Chapter Text
When fourteen-year-old James Potter saw the poster in the library, he knew it was a sign. The annual Hogwarts end-of-year talent competition, open only to fourth through seventh years, something he had been waiting for since his parents first told him about the ones they had been a part of during their time at Hogwarts. Honestly, he’d be lying if he said their stories weren’t at least part of why he learned to play the guitar—he wanted his first real opportunity to perform to be absolutely, positively, irrevocably unforgettable.
But for that, he needed a band.
Obviously, he had Peter, who was killer on the drums, but a band needed more than just a guitarist and a drummer. They definitely needed a bassist, and more than anything, they needed a singer. Yeah, he and Peter were good, but they needed to be great , and a bassist and actually good singer (James was not counting on his own abilities) would make sure of that. And thus began Operation: Procure Bandmates.
It was harder than he had thought.
They both asked around about bassists, but everyone they asked who said they knew what they were doing were either already part of a performance or were actually terrible. James was starting to lose hope entirely, until he offhandedly mentioned his predicament to Professor McGonagall. She the head of the music department—a woman with a stern demeanor, a reputation for being strict, and a rare, soft smile reserved for only the most special of occasions. She was also his favorite teacher.
He was feeling particularly downtrodden in the middle of her class one afternoon, letting out a long sigh as he struggled to find the energy to decipher the music in front of him. Peter was similarly lethargic, a tired frown twisting across his round features.
“Do I want to know what has you two fools looking as though you’ve just been run over by the Queen’s royal motorcade?” Her voice had the slightest tinge of humor as she stopped by the desk that they shared. “I don’t know if I’ve ever seen you two looking so glum in all my time as your teacher!”
James let out a long-suffering sigh, running his hands through his already disastrous dark hair. “We want to enter the talent competition,” he explained dejectedly, “but we need a bassist, and no one with any talent whatsoever wants to help us.”
Professor McGonagall cocked her head to the side. “A bassist, hm?”
Both James and Peter nodded.
"I might know someone,” she said, and they both lit up. However, before they could begin to profess their plethora of thanks, she held up a hand for silence. “I’m not going to make you any promises—he may very well say no, but it would be a shame if you didn’t at least try to get him to join. He’s quite talented, if a bit quiet.”
James grinned. “Who?”
The ghost of a smile twitched on the professor’s face. “Do you two know Remus Lupin?”
Peter blanched at her words. “Lupin? That quiet kid who’s always in the library? He’s a bassist?”
“And quite a good one at that.” McGonagall’s voice was no-nonsense as usual. “Again, I can’t promise he’ll say yes, but he’s probably your best choice.”
“Thank you, thank you, thank you, thank you !” James practically leapt from his desk, dragging Peter with him. They had a bassist! They actually had a bassist! God, he could practically kiss her.
Not really, though.
She only shook her head as they left, James practically bouncing off the walls. “The library is the other way!”
“Thanks, Prof!” He called, and in a matter of moments, they were long gone. He wasn’t sure if he had ever run through the halls so fast, and Peter was definitely struggling behind him, but he had to get to the library. He had to. The future of his future band depended on it.
It felt like an eternity before they burst into the ancient hall, tearing through the infinitely tall bookcases, scanning, scanning, scanning—there! In the classics section! Seated on the floor, leaned back against a towering shelf, shrouded in shadows as he pored over a massive tome.
“God, he’s terrifying,” Peter whispered, eying him warily. “I heard he’s in a gang—got in a knife fight in the streets one time, and that’s why he’s got all those scars.”
James didn’t take his eyes off of the long-limbed reader as he responded. “Don’t be silly, Pete, I’m sure he’s fine. Nice, even?”
“Nice?” Somehow, Peter’s hissed words managed to jump an entire octave in pitch. “Nice, James? He never talks, and you know why?”
Honestly, James wanted to know.
Peter was almost hyperventilating behind him. “They say he’s a part of the mob, and if he says anything to you, then they’ll come and kill you, and then maybe him!”
Okay, so that was freaky. It was fine, right? No mob in their right mind would let a tall, skinny fourteen-year-old join their ranks.
Would they?
“You guys do know that I’m right here , yeah?” The voice that interrupted their whispered conversation was quiet and the slightest bit rough, and in that odd stage of not-ridiculously-high-but-not-fully-dropped-either. “If you’re going to talk about me, at least ask me directly. Or do it when I’m not right fucking here.”
Peter blanched, but James wasn’t bothered. No, in that moment, all that he could think was that he really, really wanted to be friends with this kid.
“Also,” Lupin continued, leaning forward, “what kind of dumbass lets a fourteen-year-old join a mob? Like, that’s just fucking stupid.”
He made to turn back to his book, but James couldn’t lose this opportunity, not even if Peter was being a little scaredy-cat. “McGonagall said you’re a bassist!”
Lupin looked back up at that, eyebrows furrowing. “She did?”
James nodded emphatically. “Yeah, she did!” Now or never, he thought, and then he burst. “See, Pete and me, we wanna enter the talent competition as a band but he’s a drummer and I’m a guitarist and we really need a bassist but no one we’ve asked that’s actually good wants to join and everyone else kinda sucks so we asked McGonagall and she said you were the best bet so would you like to join our band?”
Frankly, Lupin looked rather taken aback at his outburst. He sat there for a moment, as though trying to figure out what in the world was going on, with his lips pursed and his head cocked to the side. “You want me ,” he said slowly, “to join your band?”
James nodded.
“But why?”
“McGonagall recommended you herself.” James grinned. “Figured that if we can trust anyone to know talent, it’s her.”
Lupin closed his book, running a hand through his curly hair. “You haven’t even heard me play. You literally have no idea if I’m any good, and you’re already asking me to join? Aren’t you getting a little bit ahead of yourself?”
He hadn’t really expected this much pushback, but to be fair, he hadn’t really thought this through at all. All he knew was that he needed a bassist, and Lupin was his best shot. Clearly, though, just asking was not going to get the job done. Dang.
Okay, so he would be as persuasive as possible. Time for a change of tactics. “I mean, you’d have to audition,” he added, keeping his voice the tiniest bit hesitant, which was harder than he’d thought it would be. Naturally honest by trade, he wasn’t expecting to have to pretend he wasn’t absolutely faithful in Lupin and his abilities even though he hadn’t actually witnessed them. “We’d need to see what you can do, but other than that, you should be set.” He paused, and then cocked his head to the side, realizing. “Unless you don’t want to join?”
Lupin sighed. “I don’t have anything against it. I just don’t understand why you’d want me.”
This time, it was Peter who spoke up—his first words spoken since the hissed conversation about Lupin’s supposed place within the ranks of various gangs and mobs. “You’re our only shot, Lupin. We kinda need you. So are you in, or are you out?”
Pushing himself into a standing position, Lupin sighed once more, then nodded. “Fine,” he said, voice hesitant. “Fine, yeah, I’ll try.”
It was almost instantaneously evident that Lupin’s hesitance was completely unwarranted—his audition was absolutely flawless. He was clearly shy about his talent, but by God, could he play that bass like he had been born doing it. His hands fluttered across the strings like butterflies with the confidence of a multiple-time-Grammy-winning star, and then he had the nerve to stand there awkwardly in front of them when he finished and apologize for being bad.
“Bad?” James burst after a moment of stunned silence. “ Bad ? Lupin, that was bloody brilliant —are you sure you’re not secretly a rock star or something?”
Lupin shook his head, sending curls spilling across his forehead. “Nope. Just play a bit in my spare time.”
Peter shook his head in shock, a smile spreading across his face. “That was fantastic, dude.” He turned to
James, eyes sparkling. “Now we just need a singer!”
James grinned broadly. “I know exactly who to ask.” And sure enough, barely half an hour later, the three of them were standing in front of none other than Sirius Black, asking him to join their band.
“Wait,” Peter said, blonde brows furrowing slightly as he glanced between James and the heir of the House of Black. “I thought you two weren’t friends anymore?”
Sirius smiled that famous, troublemaking, quicksilver grin that made teachers wary and students swoon. “Oh, that was all a farce!” He ran a hand through his dark hair—hair that should have been falling in loose curls past his shoulders, but thanks to the work of his mother over the summer, barely reached the fully-buttoned collar of his shirt (and that was with the months it had to grow) and was impeccably gelled instead of wild. His uniform, too, was perfectly pressed, his tie knotted perfectly. God, it was uncanny. This was not supposed to be Sirius, and yet it was, and in that moment, James wasn’t sure if he had ever hated his best friend’s mother more.
“A farce?”
“Yep!” Sirius winked, and James could barely repress a snort. “Mum went berserk this summer, said she’d let me too far off the leash and all, and went on her own personal mission to make me a ‘proper Black’ again.”
James nodded, a strained smile on his face. It was easier to make light of the whole situation than to think about how every summer since their second year, he had begged Sirius to come home with him instead of going back to his parents. He had known that his best friend was going back to a vicious, abusive household, and he had let him go each time. Really, if anyone could be blamed for the way Sirius had come back to school this year, it was him, because he could have fought harder to keep Sirius away from the horrors of his home and he didn’t. “Yeah, we figured his mom would have eyes on him and I didn’t want to make anything worse for him—he’s one of my best mates, you know? So we thought it’d be smart to make it seem like we’d had a fight, and just keep our friendship on the down-low.”
“Most agonizing few months of my life,” Sirius groaned, pretending to swoon dramatically. “Do you know how hard it is to not traipse around joyfully, proclaiming my love for my soulmate here for all the world to hear?”
James rolled his eyes, but smiled nonetheless—a real smile this time, not a painful one. This was the Sirius he knew and loved, no matter how much differently he was presenting himself to avoid word of disobedience getting back to his mother. “Tragic, truly,” he replied in kind, clapping a hand to his heart. “But they say that absence helps the heart grow fonder, though I hardly see how that could be possible, considering just how fond it is already!”
Peter looked as though he were not entirely sure what to do with this conversation, but then again, his friendship with James was very different than Sirius’. All that really mattered, though, was that Sirius tipped his head back and let loose a brilliant laugh that was so quintessentially him that James couldn’t help but feel that for a moment, everything was perfectly alright.
In the end, it was a cough from behind James that snapped him to attention. “I don’t mean to intrude,” said Lupin, voice dry, “but I did think we were here on a matter of business?”
How could he have forgotten? Maybe he was going crazy.
“Business?” Sirius asked, cocking his head to the side, and if possible, James’ grin grew even wider.
“We want you to sing in our band for the talent show!” For a moment, James thought he had miscalculated, seeing the way his friend’s eyes widened. Maybe Sirius had changed this year, maybe he didn’t want it after all, maybe those had just been the dreams of a few silly, starry-eyed eleven-year-olds, maybe—
“Are you fucking kidding me?” Sirius’s voice was more excited than James had heard all year. “Are you actually fucking kidding me? Of course I will!”
“Great!” Honestly, it was all James could do to not jump around in excitement. “Okay, so we just need to decide when we’re gonna practice—“
Sirius held a hand up to interrupt him. “Uh, are we forgetting the audition?”
Peter shook his head. “We’ve both heard you sing—James more than me—and we know you’ll be fine so really, there’s no need—“
Sirius shook his head violently. “Uh uh. I refuse to be nepo-babied into this band, Pete. I want it on my own merit.”
Lupin furrowed his brows, looking at James with questioning eyes. Nepo-babied? , he mouthed, and James had to stifle a laugh. He’d explain later. “If you feel that strongly about it,” he said, shaking his head a little at his friend's antics, “then yeah, of course you can audition—it’s not like I’m going to stop you or anything!”
His best friend’s eyes positively lit up at his words, grin somehow stretching even wider. He darted over to the cabinet in the corner of the open music room they were using, grabbing the silver guitar James knew to be his favorite. “Any particular song you wanna hear?”
James shook his head, already knowing he was going to play something by Queen—it was Sirius Black after all. He nudged Lupin, who was eyeing his friend with mild curiosity. “You’re in for a treat.”
Lupin quirked an eyebrow, but his lips twitched into some semblance of a smile—the most James had seen from him so far. He’d make him smile for real one day, James vowed, just like he had the first day he’d seen Sirius Black at the train station. Of course, he got the feeling Lupin would take longer than fifteen minutes to crack, but it was a challenge he was more than willing to undertake.
Sirius strummed the guitar once, twice, finding his rhythm before adjusting one of the classroom microphones and beginning to play. And goddamn was he good.
Just as James had suspected, he played Don’t Stop Me Now , and he sang it like he might have been the second coming of Freddie Mercury himself. He performed with confidence and swagger, voice effortlessly slamming the lower notes and skating over the high ones with ease. But even more captivating than his raw talent—if that was even possible—was his showmanship. If anyone had ever been born to be the frontman of a band, it was Sirius Orion Black.
When he was done, Lupin turned to James once more, eyebrows raised ever-so-slightly. “You had a point.” Though he’d only actually known the boy for no longer than an hour, James immediately got the feeling that this was a rather glowing compliment.
Sirius took a deep breath, running a hand through his gelled curls, mussing them up in a way that somehow seemed artful. “Was that alright?”
James shook his head in surprise. Idiots . Two bloody brilliant musicians, and they both asked if they were halfway decent? “Sirius, mate.” He stood up, clapping a hand on his best friend’s shoulder. “That was fantastic . You know it was, so don’t pretend otherwise.”
A grin started to spread across Sirius’ face, his eyes sparkling. “So…we getting the band together?”
“Hell yeah, we are.”
And that moment, though they didn’t yet know it, was the beginning of history being made.