Marauders - Always - Part One

I'm Taking Him Back

"Regulus isn't that bad, Sirius," James said. "Even if you'd ended up just like him, you wouldn't be evil."

"I wouldn't be good, either," he said, breathing out a long stream of smoke, which rose up and faded into the sky.

James shrugged.

"What if I was?" Sirius asked, looking over at James. "Evil, I mean?"

"You haven't got it in you to be evil," James answered.

"I do, I could," Sirius said, a playful smirk coming over his face and James knew the second before he did it what Sirius was about to do - he lunged forth, intending to pin James but James rolled out of the way and, laughing, he ran down the stairs, Sirius going after him, the cigarettes forgotten, left behind to smolder themselves out on the stone staircase. James was ahead by quite a lot and then Sirius raised his wand and shouted --

"CRUCIO!"

James was taken back by the betrayal more than the pain of the spell. The electricity of the magic sizzled as it cut across his skin like a thousand cuts and he yelled out, voice echoing off the walls of the castle as Sirius Black stood over him, staring down into James's face with a grin plastered on and that loud barking laugh...

"Beg me not to kill you, Prongs," said Sirius Black's voice, his red eyes dancing with amusement as James writhed on the floor, fingers scraping the flagstones beneath him, bits of straw clinging to his hair in the cell where he lay. Sirius's sneering face seemed to surround him. "Or beg me to kill you - either way would work just fine... The result will be the same."

"But Sirius would never do that to you!" Lily's said.

James looked around - so did Voldemort, the cruciatus curse coming from his wand faltered for but a second.

"Sirius would NEVER betray you like that!" Lily shouted, "James you know better! You know this isn't Sirius. It's Voldemort! It's Voldemort!"

It was like a muggle cartoon that James had watched now and then, which came on the telly before Doctor Who some night... It was a cartoon about a dog and some people who solved mysteries and in the end of every episode there was this brilliant moment where the dog's owner would tear a mask off the bad guy, gripping the hair on their head and yanking and off would come the perfect mask of the person the bad guy was pretending to be. 

"Evans?" James said in surprise as Lily was suddenly there, breaking into the vision, breaking into the memory, reaching up and taking hold of Sirius Black's hair and pulling the mask off. The curse was stopped and Voldemort stood over James suddenly in the memory as the grounds of Hogwarts seemed to blow away in a wind.

"It's been him all along, James!" Lily yelled, "Derek Bell knew you better than to ever think you were a coward! And Mum would never hurt you. You know that she wouldn't hurt you."

"Stand aside girl," Voldemort hissed at Lily.

"No!" Lily shouted and she stepped between James and the Dark Lord in his memory, just as she'd done when she'd finally arrived to the cell to rescue him.

"STAND ASIDE!"

"I SAID NO!" Lily shouted and the words echoed through James's mind - from this invasion of the memory and from the memory itself as Lily held her wand in her fist, Voldemort's face twisted in anger at her defiance. "I didn't back down when you were there in flesh," Lily snapped at the sinister face in James's mind, "Why would I back down now that you're nothing but a perverse memory?"

Voldemort hissed and suddenly she felt as though she'd been slammed to the wall so hard her spine felt like it had cracked and she realized it was James who had been thrown against the cell wall, and he was cowering in the corner, pressed as far into it as his body could get, and crouching down, covering his face, crying, as inferi crossed the room, their unfocused eyes rolled in unnatural directions, their dead limbs dragging as they walked, horrible snuffling, unbreathing... The smell of the rotting corpses filled the room... and the dead faces were transfigured so that Lily was looking around at the faces of all their greatest friends.