Sirius woke suddenly and in a wee bit of a panic when James sneezed so violently that it shook the entire bed. He was still in his dog form and he leaped to his feet, barking, half sure the house was being pummeled by giants like they'd done in Donegal. James had sat up and he was wincing in pain, the sneeze so strong he'd felt it in his spine.
"What the actual fuck was that, Prongs?" Sirius asked, popping back into human form.
"Sneeze," James wheezed.
"Bleeding hell," Sirius said. "Your lungs must have inverted from that one, I'll bet!"
"Practically," James croaked.
"Oh gods, Prongs, you sound like utter shit."
"Thanks," James said, his voice cracking terribly, throat raw. "I feel like I swallowed sand paper."
Sirius rolled off the bed. "I'll get you tea."
James started to answer him, but Sirius was out the door and James could hear him thundering down the steps. James hugged a pillow to his chest and flumped his face into the folds of the cotton, closing his eyes as he winced at every swallow. He groaned and even that hurt. His lungs felt like fire.
Fire.
He opened his eyes and stared down at the pillow for a long moment, trying to push the scary thought out of his head. It couldn't be -- could it? Could it? He drew a sharp breath and let it back out slowly, watching very carefully for any sign of smoke.
Nothing.
It didn't manifest instantly in mum and dad, either, though, did it?
He pushed the blankets off and, still hugging the pillow, he rolled himself up off the bed, and, finding his knees weak, nearly fell back down onto it again. He caught himself against the footboard and stood at a lopsided angle a moment, catching his breath.
Suddenly, he sneezed again and without meaning to, James felt his body transform with the force of the sneeze so that one moment he was a man, leaning against the bed, and the next he was on his arse on the floor, in stag form, legs sprawled in a painful angle, his antlers caught around the bed so that he couldn't even lift his head up because the prongs were caught on the rungs of the footboard.
He honked indignantly as he struggled and found his chest was tight and sore, even as a stag, and even the honk felt awful in his throat. He would have sworn if he was in human form, but of course deer can't curse, and he sat there waiting for his dizziness to subside as the whole room warbled about with vertigo.
Another sneeze and he was uncontrollably a man again, triple dizzy.
"Oh gods," he moaned, holding his head.
The door was flung open. "What in hell is happening up here?" Sirius was back, tea kettle in hand, hair disheveled.
"Sneezed," James wheezed.
"I heard a sound I thought you fell down!"
"Did," James panted.
"Well Merlin's sweaty balls, why are you out of bed?" Sirius came over and put the kettle down, grabbing James's bicep, helping tug him to his feet.
"Lily?" James asked, not bothering with the full sentence.
"She's at uni," Sirius said. "I told her to go and that I'd stay with you." Sirius reached for James's shoulders, determined to guide him back to the bed. "Lay your arse down, mate."
James turned out of Sirius's grasp and stumbled toward the door, "No - no... Mum?"
"Downstairs, I'll get her for you."
James started for the door, staggering. He felt top heavy and he propelled himself forward, sort of lunging more than walking, really, catching himself first on the dresser and then the door frame, wrenching it open. Sirius bounded after him nervously.
"Prongs, you've got to have a lie-down, you're sick --"
"Need a - talk with - mum," he croaked the words as he lurched down the hallway to the stairs.
"James -" Sirius's voice was firm, "No you need to --" and he reached for James just as James sneezed again, another terribly violent sneeze that rocked up through every vertebrae in his spine, and the antlers spiked up out of his head as he did, making him truly top heavy so that as Sirius turned him 'round, the weight of him was displaced, and, still top heavy, James went down backwards - down the stairs. "Oh fuck - no!" Sirius sprung after him as James crashed down - the antlers catching the picture frames as he went, scraping the wall and knocking the frames down, shattering the glass in the center of them, until he landed at the bottom and the antlers snapped off of him with great loud cracks - disappearing after they'd separated from him.
James lay on the landing, surrounded by the broken glass of the picture frames.
Sirius sprang down the last couple steps, coming to land directly beside his best friend, the breath gone from his chest. "No, no, no, no - Prongs - James!" He knelt, gathering James's torso into his arms.
Dora came up the lower flight to the landing, "What in the name of -- OH! MY BABY!" she cried out and she was on James's other side, hands pressing to check on his various body parts, making sure he was whole and James let out a grunt of pain as she got to his shoulder, wincing awake, gasping for air. Her palms were against his fevered skin. "You are positively on fire!"
"Fire?" James croaked, wincing harder the more he came-to.
Sirius reached across James and grabbed onto his shoulder, but when he tried to pull James up by the shoulder, James let out a shout and winced. Sirius looked up. "Lilith has some skelegro in the cupboard, downstairs," he said to Dora. "It's supposed to be saved for the Order but James started the Order so I think it counts."
Dora nodded and she got up and hurried down the stairs to get the skelegro.
"Fire?" James asked again, looking up at Sirius.
"What?" Sirius asked, confused, looking down at James.
"Is it - it pox?" James asked, eyes teary and blurry, unfocused, his glasses having flown off in the fall. They were a couple feet away, cracked.
Sirius shook his head, "It's not the bloody pox." He reached for Jame's glasses, but James reached up with the arm closest to Sirius and grabbed onto the neck of his t-shirt weakly. Sirius turned back and looked into James's face. "James, I promise you that it isn't Dragon Pox."
James stared up into Sirius's grey eyes and asked, "How'd'y'know?"
Sirius shrugged. "Just do."
James nodded, taking that as his answer, and he closed his eyes, wincing again at the pain in his shoulder.
Dora was back and she leaned over him, hands shaking, with a small dosing cup of the skelegro. Both Dora and Sirius's hands were on the back of James's head, bracing him up to receive the potion, which Dora gently poured into his mouth. "My poor baby, my poor baby," she whispered the entire time, stroking the side of his face with her knuckles, "My poor, poor baby boy."
Sirius watched the way her fingers came across James's face and he bit his lip.
Once James had the skelegro into him, they gently levitated him up from the stair landing - Sirius casting the spell while Dora carefully guided the way back to the Potters bedroom and they lay him down on the bed, giving him another dose of the Pepper-up Potion.
"Are you hungry, darling? Lily made a lovely chicken soup for you," Dora asked.
"Yeah, it's good," Sirius confirmed, having eaten the bowl Lily offered him eagerly.
James murmured something that sounded like "sounds good" but it was clear he was not going to stay awake long enough for Dora to go and get the soup. Instead, Dora sat down on the edge of the bed on James's side, her fingers still stroking his cheek, and she leaned over him and sang a lullaby, quietly, her voice soft and gentle.
"Sleep, my child, and peace attend thee, all through the night... Guardian angels God will send thee, all through the night... Soft and drowsy hours are creeping, hill and dale in slumber sleeping, I my loved ones watch am keeping... all through the night..."
Sirius stood at the foot of the bed, watching, listening... James's eyes were closed, but Sirius could still feel the scratchy throat and the shooting pain in his shoulder as though they were his own pains. Or maybe the scratchy throat was partially the things that were roaming through his mind. Little memories of times when he'd been sick as a child and the way Dora's gentle caresses against her son's feverish cheeks were so different to the harsh words and Kreacher's grumpy mumblings that he had received, even before his Mother had disowned Sirius.
"Lazy, good for nothing lie-about!" Walburga had said, angrily. "Take this book and read this at least while you're up there so that you aren't entirely uneducated as well as lazy." The tome had been thick and heavy, dust covered, and it was all Sirius could do to lug it up the stairs. "I'll send Kreacher up to check on you, though I trust that whatever it is that ails you will be quite right soon enough now that you've gotten out of your lessons." The accusation weighed as much as the book had done, and Sirius had crawled up the steps carrying the heaviness with him, until he fell into bed and cried himself to sleep, too tired to even lift the thick cover of the ridiculous book - A Tedious Inheritance by Phineas Nigellus Black, the former Headmaster at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, a Short Discussion on the Importance of Dedication to Upholding the Pureblood Families' Names. The thing was about as "short" as a trip to the moon, Sirius had thought, and he'd fallen asleep wondering how many stair cases would have to be built to reach the moon...
He looked away and shuffled quietly out of the room, leaving James with Dora, and heading out to the hallway. He stared at the broken frames and torn wall paper on the stairs and he sighed and drew his wand, "Reparo," he muttered, casting the charm and watching as the glass swirled in a tornadic whirlwind, coming back together with their frames as the wallpaper stitched itself back together and the frames flew up to the wall, each hanging back on its nail precisely where it belonged.
Sirius nodded and trotted down the rest of the way, pausing on the spot where James had landed and he knelt down a moment, running his palms over the spot where his antlers had disappeared from. He sighed and got back up and went the rest of the way down the steps to the living room, dropping onto the couch and rubbing his hands over his eyes.
It had been the sneeze that had sent James down the stairs, not Sirius's hands grabbing onto him - but Sirius still felt incredibly guilty. James had been in enough pain and the fall had made it worse and despite it not really being his fault, Sirius still felt as though it was his fault.
My fault, his heart whispered.
Your fault, Achlys chuckled quietly.
"Fuck off," Sirius whispered out loud at her, and she didn't speak again, but he could feel her, like smoke lingering in his chest cavity.
No matter what he did, he couldn't get the sight of James falling out of his mind, nor the way he had landed and the weight of his torso in his arms...
Something about it had triggered something in Sirius, though he couldn't quite think what it was.