He was small.
Smaller than Sirius had ever known him.
That old kitchen in Godric's Hollow at the house James grew up in, so full of sunshine and love and the smell of bacon. The sound of Dora's radio playing in the background. He was hugging a cat, trying to get it to stay with him, but the cat was all flailing limbs and flashing yellow eyes. He was all giggles and whimpers of "noo stay, kitty, stay!"
"Jamesy, my boy!" and he was up in the air, Charlus's hands under his arm pits and he was up - up - up - and it didn't matter the cat had run away because he was flying high in the sky, his father's grasp keeping him steady and supported, his laughter falling out like waves, and his legs and arms outstretched into the thin air around him.
His life was full of magic long before he ever was old enough to know or care that he was a wizard.
"I love you so much, James," Dora was kissing his forehead. She was rubbing his back after a nightmare, a steaming cup of tea clutched in his hand, sitting in front of the fire in the living room, her voice soothing and soft. What did James Potter have nightmares of back then? Before? When everything was perfect? Sirius wondered. "Nothing can ever hurt you when mummy is here to love you so, so much..."
A flash of Voldemort's face - jarring, painfully juxtaposed over Dora's own kind one in the memory.
"No..." James whimpered. "No, please..."
"Love will make you weak, Potter," Voldemort hissed.
And there was Dora again, but an uneasy feeling settled into the scene now, instead of in color it was black and white and James's tears splashed into the tea cup until it overflowed, overflowed... and he was swimming in it, swimming in tea, kicking his feet and popping up over the surface, the summer sun glistening on the water, his giggles echoing through the trees...
"An excellent cannon ball, James!"
They were at a lake somewhere, a family holiday, and Charlus was teaching James to swim. The memory was slightly blurry flashes of color and sound.
But again, his father's hands were there, supporting him, keeping him afloat.
"Does he love you enough to know you're missing?"
"He'll notice," James whispered.
"He hasn't yet, has he?"
James curled into himself.
He was on a broomstick, probably six or so, and playing Quidditch with Charlus, a quaffle under his arm and a big grin on his face, all perfectly even teeth and shining eyes, free of glasses, his hair falling in loose boyish curls around his ears. He threw the quaffle with about as much strength as a light breeze and it flew maybe three feet before dropping and Charlus swept below him quickly, catching the ball with practiced ease from years and years of playing. "Good throw, son," he said encouragingly. "You're getting stronger!"
"Someday I'll play pro, dad!" James yelled excitedly.
"Yes you will!" Charlus grinned, and he tossed the quaffle gently back to his boy, who missed it and went flying off to go and get the ball from where it had landed, bouncing across the grass. James scrambled across the grass, his little squat legs carrying him as he ran after the ball, broomstick laying behind him. He got the quaffle and hugged it to his chest, rushing back to where he'd dropped the broom. "Give it a good heave this way!" Charlus called.
And James chucked the ball as hard as he could, sending it soaring toward his father.
Without thinking, Charlus reacted from instinct, kicking the ball with his heel, sending it back with twice the force it had come to him with and --
There was a horrible crack and James was off the broomstick, falling - a good fifteen feet from the ground, not much for a grown man but a great distance for a small boy, and Charlus had never feinted so hard as he did at that moment - his broom handle quaking in his fist as he plunged to the ground, crashing and rolling with all his might to land directly below the spot where James would land, crashing into his chest and knocking the wind out of him.
James's mouth was bloody. He could taste the blood in his mouth.
Was it where the quaffle hit him or where Voldemort's spells had struck him? It mingled in his mind.
"Oh gods. Oh gods. James - Jamey..." Charlus was clutching him to his chest, panic in his voice as he struggled to his feet. Blood stained Charlus's shirt as he ran for the house. James shrieking the entire way. "Oh gods. DORA!? DORA?"
But she wasn't home, she'd gone to the market, and Charlus spun on the spot. The reception witch at Mungo's face floated into James's hazy memory of the event. Charlus's panicked voice, "Help! Help me! I - I've broken my son. With a quaffle. Quaffle to the face - I -" He was crying nearly as hard as James was.
Then James's mouth was being healed by a mediwitch, new on her job, she was resetting his upper jaw and nose where the quaffle had struck him. "Good as new," she promised, but his mouth felt different, his teeth felt bigger, there was a small gap between the front two, which were slightly pushed forward compared to the others, and his lip couldn't quite close over the canine one on the left, which had a slight turn to it now that he wasn't used to...
"I'm an idiot, Flor," Charlus was groaning. They were at Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlor in Diagon Alley and James was happily eating caramel popcorn flavored ice cream, Florean Fortescue and his dad sitting at the table, Charlus watching with a mixture of misery, guilt, and relief as his son ate merrily. "I can't believe I did it, my heart nearly stopped. If anything ever happened to him --"
"You didn't do it on purpose, Monty," Florean said, "And look, he looks fine. Well, that tooth is a little wonky, but he'll grow into it, I 'spect!"
"Dora's going to actually murder me."
"Probably," Florean answered with a chuckle.
"Hey mum! Guess what?!" James cried, running into the kitchen and leaping into his mum's arms, "We had ice cream and I got a lolly at Mungo's and --"
"Mungo's?" Dora gasped, focusing for the first time on James's reconstructed mouth. "What in the name of Merlin's --"
"It was an accident!" Charlus said quickly, flushing.
And Dora was crying, kissing his face all over, gasping how she was so sorry she wasn't there, so sorry that his face had been hurt...
Voldemort was cackling.
Lily was frowning at him.
"Evans?"
"Let me fix it."
"What?"
"Your smile. Let me fix it. Please. It's not right and it's - it's bothering me."
James laughed and sat up, too, sitting cross-legged on his bed, "How is it not right, Evans?"
"Your lip doesn't..." she tried to replicate what it usually did, but couldn't quite bend her mouth that way. James laughed again, and she said, "It's not funny, it's very much a part of you and everyone's going to notice. You might not be recognized, seeing as you make that stupid face a lot."
James's eyes sparkled. "So get over here and fix it then."
Lily quickly pushed her blankets aside and moved across the gap, sitting on the end of his bed, crossing her legs, too. She reached up and he felt her palms touch his face, cradling his cheeks and tilting his chin just so.
"Open your lips so I can see your teeth, then," she commanded.
James bared his teeth.
"You ought to floss more," she said.
"Sorry I didn't pause to floss while facing You-Know-Who. I should've done."
Lily rolled her eyes.
"Excuse me, Mr. Voldemort, but Evans says I need to floss my gums. Do you happen to have a spare pack? I've left mine at the castle. That's what I should've said, yeah? What flavor do you reckon he uses?"
"Stop talking, Potter."
"Alright."
"Potter."
"Evans."
"For real, shut up! Keep your teeth bared. Good. Now hold still... Gyrari tooth!" and his tooth was rotating on its axis and James winced, feeling it move, but keeping still while she shifted it carefully until it was perfectly positioned. His face was contorted with the pain of it, even as she paused to inspect her work. "Alright. You can close your mouth now."
James closed it and stared at her a moment.
"Smile, you bloody idiot, I need to make sure I've done it right."
"I can't just smile on command, bloody hell, Evans! You'll have to make me smile, won't you?"
"And how do you propose I do that, then?"
"Say you'll go out with me."
"Potter, I've told you a hundred times if I've told you once --"
"Just one time."
"No."
"Please."
"No."
"Why?"
"I don't want you to go getting your hopes up, Potter."
"My hopes have been up since I first saw you --"
And there she was. Alone in the compartment.
"-- crying on the Hogwarts Express, Evans."
She looked up, her face tear stained and red and her eyes piercing green. Everything else around her was faded into black and white - except those eyes. The bright glass-bottle-gree, damp with tears, wide and staring into him, as though seeing through time and into his very soul...
"You were the most bewildering thing I'd ever set eyes upon --"
She sniffled.
" -- all snot faced and sobbing like you were."
"Thanks for taking that spell," he was saying. His eyes were on her, solemn. "Could've been anything. Could've een the killing curse, even."
"It couldn't have - the sparks were red, not green."
"Oh. Yeah. Right."
"I would've let you take that one," she said, joking.
James said, "You would've missed me once I was gone."
"Would she? Would she, Potter?"
"Don't flatter yourself, Potter."
"You couldn't even handle one little tooth being out of place, Evans, how are you going to handle it when all of this is gone?" He waved his palms the length of him, indicating his entire body.
Lily rolled her eyes. "I'll manage."
He smiled - and his lip hung up on his tooth.
And suddenly there was a million flashes of James Potter smiling like that. Mostly at Lily Evans, though many times with the Marauders in their adventures, in their happiest moments. It was like a carousel of memories - a carousel with a wolf, a dog, a rat, and a stag, spinning - spinning - spinning... the trees as a background, that old Bob Dylan song filling a hundred full moon nights, the skies full of stars and fireworks... sparks showering over the lake, cool autumn air and the sound of teenage boys howling - like wolves and with laughter.
May God bless and keep you always
May your wishes all come true
May you always do for others
And let others do for you
May you build a ladder to the stars
And climb on every rung
And may you stay
Forever young
"Blimey it's hot already," Remus said. "Hey, we should wake the fellas up and go for a swim."
"A swim?" James looked intriqued. "Yeah, that sounds bloody fantastic."
They were in the water, their clothes in a pile by the edge, splashin about and James was blowing water out of the gaps between his teeth and laughing. "I love it here, really," James said.
"Well isn't this lovely..." Voldemort breathed. "CRUCIO!" James let out a howl of pain and -
-- and they were howling, walking through the woods - Sirius and James, drunk off their arses, having found the bottom of a bottle of whiskey - and Sirius tripped and caught himself on a tree. He was laughing - the most obnoxious laugh he'd ever heard - and he was clutching the tree's bark. "Why thank you for catchering me, you bugger tree. You wonderful stupid tree..."
"You're kissing a tree, you arse," snickered James, his visage blurry and twisty.
"YOU KNOW WHO I WANT TO KISS?" Sirius asked, his voice roaring loudly, "Yknowho I wanter kiss?"
"Who? Not Marlene?"
"MARLENE MCKINNON -- nooo, blimey no." Sirius had a big stick and he was waving it about, and leaned very close to James.
For a split second, James thought Sirius was going to kiss him and he froze.
"Don't you be judging me by this now when we're sober. IF WE EVER GET SOBER AGAIN... you can't be saying this. Alright, you're under a binding... a clause... it says that James... whasss your middle name again, Potter?"
"Charlus."
"That's a... horrible middle name."
"Better'n my dad's real first name. My other middle name. It's FLEAMONT. That's a horrible name."
"That's a... fucking horrible name," Sirius agreed and he laughed, cheeks flush with liquor. "Anyway, you're under a contract Potter says you can't tell bloody anybody what we say in the woods here, you and me, do you swear it?"
"I solemnly swear that I am up to no good," a cacaphony of whispered versions of the sentence fluttered through the memory, flashes of the map's magic beginning, the ink spiraling through the woods, through the trees, on the ground, filling the world with footsteps and little hand written labels... "I swear it," James's most solemn voice echoed.
"Well alright then I can tell you who it is I want to snog."
"You're acting like it's a huge confession..."
"I'd like to snog with Moony."
"You what now?" James sobered up almost instantly. "Come again?"
Sirius giggled stupidly and closed his eyes tight.
"You hear that?" Sirius said under his breath, "You lot, don't be touching each other's balls."
James buried his face into the crook of his arm, snickering and giggling, wheezing...
"You ever heard the one about the swimmig inferius? He was in the Dead sea... or The Dead-iterranean."
James was laughing, tears streaking his face.
"It takes Dead-ication to become an inferius..."
"These are the stupidest jokes I've ever heard."
Sirius's words were solemn. "If that undead bastard had taken you under --"
And there was a flash, a cold dead hand around James's ankle, pulling him under, panic rising up in James's throat, a horror so deep that his stomach twisted into a knot within him as he scrambled for some footing or hold on the stones, he was shouting, his glasses fallen off, his greatest fear --
"-- I would've gone and killed him all over again," Sirius vowed.
"I'd do the same if one of them got you."
"Is it inferius that frighten you, Potter? We'll be sure to put your body with the others when I've finished with you."
"Was it a bad dream?" Lily's voice echoing in the Shrieking Shack. "Whatever it was can't hurt you anymore."
"It's my fault, Evans, and she's gone and she can't forgive me."
Maryrose. Maryrose with her teal hair and her pretty little smile, her sweet face...
But the timing was wrong. The timing was all wrong. This James was too young for when Maryrose died --?
"Maryrose would have forgiven you."
"She refused," James sobbed. "I begged, in my dream, she was you and then she was Sirius and - and I begged, I begged and she said no, she didn't forgive me."
"Maybe. But that's your brain's version of Maryrose, that's not the real Maryrose Jenkins. The real Maryrose would've forgiven you before you ever asked her to." Lily's voice carried passion in it.
"Even for what I've done?"
"What you've done?"
"Let her die."
And there they were, a sea of inferius - flickering between the inside of a horrible, dark, mouldy-smelling cave and the underground of London - limbs and squashy pale faces, bloated with water, hair pale, floating about their faces in the white-light of the lumos.
Maryrose's face.
James, wading in water, searching for a watch, pushing aide limbs, frantic, searching for the glow of a digital watch, panic in his stomach.
A flash of him catching Sirius Black, falling in slow motion...
"They wouldn't like me," Sirius said, "I'm too sour. I reckon you taste right sweet compared to me."
They were laying in bed in the dormitory, staring up at the canopy over James's bed, the sound of Peter and Remus asleep in the dark beyond the curtains.
James snorted.
"Actually you taste rather good yourself," Remus's voice came from behind them. Remus's face was amused, "Should I be concerned that you lot are in bed together?"
"Yes, I've found myself a new boyfriend, Remus."
James laughed and shoved Sirius off him as Sirius pretended to lean in to snog. "I don't put out after a first date, you bloody dog."
It wasn't a Tuesday.
Or a bank holiday.
"YOU ARE MY BOYFRIEND, JAMES!"
"Does Remus know?"
"Remus is okay with it. Remus knows he's my king. You... you're my harem."
"Oh, is that how that works?"
"Yes. You're a sexy little concubine."
James rolled his eyes, "You're ridiculous."
"We'll only be able to be together on every other Tuesday and bank holidays."
Or the swan upping.
"What is the sudden obsession with the bleeding swan-upping?" James asked.
"It's fucking hilarious," Sirius replied.
"It's ridiculous if you think about it," James said, "The Queen literally commands a bunch of blokes to go boating along after a load of swans to chase them back to London for her viewing pleasure. Like... why doesn't she just pop over to the Ministry and say, ahoy - magic me some swans! The swan-upping therefore is entirely about the entertainment value, not the acquisition of swans."
"You've thought far too much about this."
"I think too much about a lot of things."
And it was true, Sirius suddenly realized.
He did.
James thought entirely too much about most things, actually.
About how he looked, how he sounded, how he acted, how he seemed, how he came off, about what others thought of him.
"I'm not enough." James voice broke.
"What do you want to be looking at this ugly mug for?" James laughed, shaking his head and looking away...
"I failed her."
"I'm sorry I mucked it up, mate."
"I can't believe I passed."
"Idiot like me --"
"Absolute shite for brains, like me, eh?"
Self deprecating laughter.
Self deprecating jokes.
He could look you in the eyes and deliver a thousand compliments and words of encouragement and impassioned pep talks, speeches on equality and determination, bold faced pronouncements of allegiance and rants against the dark that pressed around them...
But he had to look away if you spoke good of him.
"Nah," he would say.
James lay in bed, his feet up on the pillow. Sirius lay the opposite direction of him. They had been talking long into the night, a Beatles record laying on Sirius's chest, their newly mixed blood coursing through their veins, feeling more meaningful than what just a few drops could ever be expected to do.
But they were brothers now.
And they always would be.
Christmas lights and snow would never be the same for Sirius after that. They always meant family because he'd found his family that year.
"Happy Christmas, Sirius."
"Happy Christmas, James."
And he could smell snow... feel it on his face... and he looked up and there was James in the snow on a door step, holding a bouquet of flowers. Bluebells...
And there was Lily Evans... losing her family for Christmas.
But there was James, trying to give her one back... offering himself up.
Laying himself down.
Always.
And then he was staring at a picture - a picture of a man with sort of shaggy auburn hair and bright green eyes, and although the picture didn't move, there was a lot of life in those eyes. "I wish I'd gotten to meet him," James offered.
"I wish you had, too," Lily's voice wobbled.
"Evans, if you want me to go - I can go... I just didn't want you to feel like you didn't have anyone. You have me, if you want me. I - I'm still your stag. Same as before."
He reached for the chain to unlock the door.
"Wait. James, don't go."
She slid her arms around him, her cheek pressing to his chest and the tears started to fall. "You have no idea how glad I am that you are here, Potter."
His hands shook, pulling her into him, trying to tell her with the curve of his shoulders that she was safe, that he would form a shell around her to protect her from anything...
"I'm here Evans, as long as you want me, I'm here."
"I'm here, Potter, as long as you want me, I'm here," Lily's voice echoed back, months later...
James was staring across the Ravenclaw courtyard.
"Sirius?"
"Huh?"
"When were those trees planted?" he pointed at the rowan, birch, oak, and holly trees in the corners of the quad.
"Haven't they always been there?"
"No."
"Well, I dunno. Maybe Hagrid got bored. If I ever kept track of every tree I ever saw---"
But the trees. The trees were symbolic.
Dumbledore's voice echoed over the image of James, staring at those trees... "In the memory of Maryrose Jenkins... The oak tree, a symbol of strength... Rowan, protection... The Birch tree... purity... great power in the arts of magical healing... the cycles of life... a symbol of hope that even in our bleakest times, there soon will come better days. These trees shall remind us of Maryrose, and of the values she held most dear, of the things she was, the things she has left behind for us. They shall be a reminder that though we suffer today in the loss of a beautiful soul such a s hers, at the hands of an enemy whose hatred seems so unstoppable, there shall come a day in which the enemy is defeated, a day in which hope shall reawaken. The trees shall remind us that though today we feel there is no coming tomorrow - tomorrow will come - and with it will come healing..."
A thousand tiny lights dotting the dark courtyard.
Grief.
The grief was so heavy.
He stood over the grave.
POTTER, it read.
"I painted the kitchen today, dad. The paint sure smells, and it gets a little hard to breathe when you're doing it like a muggle. It's tedious as bloody hell. You know, you have to do more than one coat or the old colour just shows right through? I think Evans will like it. I did it yellow and green, and there's this brilliant stone work for the back wall behind the stove and of course the fireplace is all stone and brick and the floor's flagged... Course I imagine you've spotted over there and seen it for yourself, if you're able to. I probably don't have to tell you what it's like..." He stared at the unanswering stone, pausing as though Charlus might answer back if he only allowed him the chance.
"I sure do miss you, Dad."
He was flying... up, up, up... Charlus's arms under him, supporting him...
He was in the corridor of Mungo's.
"Mum." James said, the word barely coming out of his mouth for how dry his throat felt.
Dora's eyes flickered to James for a long moment, as though not recognizing him for a moment. Then, when she did, she burst into tears, and got up... enveloping him in a bone-crushing hug... her face buried into his shoulder...
Sirius could feel the shift.
Charlus's hands were no longer under James. No longer supporting him.
The loss of protection.
"May I - May I see him?"
James hovered in front of the door, unable to open it... He closed his eyes.
Charlus smiling. Charlus laughing. Charlus in the fireplace hearth...
Charlus lay on the bed as though simply asleep, his face peacefully still. James hung back, nervous, as though going closer might wake him up. The thought of it was both something he hoped for and something that terrified him at once. It's your dad, you git, James thought, and he felt a chill tremble down his spine...
"Dad," he said thickly, tears pouring down his cheeks now. "Dad. Please. Wake up."
Voldemort set a vision into his mind, a horrid vision, a vision of Charlus Potter, dragging himself toward James so that James was cowering against the corner of the dungeon he'd been locked in, sobbing, begging for mercy because he couldn't jinx his father like he'd done the other inferi that Voldemort set against him... Voldemort laughed horribly, his cackling filling the entire dungeon room. All the inferi were transfigured, their faces turned to look like all the people James loved most...
"Go on Potter, protect yourself!" he jeered. "Defend yourself!"
"I can't, I can't," James sobbed.
Voldemort laughed...
"I'd rather die than let any one of you be hurt," James's voice was solemn, lit by the flickering firelight at the campsite behind the old Dumbledore property.
"AVADA KEDAVRA!"
The spell was so shot so suddenly - so fiercely - the green sparks coming across the room... Rudolphus Lestrange had come 'round the corner of the corridor, out of the shadows he'd been lurking in, out from the dark. He'd leaped into the dining hall, his suspicions confirmed, his wand waved before he'd even completed the turn -
Sirius grabbed James's arms, spinning them about, and he stared into James's brown eyes.
James stared into Sirius's grey ones.
"Even now that it hasn't happened, Potter?" cackled Voldemort. "Even knowing it was nothing but a shadow of a memory that never was? Still you weep over him?"
The spell had hit him square in the back as he fell forward, the breath blasted from his lungs, the light in his eyes bright and then --
James was crying at the memory of the light leaving Sirius Black's eyes.
The strangest cold filled Sirius, seeing this.
Death, he realized. His blood was cold.
Where the fuck was he?
He could hear James screaming.
And then they - Sirius and James, that is - were sitting side by side outside of Madam Rosmerta's, having just dropped Bilius Weasley off at the inn where he was mourning the loss of his best mate...
"Appreciate your mates," Bilius's words echoed. "Every second you got with them is precious. One day, even if it's a very long way off and you're very old and grey, and I pray that you are... but one day just the same... they ain't going to be there no more... and you'd give bloody anything to floo'em up... but there's no floo that goes to where they're at anymore."
"We're all going to be alright," James said thickly, hopefully.
Sirius nodded, "Of course we are. But... James, if something was to happen... I don't want you to be muckin' about, drinking firewhiskey in a bar at ten o'clock in the morning, and having to be carried off by a bunch of third years to some pathetic little room at a pathetic little inn. I don't want you moping around about me. If I'd dead, I'm dead, and I want you to go off and do quidditch things and get to be a big star and whatever's in your future..."
In Dumbledore's office, years later, and James could only see Sirius Black, laying dead, half beneath the table, his eyes glassy and unseeing. And he fought - he fought, trying to get back to him. "NO!" he screamed, "NO! SIRIUS! GET UP! SIRIUS! NO!"
He was being held back by strong, powerful arms, but he shook, and fought, his body wrenching, trying to get away, "NO!"
His head rushed a blur of color and sound.
"TAKE ME BACK!" He was in Dumbledore's office. "TAKE ME BACK! MY FAMILY! MY FAMILY... AND LILY! DUMBLEDORE... SIRIUS! SIRIUS IS DEAD! SIRIUS IS -- TAKE ME BACK, TAKE ME BACK!"
"Come, have a seat, we need to have a talk, you and I."
"ARE YOU MAD? MY FAMILY IS BACK THERE! MY FAMILY, YOU OLD FOOL! MY ENTIRE FAMILY - EVERYONE THAT ILOVE - AND -"
"James! Please! Will you please listen to me?"
"THEY NEED HELP! AND WE CAN'T LEAVE SIRIUS'S BODY! WE CAN'T LEAVE -- THEY'LL DO TERRIBLE THINGS TO IT!"
They'll make him an inferius.
And he was one of them.
Voldemort watched, controlling the body he'd transfigured like a puppet, jeering in James's face, so close he could feel the cold of the skin touching him as he trembled...
"DEFEND YOURSELF."
"NO!"
James had his back to the wall, sobbing, "I would rather die --"
"Same here," James said, nodding. They were back in Hogsmeade, back sitting on the edge of some barrels outside Rosmerta's.
"I want you to do all the things you wanna do. I don't want you in some pathetic inn either. I want you to go to Costa Rica like you dreamed and drink coconut drinks with ickle umbrellas in them...
They were walking and they could see the flashing store front of Zonko's down the road in front of them and the long queue outside of Honeydukes.
Sirius looked over at James. "You alright?"
James nodded. "Are you?"
"SIRIUS! SIRIUS IS DEAD! SIRIUS IS --"
"Mr. Potter, we are going to fix all of that. We are going to have a little talk, James, about the mystery that is time. Please. Sit. Do you know what this is?"
Dumbledore held up his hand and let fall from it the chain that he held, a long gold chain, and at the end of the chain were two interconnecting hoops and a dial with a tiny little hourglass in the center with find gold powder inside.
"SIRIUS! SIRIUS IS DEAD! SIRIUS IS --"
He was screaming from the very bottom of his stomach, from the very dregs of his soul. The sort of scream that only loss can induce.
Here it was, years later, and James Potter was still screaming in his heart.
Timelines.
Artefacts.
Reparations.
Changes.
Losses.
"But at least Sirius is here," James whispered.
Remus nodded.
They were on the balcony at the top of the turret off Gryffindor tower.
"Tell me everything," James said.
Flashes of a hundred early Spring nights flashed through Sirius's mind - pranks and tea, long talks and tears, bottles of firewhiskey and fights, a blur of an alcohol induced departure from reality that he could barely remember... Black swirling smoke in his own heart...
Was that in James, too? Or was the void he saw... something else?
"I don't remember," James voice echoed.
"This place makes me think of Mopsus," Lily said, her voice echoing around the catacombs in France.
James nodded, "But not in a bad way."
"No, not at all," Lily looked about. "It's... oddly peaceful?"
"Yeah," James had been thinking the same.
"They were as we are; dust, the wind's plaything; fragile as men, feeble as the void."
"Funny to think of it, isn't it?"
"What?"
"They were as we are... All of these bones had stories that were just as vibrant and real to them as ours are to us..."
"I do wish their stories weren't forgotten, though," Lily said.
"Où est-elle la mort? toujours future ou passée. A peine est-elle présente que déjà elle n'est plus. Where is Death? Eternally in the future or the past. As soon as she appears, she is already gone."
James had a deeply thoughtful look on his face.
"What is it?"
"It's just that Mort means death, yeah? So here we are, facing... loads of the evidence of death... and the peace of it is what strikes me most, rather than the fear of it. It's as though this place carries a bit of reassurance to it, like there's no reason to be scared, this isn't terrifying. I mean, sure it's sad and there's a lot to say about how fragile and short life is and all of that, but -- I'm not anymore afraid here than I would have been to be walking through Hogwarts at night when I knew that every other person in the castle was asleep."
Hallowed ground.
"You know who's name - it means flight from death. I don't reckon someone like him would enjoy the catacombs very much, nor find much peace there, like we did."
"No?"
"When you're grasping for power so hard, it's because you're afraid of not having any... and there's no power in the individual there in the catacombs. There's no telling which skulls go to which femurs or even where the myriad of other sorts of bones are among all that. They all blended into one story there... To be afraid of death is to be afraid of this life being over, but if you've got nothing to live for - no love, I mean, that is - then that part of death isn't something to fear. He hasn't got love, so that's not what he's afraid of... I reckon, after seeing the catacombs and feeling that peace in the idea of life flowing like a river -- I reckon You Know Who's greatest fear is to be forgotten."
"What a terrible thing," Lily said.
"It's made even more sad by the thought that... without love, you've only solidified your destiny to be forgotten. I mean... who will remember you if you have no love?"
And he was holding up the ceiling, his muscles buckled with in him, the whole world caving in around him.
"Did you ever think, Evans, that he talks big because he feels small?"
"Sirius?"
"When you're weary...
Feeling small
When tears are in your eyes
I will dry them all..
It was dark. They were laying in the grass on the grounds, having snuck out, passing a cigarette back and forth, watching the smoke rise steadily up into the sky.
"Mhm?"
"Why doesn't Lily Evans like me?"
"Because you're an asshole."
"Sirius?"
"Mmm?"
"Why doesn't Lily Evans like me?"
Sirius sat up.
"I don't know, James."
He was quiet a long moment, and Sirius laid back down.
"Sirius?"
"Mmhm?"
"You're my best friend."
They were laughing, playing games, singing songs, running through trees, telling jokes and puns and limericks and stories... They were confiding in one another and doing everything together...
Best friend was hardly the term.
Brothers.
More than that.
Soulmates.
"You're mine, too."
James blew a good deal of smoke into the sky, then, "You really like me, right? It's not just... just a charade?"
"Don't you ever fucking say that again," Sirius said, and he sat up all the quicker, turning to James this time and looking him right in the eye.
"It's just. When I was there - in the dungeon and he was - Voldemort was -- he said -- as you --"
"Fuck that thought right off a cliff."
James's eyes were tear-filled.
"Yeah?"
"Yes."
James stared at Sirius.
"I mean it, don't you ever think of that ever again. Fuck it all the way out of your mind into the sky and beyond - let it be void. I love you James Potter with every fiber of my god-damned being, and I would die for you just as steadfastly as I live for you, everyday."
And James was holding up the ceiling still, trembling beneath the weight of it...
"When you're down and out,
When you're on the street
When evening falls so hard...
I will comfort you,
I'll take your part..."
A thousand tea cups were piled up on the coffee table in Gryffindor common room, in the flat in East London, in the Lupin cottage in Yorkshire, in the living room at the Potter cottage in Godric's Hollow...
Hugs, chests hitting against one another as arms were thrown about.
Golden sand, falling through an hourglass, one grain at a time.
Precious seconds, Potter.
Precious seconds...
"Calchus vowed to end the bloodline of Mopsus..."
"Mate, he's got to be long dead by now..." James hesitated. "Doesn't he?"
"Oh yes," Mopsus said, "Long dead. He was dead before I ever caught up with him... but his bloodline, boy. His blood courses through the veins of every evil wizard who has ever walked this earth - from Sauron to Slytherin, Grindelwald to --"
"Voldemort," James and Lily said together.
"CRUCIO!"
His entire body was electric.
This feeling Sirius recognized.
Although neither Walburga nor Orion's magic and curses were as powerful as Voldemort's... and even in James's memory, Sirius could tell that it was stronger... made theirs seem like child's play. Like they'd cast it without fully meaning it.
Voldemort meant it.
"Perhaps you'll be more lucky than I was," he hissed.
"What does it all got to do with us?" James asked, his nerves trembling in his voice.
"You, Potter, it's got to do with you."
"Never traced your family line, Potter? Never researched how far into history your blood goes?"
James hesitated, uneasy, "Look, if you think I'm Calchus, I --"
"You're a Mopsus, boy!"
James's jaw dropped as he stared at the old man before him.
"It's why you were able to use the time turner. Terrible things happen to wizards who meddle with time - particularly if they are not of the blood whose magic dictates the properties of how time turners work."
Time turners were more painful in the mind of James Potter than even the endless streams of torture from Voldemort.
James was shaking his head.
"You can say no, boy, but I tell you the truth."
"Evans?" James stared into Lily's eyes. "What happened? I mean - I - how did we get back here?"
"Everything's okay, James."
"Yes but -"
"Trust me."
"Evans."
"Potter."
"Really, what happened?"
"We ...we saved somebody's life."
"Why don't I remember it?" He was in the inn in Scotland, talking to Lily, but he was also in the bed at Mungo's, talking to Sirius.
"Everyone keeps saying I'm a hero," James was staring into the mirror. "But I don't remember it."
"Something else is bothering you about this," Sirius mused, looking back in the mirror, too.
Lily was gentle, "He had to do it, James, you were a wreck -- You were afraid he'd changed the timelines again, and you were --"
"DID HE?" What had changed now? What the hell was happening? Why was Lily looking so -- and what had happened that he'd forgotten about? What did he give those precious seconds for? What had Mopsus done?
"Prongs?" Sirius's voice echoed over what he was seeing.
James's terrified face - in Scotland, in the mirror, interchangeable...
He didn't look up.
"James."
He looked up.
"What is it really?" Sirius asked.
"I don't remember," James explained. But there was new meaning to this.
New meaning.
New timelines.
A dead Sirius, now a living Sirius...
Sirius's eyebrows came together in concern.
"I can't handle trying to figure out what's happened in the past again, like I did before," he said to Lily.
"James, I swear to you -- He didn't change the timelines."
"I feel like something was taken away from me," James was saying...
"It wasn't the past we've meddled with...." Lily said.
"...and no matter how hard I try thinking about it, there's just an empty space in my memory."
"The future?" James whispered. He was staring into Mopsus's eyes now, all around him was burning rubble of Dunlewey Proper.
"Yes, boy, the future. It's a long shot but if we can do it --" the old man's face was drenched with desperation. "I made a mistake."
"A - a mistake?"
"You made a mistake boy!" Voldemort hissed. "When you chose LOVE as your priority."
"And I'd choose it again a hundred times."
"I didn't know Calchus had been working against me the same as I have been working against him and I over looked -- I can't believe I overlooked the possibility --"
"The possibility of what?"
Mopsus was crying. Crying harder than anyone James had ever seen cry before.
The sight of it turned James's stomach.
"What do you remember?" Sirius asked James in the mirror.
"A woman," James said.
"I made a mistake."
"A woman from the back.
"What mistake?"
"And she looks like Lily. God help me, Sirius. She looks exactly like her..."
"...Oh when darkness comes,
And pain is all around...Like a bridge over troubled water..."
And suddenly James was in the corridor of the house, passing photos - family photos -
"And I can't see it, but I know she's holding a baby... Holding onto it for dear life because they're facing death and I just -- I'm so close -- I was so close -- but..."
And there was someone talking, a voice echoing in the hall...
"You poor boy... you poor, poor boy... I'm so sorry for you! I - I know about you, about what they did - what they did to - to you..."
"Shut UP girl!" Voldemort's voice was piercing, terrible, and imminently close. "Don't speak of things you don't know anything about! Stand aside!"
"No! I won't. I won't because I love my little boy ad ther'es nothing that you can do to make me stop loving him. Kill me if you want to, but nothing you can do will make my love go away. Love is the ONLY THING that cannot die, Tom!"
"I SAID STEP ASIDE!"
"I LOVE YOU, TOM, I LOVE YOU FOR EVERY PERSON THAT OUGHT TO HAVE DONE IT ALREADY!"
"Evans?" James's voice echoed - and the door opened and there she was - the woman with the baby... and the breath caught in James's throat.
"Like a bridge over troubled water...
I will lay me down."
"Sometimes," James said, his voice quiet, "I forget how to breathe."
"Forget how to breathe?" Sirius looked over at him, the cigarette in James's fingers glowed, smoldering, unsmoked, simply burning.
"Yeah," James said. And he looked at Sirius. "Like there's a weight... Right here." He pressed his hand to his heart.
"Perhaps you should see Madam Pomfrey?" Remus said. He was laying across the ground, head in Sirius's lap, illuminated by the stars, his head rolled back now to look at James. Peter peered anxiously through the darkness, too. "It could be something going on inside your heart causing that pressure."
James shook his head, "Nah," he said, and he stared across the water at the silhouette of Hogwarts. "I think it's just the world."
And Sirius jarred way, his hand dropping James's as though he'd been crucioed.
He. Could. Feel. It.
The weight.
He was in a pool of sweat, laying in the bed, eyes as wide as could be, his heart in his throat.
NOTHING made sense. Yet everything did, too.
The world was falling on him from the ceiling in great clumps of rubble.
Achlys was screaming.
Even that evil bitch couldn't handle all the pressure.
Holy FUCK.
Holy fuck.
Holy fuck.
Panic filled Sirius.
"James," Sirius whimpered, and he looked at his best friend, laying, peacefully asleep.