Sirius's voice carried up the stairs to James and Lily's room and James groaned, rolling over and pulling his pillow over his head. "Oh no. What's he doing here already for?" he moaned as his hands pulled the pillow tight about his ears. "It's too early for Sirius." James paused. "Go keep him busy."
Lily sighed, laying on her back, the space where James had been nestled next to her suddenly vacant as he rolled. She grabbed the blankets, which he'd pulled along with him, and yanked them back to her side of the bed. "He's your friend
"He's your friend, too."
"You were friends with him first."
"Yeah, that's right, I've dealt with him the longest, it's your turn to take up some of the responsibility, Evans."
"Is this what it'll be like when our baby finally comes? Me always changing diapers while you sleep in? Because if you think that, you've another thing coming, Mr. Potter."
James peeked at her with one eye. "If you take over with Padfoot, I'll change as many diapers as you want."
Lily stared at him.
James stared at her.
Lily's mouth twisted in thought.
"What's the matter Evans?"
"I'm trying to decide if diapers are worse than Sirius Black."
James quipped, "Honestly... they're both full of shit."
Sirius was sitting at the table in the dining room, eating sausages and beans that Dora had made, feet up on the chair across from him. Dora now sat beside him, humming and working on some knitting, the ball of yarn sitting on Sirius's lap. He grinned, waving with his sausage-skewered fork as James blearily stumbled into the kitchen, followed by Lily. "Morning Potties," he sing-songed, grinning at them. He raised an eyebrow. "Long night?"
"Mhm," James murmured, "Then we were awakened at the crack of dawn by somebody shouting and singing downstairs, weren't we?"
"Crack of dawn? Please. You should've been up hours and hours ago. Oh wait. No, that's right, too, you've become a delinquient again, haven't you?"
Dora looked up at Sirius with a warning expression.
James murmured, "Says the delinquent of the year."
"Do as I say, not as I do, Prongs," Sirius said. Then, glancing at Lily, he added, "Seems there was a good deal of doing already, though. Lilth, I'm ashamed of you. Not only have you graduated out of the PAH and brutally broken the WWNDJP portion of the club pact but now your hair -- you're breaking the WFAH part, too. I'll be needing your badge back."
"Sirius, shut up," Lily said, sitting and waving her wand to produce a teacup, magicking over the kettle from across the table. James waved his wand for a cup, too, and the kettle poured out Lily's cup, then James's as well.
"What are you doing here?" James asked.
"Do I need a reason to visit my harem?"
"Harem?" Dora Potter looked up, eyebrow raised.
"Before half eight? Yes." James glanced at his mum and flushed.
Sirius grinned wickedly. "Moony went to class this morning to go draw up a storm and he's taken the briefcase with him so I can't even pester Bradley. Thought I'd pop in and visit with mum."
Lily perked up, "Rey's classes started today! Oh I forgot!" She looked at James, eyes shining, "His drawing classes!"
"I thought maybe when you got up you might want to lark about," Sirius added, elbowing James, "We could go hang about by his college and meet up with him after he gets out and --"
"I've got a few hours to put in with Underhill this morning, actually," James said, "Then a bit of training with Oliver Kent this afternoon."
"Oh right," Sirius said.
"And you have jobs to apply for if I'm not mistaken."
"It's like last summer all over again," Sirius muttered. "Blimey."
There was a clicking on the window and all four of them looked up to see a long, brightly colored tropical bird sitting on the window sill. His bright plumes stuck out wildly against the grey of the weather outdoors. Sirius blinked in surprise and raised an eyebrow, pulling his pocket watch from the small pocket in his vest, and glancing at the time, then looking back up at the bird. "Inefficient, you are," he said in an accusatory tone as James got up and opened the window to let the bird in. "I could've bloody delivered it myself at this rate."
"Delivered what?" James asked and he untied a box from the bird's leg. The bird clicked his beak, looking for payment, and James said, "Hang on," as he reached for the tin. He opened it, then hesitated, looking back at Lily, Dora, and Sirius. "Reckon it'll accept an owl treat?"
Dora said, "The birds your cousins sent always wanted fruit."
"Fruit!"
"Yes - bananas, grapes, that sort of thing."
"Best to give him what he wants, too," Sirius said, "Nasty little bastard he is -" He looked at Lily and, as an aside, stage-whispered, "The bird bites."
James put the box down on the table in front of Lily while the bird snapped its beak impatiently at him and he went 'round to the fridge. "You would send me a biting bird, wouldn't you?"
"I'd hired him before I knew he was a biter," Sirius said, "And I shan't be using his bloody services again, that's for darned sure! I sent that when we were in Costa Rica and I'm bloody home now, so that bird doesn't deserve a treat for slow service! Why - any owl would've had that to destination long before I could have made the trip!"
"Honestly, you're expecting too much of the dear thing! After all, you and Remus disapparated," Lily said sternly, "He had to fly. And with his own wings, too! It's your own fault for sending it by owl - er, parrot - instead of just carrying it home yourself, you lazy thing." She was tearing open the package.
Sirius leaned back and held Dora's yarn ball with his hands, tossing it and catching it, "It's more fun to post things."
James had pulled a banana from the fridge and was peeling it open. He looked up at Sirius playing with the yarn and laughed, "You look like a cat," he said.
Sirius looked at the yarn, realized what he was doing, and put it down with a scowl.
James held up the half of banana he'd unpeeled, and the bird eagerly snapped onto it and started eating it from James's hand. He watched it a moment, then turned 'round to watch Lily opening the box.
Lily had got the heavily spellotaped package open. Under a load of paper inside, she found several large, fresh oranges and a postcard, brightly colored with pineapples, flowers, and birds that looked quite a lot like the one eating from James's hand now. Lily frowned as she picked up the card, "It's sticky," she complained.
Sirius laughed, "That would be the marmalade."
"Marmalade?" Lily asked, turning it over. On the back, in big letters, Sirius had written "PS, SORRY I SPILLT ALL OF THE MARMALADE!!!!!" This was surrounded by stains.
"You didn't make it rain marmalade again, mate, did you?" James asked warily.
"Oh don't remind me of that night!" Dora groaned, "That whole night was so terrible! Those poor people, that horrible fight we all had!" She clucked her tongue and focused on her knitting very intently.
Sirius grinned, "First of all, that marmalade trick was positively brilliant --"
"What marmalade trick?" Lily asked, holding the card out at arm's length between pinched fingers. She looked at Sirius, then to James, and back to Sirius.
Sirius grinned, "And secondly - No, I bought you lot a jar and I busted the jar trying to pack it. I don't think the fine folks of Costa Rica would appreciate frequent Marmalade storms."
The bird pecked at James's hand and he looked over and realized it had eaten all the the banana he'd peeled and he unpeeled the rest and laid it on the cutting board by the sink. The bird jumped down and started eating again. "Bleeder really does bite!" James complained, sucking on the finger the parrot had nipped.
"What marmalade trick?" Lily repeated.
James lowered his finger from his mouth. "Picture it, Evans... a beautiful Costa Rican evening... stars, moon, puffy clouds, music in the streets, delicious smells, ocean breeze, the lot... and suddenly there's Death Eaters attacking us. Right there on the main strip of San Jose. And we're all in the heat of a fight, yeah? and suddenly this idiot comes soaring through, wand aloft, and dumping marmalade all over the Death Eaters heads. As a fighting technique."
Lily's jaw dropped and she stared at Sirius. "Are you mental?"
"Yes," Sirius said, grinning. "But it worked, didn't it?"
Dora said, "You were very lucky that it did! You gave me a turn, goofing off like that - like you were a child playing games and the Death Eaters were something to be laughed at!" She shook her head. The thought of the evening in Costa Rica was enough to unnerve her - not to mention the horrible next couple days as, after a terrible fight, she'd gotten up to find James and Sirius were gone, having left to go back to England to see Lily, who had spoken to James on the telephone just prior to the attacks. She shuddered. It truly was one of her worst memories.
James squirmed, too, thinking of that night.
The parrot had finished his banana by then, and he jumped up to the window sill, fluttered his feathers a bit, and took off into the sky. James shut the window behind it and threw away the empty banana peel, coming over to inspect the oranges and he plucked the sticky card from Lily's hand and looked it over.
"Well, thank you for the oranges, Sirius," Lily said politely.
James set the postcard into the box, then hesitated, glancing at Dora. James hand slid across the table top and latched onto his mother's as Sirius started in on a long, loud, and mostly fictional account of going hiking through an orange grove to pick only the finest oranges from the greenest trees. Dora looked at James's hand, then up at James, and their eyes met... and suddenly Sirius's story was interrupted by Dora's chair scraping back as she tossed her knitting on the table and stood up to wrap her arms about James.
Sirius and Lily stared on as Dora held him tight and she kissed his head and she said, "I think of that day every time I know you've gone off into danger with the Order or the Ministry and it scares me to death, just as I did that morning, waking up, and finding my James wasn't there."
"I'm sorry mum."
"The way I prayed and begged for a son, Jamesy," she sobbed, "The way we waited for you."
"I know mum," James said. Dora had said these words many, many times to him throughout his life, and James drew a deep breath as she hugged him and kissed the top of his head.
Lily was tearing up across the table because she could hear the desperation echoing in Dora's voice across the years - desperation that she had been feeling ever since the first time she had looked upon her Harry. Her hand went to her stomach as she watched Dora Potter crying over her son, and Lily looked at Sirius.
"When it happens," she whispered, "That is what I will be like."
Sirius had felt Lily's reaction. She could tell because he'd put his hand across his stomach, too, even as his face was clearly responding to James's residual guilty feelings as well, and Sirius looked at Lily with wide eyes.
"That's why I'll need you, Sirius, when it happens. I'll need you."
He nodded. "I promise, Lilith," he whispered.
"REMUS!"
The moment he walked into the classroom, he heard his name called.
Remus had been looking down into his book bag when he heard Lula's voice and he looked up in surprise at hearing his name so instantly called. Lula and Stewie were sitting together at a wide table to the back of the room, a spot Remus never would have chosen himself. He'd been on his way toward a table up front by the teacher's desk, in fact, when she had called his name out. The slightest hesitation paused him before he turned to the back corner of the room and joined the pair at their table, feeling a bit anxious being so far back from the front.
"How have you been?" Lula asked excitedly.
"Been alright," Remus replied. He set Newt Scamander's suitcase down on the floor beside his chair and drew his sketchbook and pencil case from his bag.
Stewie glanced under the table at the suitcase, then up at Remus, "Expecting a long day?" he quipped.
Remus laughed, "No, just - just got back from - from a trip." He felt bad lying to his friends on day one, but he couldn't exactly say what the suitcase really was, and he hadn't really thought about the fact that he'd need to answer for it.
Lula had already slid his sketchbook over and openef the cover to see what new things Remus had been drawing and she oohed and ahhhed over several attempts to draw Sirius that had been added into the book, as well as drawings of the architecture of New York and the view from the kitchen window in the flat, portraits of pigeons, and several drawings of the ocean and the plants of Costa Rica, the jaggedy jetties and the details of a hibiscus.
"Where did you go?" Stewie asked.
"Costa Rica," Remus answered honestly. "With my husband." For some reason he whispered that last bit. He wasn't sure why.
Stewie said, "Costa Rica? That's an unusual destination."
Remus shrugged. "Sirius has cousins there, its where we had our ceremony. It seemed right to return to the scene of the crime for our anniversary."
"Anniversary!" Lula laughed, "You have an anniversary already? Goodness you must have been actual children getting married."
Stewie chuckled.
Remus flushed and shrugged, "When you know, you know." He didn't feel like explaining that it was very common in the wizarding world to wed young. Muggles had entirely different standards about marriage age, the two cultures had developed separately, and the idea of young marriage was one which had hung about longer in the wizarding culture of England compared to muggle culture - much like arranged marriages and kissing cousins and the like had done, and Remus flushed, knowing how crazy his young marriage likely seemed to the muggle mind. Not only young but gay, too. Gay was far from being as accepted in muggle culture as in wizarding culture, either, in fact Remus had read there were legal consequences to being gay, and it had made him sick. That, he realized, was why he had whispered before, despite knowing Lula and Stewie were okay with it.
"Too bad Sirius wouldn't come to class," Lula lamented, "It could have been a couples thing." She smiled.
"Sirius Black is lucky he can draw stick figures," Remus said. Not to mention he would constantly be making them move and I'd have a real Walt Disney level break in the Statute of Secrecy on my hands. Remus thought.
"We simply will have to all get together for dinner then sometime," Lula said. "I can't wait to meet him."
Remus nodded as the professor entered the front of the room and the class began.
Remus couldn't help but laugh because their first drawing assessment was a still life of a pineapple.