bruises - james potter

ninety-four

"Sounds like a plan, Moony, you can be out dad."

Remus was quick to put both his hands up and shake his head vigorously.

"I don't want to be your dad."

Cassie grinned at him, clapping her hands together.

"That's great, you already know your lines!"

Cassie and Sirius simultaneously burst out into laughter, not stopping until Sirius was wiping the tears from his eyes and Cassie was clutching her sides because they hurt so much.

"The way you two joke about your trauma scares me." Lily said once the twins had finally
stopped laughing. There was a slight look of worry in her eyes and an unsure smile on her face.

"It scares me too." Cassie admitted, nodding with her eyes widened ever so slightly.

Lily didn't know if the Slytherin was being truthful or not.

Cassie then sat up and she once again clapped her hands together, a large and very genuine smile on her face.

"Time for gifts." She exclaimed and the atmosphere around the group changed from a mixture of worry and awkwardness to excitement as they all shuffled around so that they could finally show James' the gifts they had for him.

Lily had given him a bar of Treacle flavoured chocolate from Honeydukes; Marlene and Alice had put some money together to buy him a broom cleaning kit that he had had his eyes on for a while.

"The dance on the great hall was was your gift, if anything, you should be giving us something as we let you watch it for free."

James blinked.

"Give me a gift you cheap fucker." James said with a small smirk as he gave Cassie's hand a quick squeeze.

"Now you get absolutely nothing." Sirius replied, turning his nose up at the other boy.

"You may be an adult now James Fleamont Potter, but that gives you no right to talk to your elders like that."

James blinked again.

Remus pushed Sirius' shoulder and then passed James his gift, which was wrapped very neatly, with a smile.

"It's from all of us, but if Sirius doesn't want to contribute-"

"Nu uh, I had the idea for the gift. I'm fucking contributing."

James nodded slightly as he took the gift from Remus, muttering a 'Thank you.' as he began to unwrap it.

Cassie, who was now sitting next to James rather than on his lap, smiled at Remus as he caught her eye.

James eyes widened slightly as he caught sight of the gift in the wrapping and he let out a breathless laugh.

"Mum's going to kill me, I swear to Merlin." James almost whispered as he pulled the book out of the wrapping and showed it to Cassie.

The cover of the book was a pitch black and it was decorated in different pictures of what Cassie realised were tattoos, she remembered them from one of her Muggle Studies lessons.