Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Remus didn't come from what he'd call a poor family. 

Uhhhhh.

Well.

Okay, maybe they weren't exactly middle class, alright. But they had everything they needed to get by and then some, so he never complained about it. They saved on groceries, since his dad kept a vegetable garden and two hens very much alive and thriving, so their homegrown food was usually enough when paired with his mum's bread and occasional sweet treat. 

As a kid, before everything happened, Remus lived for those moments with them.

In the garden, ankles-deep into mud as he helped Lyall weed the cabbage patch, in the kitchen, his elbow brushing Hope's as he kneaded his personal tiny loaf of bread next to her. And oh, how he loved running around the countryside! Climbing trees and jumping over fences and across ditches full of murky water! His school uniform was constantly stained with mud or grass or blackberry jam, but always ironed as well as his mum could manage, always as new and fitting as they could afford, given how intense his growth spurs could be. So what if his shirts and trousers were a bit on the shorter side? What mattered was what Remus could do when he was wearing them: study. And that he loved too. 

Deeply, obsessively so. 

There were times as a child he would sneak out, when his dad nodded off with his head on the kitchen table before heading back to the factory and his mum went to grandma's to make her lunch. A book tucked under his shirt and a bite of bread still half-chewed in his mouth, Remus sprinted to his favourite oak, a spot that to this day was still only his own, and he'd read his afternoon PE classes away, perched up on a sturdy branch, back to the gritty trunk and feet dangling in the air. More than anything, even more than the joy of reading and the thrill of skipping classes, Remus couldn't get enough of the sounds that surrounded him, then.

That's what he missed the most, lately.

Not the ability to run and climb, not the luck of living surrounded by nature, not his carefree youth, but being able to hear everything around him.

The ruffle of pages being turned mixed with what dictionaries called the psithurism of leaves shivering in the wind.  Listening to the melody of little birds holding springtime conversations, the drone of cicadas so loud it filled the summer sky, the crackle of autumn leaves and the squelch of winter paths.

And now.

Now Remus had to remember to sit and walk on people's left, so his good ear could pick up what the other one couldn't.

Now he could only wear orthopaedic boots, and though years before he thought he might as well give in to the aesthetic, dye them black and keep his hair shorn scalp-short, scars old and new in full display, now he kept them tidy and leather-brown, like his brown knitted jumpers and brown corduroy trousers and brown bookbag and brown crutches.

They weren't poor, until they were, and they were because of him, and that was something Remus would never forgive himself for.

They were poor because Darwin should have been right, and the doctors wrong at trying so hard to give him a longer life than the one he thought he deserved.

They were poor and then they weren't, because Remus left home and sent parcel-fuls of salary to Lyall to help with Hope's treatment.

And Lyall then tightened bolts and oiled gears and pruned trees and fed the hens, and Remus sent him money to buy loaves of bread.

And now here he was.

Two meters tall and managing to feel tiny, standing as a still island amidst the rivers of people crossing Waterloo Station like rising tides. 

London.

A mere three years ago, if anyone had told Remus he'd go to London not only to study, but to live there, he'd have probably given them the two finger salute. 

London.

With its buildings even taller than the cliffs on the Welsh coast, with the Thames crossing it like a beige ribbon of silt and rubbish, with thousands upon thousands of buses and cabs that reminded Remus of red and black ants crawling all over the city.

London.

With its parks, green and tidy, nature artfully constructed as wild srpung side by side with nature sculpted and painted. Remus was speechless the first time he set foot in Richmond Park and found himself surrounded by a herd of fallow deer, and Hampstead Heath came just as much as a surprise to him, though more curated. But what came to no surprise was how much time he would spend in parks, preferably sitting under a tree, his perennially mud-stained jacket padding his back and a thumb keeping a book open as he read. He'd yet to find one to call his own, much like the one at home, but for now, any oak in London would suffice.

London.

So far from home, and yet so easy to call home.

Home.

Remus had found the word escaping his lips, but much to his disbelief and mild horror, he discovered he meant it.

His new home.

And home was the dorm room he'd fought for, which was much more satisfying than being assigned one at random. Ground floor, with the library just outside his door and the Thames sloshing north where his bed was, and the neat trees lined up to guard the grounds from the wilder end of the park would stare at him from his southernmost window, alluring and safe. 

He'd been granted an early moving day, too, and for once he believed it wasn't out of pity, but a gift from the deities of student accommodations to let him dream a little of a life all of his own. 

Was he expecting a roommate that early in his first semester, if ever? 

No.

London would grant him one wish.

Just one more wish.

A little one.

He'd sacrifice his good pens by leaving them on the altar that was the main desk in the study hall if it meant he could live by himself, especially after the past year. He spent too long rooming with strangers who never became anything more.

He wished he could know what they thought of him, sometimes.

"'s not easy, y'know." 

He would say as he raised his gaze, speckles of golden sunlight glaring on his mother's glasses, the crack in them casting a mountain range of shadows on the bare wall. He'd resorted to talking to himself lately, more often than not just pretending to be interviewed by some well-known name on the telly. Too bad he didn't have one –couldn't have used it anyway– but he liked to make them up in his mind, all smartly dressed and with that stench of pretentious cologne reeking off them and plaguing his nostrils. The imaginary host would ask a question, and usually he'd reply as articulately as he could, to sound smart and knowledgeable and worthy of their interest. Though sometimes he felt like playing the tortured, ne'er-do-well artist, slurring his words all slumped on his chair, nursing a glass of something –anything– strong enough to drown in.

That day, it was the latter.

"Why, yes. 'm a busy man myself. This head of mine, it never sleeps. Never lets me, that is. Take a break?"

He straightened his back and found it tingling and sore as he feigned a scornful laugh at the ludicrous question. 

"Never. I couldn't. Too much to do, never for myself," he tsked then, letting his head loll back against the windowpane, his shadow growing taller on the pinking wall. "Wish I could wanna live for myself. But ya jus' can't, now, can ya?"

It was time to cut the play, the neck of his shirt as damp as his cheeks in the heat of summer and pain. He found them stinging, so he closed his eyes, listening at the street below as business slowed down and the tell-tale rhythm of portcullis being lowered rivalled the town bell striking 6pm sharp.

He knew their routine like one learns the seasons, observing the world change around him as he felt removed from the realms of time and space. 

An eternal and immovable entity, perfectly lonely. 

In ten minutes they'd knock thrice, but without bothering to wait for him to get to the door. They'd open it themselves, the keys clinging and their heavy breaths amplified by the winding staircase. They'd get through the threshold, and though it gave directly on the kitchenette table where he was sitting, they'd just shuffle around the house without a word, not even a glance to be spared for him. They'd dance around his chair to put the leftovers from the canteen into the fridge, never once even asking him to scoot a little to let them past. Then they'd tie an apron behind their back and put whatever dinner they had on the stove –for one, like the dish on the table, the mug of tea, the single set of cutlery. They all sat across where he was sitting, to face the window as it framed the purpling sky as they opened their palms to mutely say grace, then ate. The squeaks and scrapes of the knife and fork on the dish, the creaks of the woven chair as they leaned forward to get to their mug, the gulp in their throat and faint chewing sounds were soon to be muffled by the waterfall of the shower. And after that, by the distant clicking of the rosary beads, right before the mattress cleanly squeaked under their lithe bodies. He sat there, an angry burn in his stomach in hunger's stead. No eyes ever laid on him anyway.

It wasn't easy. 

Not when their steps echoed down the corridor, and he knew he'd only ever squeak and roll by. When he was lucky he could stumble around, a limp so heavy it made him want to crawl instead. 

He envied their sounds. 

The normality of them. 

All he wanted to do was to yell, to argue, to break their perfection, but every night at 6pm sharp he'd be reminded why it wouldn't matter. The nuns' vote of silence wasn't to punish him, he told himself. He just happened to live there, they happened to need a room to share, close enough to the cloister but far enough from it to be a punishment. He'd accepted immediately, and not a day went by that he didn't regret his bout of optimism. 

The hope of finding company or friendship shattered as soon as the first nun appeared in his kitchen, what now felt decades ago.

She'd slipped a card to him then –"bold of her to assume any cripple like me can read" he thought. It said her name, but to please not disturb her pristine devotion with questions or demands. He'd soon realised the company was about to be as dry as it had been during his elementary school years, spent at the window on the front lawn of the school's library, observing.

But that was the past.

That was last year, and the nuns were kind enough to send him marzipan treats for his birthday, so despite their absent company making him teeter on the edge of insanity for months, Remus couldn't really complain. Or, well, his sweet tooth wouldn't let him, and he was way too weak when it came to anything sugary being given to him for free. Plus, the rent was cheap and work mindless enough to daydream through it, and Hope's condition seemed to have improved thanks to his remittance, and his mum wouldn't have wanted him to complain. 

Things were good, after all.

His health, too.

He just missed the rolling hills of the countryside, and really seeing seasons turn and shape the landscape, and counting time with the tides. When he'd earned enough, he sent most of it to Lyall and enrolled with what he had left.

That way, it wasn't a true step into the unknown, and he loved being prepared. 

Ready.

He had to be to survive, anyway.

So he read all the readings and wrote all the assignments on scrap pieces of paper he'd never turn in, burning the midnight oil just to keep his goal in mind. It seemed that Remus had made it a point for his coworkers to have little to no clue what his face looked like, but a very clear idea of his taste in books. What he couldn't read in between shifts, nose buried between yellowing pages, Remus read at the apartment between his long solo rambling sessions and nighttime pity parties.

And look at where all that seemingly pointless studying landed him.

If Lyall was surprised when he told him he'd got into college for psychology, —and in London, mind you— his pointy chin and pointy moustache and thin mouth and thin lines on his forehead didn't quiver one bit. He wasn’t one to ever budge, anyway. He'd muttered a "Jus' keep your head down, now, son!", downed his tea, and nodded right at him as the cup hit the scuffed table with a satisfying clunk.

That was all the blessings Remus needed.

He bolted out of the front door, feeling like a kid again, knees and ankles barely holding on as he flew over gravel and dirt. It was a winding path, but he'd remember it even as a ghost. His oak was still there, still the same as it had always been, still too large to hug and too tall to jump onto. He wasn't there to climb on it, though. If Remus had to be honest, the run in the fields had just come naturally to him, and now that he was standing there, it was with an odd sense of reverence filling his chest.

Remus took a step back, admiring the tree that saw wars and famines as much as children playing on its roots and lovers laying under its branches. And him, growing, reading, eating, crying, thrashing around at the unfairness of the world, and waxing poetic about it all the same. 

A deep breath, and he splayed a hand on its rough bark, letting himself exist.

And he was glad he did.

Not too long after that day, he was starting over in a London unknown to him, a borough new and exciting and, surprisingly, not all grey cement and red brick, but green. So green he started wearing green jumpers just to match, to hell with the aesthetics, maybe clothes really could make him feel something half-decent even when London was shrowded in fog and all his limbs ached.

Moving from the apartment to the dorms hadn't taken long at all, what with the little stuff he owned anyway, green jumpers included. It was mostly books, old pots and pans, clothes knitted for him by his mother and grandmother, the works. He'd kept his mother's old glasses, too, safe in his breast pocket for the whole trip on the tube. Lyall had offered to take leave and help him, but Remus had refused, and told him that if he was planning on persuading him, he should save his phone booth quids for talking with Hope instead.

So, there he was now.

Though standing in the bustling heart of London, Remus couldn’t help but feel the weight of it all—mourning all the pasts he’d never have, and all the futures he’d left behind.

It used to infuriate him.

It used to make him want to thrash anything within reach.

Now, though, that playground and everything and everyone in it made him feel nothing. 

Well, only if he tried hard enough. 

Most of the time, those delighted giggles and the pure, unadulterated joy of little children just lodged a knot in his throat and the prickling of heat behind his eyes. It was the same with all playgrounds, really, but this one had been the stage of many of his bouts of rage over the years —and these sorts of patterns rarely lie. 

He'd sat on this bench almost on accident, or out of habit, to rest his legs. Then, his eyes had drifted up, beyond the seesaws and monkey bars and streetlamps and rusting London planes, and his mind had drifted up there as well. 

To his past.

A past that would have always petrified him, frozen into himself, locked in a lifetime lacking the very thing that, to him, would have made it all worth living: the promise of a future. 

Remus Lupin was born, and he'd been on death row ever since. 

Looking at all this —bright eyes and soft cheeks and smooth foreheads and toothless grins and muddy clothes and scraped knees— he wished he was the only one on earth facing this fate. 

Yet, evidence of the contrary never ceased to slash through his chest. It didn't, not even if it was in the form of a little girl with orthosis on her legs, even if she had covered them in pink and purple stickers, even if the girl she was playing with was hard at work tucking colourful leaves in the straps of her leg braces.

Remus looked away, and his gaze strayed to a window on the last floor, pale blue curtains rustling shut.

It was time to leave.

The chair rattled against the wooden floor, and Remus had to stop himself from bouncing his leg so hard it could break bones. 

Their voices seeped through the door —Lily's with its agitated northern lilt, Marlene’s darker tone with a menacing edge. The third voice filtered through so muffled that trying to strain his ears to hear it would have been utterly useless. Remus could almost see her sitting there, though, speckles perched on the tip of her nose, eyes needle-sharp on the girls, scrutinising. Despite her best efforts, she always was.

"Remus," Mary whispered, emanating that warm aura of hers that somehow magically managed to placate his fidgeting and banish his racing thoughts, "It'll work out, I'm sure it will." 

She smiled, and he tried his best to lodge that thought between the gears of doubt turning in his head to make them stop from turning in their vicious cycle. For a moment, he chose to believe her.

If he had to be realistic, this whole ordeal didn't look doomed from the start —far from it, even. He just couldn't get past what had just happened, and its implications in the long run, and what it meant that Professor McGonagall likely believed. From the outside, it looked like she had been thoughtful. Kind enough to let him sit outside with Mary after the four of them, hoping for safety in numbers and all that, had asked to be seen by the Head of Student Wellbeing, who was, coincidentally, also Remus and Lily's Degree Programme Director and one of (if not the) most feared and revered professor on campus.

Their talk seemed off to an icy start, and Remus had even more reasons to think she had made him sit this one out, rather than being merciful. He was sure of it the moment Marlene had sucked in such a sharp breath Remus thought she'd chocked on her own spit as soon as McGonagall dismissed Remus and asked for Mary to go with him. From that alone, and how she winced as she forcefully bit her tongue shut, he knew Marlene had sensed some ableist discrimination hidden behind her kindness. At the very least, Remus was just as sure his friend wouldn't let anyone slip with it, not even McGonagall.

Now, murmurs crawling down the corridor like wisps of smoke, emotions clashed through him— a wave of endearment for his still-relatively-new friends, and one of anxiety for what lay ahead. 

Classmates he would have never thought he’d be friends with, if Remus was honest. The least surprising thing, though, was that he was the only man, because some things never changed, and nothing could ever beat how safe he felt surrounded by girls if compared to the roughhousing and tug-of-war stubbornness of boys. No, he was pleased with himself for having managed to make friends that didn’t make him feel like he desperately had to prove himself worth having around, friends who valued his opinions, friends who had different ideas and different life paths ahead and behind them, which was something rather difficult to find in his village lost in the countryside. So, they were his friends, Lily and Mary and Marlene, and everyone loved them, and despite his attempts at hiding in their blinding lights, he found himself, surprisingly, also not hated nor ridiculed, which was a clear improvement from his childhood years.

A word in a language he couldn’t really make out resounded through the door like a slap, followed by a shush by Lily so loud that she could have been silencing a room of year threes for all he’d know, instead of Marlene. The thing was, the whole campus and then some all knew that Marlene was ready to chew anyone's head off in a heartbeat if she even so much as got a whiff of prejudice in anyone's attitude. Lily surely wasn't one to stop her and face Marlene's wrath later in private, which made this interaction with McGonagall all the more worrying. 

Especially if what they were looking for was a compromise. 

Of sorts, at least.

In the professor's defence, though, Remus did feel like shit, and he knew he looked like he did, too. He had been avoiding mirrors like the plague lately, only doing the barest of minimums to seem half-presentable with the least effort he could manage. 

And hell, was he tired. 

He would have sent himself to sit one out too, if he were in McGonagall’s stead. 

Mary stretched her back, taking a break from staring a hole through the door. Remus straightened his legs in front of him, too, and the mere scuffing of his heel on the parquet made him bite on a groan. He rolled his ankles, hissing, but then his foot slipped against the end of one of his crutches, making it slide off balance and clatter downwards. Mary caught the crutches just moments before they hit the ground, and wordlessly proceeded to help him secure them back on the two empty seats beside him. As he mentally thanked whatever deity had granted Mary Macdonald all the fast reflexes that hadn't been assigned to him when they were created, a turn of the lock made his heart drop to his stomach again, though for a very different reason.

Mary's plaits whipped against the mahogany wainscoting on the walls, the clean sound reverberating down the corridor with a noise much like that of his crutches. But there was no time for dwelling on the poetics of sound, now. No, because Marlene had emerged from the office first, lips pressed together in a thin line and a hint of rather concerning wildness in her eyes. Her expression was so mismatched with Lily's easy encouraging grin that Remus couldn't stop anxiety from clutching at his lungs as Lily placed a cool hand on his shoulder and leaned into his ear. 

"Good luck!" she quipped, at the same time McGonagall called out Remus' name. 

Dread froze him in place, but Lily winked, and Marlene punched him in the arm lightly, and Mary nodded at him, and that was all the push he needed. He scanned his body, grabbed his forearm crutches, and steeled himself for the brief blackout that would make him teleport across the door, just like any time he had to get up faster than he liked.

That's how he found himself standing awkwardly in front of McGonagall's desk, the ringing in his ears subsiding just in time to see her lips moving, but soundlessly so, as she politely showed him towards the tufted red armchair across from her. He tried not to collapse onto it, he really did, but his knees nearly buckled beneath him. 

Remus couldn't remember a time he didn't resent his body for betraying him, but here he was, and he had to be as smart as he knew he could be, so his self-hatred session had to wait. 

"Mister Lupin." 

He heard the older woman say in the distance, as she folded her hands on the notebook in front of her and waited for him to settle. She was used to his routines —more patient than most, to be fair— but she didn't ever try to make it any less uncomfortable for him.

"Professor McGonagall." 

He nodded, suddenly very aware of how small her quicksilver gaze made him feel.

"As I mentioned previously to the four of you," she began, "you were the first to ever propose such an initiative in the two hundred years since this faculty was established. The idea of students volunteering to better other students' quality of life is not only commendable, but it also promises to bring a wave of refreshing novelty into the services offered by our university." 

Remus only nodded, because for now, that sounded like good news, and Marlene's face didn't seem to hint at anything like this. The corners of her mouth curled upwards in a courtly manner, a smile in her voice.

"You must know, your colleagues valiantly pleaded your case, Mr Lupin. They all brought forth reasonable arguments in your favour, though I am afraid that, without any intervention, this could remain what it now is: a project. Therefore," she looked right through him, as if she could feel the dread weighing on Remus's shoulders and relished in seeing the weight of her eyes add to it, making him slouch further down the chair, "given the significant involvement both you and Miss Evans have in this project, and its potential to shape your careers, I need you to understand why I believe it necessary to increase the stakes. To further motivate you, if you will." 

Her pause was long enough for Remus to start thinking, which always proved to be a problem. 

See, his thoughts tended to be the kind that would make him regret every single decision that led him to this office, sitting here, the gnarly thoughts that spiralled down to wishing he was never born just to avoid this conversation. Remus didn't need motivation to work on this project, existential dread, peer pressure and imposter syndrome were surely enough, thank you very much, but McGonagall didn't quite seem to catch that. 

Her cluelessness was infuriating, but she didn't know. Couldn't know. So, she ploughed on, relentless. 

"I approve of this, but the renewal of both your and Miss Evans' scholarships will also be evaluated concerning the success of this endeavour, or lack thereof, at the end of this academic year, and hopefully the ones to come."

Oh no. 

No no no. 

Fucking hell. 

It was smart of McGonagall to not even give him a chance to reply.

"I wouldn't propose such... measures if wasn't sure of your skills and talent, Mister Lupin. I assure you I wouldn't. A peer-run counselling service focusing on mental health support is an honourable cause per se, and I am convinced it could shape the future of your colleagues just as much as yours. This is why I would like you to report to me bimonthly about it. I highly recommend each one of you keep a practice diary, too, and put to use all of the techniques we study in class and more."

The thought of having to see McGonagall every two months to discuss how their project was coming along made him taste bile. He shuffled in his seat, a hand firm on her desk as an attempt to stop her from adding fuel to that fire he felt so stupid to even have ever proposed to his classmates. 

It was his idea, nonetheless, and he shall suffer its consequences.

"Professor, with all due respect, we—" 

"Have you ever thought about this evolving into the topic of your final dissertation, Mister Lupin?" 

His mind went blank. Remus sank back into the chair, air punched out of him. 

No, of course not. 

His dissertation was more than a full year away, and yet people always managed to force him to think that far into the future.

And if there was one single thing Remus Lupin knew with absolute certainty, it was that he hated his future.

 Remus opened his mouth, but no sound came out. He could feel his forehead crease in distress, the muscles in his shoulders tightening as painfully as his chest, the pressure suffocating. He couldn’t think ahead, couldn’t afford to look too far into his future without seeing his own nearing end most days, and now he had agreed not only on a long-term project with other people he had to be his best for, but also this. With his aching bones, and unpredictable pain flareups, and fainting spells, and brain fog, and his whole damned life. Remus was terrified of the possibility that surviving would take too much energy for him from living his dream life, and McGonagall had no idea. His friends didn’t either, but that was different. That he’d done on purpose, omitting details, concealing and hiding and avoiding, just to look okay, just not be the one to always bring the mood down, just to not be coddled. McGonagall, well, he had hoped she’d see him, see through him, given the years of practice in psychiatric units and war hospitals under her belt. Maybe he was wrong.

“I understand this isn’t easy, Mr. Lupin,” she said, her voice calm but firm. “But the world doesn’t wait for you to catch up.”

Her words slapped him. Cold washed all over Remus, steeling him.

The world doesn’t wait.

Remus clenched his jaw, forcing himself not to look away. There was no point in arguing. He knew that. The world would keep spinning, with or without him, just like it always had. No one was going to stop and wait for Remus to figure things out, no one would wait for him if he limped along, no one would save him. He’d given up hope on that a long time ago.

But this project wasn’t a one man show, and that was just as terrifying.

For a moment, there was silence. The sound of the ticking clock on the wall was the only thing that filled the space between them. Then, light reflected on McGonagall’s glasses as she dipped her head, and just like that, she had that tight little smile on her lips that Remus always struggled to read.

“Rome wasn’t built in one day, Mr. Lupin, nor was it built by a lone architect. I will do whatever it is in my power to allow you to have what you need, time too, if necessary, as long as you stay on track. You must know, I have every faith in you. But you must be prepared for what comes next.”

Remus could only give her a tight nod, and finally break eye contact.

This was a test, he was sure.

The game was on.

"Oi, Macdonald! Careful with your nine-tailed whips, you nearly took my precious eyes out."

"Shut up McKinnon, you're the one to talk with that blond skunk on your head, you— Oh, here he comes! Remus!"

Marlene jumped to her feet and dodged Mary's dangerously long hair to rush to his side, looking at him like she could read the entire conversation just from the expression on his face. Not like they hadn't heard McGonagall through the door anyway. Mary hugged him, and Remus let himself slump over her, releasing a deep sigh as he let his eyes sank shut, just for an instant. The shorter girl was almost supporting his whole weight, and Marlene couldn't stop the flicker of warmth that cursed through her at the sight despite the insult Mary'd just spat her way.

"Well? How did it go?" Lily asked, fully committed to pretending McGonagall hadn't just made their lives exponentially more difficult in the span of a mere ten-minute conversation, but also doing her best to contain the excitement practically vibrating off of her.

"Bimonthly reports, Evans? Really?"

Remus grimaced over Mary's shoulder, her hands steadying him as he stood taller and positioned the crutches securely in his hands. He wobbled a little, then balanced on them in a quick stability test.

“Did she mention the dissertation to you too, Remus? Oh, don't look at me like that. I think it would be nice, actually. It’d mean we wouldn’t have to make up any insane topics to expand on, at least.”

“I don’t want to think about this now, Lily, do we really have to have this conversation? Or would you rather we talk about the list of rules she said she’d send our way? Keep the students anonymous, and what if someone was in real danger? How could we help them if they were planning to jump in the Thames and we’d only assigned them a fucking little black star instead of a name and an address?”

That had been one of their concerns, especially with the ‘counselling post’ service they were planning on offering other students. Remus and Marlene sided against Lily and Mary, and McGonagall with them, much to Remus’s dismay. The thought of being responsible for other people’s lives by correspondence and not being able to truly intervene was terrifying to him, but it was true that if the letters had been intercepted or stolen or whatnot, having people sign them would mean risking their privacy, and his friends with them.

"As if that was the worst thing that witch did to us! And to you, Remus, making you wait outside when it was your idea in the first place, just because of your condition! Oh, you just wait, she'll read all about it soon enough. Fuck, the articles are practically writing themselves!" 

Expectedly, Marlene was on the warpath already, her voice on a crescendo that echoed so loudly that Lily was worried McGonagall wasn't only going to hear them but also kick them out. Or get them expelled, or worse.

"We’re all in this together, alright? So why don't we take this conversation outside, girls? Shall we?" Lily chirped, ever the voice of reason, clapping her hands and ushering them further along the corridor, "After all, we have a whole cottage to christen!"

Despite his deep passion for muttering complaints under his breath, even Remus had to admit that being trusted with an —albeit minuscule— cottage on campus grounds was so much more than they could have ever hoped for, especially considering what they would have used it for in the first place.

The lift had dinged to a halt and the quartet hushed when the doors opened, trying not to call too much attention to themselves as they walked around a college still buzzing with caffeinated life. 

The exam season slowly creeping upon them only made more students in need of a safe place, somewhere to calm down, where someone could listen to them without judging or feeling medically assessed, someone who could understand them like friends, armed with advice and a cup of warm tea. This, and the seasonal depression approaching with it being three in the afternoon and getting dark already, made their project feel even more valuable. 

It had taken them more than a term and the entire summer break to come up with this plan. 

And McGonagall was secretly delighted, that much was clear.

Though, in all honesty, Remus was more worried about actually having to make something good out of it now than when he was sitting in that corridor, grappling with the possibility of it all being dismissed as a stupid waste of time.

"Oi, earth to Lupin!" Mary lightly bumped into his side, "What's going on into that pretty head of yours, hey? If it's the reports you're worried about, we'll handle them together, yeah? It's just formalities to prove to the rest of the heads of the college that we're not running a drug cartel on campus, I'm sure."

"Maybe you wouldn't, Mary 'goody-two-shoes' Macdonald, but we can't deny CBD's therapeutical benefits, so it would only be fair if one of us very accidentally handed out some perfectly legally sourced spliffs as an incentive to donate to our project..."

“Shut it, Ems, you two are distracting me, I’m the one with the map of the grounds here. You don’t want to be lost out here with wild animals, do you? And I was thinking, my dear Remus, the only sensible one here, if we can’t find the cottage, how could other students ever— Oh."

They stumbled to a halt, the crunch of gravel and dead leaves under their boots dying out, letting the whispers of nature and their cloudy breaths fill the air. The cottage, as they were told, was in a small clearing in the woody park on the outskirts of campus, protected from unwanted eyes by an imposing weeping willow that could be seen from the music wing and most of the dormitories alike. It looked, well, rather rough from the outside, if Remus was honest. Sage-green paint chipping off the thick walls, and moss and the occasional oak sapling growing on the low thatched roof. The windowpanes were clean, though, uncracked, and the wooden fixtures, if a bit squeaky-looking, seemed sturdy enough. With bated breath, Lily produced a small brass key from her coat pocket, and almost magically, at a flick of her wrist the door slid open, without as much as a low creak. They shared a look —Mary agape, Lily's fiery hair bristling in the breeze, Marlene's eyes sparkling in ill-concealed excitement, Remus staring like he was waiting for someone to pinch him awake— and beelined inside. As soon as the wooden boards of the floor groaned under their combines weights, Lily twirled on the spot, arms open wide and a blinding grin on her freckled face.

"Can you believe just how big this place is?"

"Massive!" "Gigantic!" "Bloody humongous!" 

"It's like it's larger on the inside, almost," Remus noted, leaning back on the windowsill to get a proper look.

It was a good place to start.

Fog became rain, and rain became snow, and Remus' heart kept growing just as cold. The first months at the cottage, lovingly nicknamed The Shrieking Shack due to the terrifying creaks of floorboards and doors populating it like ghosts, were so busy the four of them barely had the time to breathe. Moving desks and lamps and bookcases and an obligatory kettle for tea had been the most enjoyable part for Remus, because the girls had been adamant on not letting him do any heavy lifting, so he could order them around the rooms in his poshest accent.

"That painting's a bit crooked, love," he'd drawl, pretending to noisily chew on a piece of gum as he pointed at the frame in question with the limpest wrist motion he could manage without bursting out laughing. Marlene showed him the finger, but turned around to straighten it anyway.

“Fancy a cup of tea, sir?” she smiled, tugging on his sleeve.

“I am a merciful lord, miss McKinnon. Show me to the kitchens, then!”

They went on like that, running on milk teas and senseless banter between a class and the next. Remus had never been more thankful to his past self for having studied while at work, so he could focus on current matters when the girls were often hung up on readings and assignments he could do in his sleep by now. Soon, though, the wave of first-years would move in, and Remus tried really hard not to dwell on it too much. He just hoped the accommodation office would forgot about him, or remembered him so well they would surely think twice before assigning him a poor, unsuspecting roommate.

For now, what mattered to him, what he spent most of the little energy he had left from staying alive, was their project. It was McGonagall, pleased after her inspection of a now fully furnished and proper Shrieking Shack, to suggest they pick a name for it. It was their brainchild, after all. They’d racked their brains for days, until one fateful afternoon, as Remus and Lily were sitting side by side in the library, the two overheard someone from the desk in front of theirs. A mellow voice fit for that tuft of curls, he turned to his shorter, dirt-blond friend, and marking each word with a wide gesture of his hands, said exactly what the quartet was waiting for.

“This says fenix, Pete. You know, like the word for Phoenician red, fen in Latin and phoen in Greek. Here, see? It makes sense, doesn't it? Pliny must have known that some people believed these kinds of birds existed, and so he wrote about them in his Naturalis Historia. Yes, even if he personally didn’t think that a red bird with a golden neck and blue tail could be immortal, and be born again and live over and over by re-emerging from its own ashes. Guess he must have still thought it was something worth writing about.”

Lily craned her neck to look at Pete, his voice was lower, musing.

“I get it, James. A symbol of hope, of change in immutability.”

“Yeah. A phoenix. Lovely concept, don’t you think?”

Pete scratched his head, finally looking up from the book to reveal a pointy, pale face, contrasting starkly with James’ sun-kissed one. “You’re always so full of your studies, James. Screw mythology books! What do you think it means?”

Remus couldn’t help but stare at him, hanging from his words like a man on a cliff, then at Lily, who seemed transfixed by James himself more than what he was saying.

“It means that, well… There’s freedom in burning our own ashes.”

Remus found himself scribbling it on a scrap of paper, a circle around phoenix with an arrow pointing to project name???. Lily saw, scooted closer to scrawl over the question marks, adding a line under it and an exclamation mark to emphasise it.

Replying instantly, a new arrow flowing from phoenix to a what are we called then?, “I think we need a name for us, as members,” Remus whispered, and met her gaze.

Lily’s face lit up all of a sudden, and Remus couldn’t help but break into a smile as she wrote in a flurry, Like in the Order of Psychologists?

Remus crossed the last word and tossed the pencil aside. The two of them shared a satisfied grin, both bubbling with the anticipation of telling the whole ordeal to Mary and Marlene.

And with that, the Order of the Phoenix they were.

Chapter Text

The first time James had seen him he was sure he was mistaken. The world was full of people with similar voices, similar laughter, similar shoulders, similar mannerism.

The second time he did, he told himself he must have been one of those ghosts that populated his memories and had somehow reappeared in the corner of his eye, his mind messing with him.

The third time, though.

Planet earth could as well be a mass of indiscernible humanity in various shades of grey, but there was only one person that name could belong to. It didn’t matter if the surname didn’t match, there was only one boy who could be born in such a family of maniacs that called all their children as stars and constellations, only one in the whole of England, in London too, James was sure.

And he was there in front of him.

Maybe he didn’t see him, but just hearing his name had put James’s heart at rest.

His suspicions weren’t empty.

He wasn’t going insane.

That was one very real and very alive and very happy-looking Sirius Black, sitting two desks down towards the blackboard ahead of Peter and him.

Or Sirius Grey, as he heard him introduce himself as he asked if he could sit there, for what mattered.

James didn’t care.

Black, Grey, White, fucking Neon Pink, whatever.

That was Sirius.

His Sirius.

James hadn’t seen him in years, and yet even just the sight of him felt everything but foreign.

“James? What are you staring at? The stuff on the board’s there since yesterday. It’s not Latin —my guess is on Romanian— so don’t try to make sense of it. Professor Babbling isn’t here yet, you’re not in trouble for our very lacking translation... Yet. Oh my, oh shit, here she comes. Act natural, pretend you’re revising, stop looking. Don’t look her in the eyes, I said. She can sense fear. Hey, did you have a stroke or something? I said stop looking at—”

“Will you please shup up, Pete.”

“What?”

James felt like his chair was on fire, the desk was on fire, the world would surely burn to the ground if he didn’t immediately go hug Sirius. And punch his nose in. And then hug him so tight he’d strangle him. And maybe hug him and punch him some more.

“What what? Don’t what me.”

“Alright,” Peter dragged the word out, a mocking murmur as he pretended to be busy at sorting to through his notes, “At least don’t be an idiot and look at her, though.”

Professor Babbling’s beady eyes scoured the classroom, hungry for humiliating poor unassuming students by making them read their assigned translations out loud in front of the whole class. She had a reputation for tearing them down sentence by sentence as they stood there, chalk in one hand and half-crumpled assignments in the other, tears in their eyes.

“Any volunteers today?”

James remembered he was more than a cluster of memories embodied and took out his notebook, startled by the reality of it all. His ears were still trained on the drawled mutter coming from Sirius ahead, as he carelessly chatted with his two now half-panicking desk mates, seemingly not intending on doing anything through the class, given that he just sat there, hands deep in the pockets of his bedazzled leather jacket and battered bookbag on the desk, closed just like it had been since he stepped through the door.

“No? Nobody? Well, Mister Black, since you’re so chatty this morning, would you be so kind as to come forward and share your translation with the rest of the class?”

His desk mates looked at him in mild confusion and relief that they hadn’t been called, then turned around to giggle among themselves as he bellowed, “No problem, Bathsheda, dear! Coming right up!”

It was him.

Oh fuck, it was really him.

Sirius sauntered up his chair and stood tall in front of the blackboard, an easy grin as he rolled his shoulders, hands still buried in his pockets. He reminded James of an actor stepping on stage, settling into the character before the play.

“Where is your assignment, Mister Black?”

Sirius made a face, then tapped his temple. “It’s all in here! And just call me Sirius, please, no need to be so formal, dear.”

If Professor Babbling wasn’t red of rage before, she surely was starting to go more than pink around the edges. She huffed, gesturing towards Sirius, and sputtered a, “Go ahead back to your seat, then, let’s not lose any more time with this.”

“No, I won’t but thank you. I quite like it up here, actually. Would you mind?” Sirius said, and proceeded to grab the textbook right out of her hands, loudly flick through the pages, and get to the blackboard in long strides.

“What page was it, John?” Sirius amicably asked a lad in the front row, leaning on his desk as if they’d known each other since forever.

“Me name’s Martin,” he gasped in a thick, offended accent.

Sirius smiled at him and patted his head. “Of course, Martin. I’m terribly sorry, would you happen to know the page number?”

After a beat, James surprised himself. He didn’t think he’d have it in him, really, when he heard himself speak even before realizing what it was that he was doing, “Page 493!”

Their gazes met for an instant.

James didn’t know what he was expecting, maybe his childhood best friend running towards him in slow motion with flowers exploding all around them in the sunset. Instead, Sirius just winked at him.

“Cheers, mate!” he called, and turned his back to the class to write on the board, flourishing the letters with loops and swirls just to lose time in his theatrical arm swoops and pliés to get from one end of the blackboard to the other. The back of the class was already filling with murmurs and giggles, but Professor Babbling was so furiously transfixed on Sirius’s performance that she didn’t seem to hear them. James wasn’t in a much different state, it seemed, by the quizzical look on Peter’s face as he glanced between him and Sirius once, twice.

“Please tell me you don’t bloody fancy him, Potter.”

James whipped his head so fast his chair spun on the floor too, garnering them curious glances from the desks close by.

“The fuck are you on, Pettigrew?” James swatted him upside the head, a bit more roughly than intended.

“You know I have nothing against… that… though, right?” Peter said meekly, scratching his neck.

“Aight, thanks Pete, the way you said it was so reassuring. Now. Shut. Up.”

Sirius pretended to take a long drag of smoke, then stubbed the chalk against the board hard, until it crumbled in a white pile of dust on the ground. Despite the show he’d put on, he had opted for the sensible option of actually writing what they’d been assigned. He moved front and centre, turning to Professor Babbling as if waiting for instructions. His hands politely behind his back, her hands shaking in anger.

“Well? Translate it, Mister Black, or I’ll have you expelled from this course this instant.”

And Sirius did.

Oh, if he did.

James couldn’t hide his smile even if he tried.

From Latin to Italian, though, then Italian to French, and French to English. Back-to-back, like he used to do to pull James’s leg when they were little. Not even poor Babbling could close her mouth, so in awe as she was.

“See how each translation added impurities to the original meaning? Each language is like overlaying a whole new dimension of culture and nuance. It affects how we see and interpret the world, something good old Plato called the Heraclitean flux and our favourite grandfathers Sapir and Whorf, too, linguistics gods rest their souls.”

His words had stunned them all into such a silence that James could even hear the faint clack of Sirius’s heeled boots as he took a step forward, the rustle of his clothes as he opened his arms and proclaimed, “What I mean with this, is: translating is old rubbish! Embrace modernity, just learn the bloody language!”

A beat.

Then the classroom erupted. Some clapped, some threw their books in the air, some whooped and whistled and someone even gave him a standing ovation. Grinning ear to ear, Sirius nonchalantly bowed to his colleagues, then to a speechless Professor Babbling, jaw slack while she incinerated him with her gaze.

Sirius placed the textbook back in her lap, patting her veiny hands as they closed on the book, clutching it like a shield between her and a raven-haired demon: “Class was absolutely lovely, thank you, Bathsheda, See you next time!”

And with one last bow, Sirius picked up his jacket and bookbag and swiftly got out of the door, cheers following him as he went.

For it being the second class of the semester, James already knew Latin would have been his favourite.

Lunch was a menial affair at the canteen, but they liked lingering on the tables to keep themselves warm when, outside, it felt like winter could bite off the tips of their noses. So, there they were, way past lunchtime, usually with a small bag of crisps shared between them as to prevent the lunch ladies from kicking them out because ‘they were still eating’.

Today, Peter had marmalade on his chin, but for some reason James didn’t feel like telling him straight away, like he usually would. The exhilarated buzz from Sirius’s lecture hadn’t left his system yet, but there was a sourness in his chest when he thought about what Peter had insinuated earlier.

“I demand an explanation, James.”

James stopped casually flipping through his Latin textbook, suddenly not so lost in thought anymore. He didn’t look at Peter as he spoke, though, otherwise he knew he couldn’t have stopped himself from cleaning the mess Peter had been making with that damned marmalade sandwich, crumbs all over himself, and then scowling at him would have been much harder than it already was.

“I know what you’re thinking. So, no, I’m not like that, as you put it, but a dear friend of mine was, so tread carefully on this topic with me, or I’ll defenestrate you. No, I am not joking. And yes, you’re right about that Sirius,” James listed on his fingers, snappily.

“That he’s one of those queers?”

“I— Should I open the window for you or are you going to jump out yourself, Pete?”

“We’re on the ground floor.”

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.” James scoffed, putting his book away and hastily slipping his coat on, “I’ll be at the dorm if you need me. Don’t need me, though.”

Peter scrambled to his feet, apologetic mumbling and sticky hands reaching for James to stop him. Before he could touch him and make James twice as mad for having soiled his clothes, James settled once again on the bench. He felt the eyes of strangers on him, and although he usually loved being open about himself in public, this was a topic best discussed among the two of them alone.

“Fine, fine. You’ll get your explanation, but at the dorm,” he sighed.

Peter liked to think of himself as an observant kind of person. When everyone around him was intense and bright, he liked his muted colours, found them quite complementary to the rest of the world’s, actually. He was an outsider, and willingly so, pressing his back against the wallpaper to get the broadest view over the room. He didn't know when or why he'd started doing it, but it was useful, more often than not, a skill that left him unseen and able to operate and assist silently, only when strictly necessary, only out of his own personal judgement.

Peter knew a little bit of everything about everyone. There was hardly anyone he didn't know by name, or fame, or both, on campus and in the lives of people he loved. So colour him surprised when he noticed James saw Sirius Grey —or Black, whatever—, actually saw him. James drank in the sight like an oasis in the desert. And he was smiling. Peter had only seen James smile like that for a couple of things, namely his parents, his (strictly girl) flings, and cute animals (mostly puppies). There was affection in that gaze, and Peter, for once, hadn't seen this one coming. It was a curve ball at best, a crack in his chest at worst, and now James had him sit down in their dorm room and was pacing.

James Potter only ever paced when he was trying to study, and especially when the topic proved particularly challenging. Was this a secret well-kept from him? Had James truly never noticed that flamboyant sod strut down the grounds before?

Peter was too curious, too nosey not to know.

It almost stung.

"I'm sat."

"I can see that."

"Don't beat around the bush, James. This is like throwing up, once it's out you'll feel better. And you'll be able to look at the vomit and find the culprit in the bits on the floor, if you're lucky enough."

"Jesus, Peter, thanks for the mental image right after lunch."

"You're welcome. Now come on, let's hear it."

James perched himself on the windowsill and anxiously peeked out the window before settling, finally still.

“You remember the year you moved to London, Pete?”

Well, that caught him off guard. Of course he did, and he told James so. It was one of the worst and best years of his life. He lost his childhood home and gained a lifetime friend in the span of months, a terrific feat for Peter’s expectations of his quiet life.

“And the name Black, apart from the Sirius in question, does it ring a bell?”

James pushed the glasses up his nose, eyes wandering on Peter like he was looking for answers in his figure, recalling his pudgy and pale-blond childhood self and overlaying it with his present form.

“Don’t look at me like that, James. You know I know about them, hell, everyone in the whole bloody country knows about the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black”, Peter sing-songed mockingly, “aren’t half of them part of the medical team of the Queen herself? And at least a couple of them have a Nobel prize nomination in medicine or something.”

“Anything else about them? Less… official?”

“Yeah, heard of it, though it sounds more like gossip fit for my mother’s afternoon tea, honestly. But okay, okay, I’ll tell you, alright. I think it’s bullshit, but some people say Walburga and Orion Black are spies from France, that’s why they all speak so many languages in that family. Some say it’s almost like a sect, a freemasonry kind of thing, that family. They raise their kids to become the best physicians and surgeons in the country, no wonder they are all enrolled here. You and I are some of the few students of humanities, everyone else comes to Pembroke Hill College for the scientific faculties.”

James sighed, took off his glasses, pinched the bridge of his nose. He remained still for a long instant, and Peter let him. He must have had his reasons, and Peter wasn’t going to make James rush through this, given how much this seemed to matter to him.

He was his best friend, it was the least he could do.

“Why, do you reckon, why would they let a member of their family be like Sirius?”

Oh, so that was where this was going.

Bright and warm and sturdy James looked so small in the grey afternoon light.

“They wouldn’t. Same reason why he wants to change his surname, apparently. It’s not just in family approval, he seems to lack in the creativity department, too,” Peter tried, forcing a smile to lighten the mood. James didn’t join him in it, though, his jaw set, eyes drifting outside once more.

“He used to be the favourite, the heir, you know?”

“How’d you know?”

James closed his eyes, forehead pushed to the cold of the windowpane. Peter saw him take a deep, bracing breath, and found himself mimicking it.

It was a truth universally acknowledged that the Blacks were the straightest family in England. It was also universally acknowledged that that couldn't be statistically accurate. Affairs of all sorts ran through the family, but it was a fact only ever silently recognised, and exclusively when such extramarital endeavours were of heterosexual nature. Keeping face is the foundation of most empires, and the Blacks were no exception. But just as much as their power allowed the Black family to use riches and connections to their advantage, investing in their children's education to keep the legacy alive, they also acted like were above the law. And that was because they were, their fines immediately paid and hordes of the best lawyers in the country at their disposal in the blink of an eye. Everyone knew that. They had managed to remain the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black because they were above the law.

 And being above the law allowed them to be above the truth, too.

The lack of truly private news about the family was proof of it enough. They were paying newspapers and magazines and journalists just to keep off their backs, and a formidable sum it seemed, considering how easy it had been to brush none other than Sirius Black under the rug, now almost a decade ago. He hadn’t always been his bold, unapologetic self, at least not outwardly, but James knew him.

James had known Sirius, then.

Just like all great historians, sometimes James had to resort to making up chunks of stories to make things make sense in objective historical events. That seemed to work in his favour especially when the events in question were far from him in time. Case at point: his childhood.

Wasn’t it merely escapism?

Sometimes.

Sometimes he just fantasised about the gaps in his childhood, the weeks and months during which no memories resurfaced, just the vague emotion that ran through them stitching, two major events together. Other times, thinking about the past helped with illuminating the present, something James thought could prove particularly helpful when navigating new events which, upon further inspection, revealed themselves as not so foreign at all.

In this case, Sirius’s case, James found both options could be true.

He welcomed the coolness of the glass against his skin. He felt himself burning, and if it wasn’t a fever, that headache had to be caused by his old mistakes.

“Sirius and I used to live next door. You moved in the empty house across from us the same year he moved away.”

James didn’t have the guts to look at Peter. Suddenly, he dreaded this conversation, wishing he could almost physically remove himself from it, incinerated on the spot, and end up like a burned-up coal in the floor. He knew Peter tended to be anxious when it came to friendships, and James didn’t want to alarm him, much less to break his heart by admitting he had replaced Sirius with him, what now felt like lifetimes ago.

In his defence, the swap hadn’t been voluntary.

James Potter very much missed Sirius Black at the time, and theirs wasn’t the sort of friendship whose gaping absence could be filled easily with something new. The first week after Sirius had left, James had no intention of ever having a new best friend, or any friend whatsoever.

See, when they were even younger, Sirius had told James about a family tradition of his. It involved two people wrapping a colourful cord around their joined hands, and tying a knot over them. He’d told James it was a symbol of unbreakable unity, of brotherhood. James, as an only child, couldn’t think of a better world than one in which Sirius moved in with him and become his real brother. Of course, he didn’t even need to think twice.

They were in James’s backyard, standing solemnly under the vast summer sky. Sirius produced a piece of golden rope from his pocket, James a red one, and following Sirius’s murmured instructions, they joined their hands, and tied the knot twice. James kept Sirius’s golden one, Sirius James’s red. When it was done, James still remembered Sirius’s words, too earnest, and his eyes, too intense, for them to be playing pretend. “We vowed to be brothers. We will behave as such towards one another, or may we die.”

James had repeated it, too.

Or may he die.

James didn’t die when Sirius moved away, which little James took as proof that, despite being left to his own devices, Sirius was still behaving like a brother, so he should do the same, lest Sirius would die. Out of loyalty, out of love, there was nothing that James wouldn’t do. That would have explained why it took a long time for him to accept Peter’s friendship, but James didn’t have the heart to tell him he’d rejected playdates and gifts for months over a silly old vow.

“Oh, alright. You should go talk to him, then. See if you two can meet up for coffee to catch up on the past, what, fifteen years?”

Peter had no clue. From the way he started biting the inside of his thumb, James was sure this was news to him, and unwelcome too, or so it seemed. There was no bite in his voice, though. James took the first proper, full breath since that morning, when it got caught between his ribs at the sight of his childhood best friend.

“He only told me ‘cheers mate’ though. I’m not sure he recognised me, Pete. What if he doesn’t remember me?”

“What-ifs are good for nothing, James. Either way, he’s an old, potential new friend, what’s there to lose?”

Everything, James found himself thinking, his stomach dropping once again. Peter would learn about their history one day, but right now, James could only muster a weak, “You’re right. I should have a chat with him.”

He stood there, a stormy cloud looming over his head.

“…do you want me to come with you?”

James flashed him his classic grin, and Peter couldn’t help but huff a chuckle as he clapped his shoulder, squeezing it. “Come on, you coward. Let’s go look for your boy-crush.”

James’s he’s-not-my-crush and Peter’s whatever-you-say echoed down the corridors as they went.

Finding Sirius couldn’t have been easier.

He was loud, bright, memorable, impossible not to notice —outstanding, in every sense of the word. Peter spotted him in the busy library first, but when he pointed toward Sirius to show James, his best friend froze in place.

“You keep saying you don’t fancy him, but as soon as you see him, there you go again.”

James chuckled a shut up, you know I’m straight, but he ran a hand through his hair. A nervous gesture.

“Can you find a spot to sit at close by? But not within earshot. Just, you know, so that you can help me get away if I get too painfully awkward.”

“Sure. Just do your classic thigh-slap-alright-gotta-go thingy loud enough and I’ll be right there.”

“Thanks Pete, you’re a real mate,” James nodded, throwing an affectionate jab to Peter’s arm for good measure. He rolled his shoulders, and off he went.

“James?”

He turned around, quick, on his toes already.

“Yeah?” he asked, wide-eyed.

“You can do anything.”

James’s smile could have blinded the sun.

It was Sirius, his old Sirius.

They were neighbours. They were classmates. They could talk about anything. They were partners in crime. They laughed until they couldn’t breathe and then until they were both sobbing on each other’s shoulder.

Just, this Sirius was taller, not as sharp and lanky as he used to be. He didn’t look as tired, or as wary of people. He’d grown into someone that James knew young Sirius would look up to.

It would have been enough to just set a day for tea, to catch up. Or a pint, because they never saw each other old enough to learn their respective drink of choice. Maybe Sirius liked coffee better, or stronger drinks, like whiskey, or cheap gasoline-like vodka. Maybe he learned how to play guitar after mastering the violin, like he desperately wanted to do when they were little, dreaming of getting into a band and travelling the world together.

Sirius looked like he’d barely ever cut his hair since the last time they saw each other, too. Like all the stiff, starched collars and pinstriped trousers had disappeared from his life, replaced by soft fabric covered in sturdy leather jackets and punk-spiked work boots, his hair had been freed too, and flowed untamed way past his shoulders.

He was still sharp. It was a choice, though, far from the one imposed to him in his childhood. It was intentional, owned.

Sirius wore his sharpness like he’d crowned himself with it.

James was overcome by pride for his friend, affection warming his chest, spreading to his voice as he casually dropped in the seat next to him.

“May I sit here?”

“A bit late to ask that, don’t you think?” Sirius mused, and James wished he could remember how his voice sounded like when they were little. He only noticed he’d forgotten to reply when Sirius asked, an easy, charming smile on his face, “What? Cat got your tongue?”

“Sorry, uh, I was thinking. Your performance at Latin today. Bloody brilliant, you were.”

“Why, thank you! You flatter me. It’s always nice to hear positive reviews from my admirers,” he winked, and Sirius looked so much like his childhood self that his chuckle lodged a knot in James’s throat.

“So? How have you been, Padfoot? It’s been too long, hasn’t it?”

Sirius’s expression changed instantly.

From warm and open to cold and closed, guarded, hurt…

…Disgusted?

Outraged?

James looked while his childhood best friend scooted backward with his chair, his shoulders squared, his jaw set. The dissonance rang, blaring alarms in James’s mind.

Sirius squinted, head cocked to the side, scrutinizing.

“Nobody has called me that way in a decade.”

Maybe he was just confused. Maybe Sirius couldn’t believe it was really happening, that his James was really sitting in front of him. James summoned up all of his courage not to duck and hide and painted a smile on his face again, instead.

It was okay, surely.

“Yep, it’s me, Pads! James Fleamont Potter, in the flesh! Or Prongs, if you will.”

Again, not the expected outcome.

Just, Sirius stood up.

“Are you joking?” He spat, and grabbed his things, stuffed them in his bookbag.

James found it hard to breathe. The words slipping past his lips, dripping in confusion. “Do you not remember me? Is something wrong?”

“Is something wrong?” Sirius mocked, wiping a pretend tear from his face with an exaggerated pout on his face.

“Pads, what—”

“Everything is wrong. You!”

His tone changed, shifted to a booming, gritty tone, sneering.

James had never heard this voice come from his best friend. The horrifying truth was —it was new.

Was this not his Sirius?

 “Oh, the nerve you have. Fucking shameless. After everything you did to me! How dare you talk to me, how dare you fucking pretend you’re a decent human being, Potter.”

He pushed James’s chair away with a swift kick in its leg. Sirius seethed through gritted teeth, “Take this as a warning, Potter. And stay. The fuck. Away. From me.”

Sirius turned his back on James.

And left.

As he walked away, his words and heavy steps bouncing against the silent walls of the library, James noticed Sirius was shaking.

Maybe he wasn’t.

James didn’t know anymore.

The library was quiet enough for Peter to manage to hear them. He’d sat far enough not to, but it was late and oddly emptier than usual, so he wasn’t at fault, really. Peter heard James call himself ‘prongs’, call Sirius Black ‘padfoot’, whatever they meant.

Fuck, he was going to feel sick.

Peter saw his best friend’s resolve crumble along with his smile, and Sirius’s anger mount and mount until everyone craned their necks to watch them.

Peter saw.

Everyone saw.

Everyone witnessed the two most likeable people on campus fight.

Everyone surely thought Sirius was right and James was at fault there, now, too.

And now everyone went back to their studying material, and the guilt of nosing into private matters mixed with whisps of gossip already swirling in the air like smoke revealing the laser-sharp beams of their gazes on James.

What did Peter think?

James, his best friend.

Peter pushed away the thought that he didn’t know him, and chose to go to him instead. James flinched at the contact of Peter’s hand on his shoulder.

“You alright, James?”

He nodded imperceptibly. A statue of ice barely melting under his touch.

“What the fuck was that all about?” Peter asked, squeezing his shoulder. It was awkward, usually James’s place to do the reassuring and soothing, but it seemed to do him some good anyway. James exhaled, slowly, hunched forward a little as he stood, only shaking his head to Peter in response.

“I wish I knew, Pete. I wish I knew.”

Not even one month in and the Shrieking Shack was, in Remus’s humble opinion, in a truly horrendous state. Not the whole cottage, to be fair— it was just the kitchenette in the back, which had been turned into the staff room, and as such was now the setting of most of the girls’ days, since Remus’s legs didn’t allow him to trek out there that often. That meant that someone was always either sitting on the floor or perched on a rickety stool to write a letter on one of the few spots that were (miraculously) free from the haphazard of strewn-around paperwork and notebooks and half-drunk cups of tea in various states of coldness and milk-curdling.

The letter system, much to their surprise, had been a great success, or so it seemed. Remus was proud to say that it had all been Marlene’s doing, thanks to her articles on the local newspaper and the university zines. They’d been just the beginning of her plan for their full-scale advertisement campaign, which involved Lily and Mary parading around classes and dorms and libraries and common rooms and canteens and toilets and whatnot to put the word out there about this new service their university had to offer.

Lily thought it was brilliant, of course, delighted at being able to get a first look at their little academic world in that way, too, with a never-ending string of “Excuse me, Professor, may we steal five minutes of your lesson?”, “We have an announcement for the class, it’s a matter of the utmost importance!”, and “Hello everyone! You may not know us, but I am Lily, and this is Mary, and we are here to tell you about something new, something different, that could change your lives for the better. Don’t believe me? Well, let me tell you all about it…”

And then came the flyers, lovingly designed by Mary and secretly printed by Marlene in the middle of the night at the newspapers’ print room. They’d pinned them and glued them and stuck them and handed them out for days —Remus as well, even taking advantage of his inability to carry stacks of them to very accidentally let them fall on the ground and waiting for passersby to help him, and voluntarily help him hand them out, too.

And then the pins that the Order wore on the daily now, a little brass phoenix on a black enamel background, wings open and fiery. Lily had them made at her sisters’ company, and for once Petunia didn’t complain about her, though Lily wasn’t sure the lack of protest really didn’t have anything to do with the fact that her sister was getting paid. The pins were well made, way nicer than the average backyard sale trinket, and despite Lily’s mistrust, Remus felt the love Petunia embedded in them.

Then, the first letters had started coming in.

It was proof of the fact that they were truly, completely committed to the project. Sitting in a circle on the Shack’s living room floor, giddy with excitement, the four of them stared at the little white envelope, and with shaky hands Lily offered it to Remus, “This wouldn’t exist without you, Rem”.

And because Remus needed this to work, they sat more comfortably and reviewed the Order’s rules. So, they democratically elected a bookkeeper for the names and addresses of the various senders, which turned out to be Marlene, who as such was strictly forbidden from reading and replying to any letter unless the amount of them ever became unmanageable. It didn’t seem the influx of letters would become a problem in the short term, so for now Lily had agreed on keeping up with the tedious process of opening and sorting the already ‘anonymised’ letters —Marlene had to be physically restrained from assigning overly vulgar symbols to the senders, lest they accidentally received their crisp white envelope with anything inappropriate doodled on the other side. The letters deemed one-time issues would go in Mary’s basket, the rest would be split equally between Remus and Lily, based off their confidence on who would be able to handle each case better. It was working, it seemed, and they still managed to attend all their classes and turn in assignments and have fun on the weekends, too.

Remus was happy about how this was coming along, he truly was.

And then came this damned “Welcome to Pembroke Hill” party.

Did Remus think it could be a good opportunity for first year students to make friends? Yes.

Was he worried about what dozens of freshly-out-of-A-levels students could do to the Shrieking Shack on a Friday night? Also, yes.

But that was in the open now, too, with a new wave of flyers ready to be attached to corkboards and handed out to first-year classes by the girls, while Remus was tasked with tidying up and making lists with everything they had in the Shack —to catch thieves— and everything they needed to make it an enjoyable night out. McGonagall had even allowed them to serve beer, since people would obviously be bringing their own flasks of hard liquor anyway.

So here he was.

Remus wished that if he frowned at the mess hard enough it would magically shame itself into cleaning up on its own.

He tried.

Waited.

Frowned harder.

Then sighed and put himself at work.

It was a good day. His joints didn’t ache much, and he’d struck the milk-to-tea-ratio jackpot that morning, so the day could either a) keep its winning streak, or b) get worse. And Remus had always enjoyed tidying up. Putting things back in their own place, whether side by side with his dad as he washed and dried the dishes or on his own at the apartment, always worked wonders on soothing his nerves. Maybe it had to do with the illusion of the existence of an order, of a logic behind the chaos of life… Remus didn’t care. He let himself fall into the rhythm of it, picking up the trash and stacking loose paper, and soon enough the low morning light would have given way to noon, and brought lunchtime with it.

He was thinking of treating Lily to the chippy shop close to the aula magna they’d have their Friday afternoon lecture at when he heard someone knock, then ring the little bell Mary had him install right above the door of the Shack.

“Marls! Did you forget your key gain?” Remus called, putting the last teaspoon in the drawer and rushing through the living room. “I told you, you should put it on your carabiner but you insist on keeping it in your bag, how many times do we have to tell— Oh?”

His voice trailed off as he swung the door open. Marlene most definitely didn’t look like the sunny, bespeckled sportsman outside the door.

“Hi! You alright?” The man smiled, a hand tugging at a stray curl on the nape of his neck. “Is this the infamous Phoenix?”

“The infamous one, indeed.”

Remus offered a hand, and found himself smile, mirroring him. “I’m Remus Lupin, member of the Order of the Phoenix. How may I help you?”, and the man shook it, a confident warmth radiating off him.

There was something in the way he carried himself that felt peculiar in a joyful, harmonious way, like the self-assured composure of wearing loud mismatched socks under smart black trousers.

“James. James Potter.” He hesitated, lingering on the doorway as his hand quickly retreated to fixing his hair, then cleared his throat. “I’m here to solve a mystery, if you will.”

A mystery?

Remus had to stop himself from laughing out loud.

It wasn’t every day that someone showed up with a line like that, and he surely didn’t have the heart to tell him he was the first to ever show up in person at the Shack, especially unannounced.

James shifted his weight from one leg to the other, craning his neck to peek at the room behind Remus, “Is it just you at the Phoenix today or…?”

“Oh! No. No, I mean, yeah, just me right now. The girls are around campus handing out flyers for the party and I’m here on housekeeping duty. I’d invite you in for tea, but I was about to go have lunch with them so—”

“So, what about talking about this mystery as we walk to the cafeteria?” James interjected with ease, unsheathing a disarming grin.

Remus was mentally patting himself on the back for keeping a semblance of composure as it dawned on him. Excitement was buzzing underneath his skin, threatening to burst at the seams and spill out in poor James’s face.

His first case.

His first chance to plunge into someone’s head without being called rude or annoying or whatnot. His first chance to untangle their thoughts, to help them find a way through them. The terrifying chance to be a part of something bigger and unique and entirely his own. A chance— no, the chance to prove himself, not to his father, nor to McGonagall, or the girls, but to himself.

The Order’s first case.

Somehow, it felt like the direction of their fate hung on the success of this first step, as if this moment, this single handshake could hijack the trajectories of their lives forever.

Remus desperately hoped it would be for the better.

But it was a good day.

It had to be.

A deep breath to steady himself, though not deep enough for it to show his nerves to James, who had already taken a step back, waiting for him, whistling casually with his hands deep in his pockets. Thoughts heavy on his chest, anticipation lightening his steps, heart quaking through his ribs up to his eardrums, Remus dipped into the Shack.

He scanned the place, made a mental list of what needed doing, grabbed his cane and his bookbag, and locked the door behind him, something new on the horizon, rising.

“Let’s hear this mystery, then,” Remus said, walking on James’ left, and he noticed James slowed down and matched his slower pace, making no comment on the cane but noticing it, keeping a little distance not to get in the way. He was nice. And he seemed good at reading people, too, Remus thought, and maybe James could make for a good pick for a future member of the Order. But that was a thought for another day.

Focus, Remus, focus.

“Remus. Can I call you Remus? Okay, okay. So, Remus, there's this friend of mine… uh, well, not really a friend anymore, more like an ex-friend. And I've just recently found him after more than a decade. But there's a catch: I found out that he hates my guts. And I don't know why! How did I find out? Well, last week…”

Remus listened, his mind working overtime while James's tone darkened and darkened as their steps and words faded off, lost in the forest’s sounds.

Chapter Text

Sirius Black.

A mystery indeed.

James still winced at his words, now integral part of his inner monologue for the past week.

After everything you did to me!

How dare you fucking pretend you’re a decent human being, Potter.

The thing was, these bitter, spiteful remarks made no sense to James. He’d tried, god if he’d tried, but he couldn’t wrap his head around any of it. What could his pre-teen-self have possibly done to Sirius to even just warrant being called anything but a decent human being, James didn’t know. He racked his brain for answers, but not even one single memory of the ones he shared with Sirius remotely pointed towards any malice or quarrelling between them, ever.

They were brothers.

Brothers in everything but blood, too, thanks to the vow.

James couldn’t help but wonder what he would have done if he couldn’t find clues to their friendship. Would it have been better to believe he couldn’t trust his memory? Or to have lashed out on a quest to look for physical, irrevocable proof, and go mental when he couldn’t find anything?

But proof he had, and he was twirling it between finger and thumb while vaguely listening to a Roman History lecture on Cicero and the Catilinarian orations. They’d coincidentally been translating them at Latin lately, which gave James one more reason not to pay attention. Peter elbowed his side every time he finished furiously scribbling a line on his notebook, but James couldn’t bring himself to move. The little knotted piece of yarn was worn and frayed by time, but James had kept it with care, and for some fateful reason he had stuffed it in a box when moving on campus. So here he was, partly hoping it would give him the courage to go face Sirius again and show him their friendship.

“…filled with frustration at the ongoing threat posed by Catiline, Cicero says, Quo usque tandem abutere, Catilina, patientia nostra? He addresses him directly, asking how long Catiline will continue to abuse the patience of the Roman people, how long he will subject Rome to his furor, his madness, and persistent threats against the Republic, all for his own selfish gain. By this, Catiline has betrayed their trust, and Cicero captures the depth of this betrayal through rhetorical force. Any questions, before we move on?”

The professor paced around the desk, overlooking the class for confused faces and raised hands. James hadn’t been listening much, but this, oddly enough, resonated with him. Did he care too much about Sirius? Should he forget about him and move on instead of abusing his patience? Was he being selfish? Did it mean he was betraying their friendship? Or was it Sirius who betrayed him, by rejecting it so violently? James scratched his neck, and that must have looked like a raised hand because the professor’s eyes immediately locked with James’s.

“Yes?” the man asked, in his staccato Italian accent.

James froze, vaguely feeling Peter’s stunned gaze pierce the side of his head. “Oh, erm, I was wondering,” James tried to keep his cool while sneaking a peak at Peter’s notebook, that he’d just slid in front of him, “wasn’t Cicero also trying to be remembered forever as a saviour of Rome? Wasn’t his struggle against Catilina also a sign of his desire for greatness?”

The professor hummed at James's question, maybe a little impressed that he had been paying attention after all.

“Ah, an interesting thought, Potter,” he said in a rattle of rolled r’s, pausing an instant to collect his thoughts. “Indeed, Cicero's role as a defender of the Republic is a rather complex one. He did want to be remembered, and part of that desire for fame might have driven his actions, some historians do agree with you, in fact. But we must ask ourselves: is Cicero’s desire for greatness selfish? Or does it reflect a genuine concern for Rome’s future? The lines between self-interest and patriotism, well, they often blur into politics, wouldn’t you agree?"

James nodded, hoping it was firm enough an answer, and waited for the professor to turn around before daring to mutter a thanks to Peter, though his mind hadn’t been on Cicero at all.

The dark whirlpool of his thoughts was interrupted by a quick rap of knuckles against the doorframe. Every head in the class turned like sunflowers to the sun to face the sound, but only James saw her. And she blinded him. A blur of red hair, freckles in a splash of milky, rosy skin. And when she stood in the middle of the class, it was her eyes that had James completely, utterly, irrevocably transfixed. Pale sunlight dappled her lithe figure, embroidering golden filigree in her copper hair, embedding aquamarine in her emerald eyes.

“May I, Professor Barbero?”

Her voice was musical in a northern way, it held a strength that balanced fiery and gentle, all at once. The professor must have said something to acquiesce, but James could only hear her, and her only.

“Hi everyone! Sorry to interrupt! I’m Lily Evans, and I’m here to tell you about something new, something that could change things for the better.”

There was a polite restraint to her passion. James spotted it in the way she moved her hands as she spoke, underlining with smooth and swift gestures the importance of the Phoenix and how it was founded to help students navigate their lives. James had noticed the flyers plastered around campus, he’d thought about it when they’d even been mentioned on the university’s zines, but this, she was what cemented James’s conviction. Lily. Her name was Lily, and James thought no other name could have ever been more fitting for someone who looked like a star blazing amidst a lush spring garden. She could help, he was sure of it.

James knew he had to reach out to the Phoenix. Lily’s words had convinced him they’d solve his puzzle, help him fix whatever had been inexplicably broken in his and Sirius’s bond. Peter, though, in true Peter fashion, had been against the idea of going in person to the cottage Lily had told the class about.

“Just send a letter, that’s an option too, she said,” Peter had argued, his voice tinged with sour anxiety, “I wouldn’t want to be seen there, James, if I were you. People are already talking, you know.”

James rolled his eyes at him, “Yeah? Talking about what? Let’s hear it,” he huffed, challenging.

Peter squirmed in his seat, his tone taking that exasperated sigh that always reminded James of his mother.

“About how you’re queer,” James opened his mouth to rebut, but Peter didn’t let him. “And disloyal too, ‘cause you apparently must have dumped Sirius and disappeared for him to hate you so much.”

“Bollocks!” James laughed, but it came out stilted, hollow. “That’s bloody ridiculous. I’m not queer and I definitely didn’t dump Sirius, maybe it’s more like the other way around. Fuck, I don’t even know why he hates me!”

Peter looked around, eyes wide to assess the damage of James’s raised voice like a mouse looking for the cat he’d sniffed was close by.

“Still,” he said quietly, then, ducking his head, ashy blond hair camouflaging him with the wall behind him, “You should be careful, mate. People have eyes, you know? And ears, and enough boredom to make them turn even a rock into something to talk about.”

Albeit borderline paranoid, Peter’s warning had stuck with James. When he walked around campus, he had the distinct feeling of being watched, of whispers swirling around him. And James hated rumours, and even more he hated being disliked for a mess that wasn’t even his doing to begin with. Maybe if people saw him go to the Phoenix, they’d think better of him, suppose he was trying to fix himself from the excuse of a human being they thought of him.

How dare you fucking pretend you’re a decent human being, Potter.

So, it was settled, then.

If anything could help, in person or not, it was the Phoenix.

And if James happened to run into a specific redhead while he was there, well, that was just an added bonus.

It had taken him much less time than James would have been proud to admit to reach out to the Phoenix. When he cladded himself in his favourite woollen scarf, as burgundy as courage, the buzz of excitement at the prospect of seeing Lily again melted into Sirius’s words weighing on his heart. The walk across the grounds, the greenery along that winding gravelly path, the intricate mosaics of grey clouds between black oak branches, the rustling silence that kept him company— James found it all soothing, as if the quaint little thatched sage-green cottage behind the weeping willow was far removed from reality, filled with serene magic.

If his anticipation deflated at the sight of that gangly lad with kind eyes who opened the door, James tried not to show it. Remus emanated a quiet warmth, and despite everything he’d been working himself up to telling Lily, James found he needed that now, more than the girl’s ardour. And Remus was friendly enough that, when he mentioned Lily was out handing flyers, James didn’t even budge, rather, he latched onto the opportunity to see her like a lifeline.

“Let’s hear this mystery, then,” Remus said.

James couldn’t help but wince internally at the cane, at the limp in his gait. He looked so young, and yet impossibly old all at once, like he’d lived a thousand lives when James had only barely managed one (or two, if he counted the one in which he spent his childhood with Sirius).

When James began explaining, though, all the mental planning he’d been doing promptly escaped him. He disliked how he’d deflected his hurt with a humorous tone, a façade he put up as soon as things got too ugly to be left to hang bare in the air around him, unfiltered. But Sirius was a touchy subject now, and it had been for a long time until he’d finally made peace with it, with him being lost forever.

Which he wasn’t anymore.

Not yet, at least.

“I guess I’ll wait for you to agree on taking this case before giving you the unabridged version, but yeah. Long story short: he and I grew up together. We were basically brothers, more like, and his family was scary strict and I know they didn’t like me that much, but we still spent most of our time together, going to the same school and all that. Then, out of the blue, he disappeared, he did. I only caught a glimpse of the moving trucks as they cut the corner down the road, and that was it. I thought he’d come back to school, at least to say bye, but that was the last I ever saw of him up until the, ugh…”

Remus nodded, patient. James decided he liked Remus, how he let him take his time to find the right words, let him talk a flood and change his mind mid-sentence. Remus listened like a wishing well swallowing coins, with a promise of fulfilment, of resolution.

“…Until the chat we had at the library, the one everyone talks about now, apparently. And I don’t know why he said those things, but he did… Argh, screw those people! He hates me, he does.”

“Do you feel comfortable sharing what he told you?”

Remus asked, carefully slowing down as they got closer to the cafeteria, trying to prolong their conversation while keeping a wide berth from the chattering crowd that was gathering there, hungry, and not only for food.

“Oh, I thought you knew!” James chuckled despite himself. “After everything you did to me! he said, he proper yelled it at me. In the middle of the library, mind you. And then that I’m only pretending to be a decent human being. Which, I mean, how does he know, if we haven’t seen each other in ages? Oh, and he called me by my surname too, which is odd, I guess? Cause it’s something he would have never, ever done before. It was rather how his family greeted us, not him. He used their same tone, now that I think of it.”

James shuddered at the memory of three pairs of icy grey eyes pinning him down. Remus eyed him with warmth, not with the mistrust or pity he’d imagined he’d dish him.

How dare you fucking pretend you’re a decent human being, Potter.

His expression thoughtful, Remus offered, finally, “This sounds quite complicated. But not unsalvageable, especially if we come up with a good action plan. And, of course, if you’re willing to share more and put in some work, I think we— The Phoenix can help.”

Hope surged rippling in his mind, easing the tightness in his chest. “Really?” James asked, a smile in his voice.

Remus nodded, a stubborn sort of glint in his eyes. “Yes, James. Really. Though I must warn you: this isn’t going to be a walk in the park,” he smiled, vaguely waving his cane towards the forest behind them, “These things never are. But we’re here for you to lean on, if you’ll let us.”

When the two of them reached the cafeteria, it was swarming with students, the crowd large enough that even James, as the latest talk of the campus, could revel in the idea of getting lost in it, even just for a moment.

James’s eyes spotted a familiar head of spun copper in the crowd. She was chatting animatedly with a tall, pointy-looking man that, from a distance, reminded James of an oil-covered seabird. Lily patted his shoulder, and the sight sent a flicker of irritation through James. He didn’t know who that was, but he’d seen him around, and there was something about the way he carried himself that was so akin to the Blacks’, always seeming to look down on everyone, that bothered James more than he cared to admit. What was worse, or what James hoped could spur him into not being nasty at the man, was that Lily seemed to enjoy his company. And she was now calling for Remus, waving frantically at them. Remus and James briskly joined Lily and Oil-slick-man. She greeted Remus warmly before turning to James, a wary yet polite smile on her face as, for the second time that day, James shook hands with a member of the Phoenix.

“Lily, this is James,” Remus announced, gesturing at him, “He came to the Shack for a chat, we talked about it along the way, isn’t it, James?”

Lily’s eyes widened in surprise, her handshake firm and self-assured, “Oh, that’s lovely! We’re always happy to help.” James’s hand felt cold when she took a step back. Lily glanced at Oil-slick-man, then, who loudly scoffed at the mention of the Phoenix and was now full-on scowling at James. “Let me introduce you to my friend Severus, James.”

Severus looked at James’s extended hand like he could give him scabies. Lily intervened, elbowing Severus lightly to prompt him. “Sorry, James, he’s a bit— Sev, come on, he won’t bite.”

He just stood taller, eyed James up and down, and sneered in a deep nasal voice.

“Lupin. Potter.”

Lily stood there, a sour scrunch of her nose as she turned to look at Severus, but all that was left of him was a flurry of his long black overcoat as he turned a corner and left. She shook her head, a big sigh as she smiled apologetically at James.

“Ignore him, he gets in a mood sometimes.”

“More like all the time,” Remus coughed, and Lily shot him a look before turning to James again. “We were just about to grab lunch with the rest of the Order of the Phoenix, James. Why don’t you join us?”

James didn’t need to be asked twice.

“Yeah, Lils, I was thinking we could go to the chippy shop? I need some fuel for the lecture with McGonagall later…”

James caught himself staring at Lily’s eyes and decided to fix his hair instead, just to give himself anything else to do, hoping he didn’t come off as a creep. Her eyes were just so, so pretty, it would have been a crime not to look at them. James knew Peter would have hit him upside the head had he seen him in this state. He fixed his hair again for good measure.

With James in tow, Lily and Remus fetched the girls, who were waiting for them outside the history building.

“Psych majors take history too? How come I’ve never seen you —err, you two around here?” James asked Lily, speeding up to her extraordinarily fast walking pace.

“Just Remus and I are, Mary and Marlene are psychology minors. I know they take some classes together, but if you want the details, you should ask them in a bit. Look, there they are.”

James followed Lily’s gaze, and he was surprised he recognised both of them. Marlene was sitting on the steps to the entrance, the ‘do not sit’ plaque right behind her back, and in the meantime, Mary stood a few steps below her, observing intently as Marlene poured some loose tobacco on a piece of paper, placed the filter, and methodically rolled and licked her cigarette close. She motioned for Mary in offering, and when she shook her head, Marlene huffed and grabbed the lighter she’d somehow managed to tie to the carabiner on her belt loop, flicked it open with a movement of her wrist, and lit her cigarette.

“All your second-hand smoke will get me killed, McKinnon.”

“Not my fault you’re always following me around like a lost puppy, Macdonald,” she said, exhaling the smoke through her nose, though away from Mary.

“Am not! Did you know it’s also bad for the planet, not only for old bints like— Oh, hey Lily! Remus!”

Mary waved at them, quickly getting down the stairs to meet them halfway and wordlessly reach for Remus’s bookbag, who handed it to her, muttering a “Thanks, you don’t have to,” to which she replied, slinging it across the shoulder opposite the book she was already holding, “I want to, though.” James knew Mary in Contemporary History, and Marlene too, but he couldn’t remember where from.

“James Potter, yeah, hi! No need to introduce us, thank you, Remus,” Marlene quipped, halfheartedly taking a long drag of her cigarette before throwing it to the ground and putting it out with her foot.

“You pick that up and throw that in the bin right this this instant, McKinnon!” Mary threatened her, and Marlene grunted, but obliged anyway.

James couldn’t help but look bemusedly at them and turn to Remus, who shook his head and snorted a laugh. “Glad to know you’re not new to the rest of the Order, then! Fancy some fish and chips, anyone?”

They fell into step behind Lily as they made their way through the winding alleys just outside campus. James’s heart pounded in his chest. This was his chance —with Sirius, with her. He held his breath, trying hard not to smile as he struggled to keep at her heels.

The chippy was tucked away in a narrow water lane, the tide times marked on a chalkboard by the door. James followed them in. The others were clearly familiar with the place, and they gave no mind to the squeaky linoleum floor, scuffed at the corners from years of foot traffic, and faded, peeling pastel yellow wallpaper that was suspiciously darker at arms and heads’ height.

A few locals were digging into their meals, dousing the chips in vinegar, assaulting James’s nostrils —he’d never been a fan of it, much preferring his mum’s meen varuval, and hoped the older man behind the counter, who was skilfully flipping the fish in the deep frying oil without so much as a splash, would be kind enough to give him at least a slice of lemon instead. James looked around the place, at the few dark wooden tables eroded by time, at the black-and-white pictures all crookedly hanging on the walls, but there was no menu in sight.

“So… do you come here often?” He asked, taking a seat on a rickety stool at the head of the table.

“You could say that, yeah! Pa used to be a regular when he worked at the brewery just downstream, you know? The one close to Putney, behind the train station… No? Well. Anyway, I followed him around a lot when I was little and I often waited for him here, what with Ma working shifts at the launderette and all that, so Aberforth is sort of a grandpa to me, yeah.”

Mary spoke easily, a tilt of the head to point at the man who was in the kitchen a second ago and was now gathering empty trays. He was tall and silvery all over and looked back at James’s unintentional stare with a crinkled smile in the bluest eyes he’d ever seen.

“Mary! ‘Ow ya doin’, love? Brought ya mates down, ‘ave ya?”

The man, who struck James as the photographic negative of Mary’s warm and soft features, called from the kitchen, appearing a moment later next to them to set a jug of tap water and a small tower of glasses on the table.

“Good, good, cheers, Abe! You know them already, it’s just James here who’s new. Classmate of mine, he studies—”

“—Classics, ancient European history and Latin, specifically. Pleasure to meet you, sir.”

Aberforth was wiping his hands on his oil-stained white apron. He paused for an instant, then crashed into a fit of laughter. It was the contagious sort of laugh that had the whole table snickering, James too, even though he had no idea what for.

“A posh boy, this one, innit? Mary, love, I can still see you this tall tugging at me sleeve, but I you’re a proper scholar now! Ah, right, cheers for the laugh, son” he patted James’s shoulder roughly, a crooked smile on his face. “So, what can I get ya?”

James let the others order before him, then settled on a side of mushy peas to hopefully cut through the grease of the fish and chips without being ostracised for asking for lemon to squeeze on it like a heathen.

Between waiting for their piping hot, surprisingly perfectly crispy portion of fish and chips and over lunch, the conversation flowed easily. Lily was charming and clearly a brilliant student, if James could go by the incomprehensibility of the topic she and Remus were in clear disagreement on, but when the chatting turned to the Phoenix, her eyes lit up.

“James! My, I just realised something!” She excitedly turned to him, catching him mid-stare, “Do you know it was actually you and a friend of yours who gave us the idea for the name phoenix? Am I right, Remus?”

“Oh, yeah, now that you mention it, it was really you that day at the library. You and, uh, Peter, I think?” Remus confirmed, drowning his chips in so much vinegar that it pooled on the greasy newspaper underneath. James would have recoiled at the smell, but he was too busy blinking at them, surprised.

“We… did?”

“You two were talking about a translation, I guess? And then you said something about how phoenixes symbolize rebirth,” Lily nodded, the glint in her eyes even brighter as she repeated James’s words, “There is freedom in burning our own ashes, you said. It was perfect.”

James’s heart swelled in his chest. “Well, glad we could help, I guess?”

“So, what brought you to the Phoenix, James?” Marlene cut through, sneakily dipping a chip in Mary’s mushy peas and popping it in her mouth. Mary shot her a glare, and Marlene just grinned, unrepentant.

It took James the rest of their lunchbreak to explain his situation, the words tumbling out between bites of food that felt more like excuses to pause and gather his wits than actual eating. By the time he was finished, a weight loomed over his head. He took in the girls’ faces, all overcast with thoughts. Only Remus nodded at him, a corner of his mouth tugging upwards.

“Remus was right, it is complicated,” Lily’s brows were furrowed when she spoke, her voice steady yet cautious. “But we’ll do our best to help, James.”

James hesitated. But? Her tone didn’t sit right with him. “I— I feel like I’m missing something.”

The table fell silent.

Tense.

Mary shifted in her seat. Marlene set her fork down, eyes darting from Lily to Remus, then her gaze fixed on a knot on the wooden table, avoiding James.

“Well,” Mary began, tentative, “we’ve helped other students before, but… you’re our first in-person case.”

Oh, shite.

“What do you mean —the first?”

Someone must have kicked Mary’s shin under the table, because she winced, an offended ow escaping her.

“Sorry, sorry. Yes, you’re the first student to come up to us in person. But it’s not like it’s a bad thing! We’ve been training for this. Right, Lily?”

Lily sighed, her pale fingers tracing the rim of her glass, avoiding James’s eyes. “Mary’s right, James, we’re extremely serious about the Phoenix, more than you know.”

She glanced at Remus for backup, who added, “Yes, in fact, our scholarship renewal depends on it. Plus, Lily came top of the year last year,” Remus said, gesturing to her.

She ducked her head, a faint blush melting her freckles. “And Remus was a close second, and Mary and Marlene are brilliant, too. You’re in good hands, James.”

James studied her face, their faces, looking for reassurance. Lily’s smile was warm, though it didn’t quite reach her eyes. “We’ll get back to you soon to tell you who will follow your case. We’ll figure it out together,” she said, nodding, and it felt like it was more to convince herself than James. Around the table, the rest of the Phoenix were all either nodding or humming in agreement.

Was James reassured?

Maybe it was because Lily had said it, maybe it was that something steady and warm in her voice, but James decided to believe her.

To trust them.

After lunch, as soon as James left for his lectures, the four of them stayed behind at the chippy shop to decide who would take on James’s case. Mary and Marlene immediately voted for Remus, and Lily left him with little room for complaint.

“James talked to you already, and you’ve got a knack for seeing through people’s defences, Remus. You’re the best for this, but if anything comes up, tell us, okay?”

So that was settled, then.

Remus delivered the news to James right at his dorm, armed with his trusted crutches and fuelled by a good cup of builders’ brew. James wasn’t too disappointed, though, much to Remus’s secret delight, he did ask if Lily was ever going to be around while the two of them talked. He made a mental note to tell Marlene owed him his tenner for the bet.

They decided to meet at the Shack over the next few days, mainly to dig deeper into James’s memories to help communication bloom between him and his childhood best friend. “James, sorry, I don’t think I caught your friends’ name.”

James paused, head tilted as he asked, “You mean Pete?” Remus shook his head, mentally chastising himself for his dislike of gossip. “Oh, Sirius? Sirius Black.”

Black.

Remus’s mind short-circuited, a distant scent of disinfectant hit his nostrils, he tasted something metallic under his tongue, numbing.

He’s a Black.

The old sensations flooded Remus with such intensity that he didn’t even realise he had repeated the surname until James spoke again, answering what must have sounded like a questioning tone in his voice.

“Yes, those Blacks exactly, but he wants to be called Grey now, for some reason. Pete thinks it’s because he doesn’t want to be associated with the Blacks anymore,” James added, and Remus was grateful for his gaze drifting away from him, to the branches of the weeping willow dancing outside in the drizzle, “but I don’t know, to be honest. Why would he talk to me like his mother used to do, then?”

Sirius Black.

It was certainly a mystery why Sirius could have reacted so strongly at their reunion if James had been telling the truth, but Remus decided he should believe James’s words rather than assuming his memories were skewed by childhood’s rose-tinted glasses. What Remus noted, though, time and again, was the desperation in James’s voice, in James’s words, in the way he talked about this vow ritual he and Sirius carried out when they were little, in how he recounted with painstaking detail their primary school antics.

And each time the sensory memories came back, unrelenting.

With slight horror, Remus realised he might not be as unbiased as he thought he was. He couldn’t tell Lily though, because then he would have had to explain himself and his —history, for lack of a better word. But Lily was just as affected by this case as Remus was, though for very different reasons. And he didn’t want to burden Mary or Marlene either; they had been working so hard for the Phoenix already and they weren’t even majoring in psychology…

Remus was meant to be a professional, calm and collected, able to cleanly draw a line between his and James’s life, so why was it that, whenever Remus heard that surname, he had to swallow acid at the back of his throat? Why didn’t his body cooperate, just this once?

For everyone’s sake, he resigned himself to it.

And whenever the nausea rose again, Remus hang on all his positive thoughts about James, desperate not to associate him with it, or with his past.

And what was worse was that, completely disregarding Remus’s advice, one day at the Shack James was joined by a very wary Peter, who looked around the cottage wringing his hands like he needed to have every single tile memorised.

Remus wasn’t happy with adding one more human variable to the already messy situation he was dealing with, but he was surprised by the short, mousy man’s insight. Whenever James got overly idealistic, describing how amazing and unforgettable one of his and Sirius’s pranks was, he offered a more neutral perspective, grounding his friend and, unknowingly, Remus too.

The dynamic between the two was interesting, with Peter firmly refusing to be left out of his best friend’s business and James being eager to please, though usually just for the sake of peace. More than once, Remus had to bite his tongue not to make them question it, dig deeper into their friendship. After all, James had come to him for another friend of his, and Remus wasn’t going to intervene between him and Peter without them agreeing to it.

All in all, though, Remus found himself growing grateful for Peter’s presence and point of view, especially after one afternoon, when James had realised that he was late for class and Peter had stayed behind, in no hurry to leave whatsoever. Worrying his nailbeds, Peter confessed to Remus, who was fetching his cane to see him out, that he was worried about James.

Why? He had asked, expecting Peter to talk about their friendship, but he shook his head, and managed to surprise Remus. Happy-go-lucky James, captain of Pembroke Hill College’s football team, teacher’s pet and ancient languages prodigy James Potter hated being disliked, and even more, he hated the idea of being the cause of losing someone he cared about.

“James has always been like this,” he said, standing just outside the door, raindrops catching on his pale hair and rolling down on his shoulders, creating a mottled pattern in the fabric of his coat. “He can’t stand the thought of someone being mad at him. Never has, really. It’s like… he needs everyone to like him. Everyone. This Sirius thing, I know him so I can tell, but it’s driving him insane.”

Remus filed that information away for later, thanked Peter, and asked him to come back with James the next time as well.

It wasn’t long before Peter became a regular at the appointments between Remus and James. They agreed on the most logical course of action —finding a neutral place and time to talk with Sirius and get more insight into this mystery— and it was Peter’s idea to set up their talk at the “Welcome to Pembroke Hill” party.

“Everyone knows Sirius is going to be there. Some people say he has the gift of ubiquity when it comes to parties, even. I swear, it’s like he teleports from one to the other,” Peter said, picking a biscuit from the tin he’d brought to the Shack to share.

“How come you know so much about him, huh, Pete?” James asked, arching an eyebrow at him, “Anything else you want to share with the class?”

“Just like to keep up with the news,” he smirked, dunking the biscuit in his cup of ludicrously milky tea.

Remus had been watching them for some time now, and the more he thought about it, the more it would have been better if Peter didn’t join James at the party. Remus’s role there, just like with the girls’, apart from being one of the organisers, would have been facilitating conversations and friendly mingling among new students, with the intention of wearing his Order pin and letting people call for his help if necessary.

Peter, Remus feared, risked being a liability more than having a positive impact between James and his old friend’s interactions. Meeting Sirius in public like that could have smoothed out their rocky relationship if they tried not to draw too much attention to themselves, and maybe James wouldn’t risk being verbally assaulted again that way, but if Sirius raised his voice, and Peter was there…

Remus didn’t like this.

They’d been planning it for almost a month, and they’d ended up tying sparkly streamers and snoop-proofing the Shack the day of the party. If there was something on planet earth that never failed to get on Remus’s nerves, this was it.

So, the evening was off to a grand start, truly.

He sighed, dodging Marlene and her whirlwind of nerves. She was bouncing from one corner of the living room to the other, fixing anything within reach and chirping delighted ‘perfect’s over and over. Mary, she murmured to Remus, suspected the rest of her vocabulary had gone down the drain with the cheap vodka she’d tried to sneak into the kitchen. Remus was sweeping the floor, thankful for the broom for added support between their antics, as Mary rushed up and down the stairs with food and party favours with Lily at her heels, arms full of bags of crisps and whatever she could find in their shared pantry, because apparently, someone was supposed to go grocery shopping, but that someone obviously forgot.

Nice.

It’s fine, it’s alright. It’s all going to work out. “Deep breaths, Remus, deep breaths,” he muttered to himself, even if breathing in the dust he was sweeping put an itch in his throat. He’d briefly considered telling the girls he could feel one of his episodes coming, but then they’d worry and fuss over him like they always did, so Remus begrudgingly decided against it, keeping it as a last resort to escape the party, if need be.

No.

Remus didn’t like any of this.

Nor did he like how James hadn’t seemed at all convinced at coming to the party alone. He wasn’t, not even after Remus coached him on what to do and say and not do and not say to Sirius, which also included, and rather high up on the not-to-do list: not talking about the friends you made after him. Still, Remus kept his fingers crossed, hoping the man had some sense left in him, at the very least thanks to his historical studies and the whole ‘learning from the past’ spiel historians liked to pride themselves in.

He'd never thought that an old cuckoo clock striking six o’clock could sound more ominous, yet here they were.

The refreshments table had been haphazardly covered in bowls of chips, sausage rolls from their trusty chippy and hedgehog-style fruit skewers, courtesy of Marlene’s mum’s best efforts, which Remus hoped would be appreciated despite them looking rather exotic and hippie for a bunch of posh university students.

In his brief experiences as a waiter, Remus had had the chance to learn about these toffs’ extravagant, yet exclusive, quintessentially British and French tastes. Even if it was just a platter of bread and butter, if a dish was named anything with an accent, they’d eat it up and praise the cook for it, asking for the recipe in their clearly sounded vowels and un-dropped t’s. But as the first few students showed up at their door, with their suspiciously pressed shirts under preppy tweed jackets and carefully styled flared jeans and wide collar shirts, Remus doubted they’d be satisfied with their substandard mise-en-place.

Oh, yeah.

Remus hated this.

James, Peter in tow, beelined to the refreshments table against which Remus had been leaning for the good part of the last hour, surveying the crowd and occasionally serving cups of fruit punch and telling people where the loo was. They’d agreed exactly on not doing this, on not making it obvious that they knew each other, and yet here James was, nervously raking a hand through his black curls as the other gripped a glass so tight his knuckles turned white. Remus was ready to go fetch a broom to pick up the inevitable shards of it.

“Got anything stronger than apple juice, Remus?” James choked on a laugh, hollow and breathless.

Remus mentally cursed him, but painted a polite smile on his face, nonetheless.

“Only beer, I’m afraid. Oh, and lightly spiked fruit punch, courtesy of our resident dosser, Marls.” He gestured at the bowls and bottles with the ladle he’d been holding on all evening, pouring drinks, but a part of him wanted to hit James with it. Why was it that people always disregarded the same godforsaken advice that they asked him in the first place?

Remus bit his tongue, instead, “Peter, fancy a drink?”

He shook his head, a look on his face as if he were surprised Remus could see him. Peter was pulling at his lime-green shirt, trying to smooth out a crease in the front but crumpling it more at the hem. “The choice in music is… interesting,” he grimaced, and Remus had to agree.

He wasn’t a snob, but hell, it was 1979, there had to be something better than Donna Summers, but they’d let Lily pick the records so... “Yeah, I’d love me some The Clash now. Or Sex Pistols. Or T.Rex. Anything but this.”

“Or ABBA. If I hear Dancing Queen one more time, I swear I’ll go insane,” James nodded, a grave tone in his voice. Peter protested at that, but James seemed happy to ignore his friend’s musical tastes.

“Spotted the target already, Remus?”

James, back at the very packed room behind him, picked up a beer, inspecting the nondescript label in mild distrust. The thing was, Remus had only a couple of clues to go by to find said target, as James had called him. Peter had been nicely calling Sirius a ‘sequin-covered ponce’, and if there was anything Remus remembered about his past, it was the tendency of the Black family to wear their raven hair long and keep away from the sun, so much so that, when he was little, Remus was fairly certain they were vampires.

Remus overlooked the crowd, which to him usually looked like crowns of heads and the occasional pair of eyes peeking through, but nobody fit the image he’s crafted in his mind. Well, if he were to assume that clique of black-haired, overdressed people in the corner didn’t include Sirius.

Just the sight of them made him queasy.

Their fame preceded them: Bellatrix and Narcissa Black, the embodied nightmares of anyone who dreamed a career in medicine and dared trying to be better than them, who were supposed to be doing their master’s in surgery and Remus thought had no reason of showing up to a first years’ party, were crowding a shorter, younger-looking man. His shoulders were too squared and stiff, hair neatly trimmed at ears’ length, clothes too black to be Sirius. Remus had seen him in class, Neuroscience probably. The name evaded him, but he was a Black, that he was sure of.

“No target in sight, James, no. Just go mingling with other students, ask Lily where the loo is or something, just. Stick to the plan, please?”

James’s eyes widened, and maybe Remus’s tone had been a bit too clipped, but his hips were starting to hurt and the night was still too young for him to give up on his Phoenix duties just yet.

“Come on, James, let’s go, I know you’re dying to talk to a certain redhead...”

He made a pained noise, put the glass down and held onto his emotional support beer, with seemingly no intention to drink it whatsoever. Peter grabbed his arm to coax him away, pulling him deeper into the crowd.

The party was in full swing now, with students spilling from one room to the next. He was grateful for whoever changed the record and put on something more upbeat, though Remus couldn’t decide if it was an improvement or just one more auditory assault.

Remus sighed inwardly when he saw James animatedly chatting with Lily, completely disregarding their rule of pretending not to know each other but, still, he commended himself for his ability to stay on task, pouring fruit punch, giving direction to lost-looking students, and redirecting lonely ones together to help them find new friends.

Peter appeared at the table, looking curiously at the fruit skewers as he murmured, voice low enough that only Remus could hear over the chaos, “No wonder Sirius wants to change surname, am I right?”

“A question, Pete. Since you know an awful lot about them. Who’s the younger one? I thought Narcissa and Bellatrix were only two sisters.”

“Ha! About that! There’s actually a third sister Black, whom I suspect had a very similar fate to our target’s. I asked mum last weekend for tea and she knows all about the drama,” Peter mumbled, sliding a cube of pineapple off a skewer. “Little Black is probably the reason why Sirius is supposed to be here tonight, his name’s Regulus. Their family tree must look like a dictionary, am I right?” he made a puckered face as the sourness of the fruit hit him.

“Hold on, why?”

“Why what? I need a word with whoever made this, it’s bloody poisonous, you should put up warning signs,” he said, downing a glass of punch. The music was loud, the people were all talking over each other, the air in the Shack was growing hot and stale: the recipe for a headache of biblical proportions, and Peter’s nonsense was getting on Remus’s nerves. He must have sensed it in Remus’s glare, because he turned to look at the sea of people to point at one tall, dark-haired figure in the doorway.

His hair was longer, falling in loose waves past his shoulders, but despite the sharp eyeliner, there was no mistaking him for anything other than a Black, with those luminous silver eyes and porcelain skin. He was wearing a studded leather jacket over a loose white shirt and a pair of too-tight black jeans, and Remus spotted a line of black ink creeping underneath the sheer fabric, along his collarbone. His mere presence commanded everyone’s gazes towards him, all moths to his icy flame adorned in sparks of cheeky smiles and suggestive winks.

“There he is, Sirius Grey. See?”

Remus needed a drink.

Immediately.

“I have eyes, yes, Peter,” he shot, pouring himself a glass of definitely-not-spiked-enough punch. It was cloying, the burn in his throat too tame. Close to the stairs, Remus glanced at James, who had also been affected by Sirius’s arrival, though likely for very different reasons, if he could go by his expression, an explosive cocktail of hope and fear.

“You see, but you’re not looking,” Peter gave him a pointed look, he seemed almost disappointed in Remus, “He is here for him, for Regulus Black.”

Remus downed another glass, swallowing nauseous memories with it.

Chapter Text

Nothing was according to plan.

He’d brought Peter along despite promising Remus he’d try to convince him to wait at the dorms. And Peter was now chatting with Remus, while on the other end of the room he was raising a toast with Lily and Marlene. She’d uncapped his beer, offended he didn’t take a swig as a sign of friendship, and just to see her happy James immediately downed half of it in one go. Screw all the pointless rules they’d made for themselves: it was supposed to feel natural, wasn’t it? It was a party, so why not have a little fun?

Nothing would have been going according to plan anyway.

Which meant Remus had no damage control to do, and they had no choice but to improvise.

For James, it was almost a relief.

And it was.

For, well, half an hour or so.

Then, all sounds had muffled when he’d entered his line of sight, the world a little blurry, faces in the crowd madly spinning around a star.

The brightest star in the night sky.

It was then, that James wished he still had a plan.

Too bad James was just another celestial body caught in his orbit, an asteroid inevitably launching itself towards Sirius, ready —eager— to disintegrate on impact. James’s legs moved on their own accord towards him, barely registering Lily’s confused looks when he left her mid-conversation, nor the people he bumped into, the apologies he muttered under his breath.

Sirius was standing amidst a huddle of younger students, the studs on his leather jacket catching and refracting the dim light, and as James got closer to him, he distantly remembered that seirios meant scorching.

No other word could have ever better described Sirius.

Sirius’s laugh pierced through the muddled hum of the party and, for an instant, their eyes locked. The blade of his smile slit the breath in James’s throat.

“Potter,” he said it casually, but his eyes weren’t this sharp when he was talking with the girls surrounding him. “Fancy seeing you here.”

James’s smile felt brittle on his lips. He held onto the coolness of the bottle in his hand, pressed it against his chest. “Sirius,” he nodded tightly, “It’s Grey now, innit?”

It wasn’t only James’s spine being run over by chills, the girls could sense it, too. They turned to leave, but Sirius caught one’s wrist, proceeded to steal a cup right from her hand, “Cheers, love, you can go now,” he winked, releasing her smoothly and drinking the contents without batting an eye, “And don’t tell your boyfriend.” His attention falling back on James gave him whiplash. “Yes, Grey. Black grew a bit too… tight on me.”

James couldn’t even manage a nod. Sirius seemed to revel in it, in the whispers rippling through the partygoers surrounding them.

He took a step forward; James took one back.

“So,” Sirius crossed his arms, stood taller, “what brings you to this little do?”

James shrugged, trying to keep his tone light and the grip on his bottle lighter. “Just, you know, to make friends, broaden my horizons. You?”

Sirius snorted, producing a small, engraved flask from his breast pocket. “Yeah, right. Broadening horizons, forgot that’s what we’re calling it now.”

James mouthed a no, felt like he had to apologise for something —anything, maybe simply for existing, but the words got stuck in his chest. Seizing the opportunity, Sirius sneaked a glance over a stunned James’s shoulder, and James found himself following his gaze, turning around before he could think twice about it.

Ah, that explained it.

Regulus.

Poised, elegant, superior. He’d grown up to be the spitting image of his cousins, all perfect bone structure and arched eyebrows. Narcissa and Bellatrix were there, too, much to James’s chagrin. They were watching Regulus closely, followed all of his movements as he chatted with other students his age, his expressions unreadable amidst their laughter. James frowned when his gaze met Sirius’s on his little brother. Unlike the rest of the Blacks, Sirius kept his distance, trying to remain unseen. James wondered why. It wasn’t news to James that their relationship was a little rocky, but he couldn’t shake the feeling that something was much more off than it used to be.

Sirius’s stare made James’s skin prickle as he spoke, in a murmur that would have been barely audible hadn’t James’s ears been trained on looking for his voice for years on end, long before he’d given up hope. “Have you been thinking about what you did, Potter? Are you here to repent?”

James blinked, so caught off guard he stumbled backward a little, “What do you mean?” he whispered.

“I mean,” Sirius took a step closer, his volume suddenly louder, his eyes shards of ice, “how dare you show up here again, acting like you didn’t fucking—”

James didn’t know how or when, but Remus was there, in front of him, acting as a shield between Sirius and him.

“Alright, that’s it, you two. I say it’s time for a breather,” his voice was impossibly steady.

James watched as Remus placed a hand on Sirius’s arm. Sirius hesitated, a muscle twitching in his jaw, but he didn’t protest. Remus took a hold of his hand, then, and James felt himself follow Remus cut through the crowd.

He guided them towards the kitchenette in the back, and when they crossed the door, Peter appeared by his side, shoulders tense.

Oh, was he fucked.

Remus tried observing them from the sidelines, he truly did.

He was supposed to be facilitating, helping people mingle and chat and make new friends and fight loneliness, but his attention kept drifting to Sirius.

Sirius.

Who looked like a whirlwind of contradictions.

Sirius.

Who moved across the room with easy confidence, laughing and smirking and winking at whoever gave him the chance to. But Remus noticed. He saw the practiced way his hand kept slipping under his jacket, pulling out a silvery flask to take quick sips. Discreetly at first, then more and more loosely the more he drank, indifferent to questioning eyes.

Sirius.

Whose gaze darted around the room, always inevitably landing on the man Peter had called his little brother. Remus knew Regulus, he’d exchanged a few words with the med students he was talking with, too, a certain Barty and a Rosier, if he wasn’t mistaken. Half of that bloody family was at the party, all circling Regulus. It was strange, and Remus was sure Peter looked just as uneasy as he felt himself. They reminded Remus of sharks rounding up live bait.

Sirius.

Who moved around James like a wolf ready to pounce. Remus didn’t need to wait for the conversation to get loud enough to hear it from his spot at the table. He’d just reached for his cane that he was already moving over to them, who were now standing too close to each other. Sirius was mid-sentence, his voice laced with something sharp and venomous, clearly enough to affect James, who was trying not to curl into himself and keep a friendly, albeit confused smile on his face.

People were closing in around them, nosey and eavesdropping, cutting Remus’s way and kicking his cane or getting too close.

“Are you here to repent?” Remus heard it loud and clear, and he suddenly didn’t need the cane at all.

He got between them in an instant, heart beating through his back, knees unsteady and cane barely clicking every second step.

Remus wasn’t sure what he said to them, he’d just seen the horror in James’s eyes and a second later he’d somehow managed to drag them all to the staff room, Sirius too.

As Peter closed the door behind them, Remus noticed a tremble under his palm, in Sirius’s arm. Tense like a coiled spring. He was glad the noise and chaos were muffled in there and hated it all at once. Sirius’s breaths were so loud in his ear that Remus had to release him immediately, electricity coursing through him, burning.

Sirius distanced himself from them, eyes darting to Peter, who was standing in front of the door, keeping guard with the least intimidating face Remus had ever seen in his life, all wide-eyed and hunched over as he was.

“Fuck’s going on?” Sirius asked sharply, arms crossed, eyes darting between James and Peter, then settling on Remus. “Is this an intervention? What, you gonna lock me up in a psych ward or something?”

“Hey, no,” Remus said quickly, hands in front of him like a horse tamer in front of a proud and rowdy young one. “I saw you and just thought you could use a break. Pretty loud out there.”

Sirius snorted, unconvinced, but he didn’t argue, much to Remus’s relief. Instead, he pulled out his flask again, and took a long, long swig before surprising Remus with a very mild offer. “Want some?”

Remus shook his head, but fuck, if he’d need that. “I’m good thanks.”

“Thought you did, with how much you’ve been staring,” he shrugged, and tipped the flask over, shaking it to let the last drops fall on his tongue. Remus sharply turned away, a shameful warmth on his cheeks to conceal right that instant.

He sighed, then shook his head for good measure.

Remus had to make them all get through it, unscathed.

It was going to be a long, long night.

“What's going on?” It was Beanstalk who asked him, friendly enough. “What got you so worked up, hey?”

Sirius looked outside the window, but instead of the forest, he was met with his reflection shrouded in darkness.

Smudged eyeliner, frizzy hair, crumpled clothes.

Fuck, he looked tired.

“He’s spitting nonsense, that’s what,” Sirius said, sharpening the edge of his voice.

James flinched, then surged forward at his words, hands tightening into fists at his sides. “Listen, I don’t know what you’re talking about, I never—”

Sirius thought he’d never be thankful for that blond lad, but when he stopped James by his shoulder, he really fucking was. To hell with spite and all that, honestly, Sirius wasn’t going to get sucker punched on a nice cool Friday night.

But that didn’t mean he’d have to stop teasing.

“No, no. You know what? Act clueless all you want, Potter, I’ll tell them what’s going on,” Sirius leaned back against a cabinet, arms crossed and at safe distance. James had put on some muscle since the last time they’d been in a fist fight, and Sirius wasn’t going to take any chances of having his face ruined, thank you very much.

“Potter here says he never did anything wrong. Pretty rich coming from the same person that was pissing himself at me and my broken fucking legs.”

He gasped, James fucking gasped!

“Legs?”

The shock on his face was such a cloying, satisfying sight. Sirius drank it in, finally revelling in the spectacle like he’d tried not to do at the library, with that much audience.

“Yes, I know what you did,” he sing-songed, waving a finger towards James, then, just to toy with them and double down, he snapped again, “you’re the one who found me on the ground with two broken legs and and called my fucking parents! Mine! Mine, instead of yours! I’d just taken an 8-metre fall and you laughed. You laughed and then betrayed me twofold like that!”

James’s face contorted into something new.

It wasn’t the guilt, nor the angry denial Sirius had been expecting. Fuck, he’d waited so long for this moment, daydreamed of it for years even, James wasn’t going to spoil it all for him.

This was his show, not James’s.

“Sirius, what are you talking about? You fell and broke your legs? When?”

“Oh, stop it. Someone give James Fleamont Potter a fucking BAFTA already,” Sirius started clapping, slow, exasperating the motions.

It was fun.

He looked at the other two standing in that kitchen, and the discomfort was so loud in them, Sirius couldn’t stop himself from smiling, broad and deliberate. He didn’t want to stop there, actually. Everyone had to see James for what he was.

A traitor.

“Sirius, wait.” Beanstalk interrupted waving a hand at him, his tone calm but firm. “Could you elaborate further? What do you remember, exactly?”

Sirius didn’t remember giving him his name, but he liked the way it sounded in his voice, so he decided he didn’t mind. Very beanstalk-looking, tall and gangly, long nose and wolfish eyebrows, he was leaning heavily on a cane, the veins in his arms and hands popping beneath the skin. Sirius caught the glimpse of scars, there, pearlescent under the tinge of tungsten lightbulb and lightning in the distance.

Sirius’s mouth felt dry, but when he reached for the flask, he found it empty.

“Oh, so now I'm the nut case here, huh?” He sighed, throwing the small bottle on the table, watching it skid across it with a thump. Now, thunder echoed.

“Nobody said that, Sirius,” said the blondie, back pressed to the door.

His name sounded like a curse, and Sirius decided he didn’t like him all that much anymore, he’d quite rather have his nose punched in by James than hear him say it again.

“No! No, please, let’s hear it then! But, oh, wait! Silly me, you weren’t fucking there!”

Sirius turned to face Beanstalk again, pointing an accusing finger to him and blondie, hoping a lightning bolt could crack the sky open and strike James right there and then.

“You don't know shit about me. You only listen to him because he’s James fucking Potter, that’s why. But I— I can still hear his laughter.”

Why?

Why was his hand trembling?

Why was his voice shaking?

“And then my parents showed up, not the Potters. And instead of calling a fucking ambulance like any other normal family would have done, no! They dragged me inside the house and then gave me the rest of it! Just like I deserved for trying to run away like you said I should do, James.”

James inhaled sharply.

Then it was silence.

Silence.

Too much silence. Sirius hoped for more thunder, for the music on the other side of the door to grow in volume. The light was getting too bright, his jacket too warm, his heart too loud, their reactions too underwhelming.

Or overwhelming.

Fuck, Sirius couldn’t be sure anymore.

“And you remember all that?” It was Beanstalk. His whisper cracked something between Sirius’s ribs. “Through that much pain?”

Rage wasn’t simmering in his veins anymore, but Sirius couldn’t let anything else come through. No, nothing.

“Fuck you, I remember enough!” He stood taller, hands shooting in the air, messy. “I know I was in and out of consciousness from the pain, okay? Bloody hell, I was a child, two broken legs at once weren’t exactly easy to ignore, even though I was used to having my bones broken.”

“Sirius, shit, I—”

“No! Did I say you could speak? Let me finish, James, let me fucking finish,” Sirius glared at him. He was aware he’d been shouting, and found he couldn’t care less. “Didn’t you want to know, James? Your friends here need to know. Because even if I hate my family with all of my fucking being, I know what I heard. They told me you found me and you called them to go get me. I remember your laughter when I hit the ground.”

He watched James turn a shade greener.

It was exhilarating.

“Fuck,” James fisted his hair, tugged at the roots, his breath came in ragged, short huffs, “I remember. Oh, I remember now. Shite. Fuck fuck fuck—”

Beanstalk inched closer to him, took him by the shoulders.

Assessing the damage.

“What do you remember, James?” Sirius ordered.

“I— I remember the sound.”

Sirius lived for it, for the crack in his voice.

Finally.

“I remember Mum and I were watching the telly the night before you disappeared. We were waiting for dad to come back from work, and I think something happened on the screen, and we couldn’t stop laughing, and then— Then I heard it. I heard it, the— the thump. But the telly was on, and the dishwasher was loud and mum had been laughing so I thought—”

“Oh, please, are you even hearing yourself? Could anyone ever believe this story, James? Is this the shit you tell yourself to sleep better at night?” His laughter sounded foreign to his own ears, but Sirius turned to the pale lad at the door anyway, unable to stop now, their faces way too enjoyable. “Did he tell you these bollocks, blondie, or is it flash news to you, his new best friend forever?”

The shorter man shifted forward, eyebrows furrowed, the sheer force of his step reverberating through the wooden floor. Rain started a heavy drumroll against the windowpane. Everything was shaking, the ground, the walls, Sirius’s fingertips, the very air electric.

Oh, things were just starting to get fun fun.

“Did you know that little James here solemnly vowed he’d be my brother? Has he ever talked about his brother to you before? I bet he’s never shown you that piece of string, has he? That should tell you something. Untrustworthy piece of shit, Potter is. He—”

“James kept it.”

Sirius wasn’t sure if he heard Blondie correctly. “What?”

“I said,” he leaned against the table between them, stubby fingers gripping the edge, “he kept it. The string. Show him, James.”

James —Beanstalk had made him sit on a stool; he was as pale as the wall behind him— produced a small bundle from his pocket.

“Take it,” he wheezed, shoving it towards Sirius, “Open it.”

Reluctantly, Sirius took it.

The warmth of alcohol was wearing off, his hands were getting clammy. Opening it was a struggle.

“I swear, Sirius, I swear I didn't know it was you. I didn’t know you fell. And if you heard laughter, it wasn't for you. I never called your parents. I would have never. I didn't know, Sirius. I promise you, you have to believe me.”

After a minute of fumbling, he gave up with the drawstring. There was a piece of cord in there, Sirius didn’t need to open it to know.

But it wasn’t possible, was it?

It didn’t make any sense.

“Good one, I give you that. You saw me hit the ground, and laughed, and you still kept it? Congrats on the hypocrisy, Potter, a new low for you.”

“No,” James’s voice was strained, teary and hurt, “I said I didn’t, I—”

“Then why do I remember it?”

Sirius found his volume rising again, furious that he couldn’t look James in the eyes, his own prickling already at the sight. “Why? Tell me why do I remember you dying of fucking laughter when I was trying to cry silently so that my parents wouldn’t find out I was running away? Why were you laughing just like them, huh? You were never on my side, never. Did they pay you to do that? So that I’d become their puppet like Reggie is now?”

“Slow down, Sirius, wait a second. Let’s try not to interrupt each other.” Beanstalk shook his head, standing up slowly, and fuck if that wasn’t infuriating. “You just said something.”

“What, Beanstalk? Am I right? Did Orion and Walburga Black pay you to manipulate me, James?”

“My name’s Remus,” he grimaced, “But no, no, before that. You said you heard James laugh just like them. What do you mean by that?”

He was too calm, with the raging within and the light clawing at the darkness outside.

Sirius watched as James’s eyes flashed, lit up, mouth suddenly agape.

Three, four, five, six…

Remus trained his voice to be soft, hesitant, “Is it possible your memories weren't… yours? That they were planted in your brain, maybe?”

…seven, eight, nine…

His fingers subtly tapped against his cane, hoping it wouldn’t betray his nerves. Remus timed the silence between lightning and thunder, watching him, measuring.

…eleven, twelve.

Then Sirius shook his head with force, black hair fanning around him in a dark halo. His hands flew up to card through it, tugging slightly to pull himself back together, gaining composure one strand at a time. When he finally looked at Remus, it was with a flicker in his eyes.

Doubt.

Even if he didn’t want to acknowledge it himself, the seeds of doubt were taking root. Remus noticed it, the way Sirius’s shoulders dropped just a fraction, the way his jaw loosened before tightening again.

It was good.

Progress.

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Sirius’s voice was thick with something new, though still sharp. Confrontational as he’d ever been, Remus was sure that Sirius just needed an anchor and a compass to navigate the storm he was in. Questioning one’s own narrative was no easy feat —Remus was living proof of that— and it was impressive how Sirius was still standing his ground, wavering with theatrical grace.

But James needed help too, fuck, if he did.

With every verbal blow from Sirius, Remus reached out. A squeeze of James’s knee, a steadying hand between his shoulder blades. When breath hitched in his chest, Remus met James’s eyes and murmured, low and steady, “I’m here. I got you.”

He had to tread carefully.

The silver in Sirius’s eyes was gold in the warm light of the kitchenette, molten with red-rimmed anger, a fragile bell jar protecting the rose of his pain. Prying too hard would have done no good; it wasn’t the time for uncovering everything at once.

Just sowing the seeds would have been enough.

James nodded, his hands trembling slightly as he adjusted his glasses. He rolled back his shoulders and glanced at Peter with a quick, strained smile. “Alright,” he said, a whisper merely above the volume of rainfall. Peter smiled back, reassuring.

Only then did Remus fully turn to face Sirius.

“I am just trying to understand. Because I know it’s real. To you, Sirius, it feels real. I can’t imagine how painful that memory must be, to remember things that way.”

Sirius’s lips curled into a sneer, one that didn’t reach his eyes, challenging. “How do you explain the laugh then? Laugh, James. I need you to fucking laugh, right now. Show them.” He stood stiffly, took a step toward James as his voice echoed in the small room. “Come on, let’s hear it.”

“James, don’t.”

Remus heard himself cut in quickly, stepping between them once again. Tentatively, he reached for Sirius’s shoulder, feeling the rushing heartbeat beneath his palm.

“Easy, now. Take a deep breath for me?” Sirius glared at him, but his chest still rose and fell, his heartrate dropping slightly. “James, can you tell Sirius what you remember about that night again? Revisit those memories without judging them. Just as you remember.”

James ran a hand through his hair for the thousandth time that night, his glasses slipped down his nose as he dipped his head, thinking.

“It was just a night like any other. Fuck, it was.” James swallowed hard, closing his eyes, but he pushed on. “And then the next day there were moving trucks and boxes in front of your house, Sirius. I think Mum and I were watching Doctor Who. It was funny, and you know we had that old dishwasher that needed changing. It would get so loud that your father knocked on our door to complain about it, remember?”

He paused, then lifted his gaze, searching for the memory on Sirius’s face, and James sighed when there was none. “But I never saw you that night. My last memory of you was that morning in the garden. You told me you had dreamed of living in a cottage on the beach, and I spent the past decade hoping you managed to do that and be happy.”

Unshed tears sparkled on James’s eyelashes. “I didn’t know.”

Sirius’s breath hitched.

Remus froze, and with him, the air in the room, silent except for the rain rapping against the window.

They all watched as Sirius’s hand clenched around the small piece of fabric he’d been holding.

“You didn’t know,” Sirius breathed.

“I didn’t know, Pads, I didn’t know,” James repeated.

It almost burned, but Remus never broke contact with Sirius’s shoulder. He just pressed it lightly, voice gentle but firm as he addressed both friends.

“The past is painful and confusing, but it’s past, we can’t change it. What we can change is how we move forward, yeah? How we can live in this shared space. And, maybe, how we can make things right in there, here and now.”

He glanced at James, his shoulders hunched as he rested his elbows on his knees, just breathing, staring at the grain of the wooden floor. James needed some time to process all this, he did, from the look on his face.

“Intentions matter, don’t they? Were there any ill intentions on your part, James?”

“No, never,” he replied immediately, looking up, steady eyes piercing Sirius’s, “or may I die.”

Sirius flinched at the words. Remus’s hold steadied him.

“Oh.”

His knuckles turned white, and for a minute cold trickled down Remus’s spine, ready to catch the little bundle mid-air, sure cups and chairs were about to go flying with it. But Sirius’s hand opened slowly, like aching joints awakening, and he untied the drawstring, and a knot of rope fell on his palm.

It wasn’t new, but it was clear James had kept it with care.

“What you remember might not be what happened,” Remus continued, turning to Sirius, “but I know it hurt. I know you felt betrayed, and abandoned, and I— we can’t take that away. But we can try to listen, to understand one another, yeah?” He waited for a reaction from Sirius, entranced with the small golden string. “Sirius, can you try to let this exist with you, to believe just here and now, not forever, James didn’t mean to hurt you? And I don’t think he ever thought he was laughing at you, either, but it’s clear you both have different memories of that moment. Maybe it’s time to talk about those differences, and maybe we can start to understand each other better.”

Sirius’s shoulders slumped, thumb brushing over the keepsake. His lips moved without a sound, so Remus inched in closer to read on them and, over and over and over again, Sirius mouthed, it wasn’t true.

“Or may I die.”

Sirius whispered, looking at James.

Seeing him.

Finally.

Then, his knees buckled beneath him.

Remus caught him by the arm. James gasped, immediately stood up to help Remus guide him and sit Sirius down on the nearest stool. Although unnecessarily drawn, Sirius didn’t protest at James’s hold on his side.

“You alright there, Pads?”

James whispered, almost in Sirius’s hair as he nodded. Remus decided to step back and leave James at it, Sirius defused and suddenly spent like the storm outside.

Lonely raindrops ran down the windowpane, faintly illuminated by the light within the room.

Peter had sat at the table and was absentmindedly tracing the engraving on Sirius’s empty flask he’d thrown there what now felt years ago. Remus caught his gaze, and Peter nodded, eyes flicking to James and Sirius, a question in the arch of his brow. He managed to smile at Peter, hoping he could telepathically convey how thankful he was that he hadn’t left.

“Sorry, ‘m okay, jus’ got a tad wobbly,” Sirius drawled, and James scoffed what almost sounded like a laugh. “Oh, bugger off, Prongs. Can smell the beer on you too,” for the first time, Remus witnessed it.

Albeit barely there, a fleeting quip of his mouth, Sirius smiled.

James smiled with him.

Willing his own heart to stop fluttering, Remus decided to ignore his screaming bones and crouched on the ground besides James. Still managing to be at eye’s level with the both of them, he sweetened his tone, took a grounding breath, half-hoping they’d mimic him when he started.

“Both of your feelings are valid. It’s okay to feel hurt and confused, let’s try not to judge our own feelings, okay? We’re here to understand, not to blame anyone. So let’s summarise what we’ve heard so far. Can you help us with that, Peter? Remember, just stick to what we heard now, not what we think we know.”

Peter leaned forward over the table, a grave nod before he began.

“Sirius feels betrayed by James because he remembers him laughing when he fell from the rooftop and he was in pain, and also because his parents told him it was James who called them to go get him,” Remus could have cried, Peter was doing such a great job, no sour inflections in his voice whatsoever. “And James, he remembers watching the telly with Effie and hearing something, but he didn’t realise something was wrong, that Sirius was in trouble even though they’d talked about running away that day.”

“Brilliant, thank you Peter. Does that sound right to the both of you? Anything to add, or to rectify?”

James and Sirius looked at each other for a never-ending beat.

Then, they both nodded at once.

“I was laughing at something on TV, not at you. I am so fucking sorry that I didn’t notice you fell. I didn’t know what happened, Padfoot, really, I swear,” James rushed to add, now fully kneeling on the floor next to Sirius.

It was an uncomfortable sight, and it must have felt that way for Sirius too, because he grabbed a hold of James’s arms and tugged him upward, struggling against him to make him stand up.

“I’m sorry I lashed out,” Sirius murmured, a guilty drop of his shoulders, finally breaking eye contact when James was on his feet.

“So… You mentioned running away, Sirius. Do you feel like telling us more about it?”

Remus pushed a stool toward James and took one for himself, until they were all sitting around the old table in the middle of the kitchenette. Peter’s elbows were propped on the worm-eaten and scuffed surface, James tracing the knots in the wood with his fingertips, Sirius naturally poised, sitting back with his hands folded in his lap, James’s golden yarn peeking through his pale fingers.

“You’re no strangers to my birth family, I assume,” the corners of Sirius’s mouth curling downward into a frown. “You know how they’re like. Rich, celebrities of the medical field, the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black, yada yada. Of course, I’d want to run away from that amount of pressure alone, the expectations of the whole family weighing on me to be the heir, the perfect Black specimen to parade around London. But,” here, Sirius sighed, eyes darting to James. “But they’re also amazing parents. So much so that they’d hit me and Regulus for any minor inconvenience. As in, you know, us being children, and accidentally tripping on our feet at a family function, god forbid wetting our beds at night or being afraid of the dark.”

Sirius laughed, dripping in sarcasm. It was a bitter, choppy sound, head tilted back while he sat straight and stiff. He looked as if a puppet master had cut off just a couple of strings, barely enough to allow him the motions of laughter.

“So yeah, we got hit, a classic, truly. But also starved, sleep deprived, publicly shamed… you name it, we’ve had a taste of it. Don’t recommend.” He’d listed them off on his fingers, a brave grin painted on his face. Remus’s heart clenched in his chest at each word. “So, you can imagine why I’d want to run away. I could only daydream about it when I was very young, then I started planning it when I was old enough to understand what I’d need to survive on my own for a while. And then I thought it would be better to ask for advice on it. James was my only friend and… and well, look where it landed me.”

Sirius showed them the ghost of a smile, but it felt practiced, carved in by years of sculpting a mask for himself. It unsettled something deep within Remus, and by the look on James and Peter’s faces, the feeling was mutual.

“James, do you remember talking with Sirius about running away?”

Remus asked instead, peeling away at the layers Sirius had enshrouded himself into all over again, a bubble-wrap of self-deprecating humour and restraint.

James seemed hardened by the memories, leaning forward as to shield Sirius from the past with his own body, his own set shoulders and clenched jaw. “Yes, we talked about it a lot. It was our last conversation. I— I have replayed it in my mind so much. For the longest time I hoped you’d managed to run away to the seaside like we joked you would. I never realised you were serious about it.” Sirius glared at James, and he raised his hands in defeat, “I didn’t make the pun, Sirius! I swear!”

“Pun?” Peter repeated, sharing a confused shake of the head with Remus.

“The serious Sirius pun. Yes, it got old very quickly as kids. Please avoid that at all costs,” explained Sirius, and exasperated edge to his tone.

“Moving on, though. Of course I wanted to get out of there. I was stupid, though, I picked a rainy day and lost my footing on the gutter. Had I fallen on Mother’s bushes of roses they would have softened the fall, and I would have managed to get away with it. I packed food and clothing and money, too, you know? I even had Uncle Alphard’s address written on my arm in felt tip pen and a map of England and Wales, like you said you’d do if you were in my place.”

Sirius suddenly banged his fist on the table. Peter almost jumped off his stool.

“I was ready, but stupid.” He hit it again.

“Stupid,” hit, “stupid,” hit, “Stupid,” hitting harder than before. Sirius hissed, the side of his fist already red. Remus splayed his hand where Sirius had been punching the table, hoping he could reduce the harm he was inflicting on himself if he hit again, happy to take the blow instead. “Because I was so, so sure I could finally be free! And then I fell. I fell, and you were laughing, and I was in so much pain and I was trying not to make a sound and, and—”

Sirius raised his fist again, but opened his eyes just enough to look through the pooling tears. He gasped, and let it fall beside Remus’s hand, limp, powerless.

He didn’t know if what he was doing was wrong, but Remus let his hand cover Sirius’s, gently coaxing his fingers open, holding it between his own. It was a pianist’s hand, all graceful lines and practiced calluses, and it hurt to see it bruising. “You were just a boy, Sirius. Nobody should go through that, you were just trying to do you best in an impossible situation. It’s not your fault.”

Sirius shook his head, hand retreating from Remus’s to cover his chest as if the words had burned him. “No, no, it was my fault, I—”

James wrapped an arm around Sirius’s shoulders, an awkward movement side by side.

“Shush. It wasn’t your fault. None of it was. You didn’t deserve any of it. You don’t.” Sirius protested, and James just held him tighter, rocking them together a bit, murmuring.

“You’re not stupid, you were so bloody brave. I am sorry I wasn’t there; I am sorry I didn’t notice, I will never forgive myself for not knowing you were out there, not looking outside my window. I am so, so sorry. I would have done anything to help you, Pads. Fuck, if I’d known, I would have even tried to catch you.” At that, Sirius let out a wet little laugh, and wriggled out of James’s hold, face up at the ceiling, taking deep breaths.

“Fuck, forgot I was wearing eyeliner. As I said, a bit wobbly tonight. Sorry about that,” he sucked in a breath when Peter reached out and patted his shoulder twice, wincing, and Remus wasn’t sure whether what Sirius let out next was a chuckle or a sob.

James went to hold him again, but instead of immediately wrapping an arm around Sirius, he let him choose. With bated breath, Remus watched Sirius let himself lean into James’s half hug, his breath hitching. “James, I don’t know, I— I’m sorry I don’t know how stop feeling this way. I wish I could just stop, but—”

“It’s okay to feel this way, Sirius.” Remus reached to hold his hand across the table, and Sirius held onto him again. “Logically, it makes sense, but your heart doesn’t have to change immediately. Take your time, it’s okay.”

Remus, gaze solid, warm, searched Sirius’s eyes amidst the hair he’d let fall in front of his face. “Sometimes, when we go through something incredibly painful, our minds can play tricks on us. The body remembers the pain, and it distorts the memory. You were hurt, and memories, especially the ones we’re most upset about, can be different from what truly happened through pain’s lenses. Sometimes they don’t paint the full picture, and,” Remus smiled when Sirius finally, finally looked back, “it’s not your fault. You were just trying to make sense of it, to survive. You were trying your best, but you don’t have to carry all that on your own now.”

James tightened his hold, squeezing him, revelling in having his best friend back, if only for a night. “I spent years wondering where you were, looking for you in the crowd, in the shadows moving in your old house. I hated myself for not knowing where you were, why you left, if you were okay.”

All the fight left Sirius in waves. He slumped against James’s shoulder, smile teetering on the edge of tears.

“One step at a time, Sirius. It’s alright,” Peter dared to say in a thread of voice, though sounding sincere.

Sirius used the sleeves of his jacket to dab at the corners of his eyes, trying not to rub the make-up off, letting out a wet laugh before letting himself fully look into Peter’s, James’s, and then Remus’s eyes.

“So what now?” James asked, clearing his throat and slapping his thigh as if he was impatient to leave.

“One step at a time, I guess?” Sirius seemed steadier, clearer, like the sky outside. “Alright, fine, I kind of needed this.” he smiled in earnest. “But enough of this sappy shite, now!”

They all laughed, and just like that, as the four of them got off their stools, Remus felt like he was seeing Sirius for the first time.

“Well, there’s a party still going on out there. One Remus’s supposed to be working at?” Peter stood up too, brushing his hands on his trousers before pointing at Remus. The little phoenix pin on his heart glistened in the warm light, catching Remus’s eye. Before he could reply, Sirius groaned, an incredulous laugh escaping him. “You’re really asking me to party in this condition? After all that?”

There was a smile in his voice, a real one, and Remus was delighted to notice it. He quickly retrieved his cane, relieved he could lean on it and ease the weight on his joints a bit, already regretting all of his careless moving around.

Peter, sporting a sheepish grin, shrugged at Sirius, “You know, whatever works for you, I guess?” James playfully punched his arm at that.

“Ready to face the masses?” Remus asked, a hand on the doorknob.

Sirius hesitated at the question. First, he pushed the little bundle with the golden string into James’s hands, then slowly slipped the flask back into his inner pocket. He fixed his hair using the rained-upon window as a makeshift mirror, frowned, then smiled broadly, scrunched up his face and leaned in closer to look at his eyeliner, then just watched himself, expression neutral. “Should have really gone with waterproof, ah. Next time, then! Let’s go now.”

Remus’s thumped around as he approached him, used the tip of his cane to tap Sirius’s foot, grabbing his attention, “Hey, take it slow. No need to force yourself through this.”

Sirius nodded, and Remus felt a veil of blush creep up his ears at the proximity, at Sirius’s Brely-there smile.

“Thank you for this, Remus. Maybe it was just your job here, but… yeah. You’re good. Thank you for —for everything, really.”

Remus returned the smile twice as warmly. “I can’t say it was a pleasure, but I’d do it all over again in a heartbeat, Sirius. If there’s anything I can do, for you I mean.”

James must have sensed the embarrassment stifling the air, because he slapped right across Sirius’s back, “Let me treat you to a proper drink in town, let’s get out of here! Remus, come with us?”

“Yeah, let’s go, Remus.” Peter chirped, trepidation bouncing on his toes.

Remus shook his head, and looked at James, then at Sirius. “I’m afraid I have my job to do here, but you go along, yeah? You know where to find me anyway.”

They deflated slightly, but nodded nonetheless, understanding. Remus opened the door for them, the chaos of the party suddenly reverberating in their ribcages, the Shack much more packed with people than before.

“Let’s go party!” Sirius whooped, diving into the crowd, suddenly in his element once again. They pushed through, across the thicket of swaying bodies and sloshing cups, until Remus ushered them to the exit.

“Have fun, you three!” He waved, and stood there to watch them disappear into the night, complaining about the slippery path.

“James?” Remus overheard Sirius say, seconds before closing the front door.

“Yeah?” James replied instantly,

“We’re definitely not friends… yet.”

“Yet,” repeated James, a hopeful uptick of his tone.

“And James?”

“What?” he asked again, turning to Sirius, hands deep in his pockets.

Sirius glanced at James, the line of his shoulders finally softening as he spoke.

“I believe you.”

Remus smiled to himself and closed the door, letting himself fade in the laughter and music as the latch clicked into place.

Chapter Text

The wooden surface of the door was solid and cool against his back. Remus lingered there.

Just for an instant.

Just for an instant he let his head loll back, a soft thud to try to relieve the pressure on his neck; he rolled out the tight pull between his shoulder blades, fixed the overextension of his knees, stretched his arms above his head.

Just for an instant, then Remus was already standing again, and he wished he’d brought his crutches instead of the cane, that evening, but they were impractical and took too much space, and people stared more when he used them.

But he was fine, really. It hurt, it always did anyway.

Remus swallowed all his hisses of pain, gritted his teeth as he ambled around the thicket of people swaying at a slow, moody love song. He tasted it, at the back of his tongue.

Acid.

It was nauseating —revolting how most of them would have probably called an ambulance had they been in that much pain, while to Remus it was just another (albeit emotionally taxing) day. Just another day, every day was just another straw, and the day his back would break was looming over him, the need for more mobility aids was proof of it enough, first the cane, now the clutches, soon enough Remus saw himself back in a wheelchair, rolling around trying to dodge potholes and people’s pitiful looks.

Remus let himself burn with the hate he felt for them, for their carefree lives, then for himself, then for the unfairness of it all, and in the end, he shook his head to let it all go.

The conversation in the kitchenette weighed on his mind, too much in too little time, and maybe that was why he hurt, too. Remus returned to his place at the refreshments table, ladle in hand as an odd, new extension of his arm, like a wizard’s wand. The thought made him smile to himself.

A deep breath in.

Remus looked around the half-empty bowls of punch and half-naked porcupines of fruit skewers. Someone had added a crate of beer bottles under the table, probably Marlene’s doing. Sticky beverages were seeping through the old floral tablecloth, so damp it was rendered transparent, and the dark wood was visible underneath.

And out.

He scanned the crowd, mindful of his breathing. Remus thought he’d be out of the loop after the long chat he’d just had, stowed away in the kitchenette with James and Sirius, but he was surprised to find things quite like he’d left them.

There were only two key changes, maybe three counting the increasing amount of people flooding the living toom and raiding the refreshments table.

Little cliques of students were chattering close to the walls if they weren’t dancing in the centre of the room, and amidst the chaos he immediately spotted the Order. Mary was still out there, now gently introducing two girls to each other, but they seemed fascinated by her hairdo, which she’d adorned with golden beads and hoops for the occasion. Their praise made Mary do that little embarrassed swing she always did —adorable, Remus thought, and dragged his gaze to Marlene. She was close by, and her best efforts not to chastise a younger student for having sneaked in a full bottle of gin, which she was shaking up above her shaggy blond head and out of their reach, were distracted by all the compliments Mary was receiving. The boy tried to snatch the bottle back when she wasn’t looking, and Marlene shot him such an incinerating glare that he just dipped his head and scurried away, his friends patting him on the back and shaking their heads in Marlene’s direction. She turned, satisfied with the newly confiscated alcohol, and made her way to the kitchenette. Remus had a sneaking suspicion he’d catch her sipping on it for the best part of the next semester, but he knew better than to mention it, especially not to her.

Difference number one was Regulus. He seemed to have been released from his relatives’ not-so-metaphorical grip, looking uncharacteristically relaxed as he was now nodding in noncommittal silence at Crouch and Rosier. The two must have been deep in a very animated conversation, or so it seemed, judging by the way their hands were flying around the air, Barty even sometimes elbowing and swatting and poking people on accident, much to Evan’s bemusement and Regulus’s barely concealed second-hand embarrassment. The rest of the Blacks and their acolytes were huddled among themselves, faces grave with something being discussed which Remus could bet was either of academic nature or about one of the two infamous brothers themselves.

Not that far away from them, as trouble tended to be, was the last significant change in the room. While Mary and Marlene were working, Lily had been harder to spot in the crowd, despite her usually rather visible appearance.

But she was occupied with something —no, someone else entirely.

It was safe to say that Remus didn’t like Severus. He was snobbish, flauntingly proud, and hardly ever sported a smile on his face. Hell, Remus wasn’t even sure he'd ever seen his teeth, just his tightly pressed lips and disgusted frowns tugging at the corners of his mouth. But he was Lily’s best friend, her longest friend, like Sirius had been to James, like James was to Peter, and since Remus had never had that sort of connection with anyone, he had decided he’d have to refrain from judging their relationship.

But then, from up at the table, Remus witnessed Severus yanking Lily by the arm. He dragged her lithe, though still very much protesting figure to a far corner of the room, half-hidden by the staircase to the first floor. Remus recoiled at the sight.

Lily’s face was splotchy, red even from a distance. She shook her head frantically, keeping Severus at arm’s length, trying so even when he towered over her, his pitch-black hair veiling her features just as much as his own. Severus was talking now, and he didn’t budge. He kept his arms stiffly at his sides, but it made Remus’s stomach lurch all the same, and not just because Lily must have been in distress.

Lily’s shoulders were tense beneath her flowy green dress. She made herself small, eyes darting side to side, looking for an exit. Remus circled the table, trying to get a better angle at what was going on while still overlooking the room. Maybe she was talking to Severus about someone who’d harassed her in the crowd. She crossed her arms around herself, a self-soothing gesture.

Lily's chin trembled.

In the low light, a drop glistened from her cheek to the floor.

Severus leaned in, an angry twitch shifting his hair, his voice raised.

Remus saw his eyes, and that was enough.

“Lily? Lily! Can you go fetch me a mop? My hip hurts and someone threw up in the loo upstairs and missed the toilet bowl.”

Snape took a step back away from Lily so sharply that his long frock slapped against the wall, attracting the attention of dozens of people, all suddenly looking at him, seeing Lily’s frazzled expression, the makeup dripping off her face. Remus pretended not to notice, not them, not Snape, not Lily’s state. He weaved through the crowd, using his cane to tap people’s feet and open the way for him to get to Lily’s side. Remus decided to completely ignore her friend and stand there in a way that could have looked comfortable, leaning against the stairs, but put distance —and a whole rather sturdy cane— between the two of them.

“Cariad, can you tell me where to find it?” Remus asked in a murmur, scanning Lily’s face and body, and finding nothing if not for her tears.

They’d planned on what to tell each other had anything happened, considering they were three girls, of which two non-British-looking, and one quite different-looking man. There could be name-calling, harassing, even people touching them inappropriately, and they were all keenly aware that a party would have multiplied those chances tenfold. So, they had developed a secret code, if their native languages could be called that. Their own way to look out for each other, just the four of them. This was the spiel, for Remus, at least. It was the first time, but Lily had recognised it, then, by the relief flooding her features.

“Leannan, it’s in the cupboard,” Lily sniffled, fixed her hairdo and sneakily dried her cheeks with the back of her hand. “Right there,” she pointed at Snape, and Remus turned to him in all his two meters of height, staring him down.

Snape had flattened himself against the wall, even less colour on his face than usual. The knob of a cupboard was conveniently beside him, close enough for Remus to lean in and whisper in his ear, low, cutting.

“You’re in the way, Severus.”

Snape’s eyes widened, but he didn’t budge. So, Remus reached past him, eyes trained on his blackhole irises, unflinching. His cane was still firmly planted between him and Lily, caging Snape, he was happy to give him a taste of his own medicine. Remus opened the cupboard, and it was dark in there, but it didn’t matter. He would have conjured a broom out of thin air just to whack Severus if he could. Still, he pulled out the mop and handed it to Lily with a gentle nod.

“Here you go, cariad. Do you need help cleaning up? Want me to send Mary or Marls?”

Lily shook her head, her voice steadying as she took the mop, a twinkle in her emerald eyes. “No, I’ve got it. Tapadh leat, Remus.”

He watched her go, his gaze lingering on her retreating figure as she circled the staircase and disappeared into the corridor upstairs before turning back to Snape. Oh, Remus wished they weren’t in the middle of a fucking party, because Snape was surely grateful that they were. He was smart enough not to smirk, still pressed against the wall as he was, his expression filled with nothing but disgust.

Remus leaned in again, an excuse to close the cupboard. His voice was barely above a whisper.

“Lay a finger on her. I want to see you try.”

Snape’s jaw tightened, but he said nothing. Remus straightened, let his cane not-so-accidentally collide with Snape’s shin as he walked away, leaving Snape to stew in his silence, a hand twitching at his side to go and soothe the pain, a flicker of venom in his gaze.

He wished he could climb upstairs, but Remus’s bones hurt so much he would have loved to bottle all pain up and distribute it in ladlefuls instead of drinks, have everyone finally have a taste of a smidgeon of what he was going through, their silly little spats and jealousies disturbingly trivial.

Trivial and infuriating.

Severus bloody Snape, the Blacks’ stares at his passage —everyone, everything.

But the party raged on, oblivious amnesiacs to the tension that had just unfolded, and Remus made a mental note to ask the girls to go check on Lily and find out where Severus Snape lived.

Just in case.

Sirius was singing.

James rubbed at his eyes and cleaned his glasses with his scarf, blinked at him.

It felt too good to be true, having his old best friend back.

They weren’t friends yet, Sirius had said, but he was walking next to them, with them, and he was singing.

Hearing his voice without the sharpness of whatever emotions he’d been hit with earlier dislodged more tears in James’s eyes, pushed and pushed at his greedy, starving heart. There was guilt, in there, too. James turned to Peter and perched his glasses back on his nose, searching for awkwardness and abandonment in his features. Looking for betrayal, the likeness of which he’d seen in Sirius’s earlier.

He only saw a fond smile in his eyes, a warm hand that reached up to tousle James’s already moussed hair, a nudge to keep walking and following Sirius. He smiled at Peter, hoping it could convey all he thought and felt about their friendship, and when Peter nodded again, James skipped to Sirius, listening.

Sirius, and his warm tenor voice he could command too well for it not to be trained. James envied that a bit. He wondered how Sirius had spent his years away from him, but also away from the Black —it was obvious he wasn’t one of them, and hadn’t been for a while. Had he studied at the Royal Academy of Music like his family wanted him to? Where did he attend secondary school? What exactly was he studying now, if not medicine?

Why why why?

“Hello darkness my old friend,” Sirius waved his hands in the crisp, petrichor-laden air of the night, “I’ve come to talk with you again,” he faced James, smiling, “because a vision softly creeping, left its seeds while I was sleeping. And the vision that was planted in my brain” he stopped at the gate to the park, up atop the hill, waiting for James and Peter, lagging behind, “still remains… within the soooouuund” he turned his face up at the sky, streetlamps casting stark shadows on his face, “of silence.”

“In restless dreams I walked alone,” James started, backing Sirius up with his lower octaves, though not as good a singer as he was, “narrow streets of cobblestone!” Peter added, half-singing half-talking, a finger pointing at the ground.

“Neath the halo of a streetlamp,” Sirius stopped under it, and acted, “I turned my collar to the cold and damp,” he winked at Peter, who caught him staring, and James laughed, thinking the show was for him, at the same time as Peter.

They walked side by side, downhill towards the main street, humming. Peter grinned at the sight before him, slightly out of tune, “When my eyes were stabbed by the flash of a neon light,” James added, “That split the night!”, and then looked at both of them, and in unison, grinning broadly, “and touched the soooooouund of silence!”

Their faces and the night air crumbled into laughter. They stopped along the riverbank, looked as the lamps and signs refracted on the running waters below the bridge, shards of the world drifting with the current.

“Come on, there’s a pub just up these steps,” Peter elbowed James after a long time.

Silence was comfortable, filled with the sloshing of water and rustling of trees and the occasional scratchy rumble of a car on the main street close by. The humidity seeped within, deep through their clothes, which were too light to withstand the heat of the party and not at all prepared for a trek outside. Peter’s nose and cheeks were painted pink by the cold.

“After you,” Sirius motioned for the others to go ahead, eyes still fixed on the river. He sounded distant, and to James, Sirius seemed taken aback by the offer. And even though they’d agreed on leaving the Shrieking Shack together, he wasn’t too sure Sirius was still on board with their plan. But parting ways now… James worried it could mean losing him again, making their revelations with Remus as witness a mere moment of catharsis, no hints to a future of anything, not even acquaintance.

James said nothing, did nothing.

Peter called out at the two of them from atop the stairs. His ashy hair reminded James of one of those cherubs they’d studied in art history, a dim halo surrounding his head, forget-me-not-blue eyes so, so kind on him. He extended a hand. James took it, and turned to offer it to Sirius, a hesitant current in his veins.

“Hup!” Peter tugged up, and James watched Sirius shake his head and follow them close by. If it stung a little, James tried his best not to let it show. Golden light threaded highlights on Sirius’s raven hair as they stood outside the pub, warmth emanating from it, drawing freezing passersby in like moths to a flame.

James rocked on the balls of his feet; his nose buried so deep in the scarf that his glasses fogged up.

“In?” Peter asked, and James was startled at the realisation that he wasn’t asking him, but Sirius, in what maybe was the first friendly contact his two best mates had had since the party.

Just, Sirius took a moment too long to reply.

And James couldn’t stand it.

“You don’t have to, of course. We could walk back to the dorms if you—”

“No! I mean, no, thank you. I have an apartment off campus, anyway. And I really could use a pint.”

Sirius nodded vehemently, maybe in an attempt to make them smile, but it made the little flask clank in his pocket.

It sounded empty.

Peter shot James a look. He’d heard it too, then. James made a show to peer inside the pub, chatter and curses shared between men much greyer and rougher than the three of them were.

“It’s not my usual do either,” Peter rushed in, wide-eyed embarrassment at Sirius, who smirked at his words like he knew what he meant, thought James was rather sure he didn’t. Peter wasn’t like Sirius. Nor was he like James, to an extent, at least.

They’d talked about it a lot when they were younger, how Peter dealt with people mocking him for not being as wealthy, and ridiculed James whenever his accent slipped into the one that he shared at home. This was exactly the kind of pub they’d find Peter’s dad in, and it prodded at Peter’s pride like pressing on a bruise that never quite fades.

“We could look for somewhere else, maybe grab something at the off-licence and sit on the bridge and—”

“I said I could use a pint. If you don’t, I’ll have one either way, with or without you,” he said, crossly. James was at a loss for words, Sirius’s eyes back to their guarded steel. “Carpe diem,” Sirius added in James’ direction.

He just had the feeling drinking wouldn’t have been good for him. Or for any one of them, for what mattered. James wanted to remember it all the following morning, to only regret his past life choices and not the ones he’d made that night.

“I’ll have to carpe this diem another time, Padfoot,” Sirius snorted at that, but said nothing. “I’d love to walk around some more, though. Together. It’s a beautiful night.”

“If you ignore the puddles and biting cold, then yes, I suppose it is,” supplied Peter, and James desperately clung onto Sirius’ interminable silence. Standing still let the cool breeze slither up their jackets, but whereas Sirius was stoic in the cold, head held high, Peter was growing antsy and resorted to pubbing his hands together and tucking them under his armpits to warm. James wasn’t sure what to do or say in this situation: walking on eggshells, except the shells were glass and the shards would surely stab through his feet and leave new scars.

“How’s Effie doing?”

Sirius asked in the end. Peter and James shared a curious look, which Sirius caught. He looked at his amused huff as it billowed up and dissolved in the air above them.

“Listen, I’m not going to set foot in a pub looking like this,” he supplied, waving vaguely at his face, the smudged lines around his eyes. “Either we take the tube and go somewhere proper fun, or we should just leave it at this.”

It wasn’t about the fun, but James wasn’t going to probe.

He looked inside the pub, filled with men with weathered faces and grease-stained hands that glanced up from their drinks at the weight of his stare, their creased eyes briefly lingering on the trio outside the window before returning to their own worlds. If James felt out of place, Sirius would have looked even more alien among them.

“Mum’s well,” he nodded, and started walking toward the station, leaving the options open. “She’s been obsessed with learning how to bake.”

“She’s so good though! I gave her my recipe for scones and hers are infinitely better than mine. I wonder how she does it,” Peter nodded, falling into step beside him, not waiting for Sirius to follow. “Magic, I reckon.”

“It’s the spices. She can’t stand how plain everything is here,” Sirius murmured, and James cocked an eyebrow at him. “It was the same when we were little. She always made us chai instead of tea, said the British had stolen all the pieces of the puzzle but couldn’t place them back together to make something half-decent out of them.”

Peter laughed at that, but James couldn’t reply. Memories of their afternoons together flooded his senses, an inexplicable warmth pooled behind his eyes.

“You must be an excellent baker if she loves your cakes despite the lack of that oomph,” Sirius smirked, walking backwards ahead of the two of them to look at their faces, hands deep in his pockets. Peter wasn’t expecting a compliment, so he fixed his eyes on the ground, too cold to scratch the awkwardness at the back of his neck.

“Back in school I talked Peter into starting a little baked goods business together, you know?  Backyard sells and all that, it was great. Dad was convinced I’d go on to study finance after that, but we both surprised him with various degrees of history.”

“In my defence,” yelped Peter, “I baked so much while studying for my A-levels that I couldn’t just let it all go to waste.”

“Did you take home economics for your A-levels?” Sirius asked, amused.

“Oh no, I just bake when I’m stressed,” Peter turned a share of red brighter at every question from Sirius. James was delighted to add fuel to it, “And when he can’t sleep, when he’s bored…”

“Enough of me, James. Tell him why you picked Classics, then.”

“Only if you tell us what you’re majoring in, Sirius,” James winked, their steps slowing down in front of the bright neon sign of the station.

“Oh, a bit of this, a bit of that. English Lit, Drama, French cause it’s easy, some Latin to round the curriculum up,” Sirius’s lips curved into a faint smile, though it didn’t reach his eyes. “Trying to figure things out, I suppose. I spent an awful lot of time doing shite I didn’t want to do,” he said simply, his gaze shifting to meet James’s. “And you? Tell the truth, Professor Babbling tickles your fancy, hey?”

James choked on a laugh; Peter turned around not to show him, but his shoulders were shaking with glee, “Oh, you should see him after class, always has to run to the dorm, I wonder why.”

“God, no! No! You’re disgusting. The both of you,” he swatted Peter in the arm, and it felt so good to laugh and be stupid together.

“So, what then? Pub crawl in Soho? Walk me home like a damsel in distress?” Sirius pretended to swoon, a hand on his forehead and weak in the knees. “Or I could walk you back to the dorms, I love myself a good spooky walk in the park in the dead of the night.”

They looked at each other, and James thought he’d take this indecisive silence every day over the tension that reigned over them even just three hours ago. He turned to Peter, the most introverted of the three and usually James’s socialising metre. Too bad he was too anxious to ever make one single decision for himself, let alone a whole trio. Of course, Peter shrugged and said anything would be okay with him. Of course, James would have to take the matter into his own hands, lest Sirius thought he didn’t matter to him.

“We can take you home if you want. It makes more sense, plus there’s two of us, anyway.”

Sirius didn’t protest. Instead, he wordlessly led them into the neon-illuminated night.

If anyone were to ask her, Mary would most definitely tell them that she loved parties. She loved people, humanity buzzing around her like electricity. It made her feel alive like nothing else in the world. There had always been something exhilarating about a crow to get lost in, a never-ending sea of people to meet and learn from and laugh with.

Of course, bad people were everywhere, and she knew Marlene had been watching her back the whole night, and she’d been doing the same with her and Lily, or at the very least she’d been trying to, with her. She’d lost Lily in the crowd for a while, and when she re-emerged, it was with none other than Severus Snape.

She didn’t mind him, but Mary was convinced that Lily had some sort of morbid penchant for taking lost cases in and trying everything in her power to fix them.

Take their dorm room, for example. Tidy only on surface level, it was actually filled to the brim with half-finished projects, thrifted and second-hand clothes and teacups that she just couldn’t stand leaving on a stall, all alone and forgotten. It drove Mary insane at first, and sharing a dorm with Lily had been a borderline nightmare that had led her to hiding away in the library to do much more than just study.

Lily liked putting on music on her turntable, and she had good music taste, but she’d just keep it on low volume all day long as she busied herself writing assignments and fixing whatever broken thing she could find. It was impossible to focus in there. Her desk was a collection of mending yarn and superglue and potted plants all scattered in between felt tip pens and piles of psychology tomes. And Mary frankly could not stand it, at least until last year.

See, Mary prided herself on keeping her side of the room spotless, but sometimes, when Lily wasn’t looking, she’d run her fingers over the tangled threads and half-finished projects on Lily’s desk, resisting the urge to put them back into place. She’d never admit it out loud, even less tell Lily about it and encourage her on accident, but there was something oddly comforting about her chaos.

Despite the mess, Lily was practical, no-nonsense, and knew how to do so many different things. Even if not perfectly, she could do them, which was something Mary admired so much of her friend.

What Lily couldn’t half-ass at all, though, were friendships and relationships. She simply didn’t know how to be casual about people. That, to Mary’s surprise, was the only thing that, without fail, always managed to end up with Lily angrily sobbing in her own much-tidier bed, as Mary braided her hair and told her she didn’t deserve what the world dished her.

She truly believed Lily could do no wrong, which, okay, maybe was a bit biased of her, but apart from her chaotic ecosystem, Lily was everything but messy with people. She never left loose ends, never argued or replied harshly if it wasn’t deserved. So when Mary had seen her silently stalk upstairs, mop in hand white-knuckled like a weapon, and witnessed Remus pin Snape in place with a murderous gaze, Mary knew something was wrong, and hated that she could see where things were heading.

There was something about Snape, though. The way he looked at Lily —as if he put her and himself on a pedestal, but Lily’s was always mere seconds away from being swooped from under her feet— it never failed to make Mary uneasy. She would have tried to talk to Lily about it, but she got fiercely defensive when it came to Severus, and Mary never had the guts to ask if he was just one more of Lily’s long-time projects, or if there was something deeper in there.

Remus’s expression, the way he hadn’t apologised when his cane hit Severus’s shin, then, made Mary worry she’d get caught in their crossfire had she intervened. So, she did the second-best thing and decided to follow Lily upstairs instead.

Marlene immediately made to follow suite, but although Lily loved her for it, for being her shadow, each other’s safety net, this wasn’t the time to leave this many first-year students unattended, all under Remus’s supervision. The two of them didn’t need words to communicate —just a glance, a raised eyebrow, or a subtle nod. When Marlene had caught her eye earlier and mimed chugging the bottle of gin, Mary had burst out laughing, amidst the confused looks of the girls who’d been admiring her plaits. It was their thing, a silent promise to keep each other safe while still having fun, which meant that Mary only needed to shake her head for Marlene to get her in a heartbeat, her wide eyes flicking between Lily and her.

“Go,” Marlene mouthed at her, “I got this,” and Mary didn’t need to be told twice.

“Na gabh dragh, a Lily, tha a h-uile càil ceart gu leòr. Na gabh dragh.”

Mary didn’t need to understand her words to know what she meant. It all came through clearly with the muffled party downstairs, it almost sounded like she was singing it to herself, a lullaby of sorts. Mary found Lily sitting in the empty bathtub, arms hugging her legs, hair a long copper curtain covering her figure. The mop was abandoned on the floor, nothing to clean in sight.

“What are you doing up here all alone, Lils?” Mary asked, quietly approaching her. She sat on the edge of the bathtub, and as soon as she reached out, as soon as her hand tentatively landed on Lily’s shoulder, she looked up to her. Lily wasn’t crying. Her eyes were dry, though red-rimmed, and the green in them was startlingly bright. Determined.

“I’m alright,” she said, voice low and steady, “na gabh dragh.”

Mary hummed, and combed her fingers through Lily’s hair, away from her face. It somehow always managed to soothe her, and Lily’s eyes fluttered closed, lines in her body slowly loosening, softening, as Mary played with her hair.

“Sev came here to argue with me.”

Mary stilled at her whisper, “What did he want?”

“Said I’m wasting my potential with all… this,” Lily leaned her forehead against Mary’s knee, her big sigh echoing in the small room.

She wanted to hear it from Lily herself, so Mary didn’t say anything, just hummed and resumed to loosely braiding her hair and untangling it, and started all over again until Lily felt like she could continue. The faint scent of bleach lingered in the air, mingling with the distant hum of music and laughter from the party below, and Lily’s hair was as smooth as water between her fingers.

“I don’t think I am. Wasting myself, I mean. I love it. I love the Phoenix, I love you lot, I love studying this, love helping people the way we do.”

“I am sensing a but in there.”

Lily nudged Mary’s hand, and it reminded Mary of a ginger cat asking for head scratchies, so of course she obliged, and Lily immediately started to fess up.

“But— Oh, there’s so many buts, Em. But my scholarship now depends on this project. But it’s true that I could have studied medicine and made more money that way, and went on to help my family out sooner. But it’s still a relatively new career and I might have to go on to work for the military or in some remote place or even abroad. But I’d promised we’d study together. But—”

“Oi, hold up, Lils. This doesn’t justify his behaviour, you know that, right?” Lily made a stubborn noise, and Mary tugged lightly at a strand of hair to make Lily look at her in the eye. “Do you really think he has any right at being this angry at you?”

Lily blinked up with a frown creasing her eyebrows, “I mean, I know I can do more challenging things, he’s not exactly wrong.”

“Oh, you swot! He should be happy with your happiness. A good friend wouldn’t try to make you change your mind about your whole life without letting you figure things out yourself, without hearing you out first. Right?” Lily was deep in thought, so Mary tugged again, a playful smile when Lily finally agreed. She retaliated, a finger poking Mary’s side, making her crumble into laughter.

“Don’t tickle me! Or I’ll never braid your hair again, I swear! Hey, I said— Lily!”

There was so much warmth in Mary’s heart, even if Lily was being a little prick, no, because she was. Mary just wanted to make her understand how amazing she was, how kind and inspiring and smart and incredible Lily was. She cupped Lily’s face, thumbs gently brushing over the sprinkle of freckles on her cheeks. “Listen to me,” Mary murmured, mentally chastising the intrusive thought of kissing her friend. She felt Lily’s cheeks warm up, and so did hers, as she repeated, serious. “Listen. A good friend wants you to be happy on your own path. A good friend wants you to find your own path. A good friend would be happy to be by your side along your path. I know—” Lily tried escaping her, but Mary held on, moving closer, voice lower, “I know that he’s your best friend. And I’m telling you all this because as best friends, you should be able to talk about this, at least without one of you crying at a party. Yeah?”

Lily nodded in her hands, and only then Mary let her go.

“I just wish he listened to me. He has all these preconceptions about psychology, and he just wants the best for me. It’s nothing, really. Just Sev being Sev, you know how he is.”

Mary shook her head, folding her hands in her lap. “You were crying, Lily. That’s not nothing. You don’t have to try to justify his actions when he’s wrong.”

Lily slumped her back against the tub, letting herself slide down on the squeaky white porcelain as she sighed again.

“I know. I— It’s just so complicated. I swear he’s not always like this. Tonight though, he got so angry, saying I should have been doing something actually useful and such, and I didn’t know how to stop him. It’s silly, I know,” Lily fiddled with the hem of her dress, all bunched up and creased, and worried her nailbeds with a guilty crease between her eyebrows that Mary would have loved to smooth out with her thumb, “but I just always feel like I’m the one at fault. The only one.” Lily’s voice was barely above a whisper, her eyes squeezed shut. “Sometimes I wonder if he’s right. Am I just fooling myself, thinking I can make a difference? I don’t want to mess up and lose him.”

 She turned her head to peek above the bathtub, the sky starless out of the window.

“I think you know what that means.”

Lily was chewing the inside of her cheek, “I do, I do.”

“And you know that it’s not your job to change the way he perceives you,” Mary poked her side again, trying to make her smile, “right?”

“Right.”

She propped herself up on her elbows, and Mary offered a hand to help her sit. Lily clung onto her legs instead, hoisted up quickly and purposefully bumped her forehead against Mary’s.

“Ow! What was that about?”

“You’re always right, you should know!” Lily rubbed her head, smiling brightly. But then her expression softened, and she reached out to take Mary’s hand, just their pinkies intertwined.

“Thank you, Mary. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

Mary’s breath caught, her heart swelling with affection. She squeezed Lily’s hand, her voice barely above a whisper.

“You’ll never have to find out, I hope. I hate seeing you like this. I’m— We’re just a little worried, that’s all.”

For a moment, they stood there in silence, Lily’s porcelain-cold hand in Mary’s warm one.

The aftermath of the party was as bad, if not worse than they thought it would be, so much so that the Order’s debrief the following morning, after a night spent cleaning up and checking nothing had been broken or stolen in the Shack, was opened by their common accord of never throwing a party ever again.

Marlene had done the brunt of the work, and the bags under her eyes would have been proof of it enough, but she’d decided to lay on the floor of the kitchenette, refusing to sit at the table like everyone else.

Lily and Mary had been glued at the hip all night after the fight with Severus, and Remus was happy to see Lily seemed to have recovered quickly. The two of them worked well together, and it never ceased to amuse Remus how much it affected Marlene: whenever the two bumped into each other, Marlene shot Lily a glare from the other side of the room, but then shook her head and resumed her work.

Remus had managed to take his painkillers, and felt a bit woozy, guilt churning in his stomach at how little he’d managed to help his three colleagues. But gathered around the table, after having pointed out how first-years were so painfully awkward, lonely, and with a mean streak, everyone looked at him expectingly.

“What? Something on my face?” Remus joked, fingertips sweeping on the scar across his eyebrow.

“The star of the night, my lord and saviour Remus Lupin, where did you disappear to last night?” Lily cocked her head at him, curious.

“Oh, yeah, that. Where do I begin?” Remus recounted the argument between Sirius and James, giving them the details they were supposed to know and keeping some things to himself, like the nausea at every mention of that surname.

But there was something that nagged him, more than the blatant abuse running in that family. “I don’t think Sirius is okay. Yes, there’s a lot he and James still have to discuss, the weight of years apart isn’t so easy to put up with, and they do need time and effort to move forward, if they want to, that is. But Sirius… He’s particularly rough around the edges, raw like an open wound that refuses to heal. And he drinks, for sure.”

“Not ideal in his situation,” Marlene commented, rolling on the floor.

“No, indeed.”

Lily passed Remus sugar for his cup of tea. “Are you alright? Want me to take care of them?”

Remus shook his head, and the movement felt slowed down, light and colour dragging at the edges of his vision. Fuck, he needed to lie down. “I can handle it. They trust me, Sirius too, it seems. Don’t worry.”

Mary made a protesting noise at that, a hand emerging from beneath the table to search for her cigarettes, missing it thrice before a-ha-ing and lighting herself one. “We’re a team, we should be able to deal with heavier things as such. If your trio or Snape give us any trouble, we all got your back, am I right, Macdonald?”

“Unfortunately, McKinnon.” Mary agreed.

She stood up and opened the window. Crisp morning air flooded the kitchenette. Remus inhaled deeply, the earthy smell of the forest grounding him.

“What about the letters?” Marlene asked, blowing rings of smoke that dissolved mid-air above her. It reminded Remus of smoke signals between villages. He smiled, distantly aware of how dopey it must have looked.

“My load is manageable. Lily? Remus? What about you?” Mary perched herself up on the windowsill, chocolate eyes weighing on Remus’s figure.

“Nothing crazy for now.”

“Same here,” Remus said, eyes closed.

“Anything to add?” Lily clinked her spoon on Remus’s cup, “Drink up before it gets cold.”

He shook his head, but it made him feel queasy, so he just wrapped his hands around the warm cup, steadying himself on the stool.

“Alright, Order dismissed then!” Mary clapped her hands. “Let me take you to the couch now, old man.”

Remus groaned, but he couldn’t be more thankful for his friends.

Chapter Text

Marlene wasn’t stupid. She knew she could come across as stern, rough around the edges, and didn’t have the best grades, unlike Lily and Remus. But she’d worked her summers away for years, first as a child in her parents’ shop in Lisle Street, and then, if she could afford her own university tuition, it was only thanks to her gruesome hours lost ghost-writing, editing atrociously written articles, nodding mindlessly at criticism and paying for people’s coffees.

She was proud of herself for it.

The first in her family to even manage to get into university, let alone abroad. Expectations were high, the weight of her success a guillotine looming over her neck.

Marlene wasn’t stupid and she knew her friends didn’t look at her like she was, but there was a part of her that, for some reason, struggled to fully believe it.

She was the Order’s bookkeeper. Her workload? Well, if it wasn’t as emotionally taxing as what Lily and Remus had going on, sometimes she wished Mary would help her out a bit with that but, purely for privacy issues, that wasn’t going to be possible.

The thing was, in Marlene’s very humble and probably wrong opinion, the four of them needed another person on the team. They should be someone trusted, but since the letters were already anonymous thanks to her work, at least the brunt of sorting through them wouldn’t have been Lily’s job, and she could have more time to better focus on her studies. Especially since Lily had been getting a never-ending streak of letters by this certain person. And what was worst, Marlene couldn’t tell her, or anyone, for what mattered, who that was. Long, interminable letters, so long Marlene couldn’t help but take a peek because, hell, what was that bloke writing so much about anyway?

But enough of Lily. Because then, there was Remus. His letters, as Lily had sorted them, had been coming from a couple of different students, but there was one in particular that she was dying to hear about. The sender was... peculiar. Not in the sense that they were strange, dangerous or whatnot, but their place in the newfound Phoenix structure was interesting at best, worrying at worst.

Mary was sitting on the floor beside her, her own pile of one-time letters mostly sorted out, and she had started tackling their post-colonial literature assignment already. Marlene usually wrote them surrounded by blue morning light, her legs tingling and feet sore from running around Richmond Park when the frost was still white on each blade of grass. She looked at Mary and decided she’d write her own assignment the next day anyway, when her heart was beating through her ribcage for widely different reasons.

“Want music?” she asked Mary instead, stretching her legs before going to stand.

“Don’t mind. Ask those two, though,” Mary, sleepy and soft like the little curls framing her face, nodded toward the kitchenette.

Remus and Lily had been pin-drop silent all morning, after Remus’s well-deserved nap and Lily’s quick run to Abe’s chippy to get them lunch. Mary had stayed back at the Shack, and Marlene knew she was more worried about Remus than not feeling like seeing Aberforth ‘in that state’ (hair a bit frizzy, poorly removed makeup, bags under her eyes that could have sold for millions).

Marlene had quite disliked herself for even entertaining the thought, but it was clearer than ever now.

Remus was a liability.

Lily’s future depended on his, too, and Remus had never told anyone about what was truly wrong with him. They just knew it was from childhood, but not quite, if one was to go with his memories of climbing trees and such.

Sometimes Remus would tap Marlene’s elbow, sneakily asking her if she got a smoke, and they’d both disappear around the corner, no words shared if not complaints about the weather. She really had no idea how to get closer to him, to make him say something, to get Remus to explain himself and let them know if they should help in any way, or if they could. If he had a future, that was.

What Marlene knew, was that he’d begged her not to write anything on the university zines about how McGonagall had treated him, and that had made Marlene see red first and want to cry second. The Phoenix had the potential of being something revolutionary, something that could truly change their university for the better, and maybe also all schools in the whole of the fucking UK.

Why not and spark conversations beyond these four walls and thatched rooftop?

Why not make themselves heard and seen?

So why not speak up?

Maybe, it was because it was painfully obvious how Remus was like her.

She’d seen him eye Sirius up. She knew he’d seen her pine for Mary since the first day they’d introduced each other.

But whereas Marlene wanted something with someone, Remus always only looked.

He was window-shopping with not even a quid in his pockets. Remus looked like all his life had been ruled by a philosophy of look, don't touch, and Marlene feared it had to do with his condition, but that was one other thing he couldn’t point out to them nor him, at least for the time being.

She stretched her arms above her head and let out a comically loud yawn. The turntable was right beside the door to the kitchenette, and she popped her head inside.

“Peekaboo!”

Remus jumped on his stool, threw his pen in the air and Lily miraculously caught it before it could hit the ground. “Marlene!”

“So, we Ems feel like putting on some music, any requests?”

Remus picked the pen from Lily’s hands, but he was so slouched on the table that he had to crane his neck to look at Marlene above his shoulder. “Uh, Pink Floyd maybe? Or anything slow and spacey. Words are too distracting.”

“Should I go for Mozart then?”

“Too much rhythm, can’t stop myself from humming along.” Lily shook her head at Remus, amused.

“I’ll see what I can find. Lunchtime in an hour?”

Lily sombrely looked at the piles of envelopes in front of her. “Make it two.”

“Orright, just don't work yourselves to death, you two.”

As Marlene stepped out to set up the record player and pick an album, she overheard Remus murmur just how lovely it would have been, to drop dead right there and then.

The first clink of Time echoed in the apartment, and Marlene tried not to think too much into it.

“This one’s from a first-year,” Lily sighed, tying her hair up with a pencil. “They’re struggling with homesickness and don’t know how to talk to their friends about it. They hardly have any friends here, and calling home every night has been chipping away at their finances…”

“We’ve all been there, haven’t we?” Remus tapped a finger on the table, pensive, the sound of clocks ticking seeping in from the other room. “Maybe you could suggest they start small with their friends here instead of always calling home, like sharing a memory from back in school, or asking their friends about their families and hearing their own struggles with nostalgia, too.”

“It’d make them feel less alone. That’s a good idea, cheers,” she nodded, scribbling it all down on the stray piece of paper she’d been taking notes on. “By the way, do you know what nostalgia means? James told me yesterday.”

Remus shrugged, “Hey, got lots of practice with loneliness, I guess.” Lily didn’t like his tone, but she let it slide. “But no, I have no clue. What did he try to impress you with? Let’s hear it.”

“Oh, shut up, we were just making conversation!” Lily pushed his teacup away from him, so he’d have to reach across the table to drink it. She knew it was petty, but Remus always played the game anyway. “It’s from ancient Greek, nostos algia. It means ‘the pain of nostos’, which is like, an Odyssey thing that has to do with going back home. But if you ask James he’ll tell you it’s a lot more than just that, it’s about the heroism of returning, especially with the hero’s previous identity intact.”

Lily liked to think that she was always the same Lily when she went from London and back, but she knew it wasn’t true, and Remus clearly shared her feelings. They’d often end up talking about their landscapes back home, Lily and her lochs and highlands, Remus and his green valleys and creeks.

It was jarring to think about how quickly humans changed while the earth always felt the same. After James had told her about the concept of nostos, Lily had thought about it more than she cared to admit.

Was Severus like her home landscape? Was she holding onto him to hold onto her old self? Was she still the Lily she was at home, reciting poems by heart with Severus when they walked in the forest, pouring tea for Petunia and their cousins, helping her father fix things around the house, feeding grandma’s dog haggis sneaking it under the table after mass?

Lily felt as Lily as she’d ever felt, and the more she let nostos algia oil the cogs of her mind, the less she was sure her Lily-ness had ever been an entity as sure as she thought it was.

“Sorry for the change of topic but this is… Oh my, Lily, can you help me make it make sense? This line.” Remus passed her a letter on the table, a flutter of folded pages sliding on rough wood. Lily squinted at the page, and not because of poor grammar or scratchy handwriting —quite the contrary. The paper was smooth and cream coloured, heavy enough to withstand fountain pen ink, which was green, an interesting writing choice for someone who should have wanted to keep their anonymity intact. She followed Remus’s finger to read and found herself nodding.

“Oh, textbook sibling rivalry, tell me about it. I’d recommend trying to talk to their sibling, otherwise that could snowball into lots of drama, considering their worries.”

Remus scratched his nose with the pen. He used the wrong end though, leaving a black ballpoint mark on a little pale scar at the corner of his mouth. Lily remembered when she asked him if it was a half-successful Glasgow smile, and Remus just laughed at her. She’d never asked about his scars again, and Remus had never told any of them willingly.

“You’ve got pen on your—” Remus immediately scratched his nose again, leaving a mark on the other side, then looking at the tip of the pen, horrified at the realisation “—Oh, never mind.”

“Sorry, sorry. I am just, you know, distracted by yesterday’s chat with the trio, that’s all,” Remus groaned, trying to wipe away the mess he’d just made, and Lily had to suppress the urge to do the very sisterly thing of licking her thumb and cleaning his face herself. “Because I think Sirius should be the one to reach out to us. He shouldn’t be forced by James, although he can be very convincing. But yeah, Sirius would really benefit from even just talking about his life, not even like, only in therapy, but in general. I wonder if it’s at the point of not even talking about his life to himself, if you know what I mean.”

Lily hummed, because it was true. By what Remus had recounted it was possible for Sirius to be suppressing his past to such an extent where he didn’t even let it cross his mind, he probably didn’t even entertain the mere thought of it.

“What about… Do you think the two of them would ever agree on a session together?”

“You’re a mind reader, I knew it, that’s what you are! Yes, absolutely, although I think Sirius is still way too guarded about his life. We only know about slivers of his past, just a bunch of pieces of his puzzle and it’s most definitely not enough to paint a broader picture. It doesn’t explain all the changes in between then and now, always if we’re supposing that James’s memories are anything to go by.”

They both nodded in unison, and just like that, the two of them went back to their letters, minds filled with even more questions than before.

And they weren’t the only ones in such a state.

The night had slurred into morning. Its pale primrose light tore at Sirius, his very core split into two —no, into a myriad of shards, and the pale sunlight shone through them, refracting in an incomprehensible disarray of colours. There were the blues of the tears he’d shed, toxic green shame overlapping, and not far away a cacophony of yellows and golds that told stories of frayed yarn and longing, and the more light turned with the hours, sparks of red anger paled into the violet and indigo of worry and fear. Had Sirius had a wink of sleep, maybe this kaleidoscope would have made more sense, but now he was nauseous, and it was all his fault.

James and Peter had been so kind to walk around Richmond with him. They’d talked about nothing in particular, and the more James talked, the more Sirius wished he could have a drink to numb it all down with.

Sirius felt like he should suffer from it.

Like he should be the one to give himself the rest of it, since there was nobody to punish him for his behaviour.

So he had downed more than a single pint, courtesy of his fridge, always well stocked but never with what he truly needed.

James had lingered on the front steps, Peter distracted by a stray cat down the alley and fruitlessly trying to pet it. Sirius knew that cat well enough, it belonged to nobody and everyone and it was diffident enough a creature to keep Peter entertained for a while. He’d let himself consider it, the insane idea of inviting James to his flat, having a drink together amidst memories embodied by tarnished furniture and chipped glassware.

It could have been good, a better way to end a horrible night, but then James laughed.

James laughed, because Peter had managed to gain the cat’s trust for approximately ten seconds before it turned around and scratched his hand.

James laughed, and Sirius was sprawled on the grass, limbs at unnatural throbbing angles, heart exploding in his chest, but not for the pain, but the doomed fear of being caught and being dealt with.

James laughed, and then he wasn’t laughing anymore, and Sirius was strangling the doorknob and Peter, clutching his injured hand, was at James’s side and had a look on his face that screamed pity.

Pity.

What a pity.

I pity you, Sirius Grey.

Being pitied is proof of being a disappointment, Sirius Not-a-Black-but-still-a-Black, Sirius Always-a-Black.

Sirius wasn’t sure how harsh or loud his words had sounded, not quite remembering what he’d told them.

He’d curtly excused himself and slammed the door, desperate for a buffer between himself and his past.

What a night. What a day. What a fucking weekend.

“Dear, care to help me with the groceries?”

A tiny grandmother, all almost comically hunched over herself, was staring Remus down, expectantly annoyed. Remus shook his head, vaguely gesturing at his own cane as he packed his own measly little pile of food.

The woman had enough tact to scoff but said nothing. Remus could have given her a run for her money with his list of medications and hospital stays, but frankly, competing in the suffering Olympics was only ever a brief cause of satisfaction for him, an indulgence he’d grant himself only once or twice per month when things got too bad not to complain about them.

And right now, he was fine. Fine-ish, considering his three-hour nap that had left him asking Marlene his whereabouts and what day it was. He’d had a fitful sleep, dense with steel-grey landscapes populated by ominous black trees covered in star-shaped golden leaves. The trees, Remus could swear by it, they could move. They shifted along the flatness of the horizon at each step he took, their leaves clanking metallic windcatchers behind him, murmuring among themselves. He’d briefly wondered what Freud would have told him about that but firmly decided against it.

The matter at hand was much more pressing, nagging in the back of his mind even as he walked along the river to reach the girls’ dorm building. Marlene wanted to make them dinner, and Remus was not one to waste free food and good company.

Sirius, his mind went to him again.

Remus wondered about Padfood, as he’d heard James call him that multiple times in the past weeks, and he wondered why, the story behind such an odd nickname.

He stopped on a low wall, to rest his aching fingers and catch his breath. He sat down, the sky too bright to look at, so he watched as people paddled down the river in their colourful kayaks, coxswains yelling in the otherwise terse afternoon air.

Sirius would have looked like a figurehead on a canoe, his long hair dancing enthusiastically as he called for his teammates to pick up speed, a mermaid guiding them to joyfully ram against the bridge. Remus imagined him swift as a fish as he jumped into the running waters an instant before collision, the blade of his smile like a scythe raised, waiting to reap.

He wasn’t like the Blacks that Remus knew, at least as their reputation preceded them in every field they dabbled in. Sirius had a playfulness, a livelihood that rivalled Bellatrix’s famously sadistic streak, and intellect not at all lacking Regulus’s sharp coldness.

They had a couple of lectures in common, Regulus and him. The youngest Black was taking classes much more advanced than the rest of his cohort, and though that came to no surprise and mild concern, Remus was still fascinated at the excellence of the education that family imparted their children. Many times he’d seemed on par with their professors, challenging their statements by quoting his family’s research and publications in various languages, once even ancient Chinese medicine tomes —in Mandarin, mind you, and just to prove a point. Like every year, Neuroscience would soon assign them some project to do in pairs, and Remus wondered if Professor Argent would accept volunteers… but, anyway. Rested and ready, Remus resumed his uphill, the scenery broader at each step, the Thames revealing its twists and turns amidst the browning fields in glimpses of sun on and white reflections of buildings in its waters.

“Remus!”

Someone ran up behind him, put a gloved hand on his shoulder to stop him.

“How’d you walk so fast with all that?” It was Peter, ruddy cheeks and tight-lipped smile. “You alright?”

“Cheers, yeah, alright mate. You?” Remus swung the canvas bag, its contents rattling as a statement.

“Oh. Well, I wanted to thank you for last night.”

“No need. I was quite literally doing my job, Pete.”

“It was still kind of you. Just a heads-up, ‘cause James is probably going to thank you for the rest of his days, you should prepare yourself.” He chuckled and made to keep walking side by side with Remus. “So, I was thinking...”

Oh no.

Nothing good ever came from a preface like that, ever. First, it was the sessions with James that had become with Peter too, then it was the party, then also Peter at the party.

No, fuck no.

“Sorry, Pete, I’d love to chat but it’s not really the right time. Come by next week at the Sha- at the Phoenix, around Saturday at noon?”

“No, no, wait. It’ll be too late then.”

Remus stopped in his tracks. He faced Peter, suddenly more present than he’d been all day, and made an effort to look more tired and more intimidating at once: there was no way in heaven or hell anything would come between Remus’s well-deserved rest week after the party, not even Peter.

“Late for what?”

“You see, it’s about James. Let me explain...”

He’d got up early and pushed through his crusty eyes and baseline headache to make a trip to the phone booth. He had to call home. James didn't know what to do with himself, filled with an intense energy that bounced between ribs and heart and didn't match his sleep-deprived body’s needs. He wanted to run, wanted to scream and tear at his hair and steal little dogs from the sidewalk and kiss strangers on the mouth, but that would have looked quite insane, so this was the best he could do. Who cared about being a stereotypical all-British adult? James had to tell his mum, had to let her know.

“Vita?”

“Ma, it’s me.”

“I had a feeling it was you. I missed you. How have you been? You should call more often.”

“I called you two days ago, Ma. I’m good, still as good as I was.”

“You sound happy. Happier.”

“I… I am?” James blushed so hard he had to check nobody was within earshot, and the coast was clear, just tree branches that swayed in the wind. “I’ve got news, the kind you’d want to hear sitting down.”

“Are you sure everything is alright?”

“Yes, more than alright, actually,” he said, leaning his free forearm against the wall of the little cabin.

“Did you fall in love?”

“Uh… that’s for another call.”

“So you have, then! Who’s the lucky girl?”

She sounded delighted, and James would have loved to pour over this elephant in the room, but he still said, “Ma, not now! Well, did you sit down?”

“Yes, yes, tell me then. I’m all ears.”

James fiddled with the phone, and propped it between ear and shoulder to look for his little bundle of string, still in his pocket from the previous night. “So… I found him.”

“Him?”

“I found Sirius.” On the other end of the line, James heard her gasp, muffled as she distanced herself from the phone.

“Sirius? My beta Sirius? Our Sirius?” Her voice was a murmur, disbelief heavier with every syllable.

“Our Sirius.”

Euphemia chocked out a wet little laugh. James could practically see his mother sitting on the couch, a hand nervously twiddling with the telephone cord and the other holding onto the mouthpiece like a lifeline, clutching it to her chest as she called for Fleamont to tell him the news, her words distant but her tone tear-warm. His parents chatted animatedly, and James was happy to listen, hoping their hushed discussion would end soon because he didn’t have much cash left to feed the payphone with.

“James, are you still there?” It was his father, smile ringing in his musical voice. James hummed in response. “Listen, can we see him? Next Sunday, maybe? Effie wants to make him roast the way he liked it. Sirius! Oh, James, tell us, how was— how is he?”

“Good, good. I am not sure if he has time next week but—”

“Promise you’ll ask him!” Effie jumped on the line, so loud James had to move away from the phone, “Please, vita, at least get him to call me? Or send us a picture, he must have grown to be such a fine young man”, by the clattering that came through and the offended noises Effie let out, Monty must have snatched the receiver from her. James couldn’t help but snicker at the thought. “Don’t pressure him, James. Just let us know for how many people we should cook next week, alright?”

“I’ll ask. You can count me in already, and Pete too I think.”

“We love you, vita, be good and do good,” his father said, then his mum cut in, “and say hi to Peter and Sirius from us!”

“Yes, will do! I promise! Yeah, love you two, too! Love you, bye! Hear from you soon, bye! Yes, bye-bye!” The line fell, and James sighed in relief, a yawn contorting his face into a smile.

The sky burned blue and frozen blades of grass were thawing underneath his picnic blanket. Peter sat still on a fallen tree, sulking because apparently his diet couldn’t purely consist of sausage rolls, cream teas and marmalade sandwiches.

“It’s made with oranges, James. See? There’re little bits of pith in here, it’s got to be healthy!”

“Yeah, and by that same logic a beef steak is basically a big bowl of grass,” he drawled in a deadpan.

“My thoughts exactly!” Peter said it with such conviction that James backtracked, surely it wasn’t possible Peter truly believed that?

“Oh, come on Peter!” James flicked an acorn at him, but Peter gave him the cold shoulder, turned around and kept on munching on his sandwich, staring into the distance.

There was something terrifyingly peaceful about reading in the park, with London’s tall angular buildings so distant on the horizon, so far removed from their little pocket of dead leaves and wind-swept pages. The ground was uneven, pebbles stabbing James’s back through the blanket, but he couldn’t be bothered to move. He soaked in the sun, a habit he’d blamed his father for, because whenever there was a pool of sunlight on the floor, on a wall, or a glimpse of sun through the clouds, there they both were, black lashes casting long shadows on their smiling cheeks.

“I think we can keep him,” Peter chewed on half the words.

“What?”

“You mean who.”

“Who who?”

“Careful or you’ll attract a flock of mating owls, James.” Peter aimed a crumpled piece of parchment paper in James’ direction, and James caught it with ease. It was sticky with marmalade, and James did his best not to squirm at the texture.

“Tosser,” he grinned instead, throwing the paper ball back at him. He hit Peter square in the chest.

“Oi, you know what? No, I changed my mind, I can see his bad influence rubbing on you already. We will most definitely not keep him.”

Peter put too much force into the throw and the ball went flying up, way past James’s head, landing amidst a bunch of wilting ferns with a soft thud.

“He’s pretty cool, isn’t he?” It was a sigh, one James hoped wouldn’t sound too thick with longing.

Peter dropped on the blanket, his coat so long James could scarcely see his shoes where he’d sat cross-legged beside him, “Bit of a snob maybe, but he’s alright,”

“I knew you secretly liked him!” James cheered, shooting his hands up in the air so quickly a crow cawed, frightened flapping wings and shaking the branch it was perched on like a seesaw.

“Let’s not twist my words now. I just said he’s alright, not that I’d agree on him being your best man instead of me.”

“Bloody unfair I can only have one best man, then. I wonder which one I’ll—”

Peter pushed him, and James let himself roll off into the dead grass, only belatedly realising the ground was still damp from the rain. He was quick to sit up and inspect his clothes, frowning and thorough.

First marmalade, now mud.

Brilliant.

“Ma asked if Sirius can come over for Sunday roast next week. Don’t look at me like that, I said I’d ask him, but I wanted your opinion first.” Peter dusted the back of James’s jumper, just to fill the silence with something to do.

“Menin aeide thea, Melanus Sirius…”

“You did so not just translate Sirius’s surname as melanus in ‘sing in me o muse’, Pete.”

“Oh, I so did. Seems quite fitting to be honest. Although I should have probably used some other case, and maybe glaucus instead of Black.”

“Since when do you know anything about ancient Greek or the Iliad?”

“Since last year, when you had me quiz you for the whole bloody semester, maybe? Hell, I could have taken that exam for extra credits, I’d have passed it with flying colours, unlike someone I know... But anyway, yes, Sirius’s anger is quite epic, don’t you think? I wouldn’t mind him if I were your parents, just as long as he doesn’t have one of his outbursts, that is.”

James had to try his very best not to glare at Peter, so he settled on looking at a lone white tuft of cloud hanging in the sky instead.

“Too soon? It’s too soon, isn’t it.”

“It probably is.”

“Can you believe it, though? They asked me if I could at least pass him on the phone to them. Or send them a bloody picture of him. This is a tragedy, Pete, I am not the favourite child anymore.”

Peter bumped against his knee, winking. “You haven’t been since my first batch of jaffa cakes, I’m afraid.”

“Yes! We should bribe my mum with biscuits so she won’t nag me about Sirius anymore. Fuck, I should have known it was a mistake to introduce you two, she’s been asking for your recipe again, you know?”

Peter laughed in that shaky way of his, shoulders rising silently and nose up in the air, and James flopped back on the blanket, a hand to cover his smile.

James’s week flew by, and not once did he even not-so-accidentally manage to stumble upon Sirius. He couldn’t even spot him in Latin, and although professor Babbling was probably delighted, James was getting tired of denying to Peter just how much he wanted to see Sirius now that they were on slightly better terms. On Friday, after three days of artfully dodging Remus’s attempts at dragging him to the Phoenix to talk, James was more determined than ever to wave the white flag at Sirius and invite him over on Sunday.

That was exactly how he’d found himself pacing up and down the steps in front of Sirius’s block of flats, debating whether he should knock or ring the doorbell or run away and be a responsible adult and tell Remus all about it. He was starting to break out a sweat at his nervous stair-climbing when he heard a voice coming from around the corner.

There was a rustling of fabric, a thudding rattle followed by a steady clattering of something cascading onto a hard surface. Then, a loud and clear… meow?

James followed the noise, fully expecting to see one of Sirius’s neighbours and mentally preparing himself to ask them if they could be so kind as to pass his message on to the man himself, but the scene he was met with was much different.

Underneath the glare of tall, curtained windows, the shaded alleyway was a contrast of clotheslines and racks, purposeless in the chilly weather, chalk drawings on concrete, an orange football half-deflated in a corner. And, crouched to the ground, there was someone with a tabby cat perched on their shoulder, and a white and a grey one rubbing at their ankles, purring so loud James could hear them at a distance. They were pouring kibble into a huge —and frankly expensive-looking— salad bowl, and as soon as the porcelain tinkled on the ground, the cats jumped onto it, their munching and scrunching immediately filling the air.

“Excuse me?”

James took a step forward when he saw them stand up, brushing their hands on their trousers as they observed the cats devouring their food. Their dark hair soft at their nape, silver rings catching the low light on their fingers, and they were only wearing a flowy white blouse that fell so fluidly over their shoulders that James couldn’t help but shiver for the cold in their stead. But then, though thin, their build was rather muscular and sharp, their black dress trousers, straight and boxy, were held up at the hips by a black leather belt, and their brogue dress shoes were a little scuffed but still polished clean. For the life of him, James couldn’t figure out how to address them. “Sorry, do you live here, perchance?”

“Who on earth even says perchance anymore, Potter?”

Steel-cold eyes shot daggers at him.

Well, that explained it.

“Oh, Regulus, hi,” after the first seconds of stunned silence, James recovered quickly, making it a point to melt the tension away from his frame. “Are you here for your brother? Is Sirius at home?”

The tabby head-butted Regulus’s knee, leaving a trail of pale hair on his trousers. Regulus sighed but still bent down to give it a brief scratch between the ears. “All done?” he asked, and the cat let out a delighted chirp in response. James didn’t mind being ignored; it’d always been the case with Regulus anyway.

“No and no,” he said, as the other two cats approached him, jealous of his ministrations, but Regulus stood up and walked past James. James, unsure if the words had been for him or the cats, called after him, “I asked if your brother was at home…?”

“And I said no!” Regulus stopped in his tracks, turning so quickly James flinched back. “He’s not my brother and he’s not at home!”

As he stomped away, hands balled into fists, a window creaked open on the first floor.

“The little prick, I’m right here!”

Sirius leaned out of it like a déjà-vu. He was wearing the same white blouse as Regulus, but his hair was knotted in a loose chignon on the crown of his head, earrings and necklaces dangling in the air. “James, qual buon vento ti porta?”

“Uh, hi to you too?” Sirius laughed and sat on the windowsill, and James took a step back so as not to crane his neck too much to look at him. “Did I interrupt anything…?”

“Just came back from court, actually.”

James pushed his glasses up his nose, “Court?”

“Yeah, Royal Courts of Justice. My biological parents appealed against my case, you know, the one to change my surname to Grey. And right after that, this twat had the audacity to ask if he could feed Alphard’s cats! Can you believe him?”

Sirius waved his arms theatrically, cussing at him, but Regulus had already disappeared in the distance.

“And who won, Black or Grey?”

James pretended to look mad, or pensive, or outraged or something, but it was such a Black family thing to do, there was a comic vein in it all.

“They did, ces enculés!” He spat to the ground, somehow making a magnificent projectile arc that ended with a splat in the middle of a manhole. “Sorry, sorry. Now I feel better. I heard you were looking for me? Lovely choice of vocabulary, by the way.”

“Ha, yes, perchance. Feels like I’m Romeo asking Juliet out or something...”

 “O James James, wherefore art thou James?” Sirius grinned, a twist at his lips that made it clear he was seconds from bursting into laughter, “Deny my father and refuse my name! Bravo, you really served this joke on a silver platter. You were saying?”

He had so many questions, from Sirius’s relationship with his little brother to who Alphard was and where they’d move, and James hesitated, and the more he hesitated the more his heart pounded in his chest. James scuffed his shoe on the cobbled pavement, a hand up to fix his hair.

“Yeah, uh, I was— I wanted to ask you something.”

Sirius caught his nerves and grasped them in the palm of his hand, crumpled them up and incinerated them with, “How many times do I have to tell you? You’re not my type, Tybalt!”

They both laughed and that gave James the courage to finally ask.

“My parents are making roast on Sunday, Ma said she’s making it the way you liked it. They’d just love to see you, my father, too. I mean, if you’re free. This Sunday, so it’s a bit of a short notice, I— they’ll totally get it if you can’t. There’s also going to be Pete, probably. No pressure, of course. Really.”

Sirius gripped the windowsill, pale fingers on white wood. He looked over his shoulder, reached at something inside the apartment, and James was sure Sirius would slam the shutters closed and that’d have been his last, painfully awkward interaction with Sirius, and he’d have regretted each word forever.

Oh, then he’d definitely need therapy.

But Sirius simply produced a cigarette and a lighter, a ritual care in how he methodically placed it between his lips. He went to light it, but struggled a bit, try after try maybe for the light breeze, maybe because of something else entirely. Sirius took a long drag, held the smoke in, watched the ash turn pale and be carried by the wind. He closed his eyes as he exhaled, slowly, extremely still.

James watched.

He watched, and could only watch, rendered deaf by his heart.

“I don’t know, James,” he finished the cigarette quickly now, flicked the ash, and stubbed it on the wall beneath the window. “I don’t know. It’s been such a long time. And they’re your parents. I’m not sure I’m good with those anymore, not that I ever was anyway.”

James nodded; the tips of his shoes were suddenly quite interesting. “Would you be open to talking with them on the phone, at least?”

“Fuck, I need to think about it. Can you ask me again tomorrow? I’ll tell you tomorrow, today was already so—”

“I get it, I get it, yeah. No pressure, really. I know, it’s silly, they were so eager to hear from you that Ma asked if I could send her a photo of you, all grown up,” James forced a laugh, and when he looked up, he found Sirius with a peculiar, wistful little smile tugging at his lips.

“Let’s meet at Pembroke Lodge for tea, tomorrow. Five o’clock.” He almost couldn’t believe his ears.

“Okay! Okay, Pembroke Lodge, the one close to the Star and Garter, got it.”

“That’s the one,” Sirius nodded, then tapped a finger to his temple, “the court needs time to deliberate on this, too, you know? I just hope it won’t inconvenience Effie.”

James shook his head, a nervous chuckle bubbling in his throat. “Oh, no, they’ve been cooking all week! There’s going to be so much food that adding a seat at the table will just help me bring less leftovers back here, and trust me, there’s always so, so much stuff I can’t bring with me.”

Though silent, he seemed calmer now, playing with one of his necklaces, twisting it and untwisting it over and over.

The air was heavy, the sky holding its breath just like James, composing himself a bit more. There was something else he should tell Sirius.

“I just wanted you to know that you’re welcome at the Potters. Always. Just like the old times.”

Sirius’s hands tensed on the necklace, fingers tightening on the chain. His throat bobbed, his grey eyes glistened up at the greying sky.

He swung his legs back inside, and swiftly jumped down the sill, blinking.

“See you tomorrow, James.”

He said, voice as fragile as a sky promising rain.

As he walked back to the dorm, heart floating amidst waves of hope and anxiety, James could swear he’d felt a raindrop fall on his cheek —but when he looked up, Sirius had already disappeared into the dark apartment, the window shut tight behind him.

Yet, it didn’t rain until the next morning.

Chapter Text

Pembroke Lodge was a quaint little cottage, much akin to the Shrieking Shack, though up atop a hill and surrounded by breathtaking scenery and altisonant names like King Henry’s Mound and Isabella Plantation and so on and so forth.

Everything about it promised a plethora of insufferable accents and pockets infinitely lighter at one’s exit from the place and James, of course, had heard all about it. Frankly put, he thought it wasn’t a place for him. Just a posh place full of posh people having their posh little afternoon teas with posh cucumber sandwiches the size of a quid and as expensive as a full-course meal at their cafeteria.

But it was Sirius who’d picked it, and beggars can’t be choosers, so now, there James was.

Winter-naked wisteria crept around columns in front of what looked like the entrance, but the door was closed (or maybe too heavy to be pushed open without making a fool of oneself had it been locked), and lights so dim within that they seemed off. Unsure how to access the place, James had thus forgone the main entrance and walked all around the building. That he did so twice before settling on trying to open the first door he could find —hands reddened by the unrelenting wind that in the meantime had taken to whipping linden branches against its spotless high windows. As soon as James stepped foot inside the warm tearoom, a sense of safety settled deep within his bones. The fireplace was joyfully casting a crackling orange glow, flames licking at the iron gate and filling the room with a resinous warmth, and James found that, as most preconceptions often go, he had been, indeed, very wrong.

It was a quiet place, sophisticated, yes, but soft all over. It had the same energy as a grandmother wearing her best clothes to meet her grandchildren, her talc and elegant perfume mingling with the scent from the sweets baking in the oven. The room James had picked at random filled James’s heart with a homesickness for a home he’d never known before, and he sat there, unsettlingly comforted, listening, observing.

Chatter came from a gaggle of students at a large oval table that fit perfectly in the alcove of the bow windows, heavy curtains cascading around the scenery outside. Hilly west London, and even Windsor Castle in the distance, were all framed by each window so seamlessly that they rivalled the paintings and pictures hanging from the walls within. James found his cozy little spot by the fire, dropped his bookbag on the soft leather armchair, and took off to explore the lodge. After circling the rooms and being discretely told off by a waitress for attempting to climb upstairs, just like the minute hand of his watch, James settled on five sharp and surrendered to the agony of waiting in a less visibly agitated way.

He soon found his way to the refectory, with its cornflower blue ceramics and decadent treats, and ordered the cheapest Darjeeling on the menu and placed two cups and saucers on his practical melamine tray he’d just grabbed from the stack. Waiting for his name to be called to retrieve the teapot, James looked through the desserts section on the marble island, though he would have loved something savoury instead, and among cake stands and doilies and Battenberg slices and elaborate trifles, he settled on little Bakewell tarts. One for himself, one for Sirius, who had always loved almond-flavoured treats. Peter’s voice echoed in his memory, exasperated but fond when he painstakingly explained to him the difference between frangipane and marzipan, which, for some reason, was where Sirius drew the line (“Have you ever had frutta martorana, James?” he could almost see Sirius’s face twisted in distaste, “It’s quite realistic, shaped and decorated like pretty ripe fruit. I got fooled once, bit into a beautiful apricot, it was perfect, too perfect, and then… no! It tasted like pure cyanide! I thought I got bloody poisoned! I swear, they must feed it to Sicilian children to get rid of them or something.”).

James smiled at the memories but wiped that fond grin right off his mouth. Sirius could round the corner at any moment and find him there, an instant arched eyebrow at his foolishly optimistic self.

“James! Tea for two, James!”

He rushed to the counter, let the server set the steaming pot on the tray. He jumbled with his wallet, suddenly conscious of its cracked leather under the staff’s gaze as he asked how the payment worked. The boy at the register —couldn’t have been older than sixteen— looked at him like a deer caught in headlights at the question, and an other employee immediately appeared at his side, an older carbon copy in the same black uniform.

“Till’s here, love, just bring the tray back with the empties when you’re done if you’re waiting for someone. Or pay now, am not one to judge, myself.”

James opted for the second option, grimaced inwardly at the price, and balanced everything on his tray. His perilous journey amongst winding corridors ended when he carefully placed everything on a low table, then put his jacket on the armchair opposite the one he’d claimed as his own, lest anyone decided to steal it from him. Looking at his watch, at the fire, at the storm brewing out the windows, James wondered what would happen first: Sirius arriving or their tea getting cold.

“Bakewell tarts!”

Two icy hands materialised on his shoulders. James jumped on his chair, almost kicking the tray off the table in the process. Sirius sauntered around him, sporting a wide grin as he dropped on the armchair. He handed a speechless James his jacket, then shrugged off his own before tackling the treat in front of him.

“Did you know that you can tell the quality by how the centre catches the light? The redder the better.” Dumbfounded, James held his one to the fire, examining it, and true to what Sirius had just said, the jam glowed like a little amber dome. He’d told him that before, ages ago, Sirius’s child voice overlaying with his adult one in James’s mind.

“Yeah, I… err… are these? Hope these are good?”

Sirius had already bit into his own, silver fork abandoned on the plate, nodding with an enthusiasm that warmed James more than the fireplace ever could. “Excellent! Cheers, mate, bloody excellent! How’d you know? Didn’t wait long, did you?”

James shook his head, opting for at least halving his own with the fork before he could end covered in crumbs, much like Sirius, which he promptly swept off his black shirt. “Don’t worry about it. A lucky guess, I guess?” He set into motion and took to filling Sirius’s cup and his with luckily still-steaming tea. “Sugar? I know you don’t like it with milk.”

Sirius shook his hand to signal James to stop pouring, put his half-eaten tart back on the plate and wiped the corner of his mouth.

“How’d you—” the cheerful abandon dimmed in Sirius’s eyes and James’ blood went lukewarm in his veins, “—oh. Right.”

The clink of the sugar spoon against the porcelain bowl pierced James’s eardrums like an accusation. Sirius sighed, shook his head, hands reaching for his cup before retreating, yielding the ritual to James. Offering a truce.

“Sorry, ignore me. Of course you’d know,” his grin faltered, but he picked it up again. “Yeah, two sugars, please.”

James dumped two sugar cubes in Sirius’s tea. He wondered if the way Sirius stirred and sipped on it was how royal tasters looked like in medieval times, savoured it slowly and with a wary pinch in between his eyebrows, ready to drop dead at any given moment.

James poured himself a cup and drank it black, watching Sirius look almost amazed that he’d survived the tea. He proceeded to slump back onto the armchair, last crumbs licked away from the corners of his mouth and Bakewell tart demolished in three bites.

“So,” James stilled, pretending to blow on his tea despite its safe (and bordering on sad) temperature. “About tomorrow.”

The flames danced light on Sirius’s features, gleaming in his eyes like embers. He hummed, transfixed by the fire, so low James wasn’t sure he’d heard it over the sound of the rough paper napkin crinkling as he cleaned his hands. Without warning, Sirius balled it up and tossed it in the fireplace.

Silence lasted from the first corner catching fire to the burn spreading outward in soft waves, creeping onto the napkin and inching outward, the tissue curling at the edges until the whole thing was slowly consumed by a ribbon of red and orange glow flickering in the dark, its ashes pale and soft against the charred remains underneath.

He tried to conceal it, but James saw Sirius catch his breath when the last spark died. He turned to face him again, the armchair cracking as he leaned back, feigning a stance more open than his face.

“The thing is,” James set his cup down and went to refill it, offering to Sirius with a little motion that sloshed the contents, “No, thank you, James. The thing is I have dreamed of Effie’s cooking since the last time I saw her. Thought about her chai, the chicken biryani with those perfect little potato chunks… Ah, enough of this culinary nonsense!”

James’s smile flickered like a lightbulb in a storm. Memories, memories like a plague, clutching at his throat and burning in his eyes.

“The thing is I am not a child anymore, and I am not sure your parents know it. They do, of course, but they don’t really, you know, they—” Sirius finally looked right at James, just for an instant, then his gaze shot through him, unfocused somewhere around his forehead and the windows behind him. “I’m not sure you know it. I have the feeling you see me as my eleven-year-old self, and I need you to understand you are not your ten-year-old self anymore, either.”

The cup trembled in James’s saucer, his hold a little unsteady on the delicate handle.

“I know. And you told me about the court case, the name change,” all the things he wouldn’t tell him, at least not for a long, trusted time.

Remus had cautioned James of being rash about these conversations, he’d told him he should wait for Sirius to come to him on his own. Regardless of how much James wanted to make up for the time lost, of course he knew he’d never get his old Sirius back.

“Knowing and understanding are two very different things, and it’s important for me that when I step into your house tomorrow, everyone is acutely clear about it.”

“When.”

James repeated it, not a question, but a statement. Outside, the wind pushed against the windowpanes, whistling between branches and the last crunch of leaves, the flames in the fireplace flicking erratically in time with his heart.

“Yes, when. But whereas you’ve had a taste of this already,” he vaguely gestured at himself with the spoon, the engravings glistening like the rings on his fingers, “Effie and Monty haven’t. They, you all, you have no idea what I mean.” Then Sirius’s voice changed. Quiet, fragile, and yet managed to turn into shards the cage of ice around James’s heart, “What if you won’t like what you see?”

James shook his head, leaning forward, wishing he could put a reassuring hand on Sirius’s knee but settling on offering him one last pour of tea instead.

“Just let us see you.”

“Tea’s cold now.”

And it was.

Silence.

All the words in the world and James Potter was an empty room filled with mirrors, asking himself what was truly in it if he couldn’t take a look himself.

Just like that, Sirius gathered the tray with a clatter of porcelain. James stood, half-reaching, made to follow him, but Sirius just flashed him an offhanded smirk, “I’ll be back in a minute, you worrywart. If you get cold feet just warm them up with the fire.”

The students in the bow window had long left, the two of them adrift in a room brimming with an emptiness of posh things and choke-full of charged nothingness.

It wasn’t a lie, and Sirius did, in fact, come back soon, though not soon enough for James not to perform an autopsy on their interaction so far. Sirius came back smelling of cold air and tobacco smoke, and their tray now arranged with their cups, a steaming teapot, and two ham and cheese sandwiches.

“Ham’s okay, right?” Sirius asked, gingerly.

James, hunger multiplied by sharing chatter and tarts and nearing dinnertime, just tackled his own as an answer. He chewed around a smile, and in the brewing storm outside the window, savoured the sunny taste of the soon end to their dance around each other.

Mary knew she was supposed to be enjoying herself with Marlene and Lily and everyone else downing pints at the pub. It was Saturday, Remus was at the dorm reading his little heart out, and just to avoid thinking about her studies for once she’d decided to join the girls on a beautiful, crisp night out after the gloomiest autumn day of the year so far.

To be fair, she was at the pub, sitting next to them, among them. She just had a bottle of coke in her hand. She’d asked the bartender not to open it for her.

It was still unopened.

Mary didn't own a bottle-opener, not anymore.

She didn't allow herself to.

Marlene seemed to lose the memo any time they went out together.

See, apart from Aberforth, Mary was very close with her extended family. She often spent her free afternoons commuting around London to have a chat with them, keep in contact and gossip. And find out what was going on back home, whatever “home” even meant, considering Mary’s roots were watered by Jamaican Windrush Generation aunties’ sweat and Nigerian doctor in medicine’s tears, and unfortunately, doused in burning amber liquid as well.

That morning she’d met up with her cousin, they’d braved the rain and had a long walk along the river from Kew Bridge to Hammersmith. Much to her horror, eyes fixed on the murky waters running down to the sea, Mary had understood her cousin when he confessed it. She knew how it felt for him.

It felt like being constantly surrounded by the very thing you craved —desperately, insatiably, uncontrollably— and yet you had to make yourself take a step back.

Take a step back, not because you hated yourself and had to deprive yourself of the joy of getting what you wanted. No, you had to do everything in your power not to give in, because it would set a precedent.

And Mary didn’t have a precedent in herself, but she did all the same, and more than one. Just, it was a different one from her cousin’s, but also the exact same.

Generations hollowed out and drowned, generated and hollowed out and drowned.

Mary knew how it was like to have something inside of her and fully recognise that it ran in the very veins of someone she loved.

To see it take them away from her.

Knowing she could be next.

So, Mary didn't own a bottle-opener, which meant she had to find someone kind enough and trustworthy enough to open the bottle for her.

Luckily, said person usually manifested themself in the shape of a rather tipsy and very beautifully flushed Marlene.

Marlene, who unclipped her carabiner and always used her dorm key to open her coke, stubborn in ignoring the bottle-opener hanging there among the half-dozens of trinkets she kept on her at all times. Marlene, whose palms were cold where they touched the bottle, but so warm where she brushed against Mary’s fingers.

Sometimes, Mary worried addiction ran in her family in more than one way. Ways that could trigger the heart-shaped bomb ticking deep and indomitable in her chest, and she’d be gone, utterly, desperately off her rockers.

Insane, madly addicted to the girl.

Saturday nights weren’t as rowdy for Mary as they were for most people at Pembroke Hill, but after the first few weeks of alienation, she found that she didn’t really mind. Now, Lily and Marlene were chatting way too seriously about some obscure book on the language of flowers in the suffragette period, and Mary could sit days on end observing those two.

There was something fascinating, something that deserved to be studied and immortalised by science and art and hell, even religion about them —about Marlene. Something about the way Marlene’s bleach-fried hair shone in the yellow pub light, how her dark eyes could melt into honey-light and impossibly soft despite her dark makeup and sharp jewellery.

And her hands.

God, her hands.

Marlene’s hands would have been a pleasure to drown by.

Mary would have gladly raised a shrine for Marlene, an altar solely dedicated to that pair of lovely, loving hands.

The fan of tendons as she tapped a senseless rhythm on the neck of her beer bottle, droplets of condensation catching the light, sliding down the pads of her fingers down to the palm of her hand. A hand that she then dropped on her pleated skirt, in an excuse to smooth the black fabric, not-so-subtly drying it, just a brisk swipe of the hand on her thigh that left a trail of darker spots where the palm had been. Her hand now resting on the carabiner at her beltloop, playing with the clasp absentmindedly, ring-crowned fingers and an elegant wrist and soft skin on the inside of her elbow, where lay a constellation of moles that trailed all the way up, up to her shoulder. There were more under her sleeve.

Mary shouldn’t, but she knew them by heart. A map she’d learned her way around in months of painstaking observation, nights lost tracing them in her mind, ghosts of fingertips on phantom skin and stars. Mary shouldn’t, but she did, and now— “Fuck,” she mouthed, lips parted —without thinking, she followed their trail along her collarbone, but her eyes got caught.

Her cheeks were glowing with how much they burned. Marlene’s lips had quirked. She grasped the coke bottle with a bit too much urgency, the bottom clunk against the edge of the counter, took a long swig.

Coke fizzled sharp and cool, as sweet as guilt.

Eyes screwed shut in the foolish hope that, if she couldn’t see her, it wasn’t real. Too bad the afterimage lingered like a negative underneath her eyelids —the mole in the soft pool between her clavicles, a holy water font she would have loved to dip into.

Mary breathed out another blasphemy.

Too late.

There was nothing she could do about it, because Marlene had noticed. Mary placed the half-empty bottle on the counter, turning her back to Lily and that girl with unholy hands and a smile to match.

Mary breathed in the joyful chaos of the pub, resurfaced to a reality of clinking glasses and coarse laughter, a vibrance that hit her senses like waves crashing on the shore. She must have been well on the way to madness, because she could feel Marlene’s eyes on her, their prickle on the back of her head, luring her to face her. But Mary gulped down some more of her coke, willing herself to look around and defuse her heart.

Under a bottle-glass window illuminated by a lamplight outside, in a corner far enough for Mary not to eavesdrop but close enough to see properly, was a familiar mop of raven hair nervously swept around by wildly gesticulating hands.

A pillar hid his interlocutor, but Sirius had three empty pints in front of him and was currently drinking a fourth one. Mary glanced at the little Timex at her wrist —it was barely half past nine.

She’d seen that scene before, in her family, in her cousin’s story that morning. Still, she hoped it didn’t run in Sirius’s veins like it did in hers.

Glass slammed on the little table for two. Sirius buried his head in his hands, hunched over leaning on his elbows. His fingers crawled on his scalp, and Mary’s head hurt at how hard he tugged at his own hair.

“Em? What’s going on?”

Lily tapped her elbow, a crease in her eyebrows. Mary looked over her shoulder, and sure there Marlene was, scanning the crowd in Sirius’s direction, back straight and jaw set, hands balled into fists. Mary stood up, dodged stools and people’s feet to get to her friends’ side.

“Either I’m hallucinating, or he is,” Marlene drawled, humourless. Mary still felt a chuckle bubble up, but it died in her throat. From that new perspective, the line of sight was clear.

His fourth pint landed heavy on the table.

Sirius was alone.

“Shouldn’t we… do something?” Lily whispered, eyes following Sirius’s sloppy hand sign to the bartender, asking for a fifth pint. “Ems?”

Marlene looked at Mary, cold flooding her stomach when their eyes met, and all Mary could see in them was dark, worried determination. She nodded, and Marlene nodded with her.

“What’s the plan, Lily?”

He agreed.

Sirius agreed to having bloody Sunday roast with the Potters, at the Potters.

He agreed —he promised. James and he shook hands over it.

They’d had their makeshift dinner at Pembroke Lodge, surrounded by those high ceilings and mahogany tables that had punched the air out of Sirius’s lungs. Had the place been darker, colder, clad in black and emerald-green, it could have been the house. His childhood house. But instead, it was warm and pastel and cozy, and of course James had been drawn to the fireplace. They used to joke about him being a gecko, always looking for places to soak the light in. It took more than a decade and a tea in Pembroke Lodge to realise that being neighbours meant their houses had been built in extremely similar ways, and the more Sirius looked, the more cuttingly clear it was. It was the people living in it that made all the difference.

So now going to the Potters meant seeing his childhood house, its interior filtered in loving bright colours and laughter. He’d see them, side by side, a luna park mirror distorting the place he lived in.

Sirius had shaken hands on it, and now the mere thought of recognising what he had actually agreed on doing had kicked a restless urge into his mind. He’d talked it off with James, nonsensical banter jumping from one topic to the next, just to fill the silence growing in his core. James had laughed, and Sirius felt sick to his stomach at how delighted he looked: genuine happiness spurred on by his own concealed dread.

They’d lost time trying to spot St. Paul’s dome and Windsor Castle from King Henry’s Mound, James excitedly lost in explaining the Greek influences in neoclassical architecture in the UK, Sirius nodding along and somehow smiling in earnest. They’d walked and walked, balancing on fallen trees and leaping across puddles all the way back to the James’s dorm. He’d told Sirius that his roommate was Peter, and it had taken a crack of thunder to make James finally stop talking about his picture-perfect childhood with his friend and finally — finally!— open his damned door and go back to his textbook university life.

As soon as the door clicked closed, Sirius’s veins and lungs and brain and heart had been flooded, intoxicated by the thrumming in his blood. He couldn’t stand it any longer. Sirius half-jogged to his apartment, a restlessness he knew anticipated storms raged against himself.

He missed the keyhole once, twice, heartbeat reverberating in his fingertips. As soon as he was in his own kitchen, just like a nurse had once told him to do, he made a list:

Lungs —working overtime.

Skin —started itching.

Chest —still tightening tightening tightening.

He reached for the fridge. Cool metal, white light assaulted his eyes when he opened it. His eyes zeroed in on the green beer bottles. Sirius’s hand hurt with how hard he grasped the handle. He gritted his teeth, bit the inside of his cheek. He shouldn’t. Not tonight. Not with a lunch out tomorrow.

Tongue lapping at the metal, the ragged surface beyond his teeth, soothing and savouring the sting, Sirius was made aware of the tension in his neck, spine, legs, feet.

“No.”

He hissed at the bottles lined on the fridge door, at his grip on the handle, at his hungry eyes and lonely mouth. Sirius took a step back, the need to shut it all out turned to a bubble of anger growing between his shoulder blades.

“Don’t.”

He slammed the fridge closed.

The sound of bottles tinkling on impact inside, a siren song he had no way to escape from.

“No, Sirius, no. You’ve been good all week. Not now,” he paced around the kitchen table, anger expanding, engulfing his head, his arms. Why was he always like this? Why couldn’t he just be fine for fucking once in his lifetime?

He needed to cool down. To break something. In a blink of reason, Sirius locked the door to the living room, where Alphard’s grand piano was. And his gin.

“Stop it!” Sirius shouted to himself, the boiling now reaching his fists, his knees.

“You bloody attention whore, always so dramatic. Why are you putting on this little show? Stop pretending you’re hurting. Who are you performing this tragedy for? The ghosts in the walls? Fucking pathetic, you are.”

He was in front of the fridge.

His knees were throbbing, his knuckles white on the handle, a dent at knee height in the metal surface.

Sirius smiled despite himself, so wide his lips cracked, revelling in yet one more burn in his body. Maybe it’d take his thirst for the burn of alcohol away.

He needed to take a shower.

Cool down. Assess the damage.

Sirius’s limbs were lead, everything a throb, an ache, and yet he was still buzzing, the energy not quite dissipated yet.

A shower would help. It usually did.

He stripped put of his clothes, careful not to touch too much, just watching. In the mirror was a little boy, bruising knees and clenched fists. They made eye contact, but Sirius couldn’t. He averted his eyes, fixed them on the white tiles. As if holding his breath, he watched himself go through the motions of it. Opened the curtain, stepped in, cold porcelain under his feet, turned the knob all the way.

He sighed at his body bracing itself for the cold when all he wanted was to freeze.

But showers came with thoughts, no matter how numb he felt.

“I’m fine.”

Voice a guttural sound, dark bouncing against the neon-white bathroom walls.

“I can prove it,” he told himself, shivering as he quickly patted himself dry.

“I lasted one week. I can control myself, I have before.”

He was already buttoning up a clean shirt, tucking it in his good trousers, cinching them at the waist with a thick belt.

“Got to hold myself accountable. Where?”

Sirius shrugged on his leather jacket, immediately crouched down to tie his boots, the ones with the platform sole, they made him feel brave.

“A pub. Lots of people to judge me. The more the better,” he murmured, locking the door behind himself, then stepped into the night.

Fidgeting with the apartment keys, Sirius’s legs lead him to the pub in Brewer’s Lane, a favourite among students and locals alike, always bustling with people and dimly lit in yellow Christmas lights. As expected, it was packed, a hornet hive writhing in life.

He took a deep breath.

“One pint, just one. I can stop there, I’m fine.” He’d left the house, but for some reason he couldn’t stop talking to himself out loud —didn’t really care, anyway.

Sirius walked up to the bartender, ordered one pint, had to pry his eyes away from the taps as the man poured it, looking for a place to sit instead. But that meant looking at people, their faces, their gazes.

“’Ere’s ya beer,” the greying man said, the amber content swishing in the glass, foam teetering on the rim, about to spill over.

“Cheers. I’ll be over there,” Sirius told him, pointing at a lone table in a corner, an inkling of pride at admitting it, of letting himself be easy to find.

He didn’t wait for an answer, hand already on the glass, gripping it, keeping it at a distance as he reached his seat. It was loud, so loud. There was someone setting up a live music stand, but the pub was filled with shouts and laughter and singing already.

Sirius set his glass down, sat in front of it.

“People do this all the time.”

He stared the liquid down, carbonation stirring the surface, the foam slowly melting away. Bottles tended to be more satisfying to drink, the act of opening it, the hiss under the cap, and throwing it away as soon as it was empty, the sound of glass colliding against glass, loud and sharp. This was controlled, better, not like hiding away in his apartment with a fridgeful of the stuff.

Sirius looked around, surrounded by a incoherent mass of drinking, spinning like frozen pictures in a zoetrope, frame after frame of the same motions blurring together. He held the glass to his lips, copied a man standing at the bar, closed his eyes.

“Normal people don’t panic over a bloody beer, Sirius.”

He chugged it down, vaguely aware of how it cooled down his throat, down, down to his stomach. The bitter aftertaste clung to his tongue.

“More,” he whispered, and the thought was terrifying. It should have felt better, calmed his nerves, quenched that burn.

It should have been enough. Why wasn’t it enough?

Sirius scoped the room. People had more than one empty glass in front of them, pretty people, ugly people, young people, old people. It was alright, it was fine. He could grant himself one more chance, blame the first fluke on his nerves. Nobody would think anything of him if he did.

Hand raised to order, quick eye contact with the bartender.

Done.

“Fuck. Okay, okay. Try to savour it, make this one last. One and then back home.”

Reasoning with himself wasn’t easy when he felt split into two, a part of him simmering in judgement and anger at his poor life choices, the other craving and yet fully knowing it could end badly.

“There ya go,” and a new, freshly tapped pint was in front of him again.

Sirius put his hands in his hair, fidgeting with his long locks, looking. Just looking. He’d drink this one slowly and go back to the apartment. There was a magnetic sort of pull between his fingertips and the cool glass, it itched, could only be taken away by holding the glass. Sirius held his breath, then did.

As soon as the beer was in his hands, he drank it — ‘You fucked up’ he thought, the tone in his mind vicious— all in one go.

He stopped himself from slamming the empty glass down, foam descending in arcs, still pooling on the bottom of his first glass.

“Pathetic.”

He was sweating, he was nauseous already and not because of the beer. Because of himself.

“Utterly fucking pathetic, Sirius Orion Black. You useless piece of shit. Can’t even drink like a normal person.”

He mouthed, tongue thick with the lie of beer’s comfort. Even his own spit tasted like failure.

Sirius immediately ordered another one, doubled down on the shame that was filling his guts, acid, rotten. Punishing himself. And yes, in public too.

“You deserve their looks. Deserve their disgust. Fucking disgusting, you are.”

He didn’t even taste the third, barely even breathed.

Just rushed for more numbness, distantly hoping he’d be sick or black out soon.

But he didn’t.

So a fourth it was.

And after the fourth, then a —No. Someone was at his side, and it wasn’t the helpful ghost of the bartender, they weren’t carrying his beer. Where was his beer? He whipped around, facing the vignetted entity, and he was met with a trio of girls. Their expressions were strange, unreadable in his muddled state.

“Hey! Sorry, not interested. Not tonight, haven’t got the energy for a foursome, ‘s a bit of a night.”

He laughed, too loud, head thrown back and a smile on his face. He flashed a grin at them, the blonde in the middle was eyeing him up in such a nasty way, arms crossed and a stance that screamed repulsion.

Oh, Sirius got her, alright.

“Bye-bye! Off you go!”

He sing-songed, waving at the girls, and turned to his glass again.

But the redhead stepped forward, serious, leaning on his table at the same time the curly girl took a seat on the rickety chair opposite his.

“Listen, we—"

“Woah, what’s this? Every man’s fantasy? Are you going to start stripping now or should we move to my place?” Not his kind of fantasy, surely. At the very least not if it involved girls anyway, but it was easier to say than shooing them away with what he’d loved to yell the world, a loud, exasperated ‘I’m fucking gay, leave me alone!’

The blondie put a hand on the back of his chair, voice firm. “Sirius. We need to talk. Outside.”

“No, thanks, I’m perfectly fine here.”

 A laugh came from the next table. He shook his head, trained his face to look at ease, looked up at the girl towering over him.

“Come with us or I’ll make you, Black.”

She flinched. The redhead had fucking elbowed her side.

“Not about to get mugged by a bunch of birds, now, am I?” Maybe these three weren’t as harmless as they looked. Not that they all did, only the one sitting in front of him wasn’t menacing, but Sirius had seen her around corridors. She looked like she didn’t have one mean bone in her whole body.

 “You’re blocking the beer. I ordered one. Move.”

The girl with the braids put her hand on his own, on his glass.

“You should stop,” her voice trembled, but her eyes pinned Sirius in place, a weight to her gaze he didn’t know how to deal with. Slowly, she pried his fingers off the glass, moved them all to the side with her free hand.

“Lily, take them to the counter. Tell them to put them on Sirius Black’s tab.”

The redhead swiftly gathered the empty glasses, and before Sirius could move, the blonde crowded him between the chair, table and wall. No way out. What the fuck were they doing?

“Who do you think you are, bossing me around like this, huh? My tab is my fucking business. Leave me alone.”

A sideways glance, words shared behind hands covering mouths. He’d raised his voice. The girl with the braids looked around, her hands firm on Sirius’s.

“Lily’s at the door,” she murmured to the blondie, then directly at him, eyes so full of something warm and sad that Sirius squirmed under her gaze, “Just come with us, Sirius.”

Hadn’t people been watching, hadn’t the pub felt so up close and present, Sirius would have resisted, he would have yelled, he would have flipped the table and run away if necessary. But he was surrounded.

“Ambushed,” he raised his free hand, palm mockingly facing the blonde girl, “I surrender.”

She gave him enough space to stand up, held him by the shoulder all the way to the door.

“My name’s Mary, by the way. This is Marlene, and that’s Lily over there.” Braids murmured, pointing at the girls of her trio as she hooked her arm with his. Deep down, Sirius had to thank her for supporting his weight. His legs were melted, as soon as he’d stood up the light in the pub got overly bright and punched his senses, nausea slithering in his torso.

Lily held the door open for them, and only outside did he notice how stifling and stale the air inside the pub had been. The cool air was a slap, much like the cold shower he’d taken earlier— mercilessly clarifying.

Leaning heavily on Mary, Marlene behind and Lily guiding them, Sirius dragged his feet to Richmond Green.

“Happy now?”

Sirius slumped onto the bench, his question ricocheting on terraced houses and rustling trees. Mary’s breath hitched.

For Mary, it was her cousin in that bench.

Her uncles and aunties.

She saw her future self, and herself in the past.

Or in the present, had her past been different.

Marlene was uncomfortably still, keeping guard, and Lily was biting her lips, thinking, her hands twitched, but she wouldn’t dare reach out. Mary’s eyes were shining in unshed tears, and Marlene had no clue just how close this ordeal hit her home and—

“Can I hug you, Sirius?” Mary blurted it out, shocking herself. She watched Sirius blink, and slowly nod, cautious.

“Sirius, you don’t have to,” Lily cut in, looking pointedly at Mary. “We’re just here to chat and calm down, you can leave anytime.”

She didn’t get it, that every second lost was getting further away from her chance to break this curse, at least for him, to set a corner stone of a memory.

A positive precedent.

“No, I— I think I could use a hug.”

Mary crushed him to her; she had to act quickly, before he could protest or change his mind. Sirius froze, but Mary didn’t budge. She held on to him, the way she would have loved to do for her family, the way her grandmother used to when she gasped awake from nightmares. She rubbed his back, as steady and strong as she could be.

Slowly, Sirius melted.

Unravelled.

His forehead tipped against her shoulder, and Mary could feel his hands grasping the back of her coat, his breaths forcibly deep first and then shallower, laboured.

“Shush, it’s alright, you’re safe,” she murmured in his hair, hating how familiar the mingling of tobacco and cheap beer and cologne was, like her father’s. “You don’t have to do this all on your own,” Sirius strangled a sob, and Mary just wrapped her arms around him even tighter, “whatever you’re fighting now, Sirius, you’re stronger. You’re so strong, but you don’t deserve any of this pain. None of it.”

 That did it.

Sirius fully slumped against Mary, his tears warm on the collar of her shirt, crying silently. It was awkward, but frankly, Mary couldn’t care less. She stroked his hair, rocking him side to side like she did with her baby cousins, whispering you don’t deserve this and you’re safe now over and over.

It took a long time for it to subside, and Mary still held him when his tears had dried, and breathing had calmed.

Marlene’s eyes were so intense, her hands twitching on the strap of her bag, on the charms hanging on her carabiner, and for a very guilty instant Mary let herself think she wanted to reach out, to soothe her and Sirius too.

After a never-ending silence, Lily sat down beside him, a tentative hand on his shoulder, an aborted gesture, a question yet to be voiced. “Sirius,” she said quietly, “do you want us to take you home?”

“No!” He jerked back so quickly he almost headbutted Mary in the chin, eyes wild. Then, just as suddenly, he deflated. “No, please, no.”

Mary flinched back and gave him some space, embarrassed blush creeping on her cheeks when her eyes met Marlene’s. Marlene touched her own cheek, and when Mary mimicked her, she found she’d been crying with him.

“Okay, alright, not at home then. Do you want to go anywhere else?” Sirius shook his head, sniffled another no. “No. Do you… want to tell us what’s going on?”

Sirius sighed, head lolled back and eyes up at the sky. The wind whistled in the trees, the pub drumming in a distant echo. His words were slow, exhausted. A completely voiceless chuckle hadn’t they been so close to each other.

“Seems like I can’t have a beer anymore.”

Sirius shook his head, a smile clashing with the tears he was drying on his chin.

“I am—” he started, but stayed still for a long time, sobering up, looking for words that Mary had learned to talk with long ago.

“I’ve been drinking a bit. Then stopped after that godforsaken party. And now, well, here I am again.”

Mary patted the space at her side, making Marlene sit too, but she refused, fetching a tissue and handing it to Sirius instead.

“Thank you. I just want to be, like, fucking normal, you now? Being able to go to a pub and getting piss-drunk and having no desire to get ten times as wasted when I get home just because I’m—”

Lily hummed, and since Sirius still looked up at the vast lack of stars above them, she held Mary’s gaze. Somehow, it felt like she was talking to her. “You aren’t anything. You’re Sirius. You have this issue, it’s not who you are.”

His breath hitched again.

“Fuck you, Lily. That’s your name, innit?”

Sirius chuckled, and so did Marlene, and Mary after her. “Professional tearjerkers, the lot of you. Why the fuck didn’t you leave me there to drown in my misery, hey?”

He finally sat straight, but still wouldn’t look at them.

He studied his hands, and Mary noticed his rough knuckles, little bruises here and there that had been faded in the warm light of the pub. “Well, yeah, that’s what I was doing. Drinking because I drink. Because I drink cause I don’t know how not to drink when shit like this happens.”

“What happened?” It was Marlene, and Mary’s gaze flicked to her hand, back at playing with her carabiner as she spoke.

“I know you know James Potter,” the three of them nodded, Lily scooting closer. “Well, we used to be best friends. Shit went down in between, we met again a little while back, and I wasn’t happy with it, though I may just have issues remembering things as they actually happened. But anyway. Long story short, James invited me to lunch tomorrow. At his parents’ house.”

“Sorry, Sirius, I’m not following,” Marlene took a step forward, hands clasped behind her back to stop herself from fidgeting, “couldn’t you just say no?”

“Oh, sweet summer child, if only it were that easy!”

“Sirius,” Mary nudged his knee with her own to get his attention. “It is. You could say no to James, I’m sure— no, I know he’d understand. But if it’s you who wants to go, then that’s something else entirely.”

“It’s just that I’m— Fuck, this is going to sound absolutely mental, but I’m split into two. I always am, torn like in a torture device.” Sirius’s eyes met Mary’s, a smile tugging at her lips. He nudged her back. “I want to see Effie and Monty, and eat her roasted mutton and pulihora, and talk about books with him, but at the same time seeing them, and being in that house where I spent so much time in, that house I spent a decade hating for no reason, apparently…”

“Okay, so that’s why you don’t want to go home now?” Lily tried again.

“Oh, no, not at all. I just have… temptation there.”

Mary’s posture stiffened.

Remus needed to know about this. Sirius, a drop of alcohol away from spiralling, invited for lunch at the Potters. People who, as far as she’d gathered, had been nothing but kind to Sirius, but he’d associated them with some sort of trauma, and they had invited him to the house next to the one he probably ran away from? No, this couldn’t be happening. Not when Sirius was like this.

She caught Lily’s eye, jerked her chin toward the high street. Understanding flashed between them, no need for words to convey what had to be done.

Lily made a show of looking at her watch. “What about we do something like this, Sirius: Mary and Marlene can accompany you back to your place, so your temptations are dealt with. I’m sorry, I’ve got to go. So, so sorry I can’t stay any longer, Sirius. You can always lean on us, okay? We’re the Phoenix, where the infamous party took place, if you want to come have a chat. We can work on this together.”

Lily smiled at him, warm as spring, and Sirius nodded, a faint smile creasing his eyes.

“Thank you. I— I am not sure how the night could end. I’ll remember this. Now go, I know running late on a date when I see it.”

Mary chuckled, endeared. Sirius was way off the mark, and had winked at Lily whispering good luck, as if he hadn’t just admitted of still being a potential danger to himself. “Bye Lils!”

“Bye Ems! Take care, Sirius!”

The clack of her heels echoed on the pavement, composed at first, but in the distance, Mary could hear her sprinting. Sirius had waved at her, but there was a quizzical arch in his eyebrows. “Ems?”

Marlene offered him a hand, hoisted him to his feet.

“Yeah, M-arlene, M-ary, two M’s, that’s us.”

Mary had to pretend to look at the mud under her feet to hide her blush.

“Well, Ems, we sat on a damp bench and now my arse is wet in the least pleasurable way possible.”

Mary stood up slowly, a locked eyes with Marlene and Sirius, and all three were in the very compromising position that was checking what Sirius had just said was true.

“Bloody hell!” gasped Mary, and on cue, Marlene burst out laughing in that shaky, breathy way of hers that billowed up in the air like steam from a teacup.

She lightly slapped Mary’s arm, clung onto it as her slightly tipsy laughing fit subsided. Sirius smirked knowingly at them, but Mary glared a warning: he needed to lean on Marlene to walk to his place, so he’d have to hold his tongue until they’d at least got there before saying anything.

“Is it really okay for us to get rid of your, uh, stuff, Sirius?”

He zipped up his jacket, focused on putting one foot in front of the other, trying hard not to fall from the curb of the sidewalk, mumbling something about being sober enough.

Marlene tugged on Mary’s sleeve, now that Sirius wasn’t using her as a living cane anymore. “Do you think it’s fair for us not to?”

It was a whisper Mary didn’t have the chance to reply to.

“I’m not sure. I’m not sure how I could react seeing you take it away. But don’t open and pour it down the drain. Please,” he emphasized it, a glance to look at their reactions, “Promise me it won’t go to waste. It’s already wasted when I drink it, anyway.”

Mary shivered.

Sirius’s words were a boulder on her heart. Marlene must have noticed, and let her hand slip into Mary’s, fingers perfectly slotted between fingers.

Marlene’s thumb brushed Mary’s wrist, once, twice, a Morse code of comfort in the dark.

The knock came seconds to midnight.

Three raps on the door.

Remus didn’t bother stubbing his cigarette, but he did close his Interpretation of Dreams to lend an ear, waiting.

Five frantic knocks.

There was only one person who knew that code. But it wasn’t like Lily to barge in completely unannounced. Now Remus did stub his cigarette, even hid the ashtray out the window, waving a notebook in the air to hopefully shove some smoke outside.

He limped to the door, too concerned to care about the cane. Her hair was windswept, cheeks flushed, breathing hard, “Did you run here?”

“Remind me to thank the accommodation office for your ground floor room,” Lily let herself fall onto Remus’s bed, arms spread like a snow angel. Remus snorted, shook his head, sat on the edge next to her. “That idiot invited Sirius to have lunch with his parents.”

Remus’s stomach dropped. “You’re joking.” She rolled on her side, an angry teary pout on her face. “You’re not. Fuck, Lily, what happened?”

Lily kicked her shoes off, and Remus knew it was going to be a long, long night.