Seventeen Again: Owl and Closed RP (James and Sirius)
The tiles covering the floor of the boys' loo were cold, but Sirius was sweating. Balanced on a small shelf above the sink in front of him were a bottle of ink and a small vial of hazy grey potion. One of his hands was curled around a quill and a small piece of parchment, wrinkled at the edges from the perspiration from his fingers. And perched on a nearby ledge was a small tawny owl, waiting for its instructions.
Leaning the parchment up against the wall, Sirius wrote out a short note.
~~~
Prongs,
Can you come to our room and wait for me? I've got a bit of a surprise for you. Use the usual wards and passwords.
Padfoot
~~~
After sending the note off with the owl, Sirius put both hands on the sink and leant forward to stare at his reflection.
He hadn't looked in a mirror during the whole time he was in Azkaban. He happened to have caught sight of his reflection in a moonlit pond on the way to Hogwarts not long after escaping Azkaban and had been completely horrified by what he had seen. The person staring back at him had been a stranger - matted hair, hollow eyes, wrinkled and worn, all bones and angles.
Over the past few years, he had become accustomed to what time and memory had done to his face and to his body, and he had even managed to put some weight back on, fill out his face a bit, bring the life back into his eyes.
But all the changes were still too much for James, only seventeen years old, propelled twenty years into the future against his will, unexposed to the hardships they all had faced after leaving Hogwarts. Of course he had fallen back into Sirius's open arms once they had reunited, but not long thereafter he had begun to melt under the pressure of all the changes. And it was hurting the both of them way too much to do nothing about it.
Sirius glanced over at the vial of potion and then picked it up carefully. It was a de-aging potion, designed to transform his face and body to the way they were when he was seventeen.
Sirius looked at himself in the mirror again. This was his face now. He was used to this. But a part of him, a very large part of him, really wanted to cast it aside, just for a little bit. It wouldn't change his experiences. James and Lily's deaths and Azkaban would always be there - as would the good things, the things Sirius would never want to lose sight of, like Harry. But it would feel so good to take a break from all of that for a bit.
And James needed this. James needed to see his best friend as he remembered him, so the two of them could get past the tension that had built up in their relationship, so that James wouldn't feel uncomfortable when he found himself curled up next to a stranger who was too old and too rundown by James's recollection. With the tension temporarily eliminated, Sirius hoped they could find their old comfortable relationship again, and then Sirius could ease James into accepting the changes and understanding all that he had missed during the years he never had a chance to live.
Sirius let his eyes linger a bit on the wrinkles, the lines, the angles that were now too sharp to be considered handsome any more. His heart was racing, and unconsciously, he kept tapping his heel up and down on the icy tiles. Finally, after a deep breath and one last glance, he brought the vial to his lips and threw back the contents of the vial.
For a few seconds, nothing happened, and then Sirius felt a strange, tight sort of sensation spread throughout his entire body, but especially in his face. It seemed like he didn't have enough air in his lungs. Quickly, he crouched down on the ground, the vial rolling several feet away with a dry, clinking sound. He tried to breathe deeply as the changes took place.
After a couple of minutes, the tightness seemed to even out, and Sirius felt like he could breathe properly again. Gingerly, he stood up, eyes lowered.
His hands. Those were the first thing he noticed. His hands looked soft. The callouses were gone, and the veins no longer stuck out as much as they had before. And his skin tone was deeper, not as pale as it had been a moment ago.
Then, slowly and deliberately, he raised his eyes and looked in the mirror.
For a moment, he felt like his heart had stopped. The person staring back at him was both familiar and completely foreign. It was like seeing someone he had known a long time ago, someone he had forgotten about, someone he had given up for dead. In many ways, it was how he had felt when he had first seen James in the Sorting Room.
Shakily, Sirius raised his hands to his face and touched his cheeks. The skin was smooth and covered the bones in soft curves. Through his fingers, he looked at his eyes.
His eyes. They were no longer hollow, empty, deadened - something that Sirius had been able to soften somewhat with smiles and good moods, but not eliminate completely. They were still intense, always had been, but they looked alive, white around the edges, grey irises, hesitant, but lively.
Sirius removed his hands and stared for several more minutes.
Then, after taking a deep breath, he walked out of the loo and towards the room he shared with James. Even walking felt different. He was stronger, more in control. Still, as he strode down the corridor, he kept his head tilted downward, partly because he didn't want to run into anyone he knew just yet and partly because he felt a bit self-conscious, as if he had done something he shouldn't have. And he also worried about how James might react. What if it was one more wrong step with James? It was so hard for Sirius to tell for sure.
And then Sirius arrived outside his and James's room. After breaking the wards and muttering the proper passwords, he opened the door a crack - just enough for him to get through - and then closed it behind himself.
"Prongs? You here?"
((Forward dated to after Sirius gets the de-aging potion))