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It happens this way: Sirius is friends with James first, and Lily is friends with Severus. Everything else unfolds from there.
Until then – before the train and the Chocolate Frog Incident and the pillow-fight that first night in the tower and everything that came afterwards, before all that – Sirius was alone. His world was bounded by the walls of his mother's house, grey walls and locked doors and empty rooms. There were dozens of empty rooms in that house, but somehow there was never room enough for him – nothing but edges and corners, the shadows of a noisy house where no one ever spoke.
Here is a story his mother likes to tell: Sirius was born silent. She likes to say that the thirty-second pause (the flurry of the healers, her own panting breaths) was the last moment of peace she ever had. Sirius imagines that the silence stretched out under the healer's gentle hands, that the screaming began the moment he opened his eyes and met his mother's expectant gaze. (He has been screaming, silently, ever since.)
Years later Sirius tells the story of his life to a young boy with a scar on his forehead; he starts with the beginning, tells him, this is how I met your father. The time before that he doesn't count as time, the hours lost behind hollow walls, indistinguishable from seconds, days. He allows them to blend, pushes them away like dim memories from a forgotten life – the years he did not live, the names (brother, cousin, son) which were never his to start with.
He never wanted those names, anyway.
Once, his uncle came from far away (which was Leeds, which was outside, which was Elsewhere), and for a few days Sirius was nephew. Uncle Alphard smiled at him, spoke of inconsequential things like pudding and salamanders and stars. "You were named after a star," he told Sirius, who hadn't known.
Sirius thought that, just maybe, nephew was a name he wanted to keep. He told Uncle Alphard that he hoped he would stay forever. Uncle Alphard frowned, and said things about "work" and "your mother" and "the Committee for Domestic Apparation", and then he went away for five years.
The night his uncle left, Sirius looked up at the dark sky, at the stars shining bright and fierce and so, so far away, and he thought yes, I am like that.
Then came Hogwarts, which was Away, which was a thousand firsts and most of all James.
If Sirius had met Lily first, maybe the whole story would have been different. (Maybe it would have been the same.)
This is how he misses Lily and meets James:
That first day there are two dangerous boys on the platform with black hair and shaded eyes and mouths full of curses. Their mothers meet, smile. "Sirius, Severus, you two run along now."
On the train he moves away from Severus, because everything about today speaks of new beginnings, and Severus is old old old, the pale reflection of everything Sirius has ever been or known. He walks away, eager to start over, and so – quite by accident – he watches from a distance as a girl tumbles her way into the compartment in a tangle of long limbs, eager and awkward and unlike anyone he's ever seen. She is bright with possibility, she is the promise of a new life (she is the first thing he ever loves). She is gawky and freckled and smiling, smiling, smiling for Severus.
No one ever smiles for Sirius.
She does not see him standing there. She walks away, Severus's hand in her own; Sirius is left nameless and alone.
Then he meets James. (This is where his life begins.)
James explodes into the train, trailing bags and boxes and last minute gifts from the family that is standing on the platform to see him off. James has an entire trunk full of chocolates that he doesn't mind sharing. James has been to Siberia, Norway, South America. James has bright eyes and a split-second smile, and he likes Sirius best of anyone at Hogwarts – he tells him so on the second day.
Sirius has never had a best friend before (he never will again), but it is the first name he ever keeps. (He will keep it forever, even in the cold and the dark when the fear has stripped all the other names away.)
James is the second thing he loves. From that moment on his days are caught up in James James James, because Sirius has never learned to give his heart to more than one person at a time.
He thinks he could be happy, maybe.
He meets Lily properly two weeks later. It happens like this: where James goes, Sirius goes, and when James decides to reform that girl who is friends with the Slytherin, Sirius follows. James explains the historic Gryffindor-Slytherin rivalry with flailing gestures, in turns earnest and eager and oblivious. Lily throws her head back and laughs in his face, open and honest and uncaring. Watching, Sirius sees Lily's bright hair and James' dark eyes, and they are so alike that it makes him ache to watch them together, both so quick and bright and beautiful.
This is the beginning of their war, this is the beginning of their love, this is when everything starts to end.
They fall together so inevitably that Sirius almost doesn't notice, the three of them caught in a strange sort of friendship, James and Lily constantly fighting with Sirius caught happily in the middle.
Third year James won't stand anywhere near Lily, because she's taller than him and it rankles. Sirius points out that everyone is taller than him, even Peter, and James says, "Well, she's particularly tall," which is sort of true. He makes a point of avoiding her, until she follows him around asking what she's done to result in complete castigation. Then James grins in satisfaction, and Lily raises her wand and chases him, and Sirius laughs and eggs them both on in turns.
Fourth year James has a growth spurt. He is finally taller than Lily, and he crows about it for two weeks before she finally tells him to get stuffed, Potter, and hexes his ears green. Sirius teases him about it for days, just to watch James glower, and when James finally breaks the hex, he helps him retaliate.
Fifth year, of course, James realizes what Sirius has always known, that the past four years have been about Lily Lily Lily, and he sets out to fall in love properly.
Here is the story James tells at his wedding: It was fifth year, late September but still summer, so hot that they spent their days fanning themselves by the lake and there was absolutely no point to even attempting homework (or so they tried to tell the professors). James, in a fit of inspired stupidity (as Remus labeled it, years later), stole Lily's Herbology notes. She chased him, half-angry half-amused, and pushed him into the lake before diving in herself in a desperate attempt to save her notes. (She didn't – they were spectacularly ruined. Lily was spectacularly angry.) That was the day James fell (rather spectacularly) into love.
It was one out of a hundred lazy not-quite-summer days, but even at the time Sirius, watching, perceived it with a certain degree of inevitability – Lily flushed and freckled, James laughing and triumphant, how they landed in the water, James's surprised splash and Lily's neat dive. He remembers the day in details – ink blurred on parchment, Lily's mouth twitching despite itself while the water dripped slowly from their soggy robes – and every detail seemed like a promise of what was to come.
Sirius knew, then, or maybe he had always known.
The past five years had been perfect, scraped knees and bruised dignities and all – five years spent arguing and hexing and stuffing each other into broom closets and having the times of their lives. Sirius would have given anything to keep it that way forever, but in the middle of this September afternoon, James, pushing his sopping hair out of his eyes, looked at Lily and discovered he wanted something more.
James declared his undying love later that evening, first to Sirius, and then to Remus and Peter, and then to the common room at large, and then, finally, to Lily (this last was judged by all and sundry to be a mistake). Remus raised an eyebrow. Peter laughed so hard he fell off the couch. The common room at large stared and then returned to their work. Lily hit him with an itching hex that took two days to wear off.
And things went almost back to normal.
This is what changes: sometimes, when James talks Lily Lily Lily (which grows more and more often as the years pass by), Sirius listens, breathing hot and cold and hopeless. James babbles on, animated and oblivious; looking at him, Sirius hates him and loves him and wonders how anything can ever be right again. He leaves, invariably, because he can love James and he can love Lily, but sometimes the whole thing makes his head hurt, and he leaves James to his babbling and gesturing, flees to the Astronomy Tower, or the lake, or Hogsmeade.
It is on one such day that he kisses Lily; later, he finds he cannot remember when it was, only that it was winter, and that James had been reading up on Muggle poets, and that Lily was wearing a red scarf.
This is how it happens: the autumn air is brisk, and he is thinking about James, and suddenly Lily is there, rubbing her arms and half laughing as gales of wind buffet them back and forth along the lake's edge.
They meet quite by accident. She is cold, and he is tired, and maybe she just leans in for the warmth, maybe he just wants a comforting touch. Soft words like sighs spill across his neck; he shivers. On her mouth he tastes the remnants of the afternoon's dessert, her lips spicy with cinnamon and pumpkin, and he breathes into them; her body is soft and mysterious and sweet against his own.
He loves her, then, and he pulls away, because this kiss (the sweet tang of her mouth and her gentle hands on his back) is both too much and too little. Because Lily is, maybe, everything he has ever wanted, but not like this, not with James alone in the castle, not with a kiss sealing the two of them together. He can feel how it might be – Sirius and Lily wrapped up together, no room for anyone else, only James flickering around the edges.
Sirius spent all his life being nothing – not brother not cousin not son – until James came and made him friend; that is all he wants, all he has ever needed. His hands slip away from Lily's shoulders and she watches him with fragile eyes as he whispers apologies into her ear and walks away.
Back in the dormitory James is hanging upside down over the edge of his bed, reciting bad love poetry. When Sirius enters, James gives him a mournful look and clutches his heart before falling dramatically off the bed. Sirius looks at him, splayed out on the floor, tangled limbs and glasses askew, and even though his lips still taste like pumpkin, even though the pang of walking away from Lily still lingers in his chest, he grins.
(In another world Lily is his best friend; they walk by the lake and have deep conversations about life and poetry and Quidditch. In another world he is happy.)
He is happy here, too.
As Sirius passes, James reaches out a foot and trips him, affectionately. Sirius lands in a heap on top of his friend, and they roll around on the floor for a few minutes, until Remus comes in, all exasperated and amused, and teases them that he's worried their animal forms are rubbing off. Sirius lies still. There's a rapidly forming bruise on his chin, where James clipped him with a flailing arm, and James' hair is tickling his nose; he can feel James' panting breaths rise and fall against his chest, while Remus stands and stares down at them.
Perhaps everything could be summed up like this: he kissed Lily and he tackled James, and what he meant for both of them was, I would do anything for you.
This is better, maybe, to have both of them a little. Perhaps he's never really wanted them any other way, only to catch them like this forever, together, messy hair and freckles, bickering and quarrels and all.
He has them together, right now, and it makes his heart leap and his chest ache. They position themselves around him, use him as a barrier in their protracted conflict. He lounges on the couch, with Lily on one side and James on the other, their sharp words and quick retorts sailing over him. He throws an occasional sarcastic comment into the air, but mostly he enjoys the feeling of being surrounded. Lily grazes his nose with her arm as she lobs a pillow at James, James accidentally elbows him in the ribs as he throws it back, and all Sirius wants is for this to go on forever.
It ends in the final week of their schooling, like this:
NEWTs are over, and in five days the seventh years will leave Hogwarts to head out towards jobs and families and war. Some of them are scared and some of them are sad, some of them never want to come back (and some of them never will), but for now they are enjoying their final days of childhood, the summer heat browning their backs and warming their smiles. (If they know what lies around the corner, it only makes them laugh louder in these, their last days.)
On the edge of the lake there is a patch of mud, three meters long and almost a meter deep, left over from Tiberius Biggle's Aquafication project gone horribly wrong. Someone (quite probably James, but possibly Tiberius himself) saw the potential of the situation, and levitated a long, narrow pole to hover several feet above the mud. As the younger students finish their exams, some of the seventh years spend the morning attempting to balance their way across to dive into the clear water at the far side. James is the only one to make it across successfully; he's cockily proud, and conspicuously mud-free.
Basking, as always, in the admiration of the others, James can't stop showing off; Sirius wipes mud off of his face and sits back to enjoy the spectacle, watching him walk casually over the wooden beam, feet bare and confident. James is halfway across for the fourth time when Lily shows up; she looks hot and amused and more relaxed than Sirius has seen her in weeks, months (ever since the first set of raids). Sirius takes his eyes off James' endeavor to wave at her. Unfortunately, so does James.
"There's no balance like Potter balance," James has said many a time, but he looks back and sees Lily watching, and suddenly his arms are flailing wildly as he tips over the side, his surprised face still half-cocky as he falls.
Sitting on the bank, Lily laughs. She laughs and laughs, and when James climbs shamefully out of the mud hole, she laughs even more.
"I didn't fall because of you," protests James. "Really, really, I didn't." He tries to wipe the mud out of his eyes, but his hands are filthy, and he only succeeds in smearing it.
Lily does not attempt to hide her smile. "Did you fall because of me?"
"Most definitely," admits James, who has never, ever learned to lie to Lily.
Sirius doesn't know quite how it happens (though it has been seven years in the happening), but suddenly Lily moves and James moves and then they are pressed together, bodies close, and James' hands are getting mud all over the back of Lily's neck. She doesn't seem to care.
Of all the things that happen in that final week, the triumphs and the games and the final goodbyes, what Sirius remembers most are the streaks of mud in Lily's hair, and how James' surprised eyes close, slow and content.
After that the war starts in earnest. They aren't students anymore, but even as members of the Order of the Phoenix, they can't fight all the time – there are still moments of peace, entire days of normality, and some things (sleeping and baking and how none of them ever have any clean socks) go on the same as they've always been. There are parties at Sirius' flat, and Remus and Lily schedule weekly Scrabble tournaments, and James starts a communal laundry drive, and sometimes it seems almost the way it used to be, just the three of them, James and Lily with Sirius on the side, and he is happy, still.
James has a flat of his own, now, even if he's never there, and it has a postage-stamp-sized garden out back, barely big enough for the three of them to lie on the dry, spiky, end-of-summer grass. Yesterday the Death Eaters raided Diagon Alley, and tomorrow is the day the Prewett brothers will die, but tonight is warm and the stars are bright in the sky above. The days are short, and they are all three young, and the stars feel eternal, unshakeable.
James points out Roderick, the Hungry Rhino, and Lily asks how long it took him to figure out that the constellations his cousins taught him were completely wrong; Sirius says that he kept a copy of James' first ever Astronomy exam, if she wants to see it.
He can feel their bodies shaking with laughter next to him. The night seems almost like a dream.
Lily waves her arm, pointing out a Muggle constellation. James reaches up his own hand to follow hers, and Sirius watches their fingers intertwine, dark against the sky. He throws his own arms out, heroic and alone under the stars. "How epic," he says, feeling extravagant.
"Cassiopeia?" asks Lily.
"Me and Lily?" suggests James, at the same time.
"Neither," says Sirius, and then, "Both."
"We're epic like the stars," James says, and his grin is audible. "That's us, Lily, me and you. Someday, the Astronomy Professors are going to be pointing us out to first years. Potteropeia, they'll say." James puts on a deep, officious voice. "They used to be Hogwarts students, they did. That James Potter, brightest boy we've had in a good few generations."
"Oh, come off it," Lily laughs.
"Stop hitting me," says James. "I wasn't finished yet, but if you don't want to hear what they'll say about you, fine with me."
"What they're going to say," says Sirius, "is, my, what a big head that James Potter had. And also, how on earth do you spell Potteropeia?"
"It's spelled exactly as it sounds," answers James, annoyed to be broken from his stride.
"What they're going to say," interrupts Lily, "is, you see that constellation up there? That's James, the Eternally Unsatisfied Stag. And they'll shake their heads sympathetically, and warn their students about the dangers of a swollen ego."
"Oh, you know you love me and my swollen ego," says James, contentedly. Then, "Ow, stop it!"
What follows is a pinching war, but Sirius lies still despite the squirming bodies next to him. Last year, last week, he would have joined them and gotten in a few good pinches of his own, but now he feels strangely quiet, almost solemn. The night seems fragile, fleeting and quick, and it hurts him to think that it will not go on forever like this, James and Lily and Sirius lying in the grass and looking at the sky, bodies pressed close and warm and together.
Perhaps the same thought lingers in the air, because the fight dies down much more quickly than usual, until at last all three of them lie still again. "How beautiful," says Lily at last, and next to her James nods. They are, both of them, looking at the stars.
"How beautiful," Sirius agrees. He means Lily and James (he means all the things he loves but can never have), and when he looks up towards the stars, all he can see are the empty spaces in between.
It is late, now. The stars begin to fade. They lie in the garden until morning, and wake to Remus standing over them, face worn and grey, to tell them that the Prewett brothers are dead.
James sits pale and still for hours when he hears, and that day a line starts to appear on Lily's face, a worried crease right between her brows. Sirius watches them, and wonders when they all grew up, how it happened that they have become soldiers. He sees the way Lily's mouth tightens whenever James is gone too long, how James paces when Lily is on a mission, feels his own shoulders relax whenever either of them returns (another day, just one more day, safe).
"I'm going to marry her," James says frantically one day, pacing back and forth across the tiny kitchen. (Lily is two hours late, and Sirius is beginning to feel sick.) "I'm going to take her somewhere tomorrow. The Astronomy tower, maybe, or that little restaurant in Diagon Alley where we had those exploding crepes. I'm going to ask her to marry me." He turns sharply, and on his face Sirius can see love and desperation and promises, and how very, very afraid he is. "We'll have cherry ice cream, I think. Lily loves cherry ice cream. And fireworks – there have to be fireworks."
What really happens is this: the next day they are sent on an emergency mission. It is rainy and dark and bone-chillingly cold, and the Death Eaters attack from the forest.
Everything is a mess of blood and mud and screams, and Sirius shoots out spells and frantically watches for the dark forms of his two best friends. He is dueling a masked opponent when he realizes that he has been edged to one side, away from the people he would give his life to protect. He turns sharply, just in time to see James slip in the mud and go down, and Lily dive to protect him.
What happens next is lost in his mad scramble through the mud to get to where James and Lily are, and the thudding of his heart says that he cannot live if they die. When he reaches them he throws up a shield, shining and silver, and turns away before he can see the first spell bounce off it. What he sees instead are Lily's muddy hands tracing their way through James' hair, feeling for injuries, and James pulling them both to their feet.
The spells hitting the shield break and reflect back in myriads of color. It's almost like fireworks, but James and Lily don't have eyes for anything else.
"Marry me," says James.
"Only if you promise not to get yourself killed," says Lily.
They turn for long enough to include Sirius in their conspiratorial grin before diving from under the protection of the shield, eyes bright and wands raised.
When it's all over, there's clean-up to be done, and reports to be made; more Order members Apparate in and bustle around making sense of things, but Sirius trudges through the mud until he finds James and Lily. They are both caked in dirt, and Lily is bleeding from a scrape on her cheek. James has his head on her shoulder, just leaning there, and they are holding each other so tightly that Sirius finds it suddenly hard to breathe.
"That last spell," whispers James, "I thought… You were… I was so scared. Lily, I was so scared."
"I know," answers Lily. "Me, too." She raises one hand to his neck and holds it there, comforting. "As long as we both shall live. That's how it works."
Sirius' chest aches, but at that moment it is all he wants – for them both to live. And if it hurts to see them wrapped so close together, as if they were the only two people in the world, he thinks he can bear it. He loves them so much that he can bear them loving each other more; he can bear anything, as long as he can keep them, both of them, even just a little bit – to stay James and Lily (and Sirius), for ever and ever and ever.
When at last James raises his head, and his grin is wavery but bright, and he meets Sirius' eyes over Lily's shoulder. "We're getting married," he announces. "Hey, Sirius, did you hear that? Lily and I are getting married!"
"I think everyone heard that," says Lily, but she is smiling too.
"Sirius will be the best man, of course," says James, flushed and triumphant. "I mean, will you, Sirius?"
"Oh, will you?" asks Lily.
Sirius swallows once, twice, and then he nods. "Yes," he says. "Yes, yes, yes."
They are both his best friends. It is all he ever knew how to want, all he ever learned to ask."
(He walks home alone.)
The Potters throw an engagement party. Their house is open and airy and crowded with people, Order members and friends from school, people they love and trust. They raise a toast to the unfilled seats, the ones who have already fallen (and they look around and wonder, who will fall next?), and they are happy, almost.
The wide room where James and Sirius used to play Quidditch in their summers has been cleared, the carpets thrown aside; now the room is full of dancers. Sirius watches from the side, and thinks how many people he has come to love over the past eight years. Peter ambles by with a smile, Remus dances with a dark haired former Ravenclaw, McGonagall raises a glass at him from across the room. James and Lily are wrapped tight together, the other dancers parting around them. Sirius leans back heavily against the wall.
He's more than a little drunk, the heady champagne making him breathless and dizzy (or perhaps it is the sight of Lily and James, spinning so quick and bright on the polished floor of James' father's house). He is drunk and James is smiling and Lily is laughing; for a moment he sees the whole thing with painful clarity, and he stumbles outside to where the air is cool and the stars are beginning to come out.
When he feels the gentle touch on his shoulder, he knows it is Lily even before he turns.
"Are you all right?" she asks, wrinkling her forehead in concern.
He wants to say that he's always all right, that he's never been all right, that the sky tonight seems very full of stars, but instead he turns and kisses her.
She tastes like champagne and strawberries. His hand snags on the pale silk of her dress and comes to rest on her bare shoulder, where the freckles spread like fine dust under his fingers. When she pulls away her hair flutters against his neck, soft and intimate, like a sigh.
Lily looks like she might cry. "Sirius," she says, but her regretful eyes say James, and can't, and sorry.
Sirius tries to smile. He scrubs the back of his hand over his wet eyes and says things like "I shouldn't have," and "it's the champagne, that's all," and "it won't happen again," and then he flees from Lily's sympathetic gaze. She stands in the moonlight for a moment, and then turns and goes back inside. Through the window, he sees the way James turns the moment she enters the room, how easily their hands slip together.
It's better this way, he tells himself. After all, he's never really known how to go about loving either of them, not the way he's supposed to, quantifying his love into separate compartments, Lily-love and James-love, a different emotion for each of his two best friends.
They will have a child someday, he tells himself as he watches, and the thought hurts and it doesn't hurt, because he imagines that the child will have Lily's freckles and James' messy hair, will be bright eyed and quick to laugh, will grow up like Lily and like James (and nothing at all like Sirius), confident and cheeky and oblivious and unafraid. They will have a child, and the child will be Lily and the child will be James, and maybe then Sirius will be allowed to love them the way he has always loved them, together, green eyes and messy hair and quips all bound up together in one small package.
James comes to him later, hair tousled, smiling. Sirius might feel guilty, but he has had too much champagne and too little hope, and Lily is too beautiful, James too radiant.
He gives a toast that night, raises the glass of champagne high, the alcohol lending him eloquence. He kisses the hand of the bride-to-be, calls her Mrs Almost-Potter, embarrasses James with stories of his three-year courtship, even pulls out a scrap of poetry, scavenged from under James' bed in fifth year and saved against just such an occasion.
No one listening thinks his laughter is forced. (It isn't.) In all his life he has only loved two people, and it seems only sensible that they should love each other as well.
He will laugh at the wedding, too.
As people start to leave, the remnants of the party trickle out onto the veranda. It is dark and cool, and Lily kicks off her sandals to dance with James on the bare grass. Over Lily's back, James catches Sirius' eye and waves an excited hand. Sirius smiles back at him.
He is still smiling as he picks up a new bottle of champagne and winds his way out into the depths of the Potter's backyard. The garden smells like lavender and laughter. Things are very quiet now.
Back on the veranda, James and Lily are still dancing. Sirius can hear their whispers, but not their words.
The night is black, and above him the stars burn lonely and extravagant.