Archive of Our Own

I. December 1978

James’s breath fogs in the cold winter air as he heaves a frustrated sigh. He aims a kick at a small stone he finds particularly offensive but as it flies off and bounces on the paved ground he finds his irritation is no less present. “This is a waste of time,” he says as he crosses his arms in a vain attempt to shield himself from the biting cold. The warming charm he cast a couple hours ago has worn off and the streets around them are too crowded with Muggles for him to renew it without risking exposure.

“I wasn’t aware,” Remus says placidly from beside him. He, of course, thought to bring along a pair of gloves and a hat with a large ridiculous tassel so he’s looking positively toasty. “You hadn’t said so for the past 6 and a half minutes.”

James scowls. “Don’t be a prat.”

“Pot, kettle, black.”

James holds in a wince at the last word, fingers tightening almost unconsciously on the wand in his pocket. Chancing a glance at his friend, he finds his face equally strained for a moment before it smooths back into absent amusement, though it seems less genuine than before.

Well, if Remus won’t say anything about it, then neither will James. Absently, he notes that it’s a game they, along with Lily, Peter and another handful of Order members, have been playing since the mistress of 12 Grimmauld Place sent Peter and the two of them scampering away a couple of months ago, accompanied by a set of strong words and well-aimed jinxes. Their letters to the same address had been coming back unopened long before that.

“I just don’t see a point in patrolling here, of all places,” James grumbles in lieu of addressing a serious topic—pun not intended—and kicks another stone down the street. “It’s not a really note-worthy place, for anyone and especially not Death Eaters.”

“Moody’s orders,” Remus reminds him with the air of someone who’s done this a hundred times and tired of it, which James finds unfair, because, really, he’s only done it sixty-seven times. “We’ll just check for any abnormal activity and we’ll be on our merry way.” He bumps his shoulder against James’s. “You’ll be home before supper.”

It does little to lift James’s spirits—Lily is on duty at the headquarters until midnight, when James is supposed to relieve her so on top of having to freeze his ass off because of Moody’s bloody paranoia he’ll have to come home to a cold and empty house too.

At his petulant silence, Remus sighs. “I know this has been hard on all of us, Prongs, but really, there’s no need to be so—”

Remus’s would-be talking to is cut short by the sudden screams coming from the main square.

Sharing a reproachful look with his old friend, James dashes down the street toward the screams, pushing through the crowds who exclaim and huff at him, while Remus follows close behind, the picture of apologetic politeness compared to James’s rudeness.

They reach the main square at the same time, though, stopping side by side just in time to see a masked wizard upend an elderly woman mid-air while another five send streaks of light shooting at fleeing Muggles, laughing as the poor people topple over, helpless against their wands.

James is at a loss. He’s been an active member of the Order for the better part of six months and this is by no means his first mission, solo or otherwise, but it is the first time he has seen the Death Eaters’ cruelty in person, the way they taunt and mock their victims as they convulse on the ground.

Luckily for him, Remus seems to have his head on straight. He pulls James by the back of his overcoat until they’re both hidden in the shadows. He mutters a low incantation and a moment later, a silver streak shoots from his wand, bounding into the dark sky.

James stirs and starts for the square, but Remus stops him again, the grip on the collar of James’s robes surprisingly strong for someone so thin.

“Are you mad?” Remus demands, voice lowered to a whisper. “You want to go against six trained Dark Wizards on your own?”

James gives him a crooked smile, though it falls flat. He always used to have at least one other companion with even worse impulse control than his. “Well, not on my own, of course, Moony. I have you.”

Remus rolls his eyes, but must consider him deterred enough he releases him and uses his free hand to flick his sandy hair out of his eyes. “I’d rather not have my ears screamed off today, thanks,” he says.

One of the muggles in the square lets out a particularly blood-curdling scream and James tightens his grip on his wand.

“Moony,” he implores.

But Remus is as unaffected by his wide eyes as he has ever been. There has really ever been only one person whose eyes he isn’t immune to. He only levels him with a stern look. “We’re not good to anyone dead. It might even hurt the Order if we get captured.”

James has no good argument to that but before that can be properly obvious, there’s a streak of silver light through the night sky and a large horned owl of the same colour materialises in front of them.

“We’re on our way,” it says in Dorcas’s voice. “Do not engage until we arrive.”

“Well, too late for that,” James says, raising his wand as a dark figure splits off from their companions and slips into the dark alley, silver mask glinting in the moonlight. James curses under his breath. Talking Patronuses, while an incredibly quick and effective way to communicate with other Order members, are not very inconspicuous.

The Death Eater approaches, wand raised, and tilts their head as they examine the two of them. “Well, well, what do we have here?” they crow in a low but delighted voice. “If it isn’t baby Potter and little Lupin.” They cock their head to the side, strangely patronising even without the use of their face, and James’s fingers go white on his wand. “Here to play heroes, are you?”

“Certainly.” Remus is a picture of quiet confidence, his form perfect, his hand steady. If it weren’t for the way his eyes flick towards James just for a second, James might’ve thought him to be catching up with a Hogwarts classmate over tea. “Someone has to, if you insist on being the villain, Wilkes.”

Aidan Wilkes—for it is indeed Aidan Wilkes, James can see now, in the thin blond hair that shines green in the light of Death Eaters’ spells, and the pale scarred hand holding on to his wand—seems to not have expected to be recognised, but Remus always has been exceptionally observant. Wilkes sends his reply in the form of a purple light at James, who deflects it with a murmured “Protego.”

It gives Remus enough time to send a silent spell flying his way, but Wilkes easily dodges and takes a step back. They trade spells that way, some spoken, some wordless, and James finds his frustration returning with a vengeance when neither they nor Wilkes prevail. There’s two of them and only one of him and he thinks that the math there should be obvious.

He knows, of course, why they can’t beat the damn bastard—while they use spells hardly above the level they used for one of their more elaborate pranks back at Hogwarts, Wilkes fires curses at them that James hasn’t even heard of, much less experienced, and when one of particularly nasty ones grazes his shoulder, he finds he can hardly move his left arm.

The curses under his breath come quicker when he realises Wilkes has managed to retreat so far that one of the other Death Eaters jumps them from the left and they’re forced to dive to the ground to avoid the streak of green light.

Sharing a look with Remus, they spring back to their feet and press their backs together, spells shooting from their wands before they’re even fully balanced, James’s toward the new Death Eater and Remus’s toward Wilkes.

Now, James is a decent duellist, not the top of their Duel Club at Hogwarts—that honour belonged to the two most important people in his life—but he’s ended up walking away from his duels almost unscathed more times than his opponents have.

The problem is, the Death Eaters have obviously have come here to have fun and James has to assume that obliterating a couple of barely-out-of-Hogwarts wizards has to be more entertaining than simply suspending a few Muggles in air and laughing as they scream in terror.

They gather round Remus and James as they take notice of them, the Muggles they were tormenting only moments before falling to the ground. Their cackles of delight can be heard even over the sound of the explosion one of Wilkes’s spell causes.

“Just when I thought today was going to be boring,” one of them says and James sends a Backfiring Jinx—just to make things less boring for him—at him just as he shouts, “Flipendo!” He’s blasted back several metres, hitting the side of a tall building.

The one second James paid attention to him was one second too long—he is hit with a Knockback Jinx of his own, feeling like a giant has just punched him in the chest, and sent flying across the square. He lands on the cobblestones, the breath knocked out of him, black spots dancing in his vision.

He gasps for air and grapples for his wand with one hand, fixing his glasses with the other, but when he finally grabs onto something, it’s not the wooden handle of his wand but a hand, shrivelled and tiny, but still warm.

With horror, he looks to the side to see the elderly woman that was first to go up in the air blankly staring at him, blood trickling out the corner of her mouth.

He shakes his head—there’s no time to be horrified right now—and grabs his wand which rolled to the side to rest right next to the hip of the woman.

Once again, a bloody moment too late.

“Don’t move,” says a menacing voice above him, the end of a dark wand pointed at him.

The Death Eater standing in front of him is tall and lean, the intricate patterns on his silver mask almost beautiful. But there is something in the way he holds himself, high-strung and casual all at once, that seems almost reserved for one particular—

There are several successive cracks—James counts five—and the Death Eater is blasted to the side before he can so much as turn.

Marlene McKinnon—Merlin’s socks, he’s never been so happy to see her in his life—offers James a hand, which he gladly accepts, and gives him a stern look that seems almost as alien on her as a smile on her girlfriend. “I thought you weren’t supposed to engage.”

James gives her a sheepish look. “To be fair, they engaged us.”

Marlene doesn’t seem impressed but she shrugs it off. “I’ll let Lily and Dorcas do the lecturing,” she says instead, flashing him a lopsided smile.

She turns on her heel and sends a turquoise light toward Wilkes, who was just making a slashing motion toward Remus. Another swish of Marlene’s wand and he is out cold on the floor.

The remaining four Death Eaters seem to be reconsidering their life choices right about now as the combined strength and wrath of Marlene McKinnon, Lily Evans, Dorcas Meadowes, Frank Longbottom and Alice Fawley comes thundering down on them, along with rejuvenated Remus and James.

James stops only for a second to admire the sight of his fiancée dancing out of reach of one of the Death Eaters’ purple spell, her hair flying behind her as she sends a retaliating hex back. He smiles to himself, then plunges back into the fight, sending a Disarming Spell to divert a dark stream meant for Dorcas, who fluidly blasts her opponent back.

“Where’s your master now?” shouts Marlene at them, the taunt in her voice obvious as the Death Eaters flock together, retreating step by step. One—James thinks it’s the one that blasted himself back—even Disapparates. “Where is he now to hide you, you cowards?”

“Here I am, McKinnon,” says a voice, high and cold.

They all turn toward the source of it and James has to ask himself how it all went so horribly wrong so quickly.

A tall figure, garbed only in a set of elegant black robes and lacking shoes, stands in the middle of the square, the wand in his hand held almost loosely. His eyes are red, skin white and face almost snake-like, but despite himself James can still find something barely human in the tilt of his high cheekbones, the curve of his smiling lips.

Lord Voldemort holds out a hand to his followers, who, as if driven by some innate force, pick themselves up off the ground and drift toward their master. Even Wilkes, who should have been unconscious, gets up and joins him.

James moves a step closer to his friends, making sure to position himself directly in front of them.

Voldemort’s eyes focus on him first. “James Potter,” he drawls in his bone-chilling voice. His fingers slide along the length of his wand. “I heard quite a lot about you.”

James swallows. “All bad things, I hope,” he answers, shifting so that his useless arm isn’t exposed, his wand hand twitching in preparation to be raised. He is profoundly glad his voice doesn’t shake.

He chuckles, but the sound carries no humour. “Depends on who you ask.” His eyes flick toward the last Death Eater to join them, the one Marlene blasted away from James, his mouth curving up the tiniest bit before they focus back on James. “I must admit, I hoped the purity of your blood might lead you to me, but I see you need a bit of a stern hand.”

James opens his mouth, whether to tell him to sod off to hell, or to imply the same with his curses, but he’s already looking away from him and towards Marlene.

“Same goes for you, McKinnon,” he says, then adds with a glance at each of the Order members, “Longbottom, Fawley.”

All good, respectable pureblood families, though out of the four of them, Marlene is perhaps the furthest away from her family’s beliefs—while not outright blood supremacists, her grandparents are by no means fond of Muggles or Muggleborn, though her parents seem to counteract that with the way they adore Dorcas, a witch technically not a Muggleborn but close to it with her squib mother and Muggleborn father.

“The rest of you, of course, are not as worthy of following me as they are, but given the good things I heard about your talents, I will let you join me.”

Grave silence rules the square, no one daring to even let out a breath.

Lily slips her hand in James’s and though his fingers are still half-numb he is glad for it, trying to convey his gratitude through running his thumb over her knuckles.

“Rot in hell,” Dorcas spits, a deliberately Muggle saying, and just like that, all of their wands are pointed at the darkest wizard of all time.

James has a feeling they’ll all die tonight.

Voldemort seems unperturbed. “I thought you might be inclined that way—the old fool must have his claws deep inside you—so I brought along someone who might be more motivational than me.” He turns to the Death Eater directly on his right, the one that stood above James. “Prove to me they’re worthy.”

The Death Eater ducks into a shallow bow, his hood falling off as he straightens, revealing a shock of night-dark hair. “My Lord,” he murmurs and takes a few steps forward, still to the right of his master and nowhere near hiding him from their view. He walks with an easy sort of grace, strides even and measured, the back of his robes billowing behind him as if compelled.

Just like before, James finds something familiar in the way he moves, the way he carries himself, as if he’s made not of mortal flesh but of stars and steel, and there’s really only one family, pureblood or not, that James can think of that hold themselves like that.

And James knows, somehow, though perhaps it isn’t so strange all things considered, even before the Death Eater stops and pulls off his mask, knows and dreads and feels whose face they will see underneath that mask. And he prays, prays to every deity he knows, every god or goddess he has ever heard of that he is wrong, that it isn’t his dearest friend who is about to stand opposite of him.

His prayers go unanswered.

Sirius Black removes his mask with little dramatics. That particular flair of his seems to have been reserved for the way he grins at them, slow and crooked and so Sirius his chest cracks open, because he knows that smile, the one he’s seen millions of times before, the very same one that used to fall apart in a matter of seconds.

“Hello, James.”

Strangely enough, the first thing James notices about his friend that he hasn’t seen in roughly half a year—a hundred and sixty-eight days but who’s counting—is that his hair is much shorter than the last time he saw him, cut just above his ears, but still managing to retain its elegant wave. Sirius loved his hair—he used it as one of the many ways to drive his mother up the wall—and threatened anyone who so much as dared to tease him about cutting it with a gruesome death and James has never been convinced it was purely a joke.

The second thing that catches is eye is the prominence of his cheekbones and the hollowness of his cheeks, as if someone had sucked anything he could spare out of him. He wonders if Sirius has been eating enough, or even at all.

The third thing he registers—and really, he needs to get his priorities straight because this one is perhaps the most important—is the fact that Sirius Black, who has hated everything to do with Dark Magic since the day he met him, who has despised his family and their affiliations for much longer than that, is a Death Eater.

Someone lets out a sound that is between a choke and a sob. Marlene, James thinks. Marlene, who bleeds love and light like she was born for it, who adores Sirius above everyone else, her first ally, her first friend, who hexed Caradoc into oblivion just last week because he dared to imply Sirius had turned.

“Sirius kept some questionable beliefs when I first met him, I’ll admit,” says Voldemort, but his voice sounds far away to James, who currently has the mental capacity only to stare at Sirius. “But he has proven to be one of my most loyal servants and he is matched only by his dear cousin in terms of capability. Just proves my point of how remarkable such noble Houses are.”

A shadow passes Sirus’s face, gone quicker than James can blink and he convinces himself he must have imagined it.

“What did you do, Sirius?” Lily asks, voice as ashen as her face.

James squeezes her hand.

“What I should have done a long time ago, Lily,” Sirius says easily. “I was wrong before; this is where I’m meant to be. Serving eternally by the side of the most powerful wizard of all time.” His eyes flick toward someone behind James’s back and he can take an educated guess as to who’s standing behind him when something shifts in those grey eyes. He looks away and drawls on, “You can too. You take my hand and all that you have done against us, will be forgiven.” His hand, wandless and long-fingered, rises to stop mid-air, waiting palm-up for a clasp that James knows will never come.

Us. There was a time James was a part of that us. Now, looking into the face that is familiar and alien at once, too smooth, too cold, too impassive—for Sirius Black is a lot of things but impassive is not one of them—he finds he no longer wishes to be.

James lifts his wand higher. “Who are you?” He is terrified to see his hand tremble. “What did they do to you?”

“I’m me, James. They did nothing to me. Ask me anything and you’ll see.”

His voice is so calm, so reasonable, so very unlike Sirius James wants to throw up. He can’t speak past the lump in his throat.

“What did you do to him?” Marlene screams, wand pointed not at Sirius but at the dark figures behind him.

Voldemort throws a look at Sirius, a cruel smirk curving his lips. “Convince them or they’re dead, Black,” he says, the words barely more than a hiss. “I’m getting bored.”

Sirius’s hand shakes almost imperceptibly. “James, please,” he murmurs and James doesn’t think anyone other than Lily or him can actually hear him.

James shakes his head. “I’d rather die.”

Sirius’s face changes at once, harsh lines surrounding his mouth, a furrow between his thick brows. His hand drops, hanging limply by his side.

“So you shall,” the Dark Lord drawls. He looks to his Death Eaters, voice nothing short of bored as he orders, “Finish them.”

Alice, ever the vicious Hufflepuff, is the first one to throw a spell. It shoots right past James’s ear and heads straight for Voldemort, bathing the silver masks of his followers in red light.

He deflects it with a lazy flick of his wand, lazily prowling towards them, while the Death Eaters shoot forward. “Is that all you can manage, little Alice?”

Instinctively, James steps in front of Alice and feels more than hears the others do the same. Lily’s hand is still in his and he squeezes it.

Sirius has put his mask back on and his wand is a mere blur in the air as he sends a blue stream of light towards James, who barely manages to shout the incantation for a shield, though he can feel the shock of the hindered curse reverberate within his bones.

“You’re going to pay for that!” Lily shouts and throws a well-aimed Stinging Hex that hits Sirius straight into the chest and Merlin, James loves that woman, he adores her more than he has ever cared for anything else in his life. “Bloody traitor! Expulso!”

The stones at Sirius’s feet explode, throwing him several metres back, but he twists mid-air like a cat and manages to soften his landing with a shield charm. “Is that all you got, Evans?” he taunts, already making a circular motion with his hand.

James pulls down Lily just in time to avoid the pale light, and then they’re forced to twirl away as the Dark Lord himself starts for them, Alice now lying on the ground with a deep wound down her side.

“You are fools,” he says, brandishing his wand with a rather dainty swish. “You could’ve had everything in my service.”

“Everything but our dignity,” James mutters.

“Let’s be honest, James, you haven’t had that in years,” Sirius says and James doesn’t regret the Bat-Bogey hex he throws his way, an old reflex from their school tussles, in the slightest—but like always, Sirius is ready and gracefully dodges, laughing as he does.

“You’re on the battlefield,” he crows, then demonstrates that fact with a swish of his wand that sends Dorcas spinning in circles and then crumpling to the ground. Marlene’s face is a mask of fury, but Sirius seems oblivious as he drawls, “Act like it.”

James is forced to tear his eyes away from Marlene’s wand pointed directly at Sirius when Voldemort sends a jet of green light towards him, forcing him to jump to the side and land on the cobbled stones for the second time that night, which his tingling arm doesn’t take kindly to. Pain flares up from the tips of his fingers all the way up to his neck.

“James!”

But James doesn’t get to answer Lily, for there is another flash of green light and a number of cracks, announcing new arrivals.

“Expulso!” yells a familiar voice, deep but raspy, and James lifts his head just in time to see Sirius flail through the air along with his master and the rest of the Death Eaters.

He looks toward the sound of the voice and finds Moody standing in the middle of the square, the Prewett brothers and Benjy Fenwick behind him already firing curses at the fallen Death Eaters. Brilliant, brilliant people.

Voldemort is gone before the spells reach them.

The rest of them try to follow but most of them lost their wands and one of them, possibly Wilkes, is hit just as he grabs his, going down like a puppet with cut strings.

James ignores the pain still flaring up his arm, grabs his own wand and starts toward Sirius, who has managed to scramble away from the worst of the curses, though he seems to hold his leg precariously. His wand lies just out of his reach.

James points his own at him.

Sirius looks up at him, though James can see nothing of his face except for his eyes, which seem to almost match his silver mask. It is a beautiful thing, James can see now, intricate patterns engraved into it and he realises a beat later that they’re constellations, stories written in it, though James was pants enough at Astronomy to not recognise any of them. Black, indeed.

“Are you going to kill me, James?” he asks, hand blindly searching for his wand as he keeps their eyes locked.

“Why?” James demands in lieu of answer, hand trembling.

“I can’t answer that.”

“You—you could’ve come to us! To me!” His eyes sting but he promises himself he won’t cry. “You didn’t have to—”

“You’re right, I didn’t,” Sirius says, lifting his chin in that pureblood way of his, the way his mother did right before she hexed him so thoroughly he barely managed to get himself home. It rattles him to his bones that he can recognise Walburga Black, the epitome of hate, of everything that is wrong in this world, in his closest, dearest friend, a boy he considers—considered his brother. “I chose to.”

“Potter!” Moody barks. “Finish him!”

It’s a second James takes to glance at the grizzled Auror, but it’s enough. In his peripheral vision, he sees Sirius’s fingers close around his wand and he turns, the light shooting out his wand more of a manifestation of his anger, confusion and pain than an intended spell.

It hits bare stone, sending up a flurry of dust.

Sirius is no longer there, only a smatter of blood on the cobbles proving that he once was.

He feels arms around him then, strong gentle arms that are accompanied by a voice that he loves more than anything else in the world, and he lets himself sag against Lily as she murmurs in his ear, “You’re okay, we’re okay, we’re okay, . . .”

But as he recalls Sirus’s face, hard and ruthless, he isn’t so sure.

II. December 1979

The sun isn’t supposed to set for hours but James feels as if the warm autumn sunrays can’t reach him in the cocoon of darkness and numbness he has enclosed himself in.

The words of his parents’ oldest friend, Mrs Jowles, might as well be coming from underwater. The crowd around him, far smaller than it is supposed to be—but such is the time of war—seems blurry. His hands, clasped in front of him so tightly the knuckles are white, are trembling but he can’t muster up enough will to hold them still.

The grave in front of him is barely big enough to fit the complementary urns of his parents—the nearly frozen earth proved to be quite a challenge to dig up, even for wizards and their wands—but he thinks they might’ve liked it to stay so close together. He stares, not really seeing as the remains of their bodies are lowered into the earth, and clenches his jaw in an effort to keep the tears at bay.

It takes him a full minute to realise that Mrs Jowles has stopped speaking and is now looking at him with a mix of pity and expectancy. He wishes Lily were here. Or Remus. Or Peter. Or—he doesn’t let himself think of that last name.

He moves forward, toward the pile of dirt next to the hole. As their closest living relative, as their only living relative, it falls on him to cover them in the first layer of earth.   

The tradition is to use your wand to lift and lower the soil into the ground, but that feels too detached, too formal, so James drops to his knees next to the pile, uncaring of staining his white trousers, and grabs a handful of the earth, letting it fall onto his parents’ urns. He does it again and when he reaches for the earth for the third time, he realises his shoulders are shaking.

Mrs Jowles touches his shoulder. She doesn’t say anything to him, as is customary, but he understands all the same. He stands up and walks back to his previous position, watching as people form a line to pay their respects.

Something wet and cold hits his palm and he looks down, his hand automatically going for his wand once he sees the big black dog by his side.

It’s been over a year but James would recognise Padfoot, with his dark shaggy fur and sharp grey eyes, anywhere, anytime and probably blindfolded, too. He looks as bad as James feels, his tail hanging so low it touches the muddy ground, his fur wet and clear eyes unusually downtrodden. He looks like he isn’t here to pick a fight at all.

James drops his hand from his wand. If Lily were here, she’d probably hex Padfoot and then him, and Remus would kick him bloody—James, that is. But they’re not, both sick at home, Lily from pregnancy and Remus from the full moon the previous day, so James doesn’t think of it twice.

Padfoot whines, so low it’s barely audible, and buts his head against James’s thigh gently. He waits a moment, as if preparing for James to bat him away and then, when he doesn’t, he sits back on his haunches and presses himself against James’s leg.

James runs a hand over the dog’s fur and finds that, though it’s wet, it is as soft as ever. He traces a pattern on top of his head and tugs on one of his ears, then gently slides his hand to Padfoot’s neck and holds on to the fur there. It must hurt Padfoot, the strength with which he does it, but he doesn’t let out one sound. “You’re lucky I don’t hex you,” he mutters.

Padfoot lets out a sound that’s between a growl and a whine and they both know that James’s threat is empty. He’s gripping the fur of his neck too fiercely for it not to be.

So they stand, Padfoot and James—not Padfoot and Prongs, not James and Sirius, because those people don’t exist together, not anymore—side by side, as they haven’t for ages, watching as people lower themselves to their knees and grab handfuls of earth to cover their parents.

At the very end, Padfoot whines again and starts forward. James lets him go, his fingers numb for a completely different reason now, watching as Padfoot crawls across his belly towards the grave and pushes the last of the soil over the grave.

James watches, unable to look away as the big dog, his oldest friend, his most trusted companion, noses the dirt, the expression on his face so inherently human, so damnably crushed, that James wants to scream.

A blink; then Padfoot ambles back to James’s side, graceful even as a dog, no trace of that emotion in his eyes now, and together they walk away from the grave.

Usually, a wake would be held after such an event, but in times like these, one doesn’t want to dally anywhere, much less gather in big groups for an extended period of time.

James is quite content to have his wake consist of getting drunk on cheap whiskey with Peter, who is due to return from his Order mission this evening, while Lily and Remus watch on with sad eyes and then get them safely to bed.

He glances at the dog next to him, his hands clenching into fists. Quite content, yes.

He waits until they’re far enough, until he’s heard enough cracks of disapparition he can be sure most of the people have gone and will not see him arguing with a dog, as so many of his classmates have. Then he whirls on Padfoot. “Shift,” he orders.

Padfoot doesn’t listen, like he never has. Instead, he sits and stares at him with big eyes, charmingly innocent enough that James stops to consider if this is just a stray mutt who looks eerily like his best friend’s Animagus form. He dismisses the thought as soon as Padfoot cocks his head—there’s far too much defiance in his expression to be canine.

“I’m not going to talk to you while you’re a dog.”

Padfoot lies down, putting his head on his front paws and looking up at him in a way that seems to say, Well, you’ll have to.

James pinches the bridge of his nose. “Padfoot…”

There are so many things he’d like to say to Sirius Black and not Padfoot, because for all of their foolish youth’s nicknames there is a definite line between the two. What in the name of Merlin’s pants were you thinking, for one. Or, how could you be so bloody stupid. Why did you do it. Then they turn softer, these things that James doesn’t dare think of even in the dead of the night. I miss you. Tell me you don’t hate me. Tell me it’s all an act. Come home.

The words bubble up in his chest, swirling and mixing and burning, but they refuse to come out, content to simmer until they’re acid that will claw its way up his throat. Instead, all that comes out is, “I’m sorry about Regulus.”

Padfoot’s ears perk up and he lifts his head, grey eyes suddenly much less clear. He yips, this small acknowledgement of his baby brother that splits James’s soul right down the middle.

James heard about the death of the youngest scion of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black from Moody, who made it sound like the death was a cause for celebration, the first of many bull-headed purebloods to fall, rather than a tragic loss of a boy who was barely out of Hogwarts. They hadn’t even found a body to bury, he was informed in that sharp, no-nonsense way of Moody’s. It hadn’t hit him until then, not really, how divided Sirius must be in the war.

No matter which side Sirius chose, he would end up standing opposite one of his brothers.

“I know he meant a lot to you.” James bends down and scratches behind Padfoot’s ears, where he remembers he likes it best. His heart swells and then cracks at the seams when Padfoot leans into his palm.

He pushes back to his feet. “I should go,” he says, watching as Padfoot picks himself off the ground as well. “You’re not coming with me, are you?”

Very slowly, Padfoot shakes his head.

James knew, but it still hits a part of him he didn’t even know was still within him. It tastes bitter and harsh but familiar and sweet, a word James knows all too well and doesn’t want to say out loud. He’s forgiven Sirius for a lot of things over the years, stupid and messy and cruel as they were, and he hasn’t regretted one of them. It scares him to think that he might forgive him for this too.

If Sirius wants his forgiveness at all.

He doesn’t fool himself into thinking this past hour was anything more than a momentary truce, Sirius acknowledging that he’s hurting and that he’s not going to add onto that hurt for the sake of whatever they once were—though some days, he doubts that was real, too. Or perhaps it’s for the sake of his parents, who he adored and was adored by. The next time they meet on the battlefield, neither one will hold back, he’s sure of it.

He turns and starts walking away because it somehow doesn’t feel right to simply disappear from Padfoot’s view. They’ve always had a way of poking and prodding at each other with only their actions, though it’s only ever been for fun.

He’s just about to disappear on the spot, when he hears a voice call out, “Jamie.”

That nickname—the nickname that his mother used to call him and then stopped when she realised how much it hurt him after, after, after—feels like a punch to the stomach.

He turns and finds Sirius standing where Padfoot was only moments before, his hair wild around his hollow face. His robes, dark and elegant, seem to hang off his lean frame. James wonders if that’s what he looks like, too.

A moment later, he remembers he should probably pull out his wand and his hand dives into his pocket.

But Sirius doesn’t reach for his own, though James can clearly see it’s strapped to his forearm, right over the dark brand. Instead, he shoves his hands into his pockets. “When my time comes,” he says, “mourn me.”

He vanishes into thin air just as James’s fingers close around the handle of his wand.

III. February 1980

“And remember,” Marlene says, jabbing a finger into James’s chest, “don’t start fights you can’t finish.”

“But it’s a rescue mission,” says Cyrilla Hayes before James can ask why Marlene had to point him out, her dark eyes uncertain and reproachful as only new members’ are these days.

“Exactly,” Marlene says, turning her sharp eyes on the young witch, who seems to shrink under the attention of that piercing brown gaze. People say that war hones a person, gives them an edge that later takes years to dull, but James likes to think Marlene came screaming into the world with that edge and is finally alive now that she gets to cut with it. “We don’t need other people to get caught too. You’re no use to us then.” She gives the poor girl another scrutinising look and says, “You’re with James. Podmore, with Vance. Silas, you’re with me.”

James sees Jeremy Silas, another new addition, share a look with Cyrilla, half terror, half exasperation, before she turns towards James, offering him a shy smile.

James doesn’t consider himself a war veteran, not by a long shot, but it’s astounding how he can feel the ache in his stomach, the exhaustion in his bones, both razor-sharp and ditchwater-dull, as he meets the eyes of the young witch before him. He returns her smile, though it feels thin, even to him.

“Okay,” Marlene says loudly, “does everyone know where we’re going?”

They nod.

“Good. Let’s go.”

The six of them appear on a field somewhere in the south of England. There’s nothing around them for kilometres, but for a shabby-looking barn, with a blown-off roof and more missing planks than present. It hardly looks an appropriate place for a Death Eater rendezvous point but the intel from one of Voldemort’s sympathizers tells them otherwise.

“There are three entrances,” Marlene says, voice carrying even over the wind that whips her long blonde hair about her face, covering and uncovering the patch of dark bruises along the line of her jaw. She still refuses to tell anyone where she got them and rejects any offer to have them healed. “James, take the left one, Vance the front one, we’ll take the back one.”

James salutes her and just catches the edge of her smile before she casts a disillusionment charm on herself and then Silas. He copies her, rapping his wand against the top of Wilhelmina’s head, then on himself and watches as Sturgis and Emmeline do the same.

He starts towards the left side of the barn, making sure that Cyrilla is following him. “Stay close,” he murmurs to where he thinks she is, “and save your energy for spells you really need.”

He takes her lack of response as confirmation and sends out a few prodding spells that determine what kind of spells have been cast on the barn.

They all seem to match the information the young wizard told them—the usual number of protective enchantments, a few dark curses that chill James down to his bones and a couple of jinxes—but they are also all negated by the spell the aspiring Death Eater cast on them, making them able to pass through the enchantments as easily as Voldemort himself.

The door opens with a tap of James’s wand and he slips inside, the scuff of boots on the wood telling him that Cyrilla is right behind him.

The hallway in front of them is dark, lit with blaring spheres of light that cast long looming shadows on the splintered walls. There’s a set of dark, wide doors at the far end, with golden whorls and peeling paint, light shinning through the cracks around their hinges.

James starts forward, keeping his feet light and close to the walls to make as little noise as possible, and makes sure his wand doesn’t waver.

Just as they are a meter away from the doors, a scream pierces the air, making Cyrilla let out a squeak that has him pressing a hand to her mouth and against the wall.

It takes James a few seconds to will his heart into a normal rhythm again and only then does he realise that the voice, that high, pained voice is not only screaming but begging, too.

“I don’t know, please, I don’t know any—” It breaks on the last word, barely-there sobbing replacing it.

“Finish her, Rosier,” says another voice, completely at odds with the first one—level, deep, bored. “She doesn’t know anything.”

James doesn’t see Cyrilla’s eyes, but he can guess they’re wide open and panicked by the quickness of her breath against his palm. “Are you with me?” he asks lowly.

He feels her nod against his hand, though her breath is still shaky. He wishes, not for the first time, that Lily were with him.

“Good,” he says. “Follow my lead.”

There’s another, younger voice that says, “She must know something.” There’s a crack and the woman shrieks, short and sharp. A moment of silence, then, “Crucio!”

James bursts through the door just as the woman—Wilma Hughes, an important ministry official and a witch well-known for her muggleborn pride, he can see now—starts to scream. There is no time to take a look around the room but he does manage to register the three other bodies lying haphazardly against the far wall.

“Stupefy!” he shouts and Lucius Malfoy, the only Death Eater in the room wearing a mask but easily recognisable by his long, blonde hair, raises his wand to deflect it just late enough it knocks him back a few steps.

The young Death Eater that James now recognises as Evan Rosier, just a year younger than him, attacks first, twirling his wand as he shoots a dark spell at Cyrilla, his blonde curls pasted to his forehead as he ducks Cyrilla’s retaliating curse.

There’s a third Death Eater, but James doesn’t recognise him though his pointed teeth, bared in a vicious sneer, and a long, yellow nails present an idea that James would rather not entertain. “Finally, a good meal,” he growls and pounces toward James.

He is thrown to the side by a jet of white light, landing him on the cold floor, where he lets out a sound that seems to be something between a yip and a growl.

“Good aim, Silas!” says Marlene’s disembodied voice, promptly followed by a streak of red light toward Malfoy, who, this time, does manage to send the spell hurtling toward the wall, which shatters into splinters.

“Lestrange!” he roars.

James sends a wordless spell his way, but misses when he’s forced to duck away from the grey-haired man, dancing out of his reach as he pounces on him.

“Your left, James!”  Marlene shouts.

He turns just in time to put up a shield charm for a red jet of light from Rosier. James growls and slashes with his wand.

Rosier goes down, dark eyes wide as a red line appears across his belly, but not before he manages to send a badly-aimed stinging hex that hits James’s shoulder.

The third door bursts open just in time with James’s hiss, revealing an unmasked, stocky man with a shock of dark hair, holding Emmeline Vance in front of him, his wand pressed to her bleeding neck.

The movement in the room stills. Even the supposed werewolf doesn’t move.

“Drop your wands,” says Rabastan Lestrange, “or I’ll kill her.”

“Don’t,” says Emmeline, short hair soaked with blood. Her voice is slow and barely discernible. “Rescue mission.”

The werewolf, just a couple paces away from James, sniffs the air and licks his lips. “Let me have her, I’ll convince them right away.”

“Back off, Greyback,” snaps Malfoy, eyes focused on Emmeline and Lestrange.

Greyback slinks back, lips curling up in an expression James can only describe as pure hate. “Yes, sir,” he murmurs.

James takes a step forward, hands raised up but his wand still in his fingers, and finds both Lucius’s wand and Greyback’s eyes following his movement. “Rab, old chap, why don’t we talk about this rationally?” he says, voice surprisingly calm considering the situation he’s in.

Rabastan presses his wand deeper into Emmeline’s neck, drawing out a yelp from her. “Nothing to talk about,” he growls, but James can see his eyes darting around uncertainly. He’s always been a tad brighter than his brother, Rabastan, clever and uncertain where Rodolphus is more brawn than brain, and he must be coming to a conclusion that standing three against four can’t come out all that well for him, in the end.

“Look, we’ll just take what we came here for,” James says, moving one more step forward.

“Potter,” Marlene warns just as Rabastan slinks one step back, dragging Emmeline with him.

He ignores her. “You give us the prisoners—they’re of no use to you, really—and we won’t drag you to Azkaban for it,” he says instead, to Rabastan.

“Certainly,” Lucius sneers, grey eyes narrowed as they slide from James to Rabastan. “Kill her, they’re obviously not interested in keeping her alive.”

“No!” shouts Sturgis as he enters the room, a dark-haired man shuffling in front of him. His wand is pressed just below the man’s jawline, another, darker one tucked behind his ear, while he holds the man’s hand behind him. “You kill her, I’ll kill him.”

“Thanks for the heads-up, Rab,” drawls the man and James would recognise him by voice alone, even if he didn’t raise his head and reveal a face he knows all too well. “Really, a simple ‘Hey, Sirius, intruders,’ would’ve done the trick. Wouldn’t have even had to use verbs.” He blows a stray strand of his hair, shorter again by now, out of his eyes and manages to look down on Rabastan even with his hands pulled back. “Tosser,” he mutters.

“You should’ve paid more attention,” Lucius says, unimpressed. “Shouldn’t have let your guard down.”

“You told me you had everything handled,” Sirius growls. His flashing eyes find Cyrilla’s, who seems to be torn between vomiting and fainting. “Hex him,” he says and James recognises the dryness of his voice, the thinly-veiled contempt behind the words.

Cyrilla looks to James, who shakes his head at her imperceptibly.

Not yet, he mouths.

“Kill him, if you want,” Lucius drawls, mouth curving up at the glare Sirius shoots his way. It’s not hard to see parts of his old friend in that defiant look. “I don’t care much for him.”

“The Dark Lord does,” Rabastan says, biting the inside of his cheek. James can see his wand slowly dropping from Emmeline’s neck. He must be redoing his calculations.

James looks at Marlene, her disillusionment charm, like all the others’, long gone by now, who mouths a spell at him. He’s accustomed to the silent communication by now, understands it as he understands so very few things these days, so he nods and nudges Cyrilla, whispering to her, “Follow my lead.”

“Let her go,” Podmore says, voice low, as his blue eyes stare at Rabastan.

Rabastan flexes his fingers in Emmeline’s hair, eyes on Lucius. “He will be displeased—”

“Now!” Marlene shouts, a blue light already flying from her wand, Silas, James and Cyrilla’s following only moments later.

It’s impossible to tell which spell is whose but they all manage to do damage of some kind. They blow up the floor in front of the unmoving bodies, the door just behind Rabastan and one of them even manages to hit Malfoy’s hair before he can dodge fully, singeing a good part of it off.

James sees Rabastan let go of Emmeline, who stumbles forward, only half conscious, but Podmore, pushing Sirius away forcefully enough he falls down, catches her just before she hits the ground.

Podmore’s eyes catch James’s, wide and panicked, and James shouts over the sound of shooting spells.

“Go, go!”

Podmore doesn’t need further encouragement. Shooting one last spell at Malfoy, he whirls on the spot, Emmeline in his arms, and disappears.

He’s not the only one to do so. Rabastan must have decided he prefers his head intact and is gone with a crack and a swirl of dark robes, followed by Malfoy, who at least manages to get in a couple of good curses before he disapparates.

“Son of a banshee.” Sirius is lying on the floor, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. “Cowards,” he shouts toward the space where the other two Death Eaters previously were. “Bloody cowards!”

James raises his wand to stun him, but is forced to aim it at Greyback, when he launches himself at him. The spell hits, weak and poorly-aimed as it was, but Greyback seems to be affected only for a moment, then shakes it off and lands on James, knocking his glasses off his face.

They go tumbling back on the floor, Greyback snapping his teeth, sharper and longer than a human’s should be, as James tries to keep him at arm’s length. His yellow nails try to scrape at him, and James remembers how careful Remus has always been with them, taking care not to scratch—less often bite—them deep enough to draw blood for fear of infecting them with even a fraction of his curse.

“Petrificus Totalus!” he shouts and Greyback falls back, unmoving except for his sharp eyes trying to convey his hatred for James through sheer force of will.

James grapples for his glasses and shoves them back on just in time to see Silas disappear with two of the unconscious wizards, Marlene following just a few seconds later after she’s levitated Wilma Hughes and the third wizard close enough to be able to touch them both. Cyrilla is standing above Rosier, wand pointed at him as she starts murmuring an incantation. He can barely hear the start of the spell on her lips—

“No!” It’s Sirius who shouts, which stands to reason, since he’s the only one still able to, and careens right into Cyrilla a split second before she’s finished the spell. The thick ropes she conjured up fall just a few centimetres away from Rosier.

Sirius lands in front of Rosier, his knees making a sound impact on the creaking planks, and throws his hands out, hair a mess, eyes a storm as he looks up at Cyrilla. He’s wandless, his wand lying just in front of the door, where Podmore must have dropped it, but that doesn’t seem to stop him from saying in a low, dark voice, “You’ll have to go through me.”

“Stupefy!” James shouts, slashing his wand downward, but Sirius is just as fast.

“Protego!” he says, so forcefully James is knocked back by the mere throwback of his own spell.

James sees Cyrilla send another stunning spell towards Sirius but, just like James’s, it bounces off his shield and hits the wall next to the door James and Cyrilla came through.

He stands up and walks toward the two of them. He can see up close the blood trickling out the side of Sirius’s mouth and the ring of bruises on his collarbone, far too dark to have been dealt to him today. Then the thin scar right along his cheekbone, stark even against his fair skin, and James wonders if it was Walburga who dealt it to him, or someone else entirely.

Sirius keeps his eyes on Cyrilla’s wand, still pointed right at him, although he does glance at James when he stops beside her. The right sleeve of his robes is torn, revealing the long red gash down his forearm, his hair is a mess and he looks as pale as a sheet, but still, there’s nothing but defiance in his eyes when their gazes meet.

“Stand aside, Sirius,” James says, calmly levelling his wand at him.

Sirius is still a large wound on his heart, not quite open anymore, but festering still, full of anguish and rage and something James can’t put a name to, but it’s been long enough that he has dealt with it in the best way he could—which is to say, not at all—and is ready to do what it takes to not let this end the way all their other meetings in the past two years have ended.

“No.”

James gives him no further warning. This time, his spell is silent, only a quick slash of his wand through the air.

Still, Sirius is prepared. “Protego!” he shouts again and his shield reflects red as James’s spell hits it. Cyrilla’s follows only a second later, but it doesn’t do any damage either.

Sirius’s face pales by the second, mouth pressed tightly together, a crease between his brows as he concentrates on warding off the spells that they shoot at him. He deflects each one. It’s only been a minute when he says, “You’ll have to use an Unforgivable.”

James stills. Cyrilla, her face drained of colour, does too.

“You won’t get through this, not before Evan wakes up, or Greyback frees himself, or someone comes looking for us, with these amateur spells.” His eyes are dark, darker than James has ever seen them, malice written in the corners of his mouth when they turn up and James thinks, what happened to you, what happened, whathappened. “You’ll have to use an Unforgivable.”

James’s mouth is dry. His hand, the one holding his wand, lowers just a bit.

Sirius tilts his head. “Have you ever done that, James?” he asks, voice a low drawl, the one Peter used to call a part of his pureblood mask. Doesn’t seem like it was a mask, after all. “Used an Unforgivable on someone?” He chuckles, low in a way that sends shivers up James’s spine. “You have to really mean it, you know. To control, to torture,” he says, “to kill.”

“Shut up,” James says.

“James,” says Cyrilla.

James closes his eyes. He wishes Lily were here, he does, more than he has ever wished for anything. She’s the only one that can build back up what Sirius so carelessly tears down.

“Steady hand, James,” Sirius crows. “Make your parents proud.”

Bile rises in James’s throat, unbidden and bitter, clawing and tearing, and James hates him, he hates him with every bone in his body, with every beat of his heart, with every breath he takes, he hates him, he hates him, he hates him.

Except, he doesn’t. Not really.

But Sirius always has known how precisely to get to him.

“Shut up!” he roars, wand trembling as he points it back at him.

There was a time Sirius would flinch when people yelled at him all of a sudden. He would draw back and his eyes would shutter for a few seconds, dark and distant. Only minutes later, he would act as if nothing had happened. They learned with time to not yell, but to speak in even tones, even when they were furious with him. No one ever asked him why he flinched, but they could all guess. He never did manage to convince them entirely that his home life was only a few and far between arguments with his parents.

Sirius doesn’t flinch now, only looks at him. There is something in his eyes, something beyond the humour and offence that James recognises as a part of his dear friend, softer and perhaps almost human. “Go home, James,” he says and there is none of the previous mocking in his voice now. He sounds, above all, tired. “Your wife is waiting.”

“James, we can’t—”

Cyrilla is cut off when Sirius hits the floor with the flat of his palm and shouts, “Expulso!” which cracks the wooden planks and sends up splinters of them flying up in the air. Sirius shouts something else, sounding suspiciously close to a summoning charm, but James doesn’t have the time to dwell on it—the old barn seems to have taken one spell too many today, despite how weak the last one was, and it starts collapsing in on itself, the horrendous cracks along the wooden planks almost in sync with James’s frantic heartbeat.

He grabs Cyrilla’s hand and disappears on the spot just a second after he’s heard the crack of disapparition in front of him.

The sound of the roof hitting the ground follows him, echoing in his ears, even after his knees have landed on the carpeted floor of the Order Headquarters.

*********

I. March 1983

Dodging what James is sure is a horribly dark curse from who he is pretty sure is Mulciber, he is painfully aware that he’s losing the battle, not to mention the war has probably already been lost, too.

The spell hits the stone behind him, a large chunk of which explodes into dust, showering down on James and probably turning his hair a charming example of salt-and-pepper.

Well. At least it’s a lovely day to be meeting imminent death. The birds outside aren’t chirping—even they, he supposes, are not dumb enough to come near this, which, on the other hand, says a lot about him—but at least the sun is shinning and it’s unusually warm for this time of year, so, really, James has no complaints.

He wasn’t expecting to reach twenty-three, anyway.

He fires off a spell at Mulciber, who deflects it easily and retaliates quicker than James can even think of producing a shield charm. The curse that just grazes his neck, sending a sharp stab of pain up to his brain, is a stark reminder how out of practice he is. But people tend to get lazy when they’re forced into hiding for over two years.

“Bloody bastards,” Dorcas mutters beside him and really, it’s only thanks to her, Marlene, and Gideon that James still has not only all his limbs but also his head attached to his body. Her spell hits Amycus Carrow, his mask knocked off his face a few spells back, making blood gush out his nose in a torrent.

He presses his hand to staunch the bleeding but it’s only a matter of seconds before the blood seeps through his fingers.

James doesn’t have time to see what happens to him because Alecto Carrow jumps in her brother’s space, jumping not toward Dorcas but James and he’s forced to dodge once again when she sends a green light his way.

“Alecto!” Amycus growls, looking like something out of one of those horror films Lily so adores with the blood having surrounded his mouth and now running down his chin. “We’re not allowed to kill him! The Dark Lord wants him alive!”

“Shame,” Alecto says with a pout and sends a purple light James’s way.

Diverting it towards a particularly ugly tapestry on his right, he asks his companions, “Any ideas on how to get rid of these losers?”

Gideon inflicts a gash on Dolohov’s chest before he answers, “None. There’s too much of them.”

James copies his movement on Alecto, but she dodges, quick as a snake, snickering up until the point he shoots off a spell that has her stumbling several metres back. He wants to finish it off with a stunning spell but she dodges and here they go again.

Marlene’s wand is a blur as she swings it so quickly her opponent, Rodolphus Lestrange himself, is suspended mid-air and then forcibly thrown into the wall behind him. At least she is not out of practice, even if the blood gushing from her forehead down the side of her face tells a slightly different story.

“We need to distract them,” she says, pushing back her blood-matted hair while already taking on the once again able, if a bit unsteady on his own feet, Amycus Carrow.

How exactly that was to be executed remains a mystery to James because he feels, before he sees, the approach of cloaked and hooded figures drifting down the hallway, just a few centimetres off the ground. They turn towards them, as if beckoned, moving now quicker, quicker, quicker.

The cold that seeps into his bones, that sinks into his soul, is not an unfamiliar experience but it has been a long, long time since he last felt it. His lungs can’t take in air anymore, the breath in them frozen, and as he lifts his wand to say a spell, any spell, his arm seems to be made of lead, and all he can remember is his parents’ urns lowered into the ground, Sirius’s impassive face, the dark brand on his forearm, Peter’s screams as he begs and begs not to be taken, Lily’s tear-streaked cheeks as she sobs and heaves until there’s nothing left in her anymore.

He tries to push it away, to think of Lily walking down the aisle toward him, as radiant as the sun when she beams, red hair like a fiery crown.

“Expecto patronum,” he says. A wisp of silver-blue light streams out his wand, but it’s blown away before James can even take a breath. He’ll die, oh Merlin, he’ll die, or maybe something worse, and he’ll leave everyone he’s ever loved behind.

He failed. He failed Lily and Harry and—

Harry. Harry. He thinks of Harry, of his dark mess of hair, of his bright green eyes, everything he’s ever loved, cherished, adored. Harry, roaring with laughter as he zooms around on his broom, squishing the cat to his chest, shrieking with joy as he sits atop James’s shoulders. Harry, reaching up to him to be snuggled, grabbing up after puffs of smoke from James’s wand, curled tightly against Lily’s chest and dozing off.

“Expecto patronum.”

The light looks like something now, almost, almost, but someone laughs, low and cackling, and it’s gone, this thing that gave him reprieve, that reminded him he should fight.

Should he fight?

“Expecto patronum,” someone says—it might be Dorcas, or Marlene, although probably not Gideon—but their voice is just as weak as he feels and what might have been a bird disperses.

“Take them,” says a harsh voice.

The creature is in front of him, leaning his face up to its own, or to where it might have a face, and James’s fingers loosen around his wand. His mind is no longer trying to conjure up Lily or Harry or Remus. Instead, it’s Remus’s thin body with deep gouges down his back, his sides, his legs; it’s Lily’s motionless body, hair fanned out around her face as blood runs down her face; it’s Harry screaming and sobbing, green eyes full of tears; it’s all he has ever feared.

A bright form slams into the Dementor in front of him, sharp teeth digging into the creature’s neck and throwing it away from him with such force it knocks aside several of its companions.

James blinks, feeling the warmth it radiates even from so far away, and sees the Patronus clearly only for a moment before it bounces ahead and pulls the Dementors off Marlene, Dorcas, Gideon, throwing them aside as if they are nothing more than mist. It’s large and lean, four-legged, with a long snout and pricked ears, and a thick tail, and James thinks, Moony.

Marlene whoops, weak and barely-there, but it might be the best sound James has heard all day.

“What the—” starts Dolohov, but he’s blasted back against the wall right next to Lestrange, along with the Carrows and Mulciber. They’re levitating in the air, all five of them, only a moment later, and are viciously bounced up and down, from ceiling to floor—James thinks their impact on the stone is a sound he will not forget for a long, long time, because he can physically hear their bones fracturing—exactly three times before they land in a heap of limbs and groans right next to a griffin gargoyle.

“Dear me,” says a deep, muffled voice as a new figure strolls into the hallway, his wand raised in front of him. He’s dressed in dark robes, tailored to his tall, lean form exactly, his hood drawn up just enough to reveal a sliver of night-dark hair. The Patronus, having successfully driven away all dementors, bounds toward him, wrapping around his knees and revealing his teeth in a canine smile that James hasn’t seen in many, many years, however familiar it is. Its blue-silver light illuminates the newcomer’s face—or rather, his mask, but James recognises the constellations, the moon engraved into that mask, too. “I didn’t mean to be quite so gentle with them.” He flicks his wand and the gargoyle tumbles over the limp Death Eaters with a high-pitched whoop.

None of them so much as groan.

“I’ve wanted to do that for ages,” Sirius says and pulls off his mask, his grin a sharp glint of teeth. Padfoot at his feet disperses as he takes a step forward, depositing his wand back into his holster, and offers James a hand. “Come on, Jamie, up and at ‘em.”

James looks at the hand in front of him, palm up, long fingers slightly crooked, and thinks back to the last time Sirius offered him a hand. It’s been years, years since that fateful night James’s world came crashing down around him and a part of him thinks that he shouldn’t take it now either. Not just because Sirius helped them now, once. It could all be a trick.

But it hasn’t been the only time Sirius has helped them, has it?

So James meets Sirius’s eyes and takes his hand. He lets him pull him up and into his arms, his own coming up to fist in the back of Sirius’s robes, as dark and elegant as ever. He smells faintly of dust and smoke, but underneath it there’s menthol and wet dog and somehow, despite all the years, all the hate, despite everything, really, that still makes him feel like he’s finally, finally home.

“I didn’t doubt you for a second,” he says into Sirius’s shoulder.

Sirius’s snort of laughter is familiar and alien at once, sharp and bark-like, but more subdued, too, as if he isn’t quite used to it anymore; that’s alright. James can reintroduce him again. He’s done it before. Sirius's fingers on the nape of his neck tighten. “I sure hope you did.”