Chapter Text
This is the third time this week James has woken up from dreams of green light.
He doesn't know why he dreams of green light, because the closest thing he's seen to what happens in his dreams are lightsabers, and those aren't real, are they? And the hooded man wielding it is obviously evil, so James has no idea why he's got a green one rather than red. Basic rules of lightsabers.
The dream is always the same-- he is standing by the stairs as the hooded man, with the oddest lightsaber he's ever seen, approaches, the green light shoots toward him, and then he's struck by the feeling that someone's ripped his heart out of his chest. The feeling returns, as he thinks about it, and James smacks his chest lightly, just above his heart, as if warning it to stay in there. His hands are sweaty. He wipes them off on his shirt.
He doesn't know why this dream keeps coming for him, but it always seems to.
That's hardly the part that makes him feel the weirdest, the fact that he always has this dream no matter what he tries-- that honor goes to the fact that he's always yelling for someone named Lily to run, at the beginning. The oddest part of it all is that he's never known someone named Lily, much less the Lily from his dream, but he knows he loves her. He wants to protect her from whatever this green light means, keep her safe and in his arms and warm, and the feeling overwhelms him, sweeping him under like an ocean wave.
It’s a weird feeling, James thinks, to love someone who might not even exist.
But James has got school tomorrow, and Physics first to boot, so he can’t afford to ponder the philosophy of existence for hours on end. He closes his eyes, pushing as many thoughts as he can out of his head, and tries to sleep.
The hooded man doesn't come back, that night, and James is not sure whether it’s because he couldn’t fall back asleep, or because he thought of Lily instead.
The curtain sucks him in, as he is screaming for anyone at all to save him, and Sirius startles awake, rubbing at his eyes as he tries to strengthen his tenuous grip on the real world. There are no curtains swallowing him, and even if there were, it would be fake, because curtains don’t do that. That’s not how they work.
But Sirius seems to have been missing that piece of information since childhood, no matter how many times he’s been told that the drapes are “just fine, Sirius, it’s almost like you think they’ll eat you” or “curtains, of all things, are your worst fear?” in that condescending tone that Cousin Bella loves. And it’s not like he could go to his parents with this, he thinks with a snort. No, with their ridiculous ideas of power and propriety, an heir who was afraid, or god forbid, sought their comfort, was completely out of the question.
“Fuck you.” Sirius says, glaring at the curtains over his window, and buries his head in his pillow.
Within seconds, he is fast asleep.
“Must’ve been a monster in my past life, or something.” Remus mutters, shifting in his bed. Thankfully, the pain in his joints is keeping him far too awake to dream about the green light again. Or worse, he thinks, and spends the next twenty minutes frozen solid by fear, watching the window like someone was going to climb through the next second and steal him away. An unreasonable fear for anyone else, but for Remus, just the left over bits of a memory.
Remus squeezes his shoulder tight, running his thumb back and forth across it like the soothing motion will wipe the pain away, and resigns himself to another night spent awake, watching the moon through his window. He’s always felt drawn to it, for some reason, especially during the nights.
“You’re practically a wolf, with how much you love the moon.” One of his cousins had said once, with a laugh. “Except I doubt you could hurt a fly.”
“I doubt I could either.” Remus had said, with the brightest smile he could manage. “A werewolf? Me? I’d be horrid at it.”
He’d never understood why laughing at that had felt so wrong, settling heavy in his chest like a weight meant to drag him down.
“Is there something wrong with me?” Remus asks earnestly, keeping his voice to a low whisper, and the moon, as if responding, shines a little brighter.
Peter dreams of glory, of success and pride, but those dreams always end in a silver hand locked tightly around his throat as he gasps for air, begging forgiveness from someone named James. He doesn’t know anyone named James that he would be willing to beg forgiveness from that earnestly, but he hopes that, whoever this James is, he is at peace, and that Peter hasn’t done anything to him in real life.
The dream feels too real to be fake, as it always does, and Peter is left wondering about who he has hurt, and why, and how, and the strange feeling that he’s done something wrong roils in the pit of his stomach like a hurricane.
“Would be helpful”, he says aloud, “if I knew what I’d done wrong.”
The walls of his room do not answer, and Peter sighs, settling back down to sleep.
The answers always come to him eventually, and Peter is excellent at waiting.
It is not just the dream, James realizes eventually, but a whole world that comes with it that he’s dreamt up. A world where he’s the most popular boy in the school, with friends and a girlfriend to boot. A world where people like him, just because he is around, and don’t expect perfection from him, twenty four hours a day, seven days a week.
A world that doesn’t exist.
When he’s awake, James is the boy everyone loves to hate, the weird brown boy who can’t speak English properly and is too much of a troublemaker to associate with, and he ignores the boys that yell about how he should go back to his country when he rushes home, shoulders drawn halfway up to his ears and head down.
But when he’s asleep, he means something to people. He means something to his friends, means something to a beautiful little boy named Harry, who James finds himself yelling for as well, means something to Lily.
It confuses him, this feeling of being needed and wanted, and he pushes it aside. There are better things to think about, bigger things, and they are meant for James in a way this dream world isn’t.
The dream world is just a bunch of fake promises, and if James wants his life to be anything like that, he’ll have to work for it. There’s no way anyone gets friends just by existing and being themselves, no matter how much James’ mother tells him that’s true.
He taps the end of his pen against his desk, listens to the cap smack against the wood rhythmically as he watches the clock. Class will start, and then these thoughts will stop bothering him.
Sometimes Sirius wonders if he is the only popular person who despises the attention.
People flock to him because he has money, and he has more friends than he knows what to do with, but he can’t imagine sharing his thoughts with a single one of them. He can’t imagine telling them his secrets, can’t imagine sharing anything more than the most normal of the things that flit through his head. Hell, he can’t even do that with his family, so sharing with his friends would be even more of a mystery.
“You’re being dramatic, Sirius”, his mother would say, glass of wine in hand. He’s been told that he gets it from her, his need to turn every interaction into a performance, but there is a clear line in his head between his funny antics and his mother’s productions, created with purpose to tear down those around her into their constituent pieces so that she can remold them into something he can stand. He’s seen it happen right before his eyes, been an actor in her sick plays, and he would laugh in her face if he weren’t afraid she’d tear him to pieces. “I’m sure everything is fine.”
“It’s fine.” Sirius says, nodding. “You’re right, I probably am.”
Sometimes, Sirius thinks, he would like to disappear.
Remus sees a lot of people come through the library. He spends most of his time here, volunteering, simply because the library is a second home to him. He feels safe here, among the shelves of books, and there’s nothing like the quiet. Of course, there’ll be a couple people hell bent on breaking that silence, but they’re easily dealt with. Remus likes to think he’s mastered the art of shushing people.
The best part of working in the library, though, is seeing the people who come through. Remus like assigning stories to people who walk by, like he knows them well, and sometimes, particularly interesting characters will make it into the novels he writes, late at night, when his parents have fallen asleep.
The chubby brown haired boy, with his head pillowed on a pile of textbooks, might have fallen asleep waiting for his friends to come around. He looks like the type to be friends with the loud types, the ones Remus has to shush several times before they remember this is a library. And yet, at the same time, he looks like the kind of person Remus could be friends with—quiet, and funny, and the type to keep uncomfortable questions unasked. He drools, though, and Remus worries for the books.
There’s the dark skinned boy with the golden eyes that Remus always sees wandering the foreign language shelves on Thursday evenings. He’s tall, taller than Remus himself, and the sight of his short black hair, sticking up in ten thousand different directions regardless of how short he cuts it, always coaxes a smile out of Remus. Remus wonders if he’s an athlete, because he looks like the type. Perhaps a swimmer. But an athlete would be surrounded by friends, or teammates at least, and this boy looks a little lonely. One thing doesn’t change—he’s always gone by the time Remus works up the nerve to talk to him.
And then, the one that intrigues Remus the most.
A dark haired boy, with steel grey eyes and a smile that cuts like broken glass, surrounded by a crowd of people who all adore him. He looks caged in, like a cornered animal, despite his admirers, and Remus wonders if the boy is actually unhappy or just putting on an act. That seems to be what’s cool these days, from what he sees of movie posters. Being rich and dissatisfied, roaming the areas where the common people go to culture yourself. It’s a carefully constructed sort of sadness, the kind this boy displays, a sadness that’s so carefully calculated in how it’s hidden and shown that Remus wonders how he manages at all.
But they are as distant to Remus as people he passes on the street, and although these boys have found their way into the characters Remus writes, he doesn’t know a single one of their names.
What people forget, because he is so quick to take the backseat in groups, is that Peter loves conversations.
He is the type of friend that will talk to you for hours about nothing, and stay up all night laughing over stupid jokes. People tend to forget that, because he’s hardly an extrovert by any count, but lately, Peter finds himself talking to the boy at the library and enjoying it. Peter is good at the waiting game-- people come to him when they want to talk, and then he talks. And it’s all the fun in the world, when it’s happening, but people have this uncanny ability to forget Peter as quickly as they remember him.
It’s like magic, Peter says, with a laugh, when people ask. But the laugh never reaches his eyes, which remain stubbornly cold. Peter’s eyes, normally the color of the blue crocs his mother made him wear all summer when he was nine, resemble an ocean when he is angry. And, when he is forgotten, he is angry.
It’s like magic, Peter thinks bitterly, before going back to his books. He has an exam in Chemistry tomorrow, and he’s quite sure his friends are off studying together somewhere, having forgotten to invite him along again.
Invisibility is the worst kind of magic.
James is walking back from the microwaves to find a table when his lunch gets knocked out of his hands. The tupperware falls onto the floor, splattering sambar sadham all over the floor, and James’ face feels like it’s burning. If he could blush, he would be. He’s wondering who did it when he hears a familiar voice behind him.
“Maybe if you’d brought normal food, you wouldn’t have this problem.” Sirius Black says with a laugh. James doesn’t even need to look at him to see the look of haughty amusement likely plastered across Black’s face, doesn’t even need to hear his voice to feel condescension pressing in on him from all sides. He feels like everything is closing in on him, like the walls are moving in and he can’t escape, and he’ll be crushed soon, the air squeezed from his lungs.
James is going to kill him. Murder him. Hack him to bits with a plastic knife. He doesn’t know. Anything’s preferable to standing here and doing nothing. But Sirius has the whole cafeteria laughing, and James is frozen in place, staring emptily at what would’ve been his lunch until the janitor breaks the spell over him by tossing the container at him. He looks around, noticing that everyone’s sitting at their tables. How long has he been standing here?
James sighs, closing his eyes for a second to reorient himself, gripping the container as hard as he could. He’s alright. It’ll be fine. Words can’t hurt. He knows he’s lying, but it’s nice to use familiar words to do it.
“Watch yourself next time, kid.” He says, mopping up the mess. Argus Filch has always been angry, for as long as anyone could remember. “I’m not here to clean up your messes.”
James hangs his head in shame and nods. “Yeah. I won’t. I’m sorry.”
Sometimes, it feels like sorry is all he’s been saying for years.
“Maybe if you’d brought normal food, you wouldn’t have this problem.” The words leave his mouth, instinctive, as if they’re lines he’s memorized. Potter’s back is to him, but he sees the way his shoulders draw up, muscles tense. He’s ready to fight, Potter, ready to destroy Sirius, but he wouldn’t dare. He’s got too many morals for that, too many convictions and rules in his head. He looks like the idealistic sort.
Luckily, Sirius is not that sort at all.
Perhaps, in another world, Potter would have grounded him, brought him back down to earth when he flew too close to the sun, but luckily for Sirius (and perhaps not so luckily for Potter, whose first name he doesn’t know despite years of being in school together), this is not that world.
Sirius is safely sitting at his table by the time Filch comes through to take Potter to task for creating a mess, and he can’t help but smile at the shame written clearly on Potter’s face. He should’ve known better than to set himself further apart from the rest of them, after years of seeing what happened to those who tried too hard to be different, but Potter doesn’t look like the learning sort.
No, he’s got too many principles for that, Sirius thinks, as Potter leaves the cafeteria, half open lunchbox tucked under his arm. His head is held high, now, like nobody could take him down. He doesn’t look like someone who’s just come off worse in a fight with Sirius Black.
It’ll be fun, Sirius thinks, to break him.
Maybe he is a little more like his mother than he’d thought.
The boy walks into the library alone, sharp edges clearly on display, and walks straight up to Remus’ desk, steel colored eyes locked on his the whole way. A bruise blooms across his cheekbone, staining his face purple, and Remus doesn’t say a word. Bruises are nothing new to him, and he feels as if the boy would appreciate it. The broken glass smirk he gets in reply is proof that he made the right choice.
“I’m Sirius Black.” He says, as if the private school sweater and expensive watch on his wrist don’t scream out his identity. “You’ve been watching me.”
“I’m Remus Lupin.” Remus says, after a pause, and decides he can leave the desk alone for a bit. “And I won’t deny that.”
He discovers, later, a million things about Sirius he could’ve only guessed at before, namely, that Sirius is an excellent kisser, and that his phone number ends in 6789 because he was afraid he wouldn’t remember it otherwise, and that the bruise is from a fight, but that Sirius won’t say who gave it to him. Remus’ fingers run over it, soft and careful, and Sirius doesn’t flinch.
In return, for once, Remus is forthcoming. He has a younger sister named Lily, who is in the same year as Sirius at school, and the closest thing that Remus has to a best friend. He volunteers at the library because he likes watching the people. He writes novels that no one has ever read.
“Don’t get me wrong.” Remus says softly, lips pressed up against the shell of Sirius’ ear. “I’m not the type of guy to do this often.”
“No, you’re one of those library types.” Sirius says, rolling his eyes as he tugs at the fraying end of Remus’ sweater vest. Remus blushes. “Loosen up, Lupin. Live a little.”
“Maybe I will.” Remus says, and pulls Sirius in for another kiss.
“You don’t want to keep doing that.” Peter says, once Sirius has been shooed away by another librarian. “Kissing him, I mean. He’s a nasty sort.”
“He seems alright to me.” The librarian, Remus, says, with a frown and leans forward slightly. Peter hopes it’s because he’s listening.“What do you mean?”
“He’s using you.” Peter says urgently, fiddling with the hem of the too big hoodie he is wearing. “People like him, they don’t care about people like us.”
“Thanks for your concern, I guess.” Remus says, smiling softly, and Peter’s eyes go hard. He knows, then, that Remus will not listen. Remus will not listen until he sees it.
“Do you even know my name?” Peter asks, years of conversations running through his head, and Remus blinks in surprise, frowning thoughtfully as he wracks his brain for answers. After a couple seconds, Peter shakes his head. He should’ve known it better. “I take it back. You’re just like him, but you don’t even know it.”
Peter stalks out of the library, eyes blazing, and resolves to never come back.
James walks into the library on Thursday evenings, as he always does, and goes straight for the foreign language section. He only ever checks out one book, which must make his library card record look ridiculous. The last librarian used to ask him why he didn’t just buy a copy, if he was going to take a copy out every time he came in, and he didn’t know how to tell her that he had one. He had one, at home, and it was all his, but this, this was like sharing it with other people.
People wondered what a kid like him was doing, taking out the same book on medicine over and over again, but all he needs as encouragement is the name across the top. Hariharan Iyer, it says, in Tamil. He traces his finger over the loops and curves of the familiar lettering, an easy smile coming to his face. His grandfather’s name.
He flips through the pages, as if he hasn’t read it a million times before, and then goes up to the checkout counter, typing in his card number before putting the barcode under the red light. Just the one book, the same book, checked out exactly three weeks from when he last checked the book out. Thankfully, the library has two copies, so he’s never without one.
He slips the book into his backpack, careful not to bend the pages, and, just as he is heading for the door, he bumps straight into Sirius Black. James stiffens, the half a foot he has on Sirius even more apparent than usual, and stutters out an apology before pushing past Sirius and running for the door. His vision is blurred by tears, rendering his glasses useless, but it doesn’t matter, since he knows the way home. He could even get himself home on autopilot if he had to, which is his plan.
The library was supposed to be safe, and here came Sirius, ruining the last thing he had left. James pulls the sleeves of his sweater down over his hands as soon as he’s alone, rubbing hard at his eyes to force the tears back. Sirius Black, always fucking taking everything. James can’t stand him, wants to ruin him, but he can’t. He’d be just as bad as Sirius was, then, and he doubts he could live with himself if he was anything like that lowlife.
Sirius Black is everything his father has warned him against becoming-- complacent and content in his privilege, making no effort to effect change and use the power he wields so casually for anything other than his own gain.
“You’re not a single bit like him, that’s something I can be proud of.” Appa had said, a faint smile playing around his lips, and James had kept his head down, ashamed of the fact that maybe, just maybe, he’d have liked to be a little bit like Sirius. People liked him. Nobody really hung around James unless they had to, and they were gone as soon as they had an alternative. Sirius, by contrast, always had someone. James wants to know what that feels like.
The dream haunts him now, constantly filling his head with lies, and he can’t close his eyes without seeing the green light and hearing the hooded man’s laughter boom in his ears, and James screams, trying to drown out the sound in his head, and slams his fists against the wall. Amma and Appa aren’t home, so he doesn’t have to worry too much.
They’d ask what was wrong, if they were, and Amma would pull the whole story out of him no matter how hard he tried to hide it, and then they’d worry, and James doesn’t want that. They have ten thousand other things to worry over-- no need for them to worry too much over him.
By the time the front door opens and closes downstairs, accompanied by his parents’ happy chatter, James has calmed down, and is sitting on his floor, still shaking slightly. He’s no longer yelling-- he’s yelled out all the things worth yelling, in his head, and his throat feels raw, like someone shoved a hairbrush down his throat. Now, he’s just feeling too numb to do much of anything.
Amma calls up the stairs, asking if James is ready for dinner, and he yells back, once he finds his voice again, that he is, before rushing into the bathroom and washing his face as many times as he can to make it look like he hasn’t been crying. He practices smiling in the mirror while mentally reviewing his day, picking out the parts he can tell them about and spinning stories to make it seem much greater than it had been.
Amma would laugh at him for exaggerating, Appa would shake his head and mutter something about lying getting you in trouble someday, and James would smile along and let things happen. Besides, it’s not as if how his day really went was worth telling about anyhow.
Remus was fun. He was a good distraction. And a distraction was just what Sirius needed. He liked showing up at the library during the afternoons, liked having something secret to do that was just his, and it didn’t matter if he liked Remus. It was simply a bonus. Now, all he had to do was keep him a secret, and he was set.
If his family found out, it would cause a fuss Sirius wasn’t ready to deal with. And especially now, so soon after the incident with Andromeda, it would cause more than a fuss. Best to not bait them more than he had to.
“Remus?” Sirius asked, one afternoon when Remus wasn’t scheduled for work. They were sitting on the swings in an abandoned park, far away from where any of Sirius’ classmates could find him, and Sirius, always cautious, had stashed his sweater and tie in his backpack to avoid detection. Remus hums, just to prove he’s listening, and pushes himself back and forth, feet securely on the ground. Sirius finds it endearing, this strange restraint that Remus exercises around him, and taps his shoulder. Remus winces, a lot more than he should have at that light a touch, and looks over to Sirius. “Live a little, Lupin. Feet off the ground.”
“Can’t do it right without an example.” Remus says, and Sirius takes it as a challenge. He holds the rusty old chains tightly in his fists, kicking his feet out and then bending them at the knees until he feels like he’s flying. Sirius lives on adrenaline, and the swings have always fascinated him, but the swings with Remus are a new experience. Remus is laughing beside him, head thrown back as he swings back and forth, feet finally losing their tight hold on the ground.
“There you go!” Sirius called out, grinning so wide he feels like his face might split. “Now you’re doing it!”
“Learned from the best!” Remus yells back, and they have to stop swinging because Sirius doubles over, nearly falling off the swing because he’s laughing too hard.
If only Remus knew, if only.
“Remus?” He wakes suddenly, at the sound of his name, having always been a light sleeper, and his sister smiles tiredly from the doorway as he sits up. “Hey.”
“Get to bed. Sleep helps you grow.” Remus says, accompanying the last statement with a roll of his eyes. Lily hasn’t grown in three years.
“Yeah, well, sleep’s boring.” Lily said, plodding over to the end of Remus’ bed before locating his feet and sitting down hard on them. Remus winces. Thankfully his feet never really get sore, when the rest of his joints die on him, and Lily has taken full advantage of having such an easily attackable spot open. They sit there for a few seconds, in companionable silence, before Lily speaks again. “I’ve been having that dream again.”
“Which one?” Remus asks, although he already knows. It’s the same dream Lily’s been having for years-- she’s holding a baby with her eyes named Harry, telling him his father loves him and that she loves him, and then suddenly there is a loud thump and high, reedy laughter, and she wakes up, sweaty and terrified.
“Which one?” She snorts, shaking her head. “The same one as last time. Harry was clinging to me as usual, then the green light, and I was gone.”
There is never anything that Remus will find funny more than how Harry has just become a part of his sister’s life-- Lily never speaks of him as if he were anything but human, and Remus feels like he has an actual nephew, sometimes, from how detailed her descriptions are. Lily told him, once, a couple weeks ago, recounted every thing she remembered about Harry from the dream, and Remus had had an odd feeling about Harry, had cut in with something he remembered of the golden eyed boy at the library.
“Yeah.” Lily had said, brows furrowed in confusion. “Just like that, actually.”
“Maybe you like him.” Remus had said with a chuckle, nudging Lily’s arm with his elbow. “Goes to your school, I think. Maybe that’s where the dream’s coming from, huh?”
“Yeah, like I’d imagine myself dying in front of our baby, if I liked him.” Lily said, rolling her eyes, and Remus’ heart nearly stopped. It was the first time either of them had acknowledged what the green light was, what it meant. They died, in these dreams. Both of them.
“I don’t like him.” She said urgently, trying to wipe away the memory of what she’d said. “Besides, there are tons of people who look like him in the world. He’s not automatically Harry’s dad because he’s the only Indian guy you’ve ever seen.”
“True.” Remus nodded. “But he’s the only one you’re around on a regular basis, so it’s a solid guess.”
Lily had grabbed a pillow, eyes alight with mischief, and they’d both gotten grounded for starting the loudest pillow fight in Lupin family history.
“James Potter!” Peter calls out, and the spindly looking boy turns around, a frown on his face. It would look threatening if he were any bulkier, but thanks to the summer camp sweatshirt he had on, and his thin, rangy frame, it looked more like childish confusion than anything else. “James Potter!”
Peter was out of breath by the time he reached James, and James reaches out, steadying Peter easily. Peter nods in gratitude, catching his breath, and then speaks as soon as he’s positive he can. “Recognized you from the library.”
“Pettigrew.” James says, after hardly a second of thought. A strange sense of pride blooms in Peter, at the sound of his name. Someone knows him. “Peter. We’ve got Chemistry together.”
Peter groans, slapping a hand over his eyes. “See, if I’d known that, we could’ve studied together for the last exam. Wouldn’t have failed as badly as I did. Chemistry is pure shit.”
“I’m alright at it.” James says, with a shrug. He scratches the back of his head, looking quite a bit like a six year old had been stretched until he looked like an adult. “Wouldn’t mind the company, if you need a little help.”
“Actually, if you don’t mind, I need your help on something else as well.” Peter doesn’t know how well he’ll take it, or if James will come along at all, but any backup is good backup. “Remus. The librarian boy, the one that’s our age? He’s fooling around with Sirius Black.” As if brought on by the mention of Sirius Black’s name, a shadow passes over James’ face, the line of his jaw sharpening as he grits his teeth. “He doesn’t know how bad he is. We need to stop him before he gets hurt.”
“How?” James asks, frown returning in full force. “Black’s bound to find out that we’re plotting against him, and then you and me are worse off than anyone else at this school.”
“I’ve talked to him, but Remus doesn’t know us, so it’s not worth it.” Peter shook his head. “It’s got to come from someone he knows, someone he trusts.”
“How the hell are we supposed to know who Remus Lupin trusts?” James asks, running a hand through his hair, and then the answer, as it often does in Peter’s life, comes to him, after enough waiting.
“What’re you talking about my brother for?” A tiny redhead asks Peter, green eyes blazing in fury. “Remus hasn’t done shit to either of you.”
“Who are you?” James asks, looking equal parts surprised and scared. “And what’s with the yelling?”
She seems to notice James only after he speaks, and, once their eyes meet, they both fall silent. Peter feels distinctly awkward, like this is a private moment he’s intruded upon, because they both relax when they see each other, like you would around friends you’ve known for years, the tension bleeding out of both of their frames like they’ve found something familiar.
“I’m Lily.” She says, after a pause, finally breaking eye contact with James. “Remus’ sister. And what were you saying about Sirius Black?”
“Your brother’s dating him.” James says, looking as if he’d committed a crime.
“Ah.” Lily says. “Shit.”
Sirius isn’t expecting it, when it happens. He and Remus are at the park, on their bench, Sirius’ head in Remus’ lap as Remus idly plays with his hair. And then, suddenly, Potter, the lumpy boy who always moved tables at lunch, and a ginger are advancing on them. Potter looks madder than Sirius had ever seen him, and looms over his two companions, as well as Remus, although Sirius is sure that, if Remus stood up, he would hardly be much shorter than Potter is.
“What’s your business here, Potter?” Sirius asks, trying to sound casual. “If you’re looking for a partner on the English project, I’ve already got one.”
“I’m not here about you.” Potter says, voice level. “I’m here about both of you, actually.” The ginger nods sharply, looking as if she is ready to tear Sirius to pieces with her bare hands. James stands a little straighter, at her endorsement, looking a little braver. “Remus, he’s not who you think he is. This is all an act.”
“How would you know?” Remus speaks up, sounding just as calm as Potter had. “I’ve spent more time with him than you have.”
“I’ve been in school with him since we were four and he doesn’t even know my name.” Potter says calmly, frown deepening just slightly. He sounds more like a scientist listing materials than someone speaking about another’s faults, Sirius notes. Perhaps Potter has been more of a threat than he seemed all along. “He encourages his friends to go after me in public, in fact, even though I’ve made it clear I’m not a threat to him in any way. He bullies anyone who doesn’t conform perfectly to his standards, and makes fools of those who try.”
“Mary Macdonald, Remus.” The redhead says, stepping forward. The name has just as much of an impact on Remus as everyone else-- Mary Macdonald, one of the scholarship students, had been found crying in one of the hallways a year ago, unable to tell anyone what had happened to her or who had done it, and had left the school shortly after. No one had heard from Mary in months.“That was him and his friends.”
“Sirius.” Remus says, voice colder than Sirius had ever heard it. “Get off me.”
“Remus-- I--” Sirius says, as he sits up, lost for words for once in his life. How dare they tie him to what had happened to Macdonald? He hadn’t even been there. How dare they? “I didn’t do it! You have to believe me. I wasn’t involved at all! She’s lying, they all are.”
“No offense”, Remus begins as he stands up, crossing the distance between them and the others to stand by Potter’s side, “but I’d trust my sister much more easily than someone I’ve hardly known for a few months.”
“Fine.” Sirius spits out, eyes ablaze with fury. “Fine then! Leave me!”
“Sirius, I--” Remus frowns, confused by this sudden shift. Sirius seems desperate, far too desperate, to keep Remus with him. “Sirius, I have to go.”
“Fine.” Sirius says, scowling. “Be my fucking guest. Get out.”
“Come on, Remus.” Potter says softly, carefully placing his hand on Remus’ upper arm. “Don’t listen to him.”
“Is this what it’s about, Potter?” Sirius asks, bitterness dripping off his words, as Remus walks away, flanked by Potter and Company. “Taking away everything I’ve got?”
“No.” Potter says, shaking his head. His shoulders are drawn up again, back stiff, but that changes when the redhead puts a hand on his arm. Potter relaxes at the touch, his shoulders slowly coming back down as the tension bleeds out of his frame, and Sirius would make a solid bet that he is smiling. “It’s about helping someone out. It’s your call on who that is.”
Sirius growls a reply laced with profanities, looking away so he doesn’t have to watch Remus leave, and when he looks up, they’re all gone.
“Fuck you.” He says, to the sky, slinging his backpack over his shoulder. “You just hate me, don’t you?”
God, despite being called out, does not respond, and Sirius begins the long walk home.
“Lily?” Remus calls out, and his sister continues snoring. Lily could sleep through elephants walking on her head, if she put her mind to it, and Remus hobbles over to her bed before shaking her awake. “Lily!”
“Gedoffme.” She mumbles, slapping at Remus’ arms as she tried to get back to sleep. “Was havin’ a nice dream and you’re ruinin’ it.”
“Can we talk?” He asks softly, and she opens one eye, looking him over, before nodding and shifting to one side. “Thanks.”
“Get on in.” She says, patting the empty section of bed beside her. He does, and they spend a couple moments kicking each other in the calves before she gets right to the point. “I’m sorry. About Sirius. But we had to, to keep you safe.”
“I know.” Remus says, running a hand through her hair as Lily lays her head on his chest, just below his shoulder. Lily had hacked it off, in a fit of indecision, when she was fourteen, and had kept it at shoulder length since. “You did the right thing, Lily. He would’ve turned on me eventually.” The words feel wrong, coming out of his mouth, dark and dirty in comparison to the Sirius he remembers, yelling his heart out while playing on a children’s swing set. “Things like that don’t stay hidden for long.”
“Yeah.” She says, reaching up to pat the side of Remus’ face. “Still sorry.”
“It’s okay.” Remus says, shaking his head. He has a strange, fuzzy feeling in the pit of his stomach, like he is supposed to be remembering something, but the memory is just barely out of reach. Odd. “I feel like it would’ve ended badly anyway, you know? Like it’s run its course before.”
“Yeah.” Lily says, looking a little far away. “Don’t know the exact feeling, but I know what you’re going for.”
“We just wanted to say sorry.” Peter begins, putting a brown paper bag on Remus’ desk. “‘Cause, I mean, we’ve done a lot.”
“I’m sorry we couldn’t find a better gift.” James says, looking quite sheepish. “We searched, and I mean, there weren’t many options. Many options that you’d like, I mean.”
“We could’ve found better ones.” Peter speaks up. “If someone hadn’t spent their whole lunch period talking to a certain someone else. Not naming names. Just saying.”
“Thanks, Peter.” James says, sighing. “Thanks.”
“It’s a nice gesture. I love bags.” Remus says, opening the bag up and peering inside. It's full of bouncy balls.
“You also love balls.” Peter says, looking very proud of himself. “See, James? It worked.”
“Oh, good.” James looks relieved. “I was worried.”
“I’ll have a lot of fun playing with them. Thanks boys.” Remus nods seriously. “The best gift I’ve ever received.”
“We’ll leave you to your work, then.” Peter says, grinning. “Have fun, Library Boy.”
“Keep on saving the children.” James says, with a wave, and he and Peter headed for the door, James slightly ahead of Peter the whole way.
“You know I forgive you, right?” James asks, looking thoughtful, once the library door closed behind them.
“What?” Peter asked, frowning.
“Nothing.” James said, shaking his head. “Just felt like it needed to be said, I guess.”