"Nothing again?" James asks, not bothering to look up.
"What the hell are they playing at?" Sirius demands indignantly, fist slamming down on the table so hard the cutlery rattles. "How can they say nothing? How can they KNOW nothing? It's been months at this point. I mean, don't we deserve some kind of, I don't know, fucking explanation?"
It's strange for James, to see the differences between Sirius and Regulus. When they first heard about the mark Sirius got loud and angry and reckless—there have been a lot of scuffles in the corridors. Not that James is in any position to criticize, he's been getting into a fair few fights of his own recently. But Reg? Reg got quiet. There were a few nights where they just lay next to each other, not touching, not talking. It should have been boring, frustrating, but it wasn't. It was nice to have him there, at James's side, even if he couldn't explain to James what he was feeling, even if he needed to disappear for a bit. Things are better now, but the same way that Sirius's anger lingers just under his skin, so does Reg's silence.
"They're hiding something," Remus speaks up, drawing James's attention across the table.
"You think someone in the Ministry had something to do with it?" James asks, feeling a bit uneasy about that, seeing as his dad is part of the Ministry.
Remus just shrugs. "I think they fucked up, and now they're trying to fix it before they have to admit to it."
"Well they're doing a shit job," Sirius growls. "How hard can it be to find them? I mean they were casting in the middle of London, someone had to have seen them!"
"Maybe they have found them and they just don't want to release their names to the public," Remus says, pushing the food around on his plate.
"No," James says sternly, "they wouldn't do that, no way."
"I'm just saying, the Death Eaters have a lot of sympathizers within the Ministry."
"What are you talking about?" James doesn't know why this feels like a personal attack but for some reason it does. "The Minister of Magic has come out a dozen times renouncing them, he put more dementors on Azakaban to make sure the prisoners were secure—the Ministry does not support these assholes."
Remus sighs, looking up from his plate. "You know I'm not talking about your dad, right?"
"Well I don't know how you could not be," James says defensively.
"I'm just saying," he goes on, sounding a bit exasperated, "that I don't think we can trust everything the Ministry tells us."
"I'm with Moony," Sirius pipes up, and James turns to him with a look of betrayal on his face.
"I'm not talking about Fleamont, obviously," Sirius goes on. "But my dad worked for the Ministry too, and my cousins' awful husbands are working there now. The way I reckon it, the good guys are outnumbered."
James officially hates this conversation.
His eyes skate over to the Slytherin table. They stand out starkly from the rest of the hall. He's not saying it's all of them, not saying that there aren't some Slytherins' with tense faces and slouched shoulders. He's just saying it's a lot less than the rest of the school.
James sighs, pushing his plate away and getting to his feet.
"Where are you going?" Sirius asks. "Class doesn't start for another half-hour."
James holds up the folded parchment in his hand. "Gotta post a letter to my mum, I'll see you in charms?"
"Yeah, alright."
James pats him on the shoulder, giving Peter and Remus a nod before heading out of the hall and towards the owlery.
Things are...okay...between him and Sirius. He's at least talking to James again, which is something. But there's an undeniable stiffness to their conversations. It makes James's skin crawl. He keeps telling himself to follow Lily's advice and apologize. Or admit that he's scared. Say something. Anything. But months have passed and he still hasn't. Tomorrow, he keeps telling himself, I'll do it tomorrow.
Chapter Twelve
Start from the beginning
