3 HP Fics: Brighter Than Any Star, Family, and Tired
So I went through the fan fic I had written for comment_fic over the past three weeks or so and decided that there were three Harry Potter fics I rather liked and wished to crosspost to other communities. Because I am a feedback whore who has actually written something I'm not totally displeased with for once. I'm not certain whether to headdesk or actually be pleased that I've written something I don't hate.
Posted as a group to save the flist that friended me at a time when I really wasn't writing this much fic. . . .
*clears throat* Anyway. . . .
Title: Brighter Than Any Star
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairing: implied Sirius/Remus, Lily
Wordcount: 927
Summary: It's been five awkward months since the Whomping Willow Incident. Maybe it's time to mend some fences.
Notes/Warnings: The original prompt for this one was the title.
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So there were many, many things that Sirius Black was good at buggering up, and one of them was relationships. If it wasn't James pointing it out, he tended to blow it off with mention of his family or just a flat "I don't care."
This was a little bit different.
It had been almost five months since the Whimping Willow incident. He and Remus were talking again, and that was something, but Prongs and Wormtail had been to the Shrieking Shack four times now without Padfoot along, and they were going to do it again tomorrow night. The wolf remembered who had hurt him, but he had an animal's lumbering understanding about it; and the simple conviction that if Moony hurt Padfoot back than everything would be all right. Sirius was generally willing to risk it, if it would get the anger out, but James wasn't, and he'd threatened to gore any great black dogs that showed up on the grounds on a full moon night.
But for once James didn't get it. Remus was closed up, he'd always been closed up, and Sirius had managed to blow any chance of him opening up as Remus all to hell five months before. And James could take a breather and let the aggression go if he really tried, but not Remus. Remus stored anger up for when he needed it, and sometimes the only safety valve was the wolf. Moony needed to beat Padfoot to a pulp, and then Remus could pretend nothing had ever happened, and Sirius could forget how good he was at buggering things up.
James didn't get it, but as usual when it came to Padfoot-and-Prongs showdowns, James had eventually won.
Which was why he was here, another cold bloody night on the astronomy tower with a class rather than a girl. It had been Remus who had convinced him to take it at the NEWT level, on the theory that Gryffindor's resident insomniac Marauder could spend his night in class at least once a week. Sirius had only agreed because Remus planned to take it, too. He'd skipped the last three, because things were just so bloody stiff and uncomfortable without James about, but the professor had finally caught him out in a broom closet twenty minutes before class and told him to put his shirt on properly and show up.
The plan was to hang in the back as though he had better things on his mind than Uranus and stalk off at the first opportunity.
Lily Evans changed that, by slipping back through the crowd and slapping him upside the head.
"Hey! What was that for?"
"For leaving Remus wondering where you are. Seriously, you two slug it out before you drive Potter mad and he does the same to me."
Sirius rubbed the back of his head. "I was with a girl. He knew that."
Evans slapped him again for good measure. "Once I'll grant. Imbecile."
"Aren't you the good little girl who listens to the lectures anyway?"
"Oh, talk to him, Black. He's right there." She gestured.
Sirius glanced at Remus, who was off to the side as usual and scribbling notes that Sirius hadn't swiped from him in weeks, and back at Evans. He could talk to Remus, or he could get slapped in the back of the head again.
He talked to Remus.
"Hey."
Remus glanced over at him, skittish. "Sirius. You showed up tonight."
Sirius shrugged. "Failure looks bad an Auror applications even in a stupid subject like this," he answered. "And I can just imagine what it would be like to explain to my mother that I managed to fail Astronomy because I was making out with a Muggle-born in a broom closet."
The tip of the quill snapped. "You've been avoiding me."
"You haven't been talking to me." Sirius shrugged. "Evans said we should slug it out."
"Lily has a very simplistic view of male relationships."
"I noticed."
Remus sighed, tucked the broken quill in a pocket of his robe, and reached up to rub his temples. "Sirius, what do you want?"
To go chasing after you in the dark again. To hear you tell me something will never work, and then shove me away from the parchment so you can change the plan. To not hear you and Peter stop laughing because I'm stalking up the steps. To feel your back against mine in the middle of something again.
What he said was "Honestly? For her not to slap me again."
Remus sighed. "You're a bastard, you know that?"
Sirius considered it. ". . . yes?"
For a moment, that seemed to be it for awkward conversations. For a moment.
"I suppose you're staying in again tomorrow night?" Remus asked softly.
"Being gored to death by Prongs would hurt."
More silence. Sirius glanced back at Evans, but she was paying attention to the lecture again. Thank Merlin.
Then Remus spoke again. "Almost summer."
"Don't remind me," Sirius said.
Remus shrugged and leaned against the stone. "Dog star's overhead and getting dominant. You know, if you believe in divination. Probably the brightest star in the sky."
Sirius glanced at him.
Remus sighed. "I'll talk to James."
"Moony?"
Remus quirked an eyebrow, and Sirius broke into a relieved grin. "Been awhile," he managed. "You know, since I really stretched my legs."
Remus smiled back. Shyly, the way he used to in first year, but Sirius caught a glimpse of his teeth in it.
Dog star's not the brightest, Sirius couldn't help but think. Never is. It's the moon. Moony.
Title: Family
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Lily/James, Sirius
Wordcount: 1155
Prompt/Summary: Lily had forgotten that not all injuries could be treated with magic.
Warnings/Notes: N/A
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The actual cuts were relatively easy to treat, although a few of them had been made with healing-resistant spells and the best she could do was clean them with the appropriate potion, wrap them up, and hope that they wouldn't scar over in the twenty-four hours they would take to heal. Not that Sirius would care - in the months since she started dating James, she'd learned that he was a little less concerned about his appearance than she would have otherwise guessed.
It wasn't physical scarring she was worried about.
James had dragged Sirius, half-conscious, into the common room at three in the morning and actually levitated himself up the girl's dormitory steps so that he didn't slide back down when he tried to get her. Lily still didn't entirely understand why he hadn't taken them both to Madame Pomfrey - she'd had to attend to a nasty bruise on James's face that turned out to be a chipped cheekbone as well as Sirius's cuts, but James had been adamant that he needed to take Sirius home, not to the hospital wing.
"Is there any place else you both are hurt?" Lily asked, rewinding the bandages.
James shook his head. Sirius whimpered something in the back of his throat and reached for his best friend, grabbing him by the shoulder and pulling himself to a sitting position. James let himself be used for leverage, and didn't seem to mind being clung to for a few moments longer than necessary afterwards.
Lily shoved the bandages back into her potions kit and zipped it up, trying not to interrupt their moment, although she was desperate to know what happened.
"'M gonna bleedin' kill Bella and Lucius Malfoy," Sirius mumbled finally.
"Shh. You're hoarse," James said.
Lily blinked. "You were off the grounds."
"We had our reasons," James answered, looking up at her and adjusting his glasses. The look was as stubborn as ever, but it wasn't the stubborn one she was used to seeing on him. It was . . . harder, somehow.
"Really?"
"They were Sirius's reasons," James answered, glancing back at him. And Lily knew she wasn't getting anything else out of him. Not unless Sirius wanted to tell her, which was unlikely. Lily had taken James away from the possessive little boy in Sirius, which only compounded the idiot teen's distrust of any kind of authority.
Not for the first time, she wondered how exactly James reconciled being Head Boy and backing Sirius up.
"Still," she said slowly, "Madame Pomfrey might have known how to heal from some of those spells - "
"I had to take him home," James repeated.
Before Lily could tell him that what he was saying made absolutely no sense, Sirius reached up to rub his temples. "Prongs, don't make me translate for your girlfriend," he rasped. "I've already lost my voice."
Lily blinked. Sirius had not seemed to be mentally prepared for their conversation.
Then he did something he'd never done before. Sirius Black looked straight at Lily and gave her a clear answer. "I promised my Uncle Alphard on his bloody death bed that if he couldn't be around as family counter-example to Mum for Regulus's teens, I wouldn't just abandon him."
James bit his lip. "Sirius - "
Sirius glanced at him. "I did. 'M gonna kill Malfoy. Then Padfoot's gonna rip Bella's intestines out. Slowly."
Lily wasn't sure what to do. If it had been James, or a girlfriend, she would have dropped everything and wrapped them in a hug. If it had been Remus Lupin, putting a hand on his shoulder, showing she wanted to be there physically, would have been the right thing to do. But Sirius was more aloof than that. Unless they were wrestling, he didn't even touch James.
She settled for sitting on the carpeting in an I'm -not-going-anywhere sort of way. "What did they do?"
Sirius shook his head. "Recruited him."
"Oh."
What else was she supposed to say? She suspected, as much as anyone else, that both of them were Death Eaters. She supposed that with Sirius's family, he was certain.
"Sirius - " James started.
"Don't," Sirius said. "Just don't. You don't. . . ." His voice broke. It wasn't just from overuse. "He's my little brother, okay? He's barely sixteen. Just a kid." He swallowed. "That Bella would - I'm gonna kill her."
"Sirius - " Lily realized that this time, it was her speaking.
"Shut up, Evans." He slumped against the couch and yelped as he hit one of the bandages cuts wrong. "I promised Alphard. Andromeda's married, Andy's farther out of the family circle than I am. And we see each other at school. I guess he thought I could . . . but then Bella got him, and . . . and I can't do the whole family thing. He's the only brother I've got. The last family I had a chance with."
It was the most he'd ever said to Lily in seriousness. And that broken speech hurt. Petunia only didn't like her. Sirius's little brother was standing on the opposite side of a coming storm.
James, on the other hand, seemed to know what to do. "Padfoot," he said. "Sirius? Look at me." He turned towards his best friend, put his hands on Sirius's shoulders and leaned in.
Sirius did anything but meet his eyes.
"I'm your brother," James said slowly. "I'm your brother. And it doesn't have anything to do with anything stupid like blood. Mum and Dad and I . . . we let you in, we didn't ask any stupid questions, we just set an extra place at the table. I'm your brother."
"Not the same," Sirius mumbled, but he put one hand on top of James's.
Lily scooted closer to the boys, so she was leaning against the couch between them. "Sirius. It was his choice. Not yours. Even if you wanted to protect him."
James glanced down at her. Lily wasn't certain if he approved or disapproved.
"I'm your brother," James repeated. "And Lily and I are serious, so she's sort of a sister-in-law. And we know you're not going anywhere, and neither are we, because unlike your shit-for-family, we go both ways. All right?" He lowered his hands so Sirius could pull away towards the arm of the sofa.
"Yeah, Prongs," Sirius mumbled, but he didn't sound like he believed it.
He glanced down at Lily and tried to smile. "Thanks for patching us up and not just knocking your boyfriend out and going back to sleep," he said quietly.
"Any time," Lily answered, and she meant it.
They sat there for most of the night. James eventually slid off the couch and wrapped his arms around her, and they both watched and listened to Sirius in silence. She'd meant to come down and heal them quickly by magic. But for this, the only thing they could do was simply be there, as Sirius struggled to let go of the last of his first family in the arms of his second.
Title: Tired
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Remus/Sirius, James
Wordcount: 1419
Summary: James panics without back-up. Remus is hurt and tired of fighting with Sirius.
Notes/Warnings: The original prompt was "The pain has never been this back before." Another take on the aftermath of the Whomping Willow incident, although the two fics are not mutually exclusive, as I imagine the reconciliation took awhile.
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James has always been the one who never takes any chances. Deep down, Remus has always recognized that James is the responsible one. Wild and devil-may-care and sometimes, when he just doesn't like you, plain mean, but never the reckless one. James is the real, honest, bone-deep responsible, because when his head is out of his arse he looks after people and not consequences. Remus looks after consequences and is jealous of James, because he will always fear the consequences at least as much as he worries about the people.
And because of that, he can't quite bring himself to swear at Prongs while newly human fingers staunch a wound he's not going to be able to explain to Madame Pomfrey.
Still, James is the responsible one. Sirius is the reckless one, the one who wants to watch life break its rein in a few wild moments of freedom, and wasn't there last night, so it should have been safer, right?
Now that the wolf's scrabbling has stopped, James comes hurtling up the steps and into the room with a length of bandage and a wand. Remus kind of wishes he'd had time to put his trousers back on.
James leans down beside Remus and gently pries his hand away from the wound. He winces when he sees the hole in Remus's side, grazing the ribcage. "Merlin, Remus, I'm sorry."
Remus smiles weakly. "Honestly, James, you'd think you'd never had to gore me before."
James glares over the rims of his specs and turns his attention back to the wound. "Shut up."
Has James ever gored him before? Remus can't remember just now, and somewhere in the back of his mind all he can think of is Sirius's bulk headed at him like a battering ram, steering him gently and biting his ruff or his ears when the wolf didn't want to listen. Sirius is the reckless one, and because of that he's the one who never panics. He's the one who drives Remus back into the forest naturally, with nips and play fights and running shoulder to shoulder. James worries that he'll hurt someone, that Remus will never forgive himself, and so if Sirius isn't there he does it all at once, because he knows the wolf can take it.
Remus is sometimes more inclined to agree with James.
James is the responsible one, so there's no doubt his hands are clean, but Remus still refuses to watch and tries not to think about it as James probes the wound. It hurts, but he's used to pain and he's not going to whimper like an injured puppy in front of James.
"Where's Peter?" he asks instead.
"Went to the hospital wing to stall Pomfrey while I fixed this," James says, and grits his teeth. "Stop talking, will you? You're moving."
"You don't have to fix it all," Remus answers. "Break a chair leg, maybe I speared myself with that."
--
His side is killing him. Peter's stalling tactics have always left people suspicious, and Madame Pomfrey isn't entirely satisfied with the broken chair as an explanation for Prongs's horns. Chair legs splinter.
But she lets it go, because she can't think what else it could be, and takes Remus to the hospital wing to give him a potion and lay a slow healing spell on him. She tells him she'll make his excuses to Vector and McGonagall, since it's Arithmancy and Transfiguration he ought to be at today, and tells him to sleep.
So Remus manages as many stairs as he can and collapses into his four-poster, wondering whether he ought to close the curtains or if the pure, exhausting ache of a bad wound will put him to sleep in spite of light or noise.
"Moony?"
Remus puts the pillow over his face and decides to pretend Sirius isn't skipping his Potions class in favor of whatever it is he's doing in their room.
"Moony?" Sirius repeats.
A moment later Sirius's bed creaks as he rises from it and all Remus can think of is No, no, go away, I can't do this, I'm too tired for this, I don't want you to . . . NO. He can't bring himself to say it, though, even as his own bed creaks and he can feel the sudden depression from Sirius's weight.
God, he's tired of this.
"Your shirt's stained, Remus. How bad is it?"
Sirius is on his bed. Remus knows he can't ignore Sirius any longer, not really, although it would be really nice if he could. "I'll live."
The depression in the mattress moves closer, and a moment later Remus can feel Sirius's body heat as his hand lingers by his shoulder. The hair on his arms prickles upwards, and there's a moment where every pore of Remus is screaming for that warmth to be turned into a touch, even as Remus's more sensible side is begging for Sirius to take a sudden and involuntary trip to Timbuktu.
And then he can't stand sitting in Limbo anymore. "Why aren't you in Potions?" Remus asks, as waspishly as he can manage under the circumstances.
The hand doesn't move. Remus doesn't move to knock it away, because his limbs seem suddenly made of lead. "James said he hurt you," Sirius whispers.
It's clear it takes everything Sirius has to say it. It's in the waver of his voice, all hope and fear and barely repressed anger. And Remus hears what goes unsaid, even though he doesn't want to. He shouldn't have had to. I should have been there. I should have protected you.
"I'll be fine," Remus says, but there's a groan in his voice that says they're just words. Even with Madame Pomfrey's pain killers, the pain has never been this bad. James has never lacked backup. "The wolf can take a lot."
The silence this is met with says I should have been there more loudly than any words ever.
Remus really wishes that hand would just move. And finally, it does. Sirius puts it on the bed, and Remus can feel the comforter bunching underneath him as it tightens into a fist around the fabric.
"Better me than a couple sneaking back into the castle after dark," Remus says finally. "Since most people find the full moon romantic and all."
"Remus. . . ." But Sirius doesn't finish the sentence.
Neither of them can do this. This . . . dance. They've been at it for months, ever since Sirius the reckless arse made a few stupid comments to a certain Slytherin that they didn't talk about anymore. Ever since Remus realized just how true it was that Sirius didn't give a rat's arse about the consequences and didn't always think about the people. Ever since Remus who cared about the consequences and James who cared about the people had gently removed him from the most dangerous thing they did.
Remus wishes he would finish the sentence. He's never been able to hold his ground against James or Peter, let alone Sirius, and the fact that Sirius isn't asking him to give way is the only reason he hasn't yet. And Remus can't push, can't ask Sirius to come back, because obviously some part of ole Padfoot doesn't want to. Remus needs to be asked.
But God, if you're out there, he is just so tired.
Slowly he lifts the pillow off of one eye and looks at Sirius. His unruly dark hair halos around his pale face like some kind of inverted Old Testament angel, and his brow is creased with worry. Remus decides not to notice the slight tremor to his lower lip.
It's not asking. So Remus isn't giving. That's just not the way they work.
"I get hurt sometimes, Sirius," he says instead. "It comes with the whole werewolf thing. You could still get to Potions, you know."
Sirius edges a bit nearer, and despite the part that's still screaming No, Sirius, I can't do this anymore, Remus lets out a relieved breath he didn't know he'd taken in when Sirius's hand touches his shoulder again. "Sleeping it off?" he asks softly.
"Mmm," Remus mumbles, because the long night and the bone-deep ache got to him a long time ago.
He closes his eyes, so he feels rather than sees Sirius stretch out beside him, his hand sliding across Remus's chest to pull him closer. They haven't been this close in months.
And if he falls asleep more easily than he would have if Padfoot had just left, he doesn't notice.
Posted as a group to save the flist that friended me at a time when I really wasn't writing this much fic. . . .
*clears throat* Anyway. . . .
Title: Brighter Than Any Star
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairing: implied Sirius/Remus, Lily
Wordcount: 927
Summary: It's been five awkward months since the Whomping Willow Incident. Maybe it's time to mend some fences.
Notes/Warnings: The original prompt for this one was the title.
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So there were many, many things that Sirius Black was good at buggering up, and one of them was relationships. If it wasn't James pointing it out, he tended to blow it off with mention of his family or just a flat "I don't care."
This was a little bit different.
It had been almost five months since the Whimping Willow incident. He and Remus were talking again, and that was something, but Prongs and Wormtail had been to the Shrieking Shack four times now without Padfoot along, and they were going to do it again tomorrow night. The wolf remembered who had hurt him, but he had an animal's lumbering understanding about it; and the simple conviction that if Moony hurt Padfoot back than everything would be all right. Sirius was generally willing to risk it, if it would get the anger out, but James wasn't, and he'd threatened to gore any great black dogs that showed up on the grounds on a full moon night.
But for once James didn't get it. Remus was closed up, he'd always been closed up, and Sirius had managed to blow any chance of him opening up as Remus all to hell five months before. And James could take a breather and let the aggression go if he really tried, but not Remus. Remus stored anger up for when he needed it, and sometimes the only safety valve was the wolf. Moony needed to beat Padfoot to a pulp, and then Remus could pretend nothing had ever happened, and Sirius could forget how good he was at buggering things up.
James didn't get it, but as usual when it came to Padfoot-and-Prongs showdowns, James had eventually won.
Which was why he was here, another cold bloody night on the astronomy tower with a class rather than a girl. It had been Remus who had convinced him to take it at the NEWT level, on the theory that Gryffindor's resident insomniac Marauder could spend his night in class at least once a week. Sirius had only agreed because Remus planned to take it, too. He'd skipped the last three, because things were just so bloody stiff and uncomfortable without James about, but the professor had finally caught him out in a broom closet twenty minutes before class and told him to put his shirt on properly and show up.
The plan was to hang in the back as though he had better things on his mind than Uranus and stalk off at the first opportunity.
Lily Evans changed that, by slipping back through the crowd and slapping him upside the head.
"Hey! What was that for?"
"For leaving Remus wondering where you are. Seriously, you two slug it out before you drive Potter mad and he does the same to me."
Sirius rubbed the back of his head. "I was with a girl. He knew that."
Evans slapped him again for good measure. "Once I'll grant. Imbecile."
"Aren't you the good little girl who listens to the lectures anyway?"
"Oh, talk to him, Black. He's right there." She gestured.
Sirius glanced at Remus, who was off to the side as usual and scribbling notes that Sirius hadn't swiped from him in weeks, and back at Evans. He could talk to Remus, or he could get slapped in the back of the head again.
He talked to Remus.
"Hey."
Remus glanced over at him, skittish. "Sirius. You showed up tonight."
Sirius shrugged. "Failure looks bad an Auror applications even in a stupid subject like this," he answered. "And I can just imagine what it would be like to explain to my mother that I managed to fail Astronomy because I was making out with a Muggle-born in a broom closet."
The tip of the quill snapped. "You've been avoiding me."
"You haven't been talking to me." Sirius shrugged. "Evans said we should slug it out."
"Lily has a very simplistic view of male relationships."
"I noticed."
Remus sighed, tucked the broken quill in a pocket of his robe, and reached up to rub his temples. "Sirius, what do you want?"
To go chasing after you in the dark again. To hear you tell me something will never work, and then shove me away from the parchment so you can change the plan. To not hear you and Peter stop laughing because I'm stalking up the steps. To feel your back against mine in the middle of something again.
What he said was "Honestly? For her not to slap me again."
Remus sighed. "You're a bastard, you know that?"
Sirius considered it. ". . . yes?"
For a moment, that seemed to be it for awkward conversations. For a moment.
"I suppose you're staying in again tomorrow night?" Remus asked softly.
"Being gored to death by Prongs would hurt."
More silence. Sirius glanced back at Evans, but she was paying attention to the lecture again. Thank Merlin.
Then Remus spoke again. "Almost summer."
"Don't remind me," Sirius said.
Remus shrugged and leaned against the stone. "Dog star's overhead and getting dominant. You know, if you believe in divination. Probably the brightest star in the sky."
Sirius glanced at him.
Remus sighed. "I'll talk to James."
"Moony?"
Remus quirked an eyebrow, and Sirius broke into a relieved grin. "Been awhile," he managed. "You know, since I really stretched my legs."
Remus smiled back. Shyly, the way he used to in first year, but Sirius caught a glimpse of his teeth in it.
Dog star's not the brightest, Sirius couldn't help but think. Never is. It's the moon. Moony.
Title: Family
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Lily/James, Sirius
Wordcount: 1155
Prompt/Summary: Lily had forgotten that not all injuries could be treated with magic.
Warnings/Notes: N/A
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The actual cuts were relatively easy to treat, although a few of them had been made with healing-resistant spells and the best she could do was clean them with the appropriate potion, wrap them up, and hope that they wouldn't scar over in the twenty-four hours they would take to heal. Not that Sirius would care - in the months since she started dating James, she'd learned that he was a little less concerned about his appearance than she would have otherwise guessed.
It wasn't physical scarring she was worried about.
James had dragged Sirius, half-conscious, into the common room at three in the morning and actually levitated himself up the girl's dormitory steps so that he didn't slide back down when he tried to get her. Lily still didn't entirely understand why he hadn't taken them both to Madame Pomfrey - she'd had to attend to a nasty bruise on James's face that turned out to be a chipped cheekbone as well as Sirius's cuts, but James had been adamant that he needed to take Sirius home, not to the hospital wing.
"Is there any place else you both are hurt?" Lily asked, rewinding the bandages.
James shook his head. Sirius whimpered something in the back of his throat and reached for his best friend, grabbing him by the shoulder and pulling himself to a sitting position. James let himself be used for leverage, and didn't seem to mind being clung to for a few moments longer than necessary afterwards.
Lily shoved the bandages back into her potions kit and zipped it up, trying not to interrupt their moment, although she was desperate to know what happened.
"'M gonna bleedin' kill Bella and Lucius Malfoy," Sirius mumbled finally.
"Shh. You're hoarse," James said.
Lily blinked. "You were off the grounds."
"We had our reasons," James answered, looking up at her and adjusting his glasses. The look was as stubborn as ever, but it wasn't the stubborn one she was used to seeing on him. It was . . . harder, somehow.
"Really?"
"They were Sirius's reasons," James answered, glancing back at him. And Lily knew she wasn't getting anything else out of him. Not unless Sirius wanted to tell her, which was unlikely. Lily had taken James away from the possessive little boy in Sirius, which only compounded the idiot teen's distrust of any kind of authority.
Not for the first time, she wondered how exactly James reconciled being Head Boy and backing Sirius up.
"Still," she said slowly, "Madame Pomfrey might have known how to heal from some of those spells - "
"I had to take him home," James repeated.
Before Lily could tell him that what he was saying made absolutely no sense, Sirius reached up to rub his temples. "Prongs, don't make me translate for your girlfriend," he rasped. "I've already lost my voice."
Lily blinked. Sirius had not seemed to be mentally prepared for their conversation.
Then he did something he'd never done before. Sirius Black looked straight at Lily and gave her a clear answer. "I promised my Uncle Alphard on his bloody death bed that if he couldn't be around as family counter-example to Mum for Regulus's teens, I wouldn't just abandon him."
James bit his lip. "Sirius - "
Sirius glanced at him. "I did. 'M gonna kill Malfoy. Then Padfoot's gonna rip Bella's intestines out. Slowly."
Lily wasn't sure what to do. If it had been James, or a girlfriend, she would have dropped everything and wrapped them in a hug. If it had been Remus Lupin, putting a hand on his shoulder, showing she wanted to be there physically, would have been the right thing to do. But Sirius was more aloof than that. Unless they were wrestling, he didn't even touch James.
She settled for sitting on the carpeting in an I'm -not-going-anywhere sort of way. "What did they do?"
Sirius shook his head. "Recruited him."
"Oh."
What else was she supposed to say? She suspected, as much as anyone else, that both of them were Death Eaters. She supposed that with Sirius's family, he was certain.
"Sirius - " James started.
"Don't," Sirius said. "Just don't. You don't. . . ." His voice broke. It wasn't just from overuse. "He's my little brother, okay? He's barely sixteen. Just a kid." He swallowed. "That Bella would - I'm gonna kill her."
"Sirius - " Lily realized that this time, it was her speaking.
"Shut up, Evans." He slumped against the couch and yelped as he hit one of the bandages cuts wrong. "I promised Alphard. Andromeda's married, Andy's farther out of the family circle than I am. And we see each other at school. I guess he thought I could . . . but then Bella got him, and . . . and I can't do the whole family thing. He's the only brother I've got. The last family I had a chance with."
It was the most he'd ever said to Lily in seriousness. And that broken speech hurt. Petunia only didn't like her. Sirius's little brother was standing on the opposite side of a coming storm.
James, on the other hand, seemed to know what to do. "Padfoot," he said. "Sirius? Look at me." He turned towards his best friend, put his hands on Sirius's shoulders and leaned in.
Sirius did anything but meet his eyes.
"I'm your brother," James said slowly. "I'm your brother. And it doesn't have anything to do with anything stupid like blood. Mum and Dad and I . . . we let you in, we didn't ask any stupid questions, we just set an extra place at the table. I'm your brother."
"Not the same," Sirius mumbled, but he put one hand on top of James's.
Lily scooted closer to the boys, so she was leaning against the couch between them. "Sirius. It was his choice. Not yours. Even if you wanted to protect him."
James glanced down at her. Lily wasn't certain if he approved or disapproved.
"I'm your brother," James repeated. "And Lily and I are serious, so she's sort of a sister-in-law. And we know you're not going anywhere, and neither are we, because unlike your shit-for-family, we go both ways. All right?" He lowered his hands so Sirius could pull away towards the arm of the sofa.
"Yeah, Prongs," Sirius mumbled, but he didn't sound like he believed it.
He glanced down at Lily and tried to smile. "Thanks for patching us up and not just knocking your boyfriend out and going back to sleep," he said quietly.
"Any time," Lily answered, and she meant it.
They sat there for most of the night. James eventually slid off the couch and wrapped his arms around her, and they both watched and listened to Sirius in silence. She'd meant to come down and heal them quickly by magic. But for this, the only thing they could do was simply be there, as Sirius struggled to let go of the last of his first family in the arms of his second.
Title: Tired
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Remus/Sirius, James
Wordcount: 1419
Summary: James panics without back-up. Remus is hurt and tired of fighting with Sirius.
Notes/Warnings: The original prompt was "The pain has never been this back before." Another take on the aftermath of the Whomping Willow incident, although the two fics are not mutually exclusive, as I imagine the reconciliation took awhile.
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James has always been the one who never takes any chances. Deep down, Remus has always recognized that James is the responsible one. Wild and devil-may-care and sometimes, when he just doesn't like you, plain mean, but never the reckless one. James is the real, honest, bone-deep responsible, because when his head is out of his arse he looks after people and not consequences. Remus looks after consequences and is jealous of James, because he will always fear the consequences at least as much as he worries about the people.
And because of that, he can't quite bring himself to swear at Prongs while newly human fingers staunch a wound he's not going to be able to explain to Madame Pomfrey.
Still, James is the responsible one. Sirius is the reckless one, the one who wants to watch life break its rein in a few wild moments of freedom, and wasn't there last night, so it should have been safer, right?
Now that the wolf's scrabbling has stopped, James comes hurtling up the steps and into the room with a length of bandage and a wand. Remus kind of wishes he'd had time to put his trousers back on.
James leans down beside Remus and gently pries his hand away from the wound. He winces when he sees the hole in Remus's side, grazing the ribcage. "Merlin, Remus, I'm sorry."
Remus smiles weakly. "Honestly, James, you'd think you'd never had to gore me before."
James glares over the rims of his specs and turns his attention back to the wound. "Shut up."
Has James ever gored him before? Remus can't remember just now, and somewhere in the back of his mind all he can think of is Sirius's bulk headed at him like a battering ram, steering him gently and biting his ruff or his ears when the wolf didn't want to listen. Sirius is the reckless one, and because of that he's the one who never panics. He's the one who drives Remus back into the forest naturally, with nips and play fights and running shoulder to shoulder. James worries that he'll hurt someone, that Remus will never forgive himself, and so if Sirius isn't there he does it all at once, because he knows the wolf can take it.
Remus is sometimes more inclined to agree with James.
James is the responsible one, so there's no doubt his hands are clean, but Remus still refuses to watch and tries not to think about it as James probes the wound. It hurts, but he's used to pain and he's not going to whimper like an injured puppy in front of James.
"Where's Peter?" he asks instead.
"Went to the hospital wing to stall Pomfrey while I fixed this," James says, and grits his teeth. "Stop talking, will you? You're moving."
"You don't have to fix it all," Remus answers. "Break a chair leg, maybe I speared myself with that."
--
His side is killing him. Peter's stalling tactics have always left people suspicious, and Madame Pomfrey isn't entirely satisfied with the broken chair as an explanation for Prongs's horns. Chair legs splinter.
But she lets it go, because she can't think what else it could be, and takes Remus to the hospital wing to give him a potion and lay a slow healing spell on him. She tells him she'll make his excuses to Vector and McGonagall, since it's Arithmancy and Transfiguration he ought to be at today, and tells him to sleep.
So Remus manages as many stairs as he can and collapses into his four-poster, wondering whether he ought to close the curtains or if the pure, exhausting ache of a bad wound will put him to sleep in spite of light or noise.
"Moony?"
Remus puts the pillow over his face and decides to pretend Sirius isn't skipping his Potions class in favor of whatever it is he's doing in their room.
"Moony?" Sirius repeats.
A moment later Sirius's bed creaks as he rises from it and all Remus can think of is No, no, go away, I can't do this, I'm too tired for this, I don't want you to . . . NO. He can't bring himself to say it, though, even as his own bed creaks and he can feel the sudden depression from Sirius's weight.
God, he's tired of this.
"Your shirt's stained, Remus. How bad is it?"
Sirius is on his bed. Remus knows he can't ignore Sirius any longer, not really, although it would be really nice if he could. "I'll live."
The depression in the mattress moves closer, and a moment later Remus can feel Sirius's body heat as his hand lingers by his shoulder. The hair on his arms prickles upwards, and there's a moment where every pore of Remus is screaming for that warmth to be turned into a touch, even as Remus's more sensible side is begging for Sirius to take a sudden and involuntary trip to Timbuktu.
And then he can't stand sitting in Limbo anymore. "Why aren't you in Potions?" Remus asks, as waspishly as he can manage under the circumstances.
The hand doesn't move. Remus doesn't move to knock it away, because his limbs seem suddenly made of lead. "James said he hurt you," Sirius whispers.
It's clear it takes everything Sirius has to say it. It's in the waver of his voice, all hope and fear and barely repressed anger. And Remus hears what goes unsaid, even though he doesn't want to. He shouldn't have had to. I should have been there. I should have protected you.
"I'll be fine," Remus says, but there's a groan in his voice that says they're just words. Even with Madame Pomfrey's pain killers, the pain has never been this bad. James has never lacked backup. "The wolf can take a lot."
The silence this is met with says I should have been there more loudly than any words ever.
Remus really wishes that hand would just move. And finally, it does. Sirius puts it on the bed, and Remus can feel the comforter bunching underneath him as it tightens into a fist around the fabric.
"Better me than a couple sneaking back into the castle after dark," Remus says finally. "Since most people find the full moon romantic and all."
"Remus. . . ." But Sirius doesn't finish the sentence.
Neither of them can do this. This . . . dance. They've been at it for months, ever since Sirius the reckless arse made a few stupid comments to a certain Slytherin that they didn't talk about anymore. Ever since Remus realized just how true it was that Sirius didn't give a rat's arse about the consequences and didn't always think about the people. Ever since Remus who cared about the consequences and James who cared about the people had gently removed him from the most dangerous thing they did.
Remus wishes he would finish the sentence. He's never been able to hold his ground against James or Peter, let alone Sirius, and the fact that Sirius isn't asking him to give way is the only reason he hasn't yet. And Remus can't push, can't ask Sirius to come back, because obviously some part of ole Padfoot doesn't want to. Remus needs to be asked.
But God, if you're out there, he is just so tired.
Slowly he lifts the pillow off of one eye and looks at Sirius. His unruly dark hair halos around his pale face like some kind of inverted Old Testament angel, and his brow is creased with worry. Remus decides not to notice the slight tremor to his lower lip.
It's not asking. So Remus isn't giving. That's just not the way they work.
"I get hurt sometimes, Sirius," he says instead. "It comes with the whole werewolf thing. You could still get to Potions, you know."
Sirius edges a bit nearer, and despite the part that's still screaming No, Sirius, I can't do this anymore, Remus lets out a relieved breath he didn't know he'd taken in when Sirius's hand touches his shoulder again. "Sleeping it off?" he asks softly.
"Mmm," Remus mumbles, because the long night and the bone-deep ache got to him a long time ago.
He closes his eyes, so he feels rather than sees Sirius stretch out beside him, his hand sliding across Remus's chest to pull him closer. They haven't been this close in months.
And if he falls asleep more easily than he would have if Padfoot had just left, he doesn't notice.