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James felt Lily's hand rest on his forearm as they worked as a group in the Hogwarts library. His eyes blinked rapidly behind his glasses, reality crashing back over him in layers: the wind howling outside stirring up the snowfall of the last few days, blocking most of the sunlight from reaching their table, and the smell of ink and parchment filled his sense as he breathed in slowly and deeply. On some level he recognized his girlfriend staring at him with concern, her fingers still against the sleeve of his jumper, his robes wrapped over her shoulders to help block the winter chill that never seemed to go away between November and March. Remus and Peter's quills scratched against their essays, though not as rushed as before Sirius's out of the blue proclamation.
He's been Marked.
Sirius leaned back onto the back legs of his chair, his eyes staring unblinkingly out the window to his left. His schoolwork was uncharacteristically neatly stacked in front of him, with the book open to the same page as Remus's, and a scroll waiting for him to fill it with a short explanation on the potential mind-altering effects transfiguration had on animals.
Silence at their table was almost more disruptive to Madame Pince than their normal low buzz of conversation, strictly against library rules during these quiet Saturdays. She walked by, slowing down with a conspicuous glance around their table before moving away to another shelf. Peter was diligent in how he ignored the mounting tension.
"How do you know?" James asked, his voice hoarse.
Sirius shrugged like it didn't bother him. "Letter from the bitch."
The knowledge that James had missed Sirius getting a letter from home meant he hadn't received it at the breakfast table. The way Remus kept his head down to the paper before him, but his unoccupied hand was unseen below the table, also told James he was gripping onto his boyfriend's hand for strength and that Sirius had told him first. It stung a touch but it made sense: Sirius told Remus everything first, and he had no idea that James hadn't been able to keep Regulus out of his head for the last five years. Only Lily knew that.
James hadn't noticed he'd gotten up and left the library until Lily grabbed him again halfway down the corridor. She pulled on the back of his jumper, still swimming in his much longer robes, and tugged him into an alcove behind a statue. His Head Boy badge rattled against her Head Girl badge inside of a pocket somewhere in all the fabric on her shoulders.
Her fingertips gripped his upper arms, nearly hard enough to leave a bruise. "James. James do you hear me?"
"I thought...I thought he was doing better. Sirius mentioned when he came to the Manor that he almost was able to bring Regulus with him, that he might not believe what all the others do. That bastard Lucius has been out of the school for a few years and he hasn't been hanging around the Carrows as much and...and..."
Lily swallowed as James stopped to collect himself, a shaft of light from the corridor beyond framing her face and making the unshed tears in her eyes sparkle in the darkness. "You can't save everyone, James."
"What the hell does that mean?" he said, the despair in his voice tightening into something more visceral, a wounded animal on the defensive. "He was marked by that...that psychopath and that's all you can say? You've heard what Dumbledore's been saying about the world out there and what needs to be done after we graduate. What happens if he's there when we go to stop them from hurting Muggles? What am I going to do?"
Holding back a sob of her own, Lily pulled James into her fiercely, to stop him from screaming loud enough for his voice to carry out of their hiding place. She crushed him to her chest and held on so tight she could feel every tremor of emotion running through him. James resisted for a moment before hugging her back just as tightly.
The boy they both tried to protect for Sirius's sake when he was a first year, and continued to watch as the years went by, even when the two of them could do nothing but tease and bicker, was no more. What had brought them together in the first place, their common purpose and shared affection for Regulus, was tearing the two Gryffindors apart. Lily couldn't help but cry over memories of losing Severus while she tried to comfort James over the fall of the youngest Black son.