“I think about Reggie sometimes,” Sirius says, toying with the cap of his beer bottle.
An empty bottle is already next to his lawn chair. He crosses one leg over the other and sighs as the summer breeze drifts through his hair. His arms and torso are covered in bandages from the mission they went on today.
One bandage, though, covers his newest tattoo: the stars of the constellation Leo.
“Yea?”
James lounges on the second lounge chair, nursing his own bottle. He looks significantly better than Sirius, though it is mostly because of the protection charm Lily had cast at the last minute, saving him from the blast that got Sirius. Both of the boys got a lecture from Alice Longbottom as she patched them up.
Sirius taps his foot against the grassy ground. “On a mission, I came across one of those muggle record shops. They had that old guy? You know wolf-pack-something? His music’s all boring but Moony loves it?”
James chuckles. “You mean Wolfgang Mozart?”
Sirius snaps his fingers. “That guy!” He takes another sip of beer. “I found a record of some band covering his stuff. And the art on the record was real pretty, the kind Reggie likes.”
“Did you buy it?”
“Nah. Had only galleons on me and it was gone when I came back a week later.”
“That sucks.” James reaches for his second beer. “You think he likes muggle music? Like secretly? He’s a teenager even if he’s a momma’s boy. He has to keep some secrets.”
Sirius goes all quiet, staring at the flickering streetlight on the other side of the garden wall. Moths gather near the bulb, craving the drop lights of sun shining through the inky darkness of the night. They crave the light, yet it's their damnation. Do they understand that they fly towards death? Do they care?
“Sirius?”
“He likes drawing.”
“Drawing?”
“Mhm.” A sip. The liquid is bitter down his throat, not quite burning like Fire Whiskey, but it definitely tastes the quality expected of its cheapness. “When he was little, he learned how to draw from Cissa.”
“Lady Malfoy?”
“She was different before she became a Malfoy. She’d take Reggie to the blue sitting room and hand him her inks and brushes. He liked how quiet she was. Or more likely, the fact that the sitting room was far away from Bella’s cackling and shouting.”
Reggie doesn’t like loud noises. It’s one of those facts that is integral to his being like the sun is yellow, the sky is blue, and the grass is green. Those nights covering his ears as their parents shouted or distracting from the weight of the countless conversations at the balls or shielding him from Bella are burned into his memory. Being a big brother is one of those things he never managed to shed from that night he frantically Flooed himself to the Potters and passed out all bloodied in front of their fireplace.
Sirius flexes his hand, remembering Regulus’s much smaller one guided him as the older boy tried to draw a bunny. The younger brother was so exasperated by Sirius’s squiggles and amorphous blobs, whining as he tried to get Sirius to take it Siriusly. Of course, Sirius had known how to draw a bunny— not well, mind you, but well enough— but Regulus liked having one thing over his elder brother and it is the job of an elder brother to nurture the shining light in little eyes.
“Lily got a new sketchbook,” James whispers. “I don’t think she knows that I know though.”
“She couldn’t salvage any of the ones from the house?”
The brunette shakes his head solemnly.
“The fire took it all.”
The Death Eaters took it all. Her parents, her life, her childhood. They had all known there would be costs to fighting and resisting, yet it was entirely different to witness the consequences. The blaze had lit up her red hair in the way James adored, turning her into an ethereal fire nymph of old. Her face was twisted into true anguish, grasping towards the flames as Remus held her back.
Screaming, oh the screaming.
Not Sweet Lily; no, she was silent, as if her throat forgot how to make noise in the shock.
It was the screaming of her parents, voices burned into their memory and bodies etched into the wooden floors as ashes. The boys asked Dumbledore to be able to gather whatever survived the flame once the aurors and muggle firefighters had put it out. Petunia, the banshee, screamed at Peter when she arrived. It had taken Remus and Sirius to keep James from throttling the woman when she dared to shout at Lily.
“I saw her trying to draw one of the squirrels in the garden.”
“Like old times.”
Third year, James and Sirius caught her and Snivellus on the quidditch green as she was sketching a squirrel. Of course, when the two boys had run out and scared the rodent away, she gave them a piece of her mind. All James could focus on was the way her green eyes looked like shining emeralds.
“Like old times,” the brunette agrees.
A year ago, the two of them shared a beer on the top of the astronomy tower. Graduation was a week away and it seemed like their entire life was ahead of them. They talked about grand dreams of joining the war effort and tearing through the Death Eaters and making names for themselves the same way Dumbledore had. There was a life to mold in their image, a world to carve their place in.
“I’m thinking of marrying her.”
Sirius turns to look at him with wide eyes, beer bottle nearly slipping from his hand. “Say that again?”
James smiles, throat closing up.
“I think I’m marrying Evans, Padfoot.”
Watch, Sirius! I’ll marry Evans one day!
Sirius had laughed at him back when they were in First Year. James was not serious about that statement; he loved her in the way school boys loved their first loves, sweet and innocent and ignorant. He had spent those first couple years doing the teenage boy equivalent of a cat bringing its owner a dead bird as a token of affection. She’d been a competition, the only person who didn’t like him. It didn’t help that she, for some unfathomable reason, preferred the company of greasy Snivellus.
At some point, she became more.
Maybe it was the day he’d skipped dinner writing a potion’s essay and she directed him towards a good resource, only to proceed to spend the next hour absolutely tearing into his writing. They debated the merits of that specific ingredient for the next two hours, only for the librarian to kick the two of them out when they were about to agree.
Or maybe it was the time he was practicing quidditch maneuvers in the rain because they lost when he fumbled the ball. Soaking wet and shivering, he had found respite under the stands, only to find her red hair in the corner and face covered by a muggle book she loved. She had offered him a sip of her hot chocolatte as she lectured him for training in the rain when really, it’s an exercise in futility. As he warmed up under her charm, she had talked about the muggle quidditch, footy, and how her sister’s annoying boyfriend was particularly passionate about the sport. She wiped the wet rain from his cheek and her touch felt like heaven.
Little things changed their relationship. A little ‘hi’ and ‘hello’ to study sessions to game nights to cuddling up next to the fireplace to going to Hogsmeade. He fell entirely and irrevocably in love with one Ms. Lily Evans and her fiery heart.
Sirius is hugging him, more like clutching at him. James hadn’t even realized he’d been crying this entire time. They are not tears of sadness, but not entirely tears of joy either.
He had many ideas for how this was going to go. Once, he thought he would be sitting on the couch of the Evans’ home, sweating bullets as he asked Mr. Evans for his blessing. He would get a hug from his father as they went to the family jeweler and had the Lady Potter ring resized for her and discussed the semantics of a cross-cultural wedding. The Potter Manor grounds would be renovated and invitations in the hundreds would be sent at the behest of his mother. Mrs. Evans would attempt to cajole Petunia into attending and at Lily’s behest he would begrudgingly let her attend.
He’s going to marry the girl of his dreams and his father won’t be there to see the man his son has become and his mother won’t see her little boy walk around that fire and become the Lord Potter she had raised him to be. Potter Manor lies occupied by Death Eaters and the portraits of his ancestors will not bear witness to their union, if they even survive still.
James lets go of Sirius, even though his heart wishes to remain in his embrace. He wipes his tears away and smiles. Sirius’s eyes are misty and his pale cheeks glisten under the street light.
I’m so happy for you, Sirius doesn’t say. I’m so proud of you.
He doesn’t say how much he desperately wishes he could marry Moony or how much he fears that every raid James goes on will be his last. He doesn’t ask when they will have the wedding or if McGonagall is going to officiate as James declared in Fifth Year. He doesn’t voice how nineteen is so young to be a married man or a soldier or anything other than a child. He doesn’t scream about how he hasn’t heard from Regulus— baby brother, sweet, sweet, baby brother— in so long that he fears he’s finally gone.
“Congrats, Mate.”
Congratulations for surviving, congratulations for living, congratulations for holding onto the vestiges of happiness in a world where daring to dream about doing things tomorrow is an act of rebellion. Congratulations, Prongs, for moving into the future, into the life they had dreamed of, for being a Gryffindor and seizing the courage to take what you want.
Congratulations, Brother.
Tonight, the two will finish the beers they bought from the muggle store and talk about inane things like that new all women quidditch team that’s been doing well lately or the Weasley’s newest child or the fact that Sirius has finally nailed down the muggle who is selling his old motorbike. They will turn up the radio, having finally learned how to use it after begging Moony, and smile as a familiar song drifts through the warmth of the night.
The next morning, Sirius will return to the flat he shares with Moony and the limbo of a life the two have scraped together and laugh at Moony’s glare when Lily excitedly phones them about the proposal he just happened to neglect to mention. They’ll spend the afternoon wrapped under the covers of their den-home while Regulus Black drowns in cold water, dragged down by Inferi, begging for a brother who will never come for him. Sirius won’t know he’s gone until the boy’s body decomposes to the point of being unrecognizable.
James will kiss Lily sweetly and softly as he puts the golden ring on her finger, the way he’s dreamed of for years. She will gaze up at him with her emerald eyes and resist the urge to hold him there forever, where the demons can’t snatch him away. She will add a sketch of him to her book, where she keeps her parents and estranged sister and Remus and Sirius and Marley and Mary and Alice and a hidden leaf of paper depicting the happier Severus of her youth.
The Death Eaters will march on and the Order will fight back, but today, all is at rest.