SMILE LIKE YOU MEAN IT | james potter

xx. christmas cheer

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"RIGHT," SIRIUS SITS DOWN AGGRESSIVELY AT THE kitchen table. Polaris looks up from the paper, an eyebrow raised.

"Good morning to you too," she says.

"What are we going to do about Harry and Luisa?" Sirius asks. James lifts his head from Polaris' shoulder and sighs.

"Well, we're going to have to make sure they don't keep staying in each others beds," he says.

"Right, and how?"

"Er well I haven't gotten that far yet," James mutters.

"Me neither," Sirius sighs. Remus wanders into the kitchen, and Sirius perks up slightly. "Moony, you'll know what to do."

"About Luisa and Harry?" Remus says. Sirius and James both nod.

"Not a clue," he says.

Polaris is biting her cheek to stop herself from getting involved. She doesn't have kids, it's none of her business.

"Surely we can just check in on Luisa before we go to bed and make sure she's where she's meant to be," Sirius says.

Polaris snorts, and the three men turn to her.

"Do you have a better idea?" Sirius says.

"Look, if you do that then she'll only stay up until you've gone to sleep and sneak back to Harry's room," she says.

"Okay well what can we do then?" Sirius huffs in frustration. "We can't keep watch on them twenty four seven."

"Maybe it's best to accept that they're going to do what they want anyway, and once they're at Hogwarts you can't stop them, so let them be," Polaris says. She takes a large gulp of her tea.

Sirius narrows his eyes at her, but James sighs in defeat.

"She's right," he says.

"You can't just agree with her because she's your girlfriend!" Sirius snaps. "She doesn't have kids, she doesn't understand."

His words leave a tense silence in the air, Polaris goes very still and sets her mug down on the table. James glances at her uneasily.

"Fine," she says shortly. "I'll leave."

She exits the kitchen without waiting for a response, and she hears raised voices in her wake. Sirius is right, she doesn't have kids. She's never really had the desire to have children, she's not even sure if she can. She's always been too afraid of passing on some of her crazy family's genes that she'd hardly thought about it.

Okay, that's a lie.

Her and Ellen had always talked about settling down, once they were too old to do the whole chasing people down thing.

Except, Polaris was the only one who had made it to the too old stage.

She feels strange, sort of melancholic, as she thinks about what could have been. What would have happened if Ellen hadn't... well, died.

They would have lived in the country, Polaris thinks, and Ellen always said she wanted three kids. One was too little, two was a bad number, and three is just the right amount, she said. Ellen would have been an amazing mother, she'd had enough practice with getting Regulus and Polaris to fall in line.

It was just a shame that she could never be one.

Polaris isn't sure she's cut out to be a mother. Especially not now. She has a feeling she's just built to be a bit cold. That she wasn't quite made right, that she's rotten, deep down.