Work Text:
I drank the dregs of the champagne alone
Warm, flat, coppery coins down my throat
I'm saving up for a rainy day
And I plan to spend it in one place
Lily stands in the doorway. Harry is cradled against her chest, and her hand on his back rises and falls with each breath that he takes. He’s six months old today, she thinks. There’s a solidity to him nowadays that wasn’t there before; when he was first born and in those early, new months, he was like a little bird. Fragile, cooing, delicate little thing. Now there’s fat on his thighs and his chubby little cheeks, and he looks at her with more curiosity and determination than fear in his emerald green eyes.
They’re at Remus’ cottage, and the dark Derbyshire countryside beyond the windows is putting the hairs up on the back of Lily’s neck. She doesn’t understand how Remus can live out here. It feels so exposed, out here on this moorland with nothing but the moon and the wind for company. Perhaps that’s why Remus likes it, she muses. When the boys can’t join him for the full moon, at least he knows there’s no one else around. He chooses loneliness for all the other days of the month in exchange for security on one.
It feels bizarre to be celebrating. What is there for them to celebrate when the war is all but lost? They’re hanging on by a thread, this scrawny, emaciated remains of an Order. There’d been more of them at the start. So many more. And yet, here they are, the tenacious remnants of the organisation, pouring champagne into flutes and clinking the glass together, and heralding in another year. 1981. Lily wonders what the year will hold. She hopes it will be better than the last. She’s always hopeful.
I threw the party so I could stay put
You brought the bottle like a promise I forgot
A new year begins, it ushers us in
The knot in my gut is coming with
Remus doesn’t really want to be here. It’s his own house, for God’s sake, and it’s full of these people that he loves more than life itself. Lily and James have brought Harry; Sirius is here, and Peter, too. The Prewetts and Marlene, Dorcas and Benjy Fenwick. Caradoc said he’d make an appearance later, if he can. They’re all here, and they’re alive: bodies still moving and breathing, hearts still beating, hands still warm around glasses of increasingly-flat champagne.
Why, then, is there a knot in Remus’ stomach? Why does he feel the need to run, and run, and run, until the earth runs out beneath his feet and there’s nothing, nothing at all? He can barely stand it. It feels like the darkness just beyond the walls of the house is pressing in. He hates this place, this cottage, this life. That’s why he’s going. He’s not told the others yet that Dumbledore wants him to go north, to slip away into the forests in the Highlands and make a life among the very worst of his kind. Your kind. Those were the words that Dumbledore had used, two silver knife wounds to the heart.
James, Sirius, and Peter have always insisted that Remus not call other werewolves his kind. It’s why they called it his furry little problem when they were at school. James looks at him with his long-lashed gaze and tells him earnestly that one night a month doesn’t define him, that he is always more man than beast. Remus thinks it’s easy for him to say that when James chooses to be the stag. It’s not the same.
Remus thinks that Sirius knows. He doesn’t understand how he knows about the mission with the werewolves, but Remus thinks he does. Sirius has always had a knack at reading him. It’s infuriating, at times—but Sirius can smell secrets like scents in the air. He’s always taken to his animagus form more than the others. Remus has come to despise it about Sirius, like he’s come to despise so many other things about the best friend he’s in love with. They’re always at odds with each other nowadays, always looking for a loose thread to pull on and watch the other unravel.
It’s part of the reason Remus needs to leave. He needs to be able to step away from this suffocating cottage, and from the man who will take Remus to bed, but will never love him. He doesn’t begrudge Sirius for not loving him—Remus thinks bitterly, who could? But, he needs to get away to let his heart harden a little in order to be able to heal. The other werewolves will be good for that, if nothing else.
He'll blame the alcohol
And you'll blame the full moon
She'll blame the fall of man
And I’ll blame the part of you
That can't let up on the reigns
You've got life in a chokehold
You say that it's all the same
All glittering fool's gold
The record comes to an end and Sirius stands. It’s not his house—he should let Remus do this, but he’s closer to the record player. That, and he wants something to do with his hands. As he turns the record over, Sirius wonders about how they’ll see this night in twenty, thirty, forty years time: what will they all say when they talk about it? Will they be telling Harry, and however many other children James and Lily go on to have, about how they drank champagne as the minutes slipped towards midnight? Will any of them be whole enough to remember this, or even alive at all?
Sirius turns back from the record player as the static fills the air for a second, and then the dulcet tones of the Violet Thestrals begin again. He casts his eyes around the room, and they fall, as they often do, on Remus’ mussed, scruffy hair and his thoughtful face. He’s listening to Gideon Prewett explain something, but Sirius can tell he isn’t really listening. Remus has been lying about something. Sirius doesn’t know what the hell it is, but he can tell: he can always tell when Remus is lying. James, at least, doesn’t both trying to hide things; he’s got a face like an open book, especially to Sirius. And Peter—well, Sirius thinks, he’s not sure Peter would know what to do with a secret, if he ever had one of his own. But Remus… Remus thinks he’s good at lying, even though he’s not. It makes Sirius want to force his fists through the windowpanes, wrench the paintings off the walls, smash all the glasses that surround them. He doesn’t see the point of it: why should they bother with the game they play, the pretence, where Remus lies and thinks he gets away with it, and Sirius lets him. He lets Remus think he’s got the upper hand for a while.
Then, there is the explosion. It’s always Sirius who starts it: he makes a sneering, well-formed comment about Remus because he can’t help but make it personal. It’s what he’s known his whole life, that words are as capable of cutting to the bone as a well-aimed curse. He and Remus will exchange barbs, will spit words at one another like they can taste the anger and frustration on their tongues, metallic like blood. There’s hate sex, too. More of it, nowadays, because there’s more fighting than ever before.
Sirius has always been open about the fact that he won’t commit to a relationship, not at the moment. He’s not sure if that’s something Remus is in agreement with, or simply ignoring, but it’s the truth. Maybe one day, when things are different—when there’s no war on, for Merlin’s sake—but not now. Sirius thinks it’s too dangerous to give the Death Eaters even more ways of getting to them. If they were madly in love with each other like James and Lily, perhaps it would be different.
But, that’s the point: it’s not love. Sirius knows what love is; or, at least he thinks he does. Love is the way James looks at Lily, some steady eternity in his gaze. Love is the way Lily stares back, a hint of defiance in the curve of her smile, as though taunting the world and everyone in it to try it, to try and take her James from her. Love is the way the two of them look at Harry; it’s the way Dorcas’ hand seems to knot perfectly with Benjy’s.
No, that’s not what Sirius and Remus are. He sighs, and reaches for a glass of champagne that’s floating in the air beside him, dragging his eyes away from Remus’ face. It’s not love. It never will be.
I can't tell how big my heart is
Let's open the doors, see how many fit
Like drunks in a bathtub keep piling in
Now I'm locking the door till the morning
Marlene knows there’s something wrong; she can feel it in her gut, the kind of instinctive sensation carried over from the mission she’s just left behind. She killed two men yesterday. She only knows one of them—Mulciber, father of a boy she went to school with. She got close enough to watch the light leave his eyes when she shot her killing curse at him. She can almost taste the evil in what she’s done, and Marlene feels like she understands now why these curses are called Unforgivable.
Something feels off in this little sitting room. They’re squashed in together, knees knocking against one another, even with the extension charms that Remus has put on the sofas. Sirius has supplied the champagne, and the bottles are floating round the room, clinking against any empty glasses they happen to come across. The others seem to be having a good time, at least: Dorcas and Benjy are crying with laughter over some shared joke that no one else understands. They’ve been together for, what? Six months? They can barely keep their eyes off one another: Dorcas leans into him, murmuring something with her full lips and flashing smile, and dimples appear on Benjy’s cheeks as he returns the grin, and absently touches the kippah nestled in his dark-blond curls. Marlene is envious of that ostentatious joy.
Similarly, how does Lily keep smiling, Marlene wonders. A flame of hope seems to burn in Lily that—even when it is dim and struggling—never goes out. She and James have brought a baby into this world; above anything else, that’s a hopeful act. That’s an act of people who aren’t giving up. Then again, neither of them have ever killed someone—James won’t do it, holds it as the moral principle that he will not renege upon, and Lily’s never been in a position to. Marlene suspects that Lily would, though. If something threatened Harry or James, Marlene thinks that Lily would rend the world and anyone in it.
Marlene likes to think she would do that for Gideon. No one else knows about them. It’s a precious secret that just the two of them share. They were on the same mission together a month previously, and after barely getting out of it alive, they’d fallen into one another’s arms in a secluded dell. They’ve barely spent a day apart since. Marlene feels heat in her belly at the thought of all that Gideon is and all that he does, tucked away under the eaves in her pokey little flat. She wants him constantly.
Gideon looks up, then, from where he’s been telling Remus some story. His amber eyes meet hers, and the corners of his mouth quirk up in a cautious, secretive little smile. God, she wants to rush over there and press her lips against his, run her fingers through the auburn stubble on his strong jaw. He’d asked her that morning if she wanted him to shave; they were lying in bed together, and Gideon had brushed the sharp edge of his jaw against the delicate skin at Marlene’s collarbone, leaving behind pinprick marks. Marlene had shaken her head. She likes the scratch of his beard against her skin, the way his shoulders click as he stretches in the bed beside her, the way he croaks out a request for coffee by way of a good morning. The small, imperfect things remind her that it’s real.
Instinctively now, as she looks at Gideon across the room, Marlene lifts her hand. She rests her fingertips on her collarbone, her palm just above her heart. It beats stronger now than it ever has, she thinks, now that she has him. It is bizarre to find love, and to find it so strongly and in such a life-giving way, when Marlene is surrounded by so much war and so much death, but she wouldn’t change it. She wouldn’t change a thing.
He'll blame the alcohol
And you'll blame the full moon
She'll blame the fall of man
And I’ll blame the evening news
For giving us doomsday
And dropping the ball
Building our fear
Like bricks in a wall
Peter thinks he wants to die. He’s wanted to die for months now, if he’s honest. Ever since the night when he was cornered on his way home from Diagon Alley one night by three men, dressed in dark cloaks. He can still vividly remember the smell of Ogden’s Firewhisky on their breaths, and feel the way they’d grabbed his upper arm before they disapparated, grips like a vice. Peter can still smell the acrid scent of bile from where he’d vomited on his own shoes after they used the Cruciatus curse, too.
The Dark Lord called him Peter the Halfblood at first. Then—somehow, he doesn’t know how—he started using Wormtail. The name makes Peter’s stomach clench, great bands of pain constricting around his torso. It’s the name his friends gave him, and he doesn’t feel worthy of it anymore. He’s not brave like James or Sirius or Remus. He doesn’t have that instinct within him to always seek out the highest path, to pursue justice doggedly and fiercely. Lily, she’s brave too. Peter finds himself unable to look her in the eye these days. The thought of her finding out who he is, what he is, makes him sick to his stomach.
And Harry—God! Sometimes James puts the baby in Peter’s arms and the whole world seems to stop, just for a moment, just for an intake of breath. Then, it starts to spin again, and Peter remembers that he’s made a decision. It’s not a decision he likes, but it’s a decision nonetheless. Whenever he catches himself with that feeling of desperation for death, Peter has to consciously remind himself that he couldn’t have made any other choice, could he? It was either work as a double agent for Voldemort, or die. Maybe Peter doesn’t want to die, not really.
If he has to die, though, Peter hopes it’ll be Sirius who does it. At the rate the war is going, he’ll either have to be killed by friend, or by foe. He hopes it’ll be Sirius who will be staring down the length of his wand before shooting a wordless, casual killing curse. James could never do it; it’d kill him, too, because he’s wedded to a set of principles that don’t really make any sense to Peter. It’s not that Peter doesn’t respect James’ approach, but it seems so futile to be committed to a set of absolutes when you’re in the middle of a war.
And Remus… Peter’s not sure that Remus would want to bother with a killing curse. For all his good qualities—and there are many—Remus is someone who knows the value in a long, slow revenge. Where Sirius feels the urge to act immediately, to be decisive, to forget listening to both sides of the argument when there’s a chance to make an instant change, Remus knows how to bide his time.
The thought of whatever wretched, drawn-out torture Remus would concoct sends a cold shiver down Peter’s spine. Whatever happens, Peter can’t let it be him and Remus as the only ones left. He reaches a shaky hand for his drink and thinks he’d take almost anything and anyone else over Remus.
He'll blame his mum and dad
And you'll say you understand
She'll blame the wrath of God
And I come up empty-handed
Every time he cries out
James glances over at his wife. She’s quiet tonight, carrying Harry close to her chest, and not letting anyone else hold him. She gets like this, sometimes, when she is especially down about the war. James doesn’t really understand the ebbs and flows of these dark periods that Lily goes through, and he worries about her, but he tries to remember that they’re temporary. She won’t be sad forever, he reminds himself. He’ll see her smile again.
There’d been no Christmas card from Petunia this year. James knows that hurts Lily more than she cares to admit—she wants her sister in her life, wants to rest in the security of a strong sibling relationship. It’s been a greater desire ever since James’ parents died, and then Harry was born. Lily wants their son to have a connection to his extended family; she thinks Harry needs to know people who are not living on a knife-edge all the time like his parents are.
Petunia has a son, too. Dudley, he’s called. He was born a little over a month before Harry was, and Petunia sent Lily a brief, terse card with a photograph of the baby, who was a large, pink-faced thing. It was a Muggle photograph, of course, and Lily couldn’t bear to look at it, but James did—the thing fascinated him. He finds the fact that they don’t move a little disconcerting; they’re like death masks, he thinks. The photograph had made James even more grateful for the sweet, cheerful baby that he and Lily have been blessed with.
Looking away from Lily, James glances round the room. It’s a nice group of them tonight. None of them look exactly like what he’d call relaxed, but they seem to be having a good time. As he watches them, James catches sight of something unexpected: a look between Gideon and Marlene that surprises him. It’s something private, clearly, and he almost feels like he’s intruding. There’s desire—lust—written into the gaze, and maybe even something like love. James suppressed a grin. Huh. So that’s why Marlene’s been in a better mood, he thinks.
James has known Marlene his whole life. He knew her before Hogwarts, growing up near to one another, their parents being friends. He’s reflected a number of times that if there’d been no Lily, it probably would have been Marlene that he fell in love with. James knows himself well enough to recognise that he needs someone to love. He overflows with energy, and magic, and the best way of channelling that is into love. There are worse ways to be.
But James suspects it’s someone else who loves Marlene the way that he loves Lily. He’s never asked Sirius about it, of course, and particularly not now that Remus and Sirius have… well, whatever it is they have going on. The suspicion is there, though. James wants to reach out to Sirius and tell him that he understands; he knows what it’s like to have given your heart over to someone else, entirely and completely. James knows because that’s what happened when he met Lily. It wasn’t the first encounter between the two of them—that had been a disaster—nor the second, but slowly, like the petals of a flower opening over time, James had come to the realisation that to love Lily Evans was his sole purpose. The world only makes sense by loving Lily.
The time is ticking on towards midnight. James is glad that 1980 is coming to an end—wretched, horrid, awful 1980. He misses his parents more than anything, as the anniversary of their deaths is approaching. Sometimes he catches himself picking up his quill and parchment to jot off a note to his mother to ask what on earth to do with a baby who hasn’t stopped crying for three days, only to remember that she’s not there. It seems such an injustice that Fleamont and Euphemia missed their first grandson by a matter of months.
Still, James thinks, blinking away tears, their spirit lives on. The Potters were love personified, and where there is love, he thinks, he’ll find them there.
He'll blame the altitude
She'll blame society
But I blame the part of you
That can't let up on the reigns
You've got life in a chokehold
You say that it's all the same
All glittering fool's gold
“Darling!”
Lily looks up. James is beckoning her over, a smile on his face. She realises that they’re getting close to the new year, the moment where they will leave 1980 behind. She’s glad of that. It’s been a long, hard year; James lost his parents in January, and the war has only got worse. Lily knows the reason that there are lines at the corners of James’ eyes now is because he carries his grief on his person like a physical object. Grief has aged him beyond his twenty years.
The group jostles together in a circle. Lily tries to commit them all to memory as they count down to midnight; each face, each person. Rather like James, they all look older than they are; the glimmer in their eyes nowadays is full of worldly wisdom rather than naive hopefulness. Yet, they are here, and they are alive, and they are still hopeful that this war can be won. Remus is stoic, a tiredness in his smile, staring over at Sirius with something that Lily thinks is both love and hate all at once. Peter, too, looks exhausted, resentful. Benjy and Dorcas are next to each other, grasping hands in preparation for singing Auld Lang Syne, love-drunk and smitten.
Then Fabian, cracking a joke, and Gideon next to Marlene, the two of them closer than seems necessary, even in this small space. That piques Lily’s curiosity, and she makes a note to ask Marlene whether her friendship with Gideon Prewett might be something more. Beside Marlene is Sirius, who is looking at the pair out the corner of his eye as though he has also noticed something crackling in the air between them. With a jolt in her stomach, Lily realises that behind the mask-like smile plastered on Sirius’ face, there’s some deep pain and deep yearning.
And then, beside his best friend, is James—her darling, wonderful James. He’s leading them all in the countdown to midnight, his voice carrying over their heads. James towers above them. He is strong, steady, built like an old oak tree. Just for a moment, Lily feels a bloom of desire in her chest as she looks at her husband, glasses flashing and his hair wild, remembers that they’ll go home together tonight. They’ll lay Harry down to sleep in the nursery and then James will make his way up the bed to where Lily is lain. He’ll plant kisses along her neck, her décolletage, as she runs her hands in his hair and gasps. Then, they will christen the new year in their own way.
“Happy New Year!” James says, with a great, beaming grin.
When he smiles like that, Lily thinks she falls in love with him all over again. That said, Lily also thinks she falls in love with him when the baby won’t sleep and James walks around in his boxers and his socks, Harry perched over one shoulder. She falls in love with him when he brings her morning coffee. Lily falls in love with James when they argue, and when they make love, and when he washes the dishes while she dries. She falls in love with him again, and again, and again, because theirs is the kind of love that’s eternal, and you can take your time discovering all the multitudes of love when you have eternity together.
Lily raises her glass. What an astonishingly beautiful life they have made.