2] Skyfall [Harry Potter Fanfiction/James Potter Returns]

Chapter 5: New Blood

Don't try to fight; nothin' you can do
I'm gonna run all over you
Too late to try; there's nothin' you can do
I'm gonna run all over you
I'm lookin' for new blood

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Of the many things James often frequented doing with Sirius in the mornings, one happened to be transforming into his Animagus form and roughing Sirius off his bed with his antlers should the young man prove to be a nuisance when waking as he was prone to do. While he stood in the doorway to Sirius's room the next morning James contemplated doing just that, for the sake of a laugh, for the sake of making Sirius smile but he couldn't bring himself to.

Why? Why do it? He didn't seem to have the heart to do anything.

He left his friend sleeping on his bed, having gone to bed very early in the morning, and made his way through Sirius's house for the first time in his life. He had no idea how Sirius grew up in this sunless, soulless, dismal and dark house, and turned out how he did- looking back on it, many of Sirius's less than favoured darker tendencies made sense in James's mind. It was no wonder Sirius snapped in the summer of their fifth year and showed up at James's house.

He'd had shown up at the Potter doorstep beaten, bleeding and sobbing. He repeated that he was so sorry for being an inconvenience that night more than James could count, but he didn't have anywhere left to go and James had said he could come around anytime.

"Sweetheart, stay still. I need to get a proper look at this," Euphemia Potter firmly but kindly told Sirius as she examined his bleeding head, carefully prodding around his skull to figure if it was broken. Fleamont Potter stood at Sirius's side, holding Sirius's twisted arm that was broken out of place and figuring out the next steps to healing the arm. The skilled duelist wasn't a practised healer like his wife, but over his long years, he'd learnt a few things.

"James shut the door," instructed Euphemia firmly. "Sweetheart," she directed her attention back to Sirius. No one had ever addressed him like that so frequently. "This is going to hurt, but it'll only be a moment before it's over."

Shaken, pale and devastated, Sirius tried to nod numbly as she held a cloth to his bleeding skull, when she was certain James shut the door, she cast a Muffilato charm with one hand and cast another wordless mending spell the next second that made Sirius scream in pain and tremble. The sixteen-year-old looked spent, tear tracks down his handsome face, his broken arm bleeding at the forearm from a degrading marking by his parents.

"I'm so sorry," she softly crooned. "I'm so sorry, Sirius darling, but it's all fine now. I'll just clean it up, there- your skull isn't broken anymore. You're such a brave young man, standing all that. There, I'm all done. Fleamont, how's the arm?"

James watched his parents treat his best friend, an unexplainable feeling of pride that they were taking care of him so well as their own bubbling in his stomach accompanied by a dreadful feeling of the state of his best friend. He couldn't imagine the same fate befalling his own sweet little sister, Charlotte, and was more than grateful that the girl was asleep upstairs, blissfully unaware of the happenings.

Euphemia patched Sirius up well, treated his wound and bandaged the words on his arm that he couldn't bear to look at while James sat next to him. The house-elf was instructed to make Sirius a warm drink, one they waited for quietly as Sirius leaned on James, covered with James's favourite Quidditch blanket, his head bandaged along with his arm, and spoke nothing. His parents didn't press him, only asked once and were satisfied with the answer they got. Sirius didn't say it in many words, but that his parents used the Cruciatus Curse on him silenced and horrified James in a way he'd never been before.