Chapter 1
Maybe, Sirius would lament later on, things would’ve been different if he hadn’t forgotten the Marauders Map on his bedside table. Perhaps, things wouldn’t have played out the way they had, if he’d bothered to check it, just in case Snivellus was lurking around a corner somewhere.
If only he’d just been more aware of his surroundings, instead of bouncing around carefree, careless of the potential consequences of his distraction. Maybe, he wouldn’t be in this situation right now, if he had paid more attention.
But if he was being fair to himself, he had to admit that no one in their wildest dreams, could’ve predicted the outcome of his unconcerned nonchalance. Not even that loon from Ravenclaw, Xenophillius Lovegood, could’ve imagined it.
It all happened so quickly that even Remus’ wolf-instincts didn’t have time to blare out a warning.
The one moment the Marauders and Lily were happily making their way from the Tower to dinner in the Great Hall, Sirius good-naturedly teasing Peter about the blonde that he’d been sneaking around with that previous Friday.
The next, they were blinded by an abnormally bright light and the white-washed world had started to spin and swirl around them uncontrollably. Not even half a second later Sirius landed harshly on a smooth, flat surface. He’d never even realised his feet had left the ground.
Sirius creaked open his eyes and blinked multiple times in an attempt to clear his vision, before his pounding head finally recognised the white dots above him, scattered across deep blue like fairy lights, as stars in the night sky.
Remus let out a low, pained noise from his left. Sirius sat up, sore back protesting the movement.
A few feet away, Lily, Peter and James were untangling their limbs from - of all people - Snape’s.
Sirius raised a hand to massage his hurt shoulder and squinted his eyes as he looked around, caught somewhere between surprise and disorientation. He was pretty sure he wasn’t on Hogwarts grounds anymore, but wherever he was, he didn’t recall ever visiting this dreary place before. It looked like a sort of graveyard, in the height of summer. Every plant in the vicinity was crispy dry and wilted and the sweltering heat of the night air was somewhat suffocating.
At the realisation that he’d somehow Apparated away from Hogwarts to a graveyard of all places - and wasn’t that ominous - Sirius looked down and found that he was sitting on top of a grave. Talk about disrespect.
He scrambled to get off, almost toppling onto the path in his haste, before murmuring a rough apology to whoever’s final resting place he’d just accidentally disturbed.
Behind him, James, who had awful vision at the best of times but was practically useless in the dark, was calling out his and Remus’ names. He sounded somewhat panicked.
Remus quickly reassured their bespectacled friend of the fact that he was there and alright, but when Sirius opened his mouth to do the same, no sound came out. His eyes were caught on the names inscribed on the gravestone of the grave he’d just landed upon. They were… unnervingly and impossibly familiar.
“Sirius?! You okay?”
Sirius cleared his throat, but the word still came out as a low whine. “Prongs…”
The disoriented group jumped at Sirius’ call. “Padfoot,” began James, sounding relieved. “What…” he paused when he saw what had left Sirius so shaken.
He approached the headstone with his name on it in an almost curious manner. He didn’t seem scared or upset, just genuinely shocked. He reached out a hand and brushed the cold stone. He recoiled, as if he’d been expecting the stone to vanish at the touch. As if he’d been expecting it to be an illusion.
“Uh, Lils?” He called, looking unnerved for the first time. “Lily-Flower, I… I think…”
Lily, Remus and Peter all made their way to Sirius and James’ sides, who were staring numbly at the stone predicting James and Lily’s untimely death.
Lily let out an alarmed gasp. Remus stumbled back, hands flying to his chest as if wanting to claw out his stuttering heart and Peter’s eyes widened in a way that would be comical, had they been in any other situation.
Snape too, had paled quite dramatically, at the sight of the headstone bearing Lily and James’ names.
He stumbled back in the gravel, when Lily whirled around to look at him, venomous green eyes spitting fire. “What did you do?” She demanded, loudly. Too loud, for a place where spirits were supposed to rest in peace.
Snape opened and closed his mouth multiple times without saying anything. Any words he came up with seemed to die in his throat, as his dark eyes flitted from Lily’s name etched into the pale marble, to the live and livid girl in front of him.
“Answer her!” Demanded James, balling his fits and narrowing his eyes on his stumbling arch-nemesis. “What did you do, you miserable mother fucker!”
“I…” stuttered Snape. “It was a spell. I only wanted to show you ,” he looked earnestly at Lily, if not a little abashed. “how awful your future would be with him .”
James turned shades of red and hot white that Sirius had never even seen on human skin before. He turned around to exchange glances with Remus and Peter, but they were both still staring at the headstone in stunned silence.
“How dare you!” Began Lily, furious tears welling up in her signature green eyes. “We are not friends and it is my choice who-”
“Snape.” Interrupted Remus with an unusually quiet voice, without taking his eyes off of the white marble in front of them. His words came out shaky enough to make Lily deflate, cutting off her rant before she’d even worked up to full steam. “Snape, please tell me you messed it up. Please tell me you meant to show us a nightmarish vision just to scare Lily off.”
At Snape’s telling silence, the young werewolf turned around, achingly slowly, amber eyes lighting up gold in the gloomy darkness of the graveyard. “Tell me,” he pressed on, in a deeper, rougher voice. “this isn’t what happens.”
Snape wordlessly opened and closed his mouth once more, before hanging his head in defeat. “I can’t.”
“Do you mean to tell me,” Sirius pressed, in a dangerously light voice. “you didn’t try to scare Lily off by lying and showing her she’ll be dead at twenty-one? That this our actual future?”
Tense silence settled over the graveyard as five souls waited anxiously for an answer, while a sixth wished the hard ground would swallow him up.
“It’s our real future.” Snape rasped out eventually. “But… the spell was only supposed to show Lily for just a second what life would be like, I didn’t mean to bring us all here for real.”
The silence that followed that statement might’ve been even tenser than the one preceding it.
Then James sniffed suspiciously and he turned to embrace his girlfriend, burying his red-rimmed eyes in her flaming red hair. Lily clung to him just as desperately. She didn’t cry, but the look in her eyes was haunted.
Sirius didn’t even think, before stepping forward and decking Snape right in the face. He felt a sliver of satisfaction as he heard the bone in the bastard’s nose crack, but it died just as rapidly when Snape didn’t even defend himself. He just took it, every line of his body arched in guilt.
Sirius stepped back, leaving the teen in the yellowy grass. He turned to his best friend, still hugging his equally heartbroken girlfriend and his other two friends, whose expressions were ranging from deeply disturbed to sad and pensive.
“You know,” said Remus softly, reaching out a hand and squeezing Sirius’ shoulder in a half-arsed attempt at comfort. “This is an opportunity. We now know that something happens to the Potters in 1981. All we have to do is figure out what and figure out a way home and then we can prevent it from happening.”
Sirius, James, Peter and even Snape perked up at this, but Lily just shook her head sadly. “Messing with the timeline is dangerous.” She scolded thickly. “We’d create a paradox. We’d stop ourselves from dying in,” her eyes dipped down. “October 1981, because we saw that date on this headstone. But because we changed it, the headstone was never there, so we never saw it and so we never saved ourselves, but then it was there again because we didn’t save ourselves and so on…”
The group wilted in despair at her logic, her eternally unfailing logic. Sirius wished Lily could be wrong for once. Just this one time. Just this once. He didn’t want his best friend, his brother, to die. He didn’t think he could bare losing James and he couldn’t handle losing Lily, whom he’d come to love as a sister since she started dating Prongs, either.
Remus nodded reluctantly. “You’re right. And for all we know, it’s possible we’ve seen another date in the past and somehow stopped that from happening, so now the headstone is inscribed with a different date. Maybe we’re stuck in a loop. Maybe we’ve already prolonged the inevitable numerous times.”
“We’ll continue to prolong it though, right?” Sirius put in, voice edging a little too close to desperate for his own liking. “Fuck paradoxes and inevitability. We’re not standing by and watching James and Lily die. Right ?”
James pulled Lily closer and Remus’ hand on Sirius shoulder tightened minutely. Sirius found himself shivering, despite the warmth of the night.
“Whether we’re going to change it or not,” James began softly. “I do want to know what happened.”
“What I want to know is how far into the future we actually are.” Lily said. “Whether our deaths are fresh here, or if we can walk around without being recognised.”
“I want to know how to get home.” Peter admitted.
James softened and he walked over to put an arm around his smallest friend. “Me too. We’ll find a way home, Wormtail.” He promised. “Everything will be alright.”
Sirius didn’t understand how he could say that, standing only six feet above his very own bones, but he willed himself to believe it. “Okay, so what’s the plan?”
“We need to reach out to someone.” Said Snape, speaking up for the first time without being spoken to. “Someone who can tell us where and when we are and what happened to Lily and Potter. Someone who can help us find a way home.”
“Okay, that makes sense.” Said James, though he looked pained admitting it. “Who?”
“I would say Dumbledore,” Lily began hesitantly. “but Dumbledore is already quite old in our time, so…”
“So who knows if he’s still alive.” Remus finished, gloomily.
“Why don’t we contact one of us?” Peter piped up. When everyone turned to look at him, he flushed. “I… I mean…” he steeled himself and defended his idea. “Who is more trustworthy than our future selves?”
James granted his friend an enthusiastic smile. “Right you are, Wormy!”
Peter flushed, pleased with the praise.
“Well we’re not calling you ,” sneered Snape, causing Peter’s face to fall. “We need someone competent.”
Sirius growled at Snape, while Lily eyed her ex-friend disapprovingly. “Well we’re not calling you either,” she snapped. “we need someone on the right side of the war, not a Death Eater.”
It was Snape’s turn to flush, but he didn’t deny her accusation. Everyone present knew that Snape was planning to join Voldemort’s ranks as soon as he graduated Hogwarts, so Lily was probably not wrong about his older self’s alliances.
Still, he didn’t know when to shut the fuck up. “Well, clearly it’s a full moon,” he spat, gesturing at the night sky. “so calling your pet werewolf isn’t a great idea either.”
Remus had to physically hold Sirius back from punching the offending Slytherin in the throat.
“and that leaves the most moronic, irresponsible, aggressive idiot of the group.” Snape said sardonically, eying Sirius in obvious dislike. “excuse me, if I don’t trust that man with my life.”
“You’ll have to deal with it! It’s probably your own fault that future James and Lily are no longer an option anyway, you filthy Death Eater scum!” Spat Sirius, still struggling against Remus’ stronger grasp.
Snape flinched, as if he’d been slapped. “I would never hurt Lily.”
“What was your motivation of bringing us here, if it wasn’t to break my heart?” The girl in question asked, eyes narrowed sceptically.
“I was trying to protect you. I was trying to make you see that you’re making a stupid mistake, being with Potter.”
“It’s my mistake to make.” Lily whispered, voice trembling with anger or withheld tears, Sirius didn’t know. “ My mistake.” She grabbed James’ hand and squeezed, before looking back at her name carved into the marble headstone. “And I’d make it again and again, even knowing how it ends.”
Nobody knew what to say to that, least of all Snape, who turned away as a teary-eyed James kissed Lily on her forehead.
Remus cleared his throat. “So we’re all agreed? We’re calling Sirius?” At the silent nods and lack of protest from Snape, he brandished his wand. “ Expecto Patronum .” A beautiful white wolf appeared, waiting for further instruction. “Go to Sirius Black and tell him to come to Lily and James’ grave as soon as possible. It’s really, really important. Go.”
The wolf tilted its head in confusion, but dutifully took two steps, before relaying the message to Sirius, whose lips quirked up when Remus sighed fondly. “I mean the older Sirius Black, Moony.”
But the wolf kept on circling the graveyard, looking confused, as if he weren’t sure what Remus meant. Remus’ amused smile turned into a frown of bemusement. “What’s wrong with you?” He asked his pearly creation, shooing it away. “Go on, find the older Sirius Black and tell him we need his help. Quickly.”
But the wolf simply shrugged helplessly and continued pacing back and forth aimlessly. “I don’t…” Lily spoke softly, eyes suddenly watery. “I don’t think it knows where to go.” The wolf nodded, before suddenly fading out existence as Remus felt all happiness evaporate at her words.
“H-how is that possible?” James asked, nervously. “That’s not how Patronusses work, right? They always know where to find someone. Even when they’re under anti-detection and privacy charms and everything.”
Remus had gone very pale next to Sirius and Sirius felt how rigid he was, all of a sudden. He glanced up at him, his stomach sinking when he saw the agony on his friend’s face. “Moony?”
“I can think of only one reason a Patronus wouldn’t be able to track someone down.” Remus said, amber eyes shimmering in such sadness that it made Sirius’ heart crack a little. “Patronusses can’t be received if the recipient is… dead.”
Damn. Sirius didn’t know how to feel about that piece of information. He’d known he was going to fight in the war and he’d known that that was dangerous and he’d considered the possibility of dying young. He’d accepted that he’d probably not pass away peacefully in his sleep, so yes, thinking of his own death wasn’t a foreign thing for him.
But bloody hell, was it different considering such a thing and knowing it. Still, Sirius thought as he stared at the shocked and pitying faces of the people around him, maybe it was better this way. If James and Lily were dead, then he didn’t want to live anyway. Didn’t mean he wasn’t a bit scared, of whatever came next. He supposed that was natural.
“Hey,” James was suddenly right in front of him, engulfing him in a hug. “fuck paradoxes and inevitability, right?” he parroted Sirius’ earlier words back to him. “we’re going to save your sorry arse. We’re going to save all of our lives.”
Sirius relaxed into James’ hold, resting his head against his best mate’s shoulder. “Sure.” He said, forcefully casual and cheery. “Sure we will.”
Snape used their momentary distraction, by casting his own Patronus and sending it off to ‘Older Severus Snape.’ As irrefutable proof of how unfair life is, his ghostly white doe-Patronus shot off without any trouble, meaning that the Death Eater bastard was still alive.
“Hey!” Protested Sirius from over James’ shoulder, glaring at the Slytherin. “We agreed to not trust any version of you, so what the hell do you think you’re doing?”
Snape glared right back. “The choice was between me and Pettigrew . No matter how much you hate me, you have to admit that there’s only one of us that could possibly help us get home.”
“There’s also only one of us that is a raging psychopath.” Said Peter scathingly. “and only one of us whose fault it is that we’re stuck here in the first place.”
If Sirius hadn’t been clinging to his best friend, whose grave was just a stone throw away, after just receiving the news that he himself was dead too, he would’ve cheered for Pete.
Snape slumped at the latter accusation, but his glare didn’t falter. “I just wanted to know whether I was still alive.” He admitted. “And I needed someone to protect me from your wraths. Merlin knows any adult Marauder wouldn’t.”
The deed was done, and though nobody except Snape was happy about it, they had no choice but to settle in to wait for Adult Snape to show up. Hopefully the man had gone through some major character development, but Sirius wasn’t optimistic.
“If he kills us,” he whispered menacingly to Snape, before plopping down next to his friends on the other side of the path. “I’ll haunt you for the rest of your miserable little excuse of a life.”
Snape didn’t seem impressed. “At least I am alive.” His own wince indicated that he too realized that that was a low-blow, even for him.
They sat waiting in a quiet silence for maybe seven minutes before a luminous, silvery doe appeared. It spoke with the deep, drawling voice of an adult man, very unlike and alike to their Snape’s in a way that Sirius couldn’t describe. “I am not walking into any trap this easily. If you are truly my younger self, you’ll know where we grew up and where we liked to go on summer nights. Meet me there. I’ll be waiting for fifteen minutes. No more, no less.”
Snape stood, dusting off his hands as the doe vanished. “Well, c’mon then.”
“You know what he means?” Inquired James, as he helped Sirius and then Lily up.
Snape raised one scathing eyebrow. “I am him. Of course I know what he means.”
James held up his hands in mock-surrender, before turning around and helping Remus and Peter to their feet too. “So, you’re going to tell us, or will you side along-Apparate us? I’d be honestly impressed if you can take five people with you.”
“I can take Black and Pettigrew and that’s enough. Lily can take you and the werewolf, I’ve taken her there before.”
“We used to go there to stargaze, right?” Lily checked with Snape. “The place with the tree branch that almost killed Tuney?”
James mimed throwing up at the idea of Lily and Snape stargazing together. Sirius had to admit that image left him a bit queasy too, but not as much as the prospect of having to trust Snape to Apparate him successfully.
Reluctantly, he joined Snape, eyeing him mistrustfully. “Don’t you dare Splinch us.” He warned.
“Your faith in my abilities is astounding, Black.” Drawled Snape, sarcastically. “Trust me, my mother taught me how to Apparate years before we were allowed to start the classes.”
“I trust your abilities.” Sirius said sourly. “I just don’t trust you to not purposefully do me in.”
Snape’s fingers wound around Sirius’ wrist, hold deliberately tighter than necessary. He didn’t even deign Sirius’ slight of his character worthy of an answer. Once he had a proper hold on Peter too, he closed his eyes, brow furrowing in concentration.
For a moment nothing happened and Sirius was just opening his mouth to taunt Snape’s apparently overestimated abilities, when suddenly he felt a sharp tug behind his navel and they popped away.