having to go home to Grimmauld Place. He’d been invited to stay with the Potters more than once, and James had even asked his amma to write to Sirius and invite him herself — Sirius could never say no to Amma. But say no he had; apparently his mother was insisting he spend the holidays at home, and she’d made it clear that it was completely non-negotiable.
When the two of them had parted ways at Platform 9 ¾, Sirius had walked away with the air of a condemned man being led to the hangman’s rope, and James had been helpless to do anything but watch him go.
He’d tried to put it out of his mind, for the most part — he sent letters and called him on the mirror every day or two but there was no point in twisting his insides up over the fact that Sirius was alone in his own house with his frightful family. He had his suspicions about what happened over the summers, but nothing confirmable (as Sirius was loath to talk about anything regarding his family), and there was absolutely nothing he could do about it.
Okay, so he did worry about it quite a lot. It was a problem.
Appa had suggested that perhaps Walburga Black would let Sirius come over for a few days, at least, which James thought was worth a shot — except now he couldn’t even get ahold of Sirius to ask him about it. His last owl had gone unanswered, and whenever he tried him on the mirror, there was only darkness on the other end — Sirius’s mirror seemed to be in a drawer or something (though he could occasionally hear muffled Muggle rock music, which at least reassured him that Sirius hadn’t been bound and gagged in the cellar).
As he started to get a bit desperate, he took to having the mirror on all the time, propped up where he could glance at it on his desk or on his side table — at some point Sirius had to take it out of the drawer, right? Surely?
He was at last rewarded by Sirius’s voice saying, “How long have you been staring at my underwear?”
James jumped, absorbed as he was in the dirty novel he’d stolen off his mum’s bookshelf, which he promptly flung to the other side of the room when he realized the title was completely visible. “Is that where you put it? I’ve had it on for hours, I tried to get your attention by shouting yesterday but — where have you been?”
“At home,” Sirius said, deliberately not answering the question like a wanker. It was fine, James would poke him for more information later.
“Are you alright?” James said before his brain caught up with his mouth. It was never a good idea to ask Sirius if he was alright, mostly because a) he rarely was and b) he never wanted to admit it. Not to mention c) he would shut down if he suspected James knew he wasn’t alright, which was a crock of shit because of course James knew, that’s what best friends were for!
“Yes,” Sirius shot back defensively. “I just — need you to distract me for a bit. If you don’t mind.” It sounded as though he was having to force each word out of his mouth one by one. “It’s — Mum’s on the warpath again and I’m sick of hearing her voice, quite frankly.”
Was Sirius looking a little thin, or was that just James’s brain creating problems where none existed? He cursed the existence of holidays, though he’d never admit it out loud that he preferred term time. People might realise he was secretly a massive loser — and it wasn’t like he enjoyed writing essays or anything, but all his friends were at school and the sometimes-bland cooking was more than enough to put up with compared to the frustration he was feeling now as he sat several counties and an impossibly long time away from his best friend in the whole world.
Before he could respond, or Sirius could say anything else, there was a crash in the background. Sirius winced almost imperceptibly as the sound of his mother’s angry voice carried up the stairs. James couldn’t quite make out what she was saying, but she definitely did not sound happy. “Did you see the new Martin Miggs comic’s come out?” James said a little desperately. “It’s loads better than the last one.”
“Oh, good, the last one was bloody awful.”
“I know, I mean, I know he’s a mad muggle and all that, but it’s still gotta be believable! You can’t have people just — do you think they invented this ‘pager’ nonsense? It’s like something magical, which totally threw me out of the story completely.”
“Well, they do have tephelones,” Sirius pointed out. “And wasn’t Remus telling us about something — talkies?”
“But — we don’t even have a good way to send messages like that with magic! We’re still using owls, Padfoot. Owls.”
“I bet muggle thingies don’t shit on your head,” Sirius said wistfully.
“Or crash into your breakfast cereal.”
“Oi, leave Freddie Mercury alone, he’s trying his best.”
Freddie Mercury was the old, blind owl that Sirius had insisted on adopting from a shelter over the summer after his old owl, Xavier, had died, and which he’d then named after some Muggle singer in order to spite his mother. In fairness to Freddie, he'd only crashed into James's breakfast once, but still.
“He’s blind!” James argued.
“Yes, exactly, he’s trying his best.”
“Just buy a new owl, Padfoot. I’ll even give you the money for it, just to protect my future breakfasts.”
“No, fuck off, I love Freddie and I refuse to abandon him.”
That made James want to say something corny — something about how Sirius was right not to abandon Freddie and how James would never abandon Sirius — but he swallowed the urge because, despite the fact that he was a fifteen-year-old boy, he had some common sense. (If Remus were there he’d point out that James frequently said ‘Good night lads, I love you’, but that was different because it was in the dark and rules were suspended in the dark, everyone knew that.)
“I can send you a copy of the new comic,” he says instead. “I mean — unless you think you can get your own?”
“Could you send me some Spider-Man comics? Mum confiscated my last lot and it ended on a cliffhanger.”
“Some… what?”
“Spider-Man! Surely I’ve told you about him — the muggle comic about a kid who has webslingers ‘cause he was bit by a radiacontive spider or something. It’s good, way better than Martin Miggs.”
“Ugh, but didn’t Moony say they got a whole new currency system or something? It was hard enough using the old one!”
“Oh — right.” Sirius looked crestfallen for a moment, but hitched his smile back up quickly, although it looked slightly strained now. “Miggs is fine then, that’s — that would be great. So… what else is new?”
James was about the float the idea of Sirius coming to visit — although clearly he would have to ask his mum about it later, when she wasn’t in a rage — when there were thumps on Sirius’s end; Sirius’s mum’s voice, which was much clearer and closer now, shouted, “You lazy, worthless piece of scum, you better not be hiding more muggle filth in your room—” and James instantly lost picture and heard a drawer slam.
He considered eavesdropping on whatever horrible events were about to unfold but instead disconnected with a tap on the surface of the mirror. Sirius wouldn’t want him to hear it.
A week later, he ventured out into the Great Unknown (read: the muggle high street) and found his way into a comic book shop, convincing the confused person behind the counter that he needed help with paying because he was Indian and hadn’t used British money before. It turned out, much to James’s surprise, that the Muggles had not, in fact, changed their currency — but that didn’t make using it any less baffling. It was worth it, though, when they got back to school and Sirius saw he’d bought him not only the new Martin Miggs, but also all of the Spider-Man comics he could find in the shop.
4.
Remus wasn’t even supposed to have the mirror, was the thing. He had it from a reconnaissance mission the previous evening where they’d split up and investigated secret passageways, hoping to find another one that led out of the school grounds. They hadn’t managed it, but Remus had had every intention of giving the mirror back. It’s just that he forgot. It happens, it’s not the end of the world!
Usually.
Except now, here he was in this prefect’s meeting, which he’d completely forgotten to mention to the other Marauders, and he was giving a report on the success of the peer mentoring they were trying out (relatively abysmal, to be honest, but he was desperately trying to phrase that in a less disastrous way) and right in the middle of his sentence, his fucking bag began to speak.
“You’d think they’d work out the kinks of this mirror thing, given how fancy my aunt made these sound — they seem to take longer to connect if they’re further apart and that’s nonsense — ooh, has it connected already? I wonder where he is, he doesn’t have any other friends,” James’s voice rose in the mortifying silence. Everyone — literally everyone — was staring at him. Before Remus could say anything to salvage the situation — although what he could possibly say was beyond him — his bag piped up again. He definitely needed to get new friends, bloody hell.
“Oi, Remus, you prat,” said Sirius’s voice. “Get back here, we’ve got shit to do.”
“Maybe he’s with a girl,” Peter snorted in the background. “Wasn’t Ailis Whelan making eyes at him yesterday? You know, Derrick says she gives good handies.”
“Chumleigh? When were you talking to him?”
“Hungerford had us switch up partners in Divination,” Peter said, and Remus could almost hear his shrug. “Nice bloke.”
“Who gives a shit about that?” Sirius scoffed. “We have more important things to worry about. Such as...” And then he practically hollered, “Remus! Are you getting a handy right now?!”
For some reason, Remus was frozen, slowly going redder and redder but being entirely unable to move his hands to try to at least put an end to this.
The head boy, Gerald Piffling, said, “Lupin, I have no idea what you have in your bag but I would suggest you make it stop.” He did not sound remotely amused. In fact, he rather sounded as though he would’ve revoked Remus’s prefect badge right that moment if he could. Remus wanted to die.
The problem was that probably the mirror was contraband — it wasn’t on the list officially, but he was definitely worried that if people stricter than he was (i.e., the entire room he was currently in) saw it, it would be confiscated on the spot.
Which was how he ended up half-running, half-tripping out of the prefect meeting, trying to look like he was going at a perfectly respectful and not-at-all-suspicious walking speed. He could never return.
He was doomed. He may as well hand in his badge now.
He rounded a few corners and ducked into a passageway behind a tapestry before he dared to pull the mirror out of his bag. The others had kept up a running stream of commentary about the handjob he was supposedly receiving, complete with a copious amount of raucous laughter, the whole time. Before holding up the mirror, he fixed his most threatening glare onto his face (although he wasn’t sure how successful it would be given his burning red cheeks). Then he cleared his throat and snapped, “Will you lot please shut the hell up?”
“Finally,” Sirius said, clearly completely ignoring the fact that Remus wanted to murder the lot of them. “Where’ve you been? I can’t believe you have secret friends. Although — your face is quite red, maybe the handy wasn’t so far off?”
“No, you absolute cockwaffles, I was in a prefect meeting. And then your absolute tripe starts coming out of my bag — I’ll probably lose my badge! All the other prefects were there! And the heads!”
Sirius — who was the only person Remus could actually see — did not look even close to appropriately contrite. In fact, it was only a moment before he dissolved into giggles. “You were close, Pete, there was head involved.”
Clearly, Remus was not being taken seriously. So he went in for the kill. “Lily was sitting right next to me! She heard all of it! Was glaring something fierce, too.”
James’s face appeared and it, at least, did not look quite as pleased. “Did you explain?”
“Explain? What on earth could I say? I just ran right out, there’s no way to explain your absolute nonsense. I’m going to — this may well be the last use of my badge I get, but I’m giving you all detention. You’re all horrid.”
“Aw, Moony, don’t be like that,” Sirius said, fighting to keep a straight face. “How will we face detention without you?”
“Fuck off.”
“He’s obviously joking,” said Peter, his forehead appearing in the frame. “Moony would never.”
“I will now!” Remus said, trying to sound as stern as possible. “One night of detention for each of you. I don’t know what you’ll be doing yet but I’m going to make sure it’s horrible.”
“No, come on, Moony—” James started, and then
“You can’t be serious!” from Peter and
“We’ll go do a chocolate run from the kitchen just for you, if you just—”
Remus ignored them all and tapped on the mirror with finality. The surface instantly went blank.
Honestly, his friends were going to be the death of him.
5.
“What am I going to do! What if I muck this up!”
“You won’t muck it up,” Sirius said, trying to sound as soothing as possible through his total exasperation. James had called him on the mirror from the Three Broomsticks bathroom — apparently this date with Lily was enough for James to banish the other Marauders from the entire pub but he still wanted to be able to yell at Sirius next to a urinal. Weird bloke.
“That’s easy enough for you to say, you don’t need to worry about your dates,” James said, which was entirely unfair because James had been the one to whom Sirius had panicked — extensively — before he’d told Remus about his giant bleeding crush on him. It’s just that after that brush with the terrifying void it had been really easy. Not much had changed, honestly, just that they snogged a lot in addition to doing all the normal things like playing pranks and occasionally forging each others’ handwriting for essay purposes.
“I — what if I do something she doesn’t like!” James continued before Sirius could come up with a retort. “What do girls like, Padfoot?”
Sirius waited a beat so James could hear what he had just said. It continued longer than Sirius would have liked because James just continued looking at him like some terrified deer (haha) instead of realising the obvious.
“What the fuck do I know about girls, mate?” he pointed out eventually, his exasperation coming through clearly now. “Look, she asked you out, so you’ve clearly got some redeeming qualities. Although she’s probably not a fan of you talking to someone else and leaving her alone. Maybe she’ll send in a search party, concerned you’ve fallen in.”
“Or maybe she’s relieved that I’ve fucked off and she’s back at the table plotting her escape!” James replied, a little hysterically.
“She doesn’t need to plot, Prongs, she can just… leave.”
“Oh shit, what if she’s left?!”
“James Fleamont Potter, take a deep breath and just stop panicking. Please. For one second, trust me on this.”
James made the heroic effort to stop hyperventilating. When he looked a little less manic, Sirius said, “Okay, good, I’m proud of you. Now listen to me. Lily asked you out. She definitely wants to spend time with you, and that time is disappearing with every moment you spend next to a dirty urinal asking your gay best friend for girl advice.”
“But—!”
“Listen, Prongs! If you just calm down a little you won’t screw this up. You’re funny and reasonably charming and you’re not a total prat anymore, usually. And if you somehow manage to completely blow it on this date, which you won’t, Moony can talk to her or something. She likes you. You like her! Just go out there and show her, very calmly, how much you like her! Just don’t regress back to fifth year and you’ll be completely fine. Okay?”
After a long moment, James sighed. “Okay,” he said reluctantly. “But if I make a complete arse of myself, you’re going to have to comfort me.”
“You’ve been making a complete tit of yourself in front of Lily for years, and you’re still on a date with her,” Sirius said. The sky rumbled ominously and he hoped he wasn’t about to get rained on — Remus had probably already eaten half their haul from Honeydukes without him, what with how long this disaster had taken, and there was only so far he was willing to go for his useless best friend. (Well, that wasn’t true. Sirius liked to think there was a limit somewhere, though.)
“Okay… fair point. I can do this. I can do this?”
“You can do this.”
“I can do this,” James repeated, although more to himself than to Sirius. “Alright. I’m — I’m gonna get back out there.”
“I believe in you. I’ll save some chocolate for you, if Remus hasn’t demolished it all already.”
“You’re the best,” James said, finally smiling.
“I am the best, you’re right. Go get her.”
“I’ll talk to you later, Pads. I — thank you.”
Sirius just waved a hand at him, as if to say ‘don’t mention it’, and turned the mirror off. Now that that crisis was (hopefully) averted, he could finally get back to Remus and Peter. He really hoped they’d saved some sweets for him — although, if they needed to, they could probably just go back to Honeydukes. He had a feeling James and Lily were going to be a while.
+1.
It had been Remus’s brilliant idea — most of Remus’s ideas were brilliant, and this one was no exception. He had shown up the first week Sirius stayed at Grimmauld Place, and he’d opened his bag and pulled out two identical mirrors, and Sirius had had to push down the overwhelming urge to kiss him. “I thought you should have these,” he’d said, and Sirius was so choked up that he couldn’t even speak; but he’d reached out to take one of the mirrors, already feeling relief sweeping over him at the prospect of being able to talk to Remus whenever he wanted, of not being alone in this fucking house, and Remus... had handed him both mirrors.
“You should give one to Harry,” said Remus. “For while he’s at school.”
“Oh,” Sirius had said, trying not to sound as close to tears as he felt. It was absurd, was the thing! He had no right to be sad, not when this — the distance between them, every detail of their fucked-up circumstances, all of it was his fault, and it was a good idea — a brilliant idea, even — to give one to Harry, but it still felt like there was a gaping hole in his chest and he hated it.
He felt like that a lot these days.
He’d cleared his throat as subtly as possible and said, “Which — which one is mine?”, expecting that they would have to test them both. But Remus had responded instantly.
“This one is James’s,” he’d said, pointing at the mirror in Sirius’s left hand. “The one with the little scratch in the corner is yours.” He turned a bit pink at the baffled look Sirius gave him and murmured, “I just… I remember these things. You scratched it when you flung it at Peeves that one time — you know, with the pumpkins?”
“Right,” said Sirius, pretending he knew what Remus was talking about, because he didn’t want to see the look that always appeared on Remus’s face when he realized that Sirius had forgotten a moment he should have been able to remember. There was an echo in the back of his mind — you’re bloody lucky you didn’t break it, Padfoot, I might have throttled you — but it arose and disappeared again without context.
Then Remus had left, and Sirius had stored the mirrors in his desk drawer (Did you see the new Martin Miggs comic’s come out? It’s loads better than the last one) because Harry was at school and it would be far too risky to send him a package.
But he’d given Harry the mirror eventually, when he’d come for Christmas break, and he’d even managed to resist the temptation to tell him to please call as much as he could, because Harry was a teenage boy with far too much on his shoulders already — he didn’t need the added responsibility of babysitting his useless godfather when he should be enjoying himself at school.
He still kept his mirror on him at all times, just in case. He didn’t want to miss a call if Harry needed him for anything. Perhaps he’d been too vague when he gave him the package; maybe everything was somehow going smoothly with Snape’s Occlumency lessons. Either way, if Harry didn’t want to call, he wasn’t going to force the issue. Even when Harry used the Floo instead, Sirius didn’t say anything — it didn’t seem like the right time, or maybe Sirius was just terrified of Harry saying he didn’t want to talk to him very often.
And so Sirius carried a silent mirror around his silent house, and Harry never called; and months later, when Sirius raced off to the Department of Mysteries to go save Harry from whatever misconceptions he had, he left it on the kitchen table, not wanting to risk it getting damaged if there was a fight — because as soon as this business at the Department of Mysteries was over, he was sure as hell going to remind Harry that he could call him on those mirrors any time.