Not Inevitable

Chapter 3: When the Future Falls Apart

James doesn’t know what time it is. He knows he and his friends came to the room of requirement at midnight. He knows that he stood there and watched his entire life flash before his eyes. Although, upon second thought, it was definitely more than a flash. It was a series of flashes. A very long series of flashes.

Not long enough though.

James is going to be dead in five years. James’s son is going to be dead in twenty. The son he has with Lily Evans, the son he orphans with Lily Evans. Lily Evans who he fell in love with at eleven years old. Lily Evans who he has just recently become friends with. Lily Evans about whom he just recently realized is better as his friend than anything else. Lily Evans who he loves, but isn’t in love with.

At least I go first. He thinks, the most selfish thing he may ever think. He’s not sure how he survived watching it all play out in the pensieve, he knows he wouldn’t be able to live through it. He’s not entirely sure he’s living through it now. James hasn’t moved from his place on the floor. He doesn’t know how long he’s been there. He knows it’s only been a few minutes since he finally ran out of tears.  No one else has moved either, though, so James continues to lay there and breathe. Listening to nine other people, nine other children, breathe. Nine other children who would all be dead soon.

James listens to the heart beating in the chest under his head and tries to keep from panicking. He doesn’t even know whose heart it is. Not that it matters. It’s beating. The chest is breathing. What more could he ask for?

James suddenly feels cool air on his hand. The warmth that was there a second ago, the hand he was holding just a second ago, is gone. James sits up so fast his head spins.

“Sirius!” he yells at the retreating head of black hair. He’s gone before James can make it to his feet, Remus close behind him.

The rest of the kids are moving now too, disentangling their limbs, wiping snot from their noses. James looks down to Peter and Lily. Peter’s lip is trembling and he looks like he’s fighting not to cry. Lily won’t meet his eyes, looking down at where she’s clutching her hands in her lap instead.

“Okay,” he whispers, running a hand through his hair and straightening his glasses. “Okay. We’re gonna–” He doesn’t know. He starts breathing too fast again. “We’re gonna go find Sirius, yeah?” He looks at Peter who nods and stands. They take a few steps towards the door, but pause when they realize Lily isn’t behind them. She hasn’t moved from her spot on the floor.

Peter steps back towards her and James’s heart nearly pounds out of his chest.

He crouches down and very gently takes her hands, which are still the focus of her gaze. Peter ducks his head a little lower while simultaneously raising their hands until he’s holding them just below his eyes. Her eyes follow the motion.

“You can come with us, Lily,” he murmurs. She doesn’t react. “Lily. Please come with us?” Peter’s voice cracks and he loses his battle with his tears. That seems to get through to her, though she doesn’t snap out of her trance, really. She nods though, and lets Peter pull her to her feet.

As soon as she’s up, she can’t seem to get out of the room fast enough. She runs out the door, pulling Peter with her, leaving James alone.

Not alone. The five Slytherins haven’t made their way to their feet yet. James looks to Regulus. He has tears in his gray eyes, threatening to spill over and add to the tear tracks already staining his face. He looks so young.

“We–” James stops. We. Would it be a ‘we’? He has no idea what his friends are going to want to do, what they’re going to be capable of doing, after this. He has no right to make promises on their behalf. Regulus’s tears spill over in James’s silence, but he doesn’t make a sound. “I’ll come back. Maybe not tonight, but I’ll come back, or I’ll find you, and we’ll talk, okay?” James pleads. Regulus gives a tiny nod and then James runs to follow his friends.

James climbs through the portrait hole and spots his friends huddled on the floor of the common room in front of the fire. Five kids ran through the halls after hours with no invisibility cloak and no Marauder’s Map and none of them were even close to being caught. They got lucky. Or maybe that’s just the universe trying to balance out killing them all off before they even get a chance to live.

James moves towards them and is about to join them on the floor when Sirius shoots up instead and crushes him in a hug. James loves him for it. He can feel the other boy shaking, but shaking equals breathing equals living, so James is nothing but grateful. He squeezes Sirius even harder and takes a really exaggerated breath, holding it for a few seconds, then blowing it back out. He does it again, with another squeeze. Breathe with me, Sirius, he demands. Sirius squeezes back. I’m fucking trying, you prick. James breathes again. They stand like that for six more breaths. On the seventh, rather than breathing into his shoulder as he has been, Sirius blows right into his ear. I’m good now. I love you.

James smiles at Sirius and turns to look at the rest of their little group. “Alright. Are we talking this out now or are we going to try to sleep and talk about it tomorrow?” None of the marauders answer. James is usually the one to decide when they talk about things. Remus and Sirius are both too stubborn and Peter doesn’t like confrontation. But James doesn’t know what’s best for them, not this time.

Thank God for Lily Evans. “Oh we’re doing this now,” She says. She’s back to her usual self, or closer to it than she was five minutes ago anyways. She still won’t look at him. She’s not actually looking at any of them, not in the eyes at least. But she doesn’t even turn to look in James’s direction. “One and done. Let’s not drag this out any longer than absolutely necessary.”

All four boys let out a breath of relief.

“Okay,” Remus starts. “So the first bits were obvious. They already happened. Nothing we can do about that, even if we wanted to.”

“Even if we wanted to?” Sirius exclaims. “Of course we want to! We all fucking die, Moony, and not of old age!”

“I know that, Pads,” Remus says in his professor voice, like he uses when he helps the younger years with their homework. “But in the grand scheme of things, ya know, in terms of the war and the fate of the wizarding world, we won in that vision. Voldemort died. It took two generations, but he died. If we do nothing, change nothing, he dies. We don’t know what happens if we try to avoid the things we saw.” He looks away from Sirius. “It’s probably a moot point though, “ he adds, with a sharp edge to his voice now. “Now that we’ve seen that, there’s no way we don’t change something, even if it’s just accidentally.”

“Good!” Sirius yells. James sighs. He really doesn’t want to deal with a Sirius-explosion right now. But he also knows better than to think it wouldn’t happen.  Sirius lashes out when he’s scared. “Because there’s something I want to change!” He shoves his finger into Peter’s face. “I want to change that I ever trusted a fucking rat!”

Sirius gets in a good shove at Peter, sending him to the ground, before Remus is pulling him backwards and James is stepping between them and helping Peter back to his feet

“He killed you!” Sirius is vibrating in Remus’s arms and he’s screaming at the top of his lungs. “He killed you and you’re helping him up–”

“We don’t know that!” James yells back, turning to face him

“He betrayed you! He–” Sirius’s words are muffled by Remus clamping his hand over his mouth.

“If you don’t lower your voice,” Remus says, “You’re going to wake up the entire house.” Sirius tries to yell a few more things before his mouth catches up with his brain, which recognizes that Remus is right. Once he stops talking, Remus removes his hand, but doesn’t let him go. Remus always was the smart one, James thinks.

“We don’t know that,” James says again, both hands up in front of him. “We don’t have all the information. We saw you suggest Peter as the secret keeper.  We didn’t see him accept. And even if he did, we didn’t see him give us up. We don’t even really understand what that spell was. We’re missing a lot of pieces to this puzzle, Pads. Don’t tear us apart over this.” James swallows. He probably shouldn’t say the next thing he thinks. But he does, because it’s true. “Not when we don’t know how long we have left to be with each other.”

Tears fall down both Sirius and Peter’s cheeks. James grabs Peter’s hand and rubs his thumb in small circles. Remus maneuvers Sirius so that he’s tucked under his arm.

Sirius nods. “Yeah. Okay Prongs.” James knows that’s not the end of this particular conversation. But at least there’s no longer the threat of murder hanging in the air.

“Okay, now that you’ve got that out of your systems, let’s maybe go chronologically instead?” Lily suggests, taking a seat in an armchair “Starting after the stuff that already happened. The first new thing was us joining the Order.”

“No,” James and Sirius interrupt at the same time. They look at each other. Well if you know it too, I’m not the one who’s gonna say it, Sirius tells him, flopping down onto the couch and pulling Remus with him. James rolls his eyes. Of course you’re not. He and Peter join Lily in the two armchairs between hers and the couch. James wisely takes the one closer to the couch, maintaining his buffer between Pete and Sirius.

“The first thing was the dark marks. They don’t have them yet,” James explains. Lily raises an eyebrow in question, looking at Sirius instead of him. “They all rolled up their sleeves after seeing that. And even if they hadn’t, they all looked too scared to already have them,” James answers.

He remembers the way Regulus’s eyes had widened at the image of himself. He wasn’t scared, he was terrified. But James knew that’s always what would happen. Regulus wouldn’t go against his family, as much as he might want to. That’s what James had thought anyway, ever since their fight last spring, before they left for summer break. But Regulus had asked for his help, asked for his brother's help, albeit indirectly. Regulus sought James out to tell him he wanted help. And when James showed up in the room of requirement with his friends, part of what he said was that he didn’t want to follow Voldemort. That had to mean something, right?

“Well there’s nothing we can do about them anyways,” Lily states. “They’ll either get the marks or they won’t. We don’t have control over that. Moving on: we join the Order. That wasn’t really too shocking. I mean, that’s the plan right? Or it was 2 hours ago anyway. Then it was–”

“Evan,” Peter says. They all fall silent.

“And Regulus,” Remus whispers. Sirius flinches, then burrows further under Remus’s arm.

“And Dorcas,” Lily continues.

“Okay, maybe talking about it isn’t going to do us any good at all!” James says. “We all die. The end.”

“Maybe,” Remus concedes. “But we should probably talk about at least one other thing.” He takes a nervous breath and holds Sirius tighter. Not like he’s keeping Sirius from flying off the rails again, more like he just needs to feel the other boy in his grip. “Your son.”

Remus looks at James. James looks at Sirius, who seems to be trying to escape by melting into Remus’s side. James looks at Peter, who is staring at the floor. James looks at Lily, who is looking at him for the first time in what feels like forever. He doesn’t move. He doesn’t speak. In his peripheral, he sees Remus turn to look at Lily instead. James stares into her eyes, the same eyes that she passes on to her son– their son– and can see the gears turning in her head.

“What’s there to say?” She says, turning to face Remus. “If we’re not going to talk about how Sirius ends up in Azkaban, or why Peter strangles himself, or how you snap your wand and leave my son in an abusive house, then we’re not going to talk about this.”

The four marauders are frozen as she stands up and marches towards the stairs to the girls’ dormitories. She stops with her foot on the bottom step. James can see her shoulders shaking, and he can see her trying to hide it.

“It’s okay, Lils,” James says softly, sweetly, calmly– trying to put as much warmth and trust and safety into his tone as he possibly can. “You can bunk with us.” She turns to look at him, tears welling up in her green eyes, and gives him a small smile. James holds out his hand. “There will be plenty of empty beds,” he adds, trying to lighten the mood. “We tend to share.” He wiggles his eyebrows at her. She lets out a small chuckle and rolls her eyes fondly as she walks back towards him.

Remus stands up, pulling Sirius along with him. He holds out his other hand to Peter. Sirius doesn’t seem thrilled about it, but it’s also clear he will allow it to happen. Most of the tension in Peter’s body melts away as he takes Remus’s hand and walks up to their dorm.

Lily puts her hand in his and starts following the trio. James does not, forcing her to stop walking or let go. She stops walking. James runs his free hand through his hair, a little bit embarrassed now.

“Um,” he starts. “I wasn’t actually kidding. Well, I mean, I was kidding about the innuendo. But we really do sleep together a lot. Not like sleep together sleep together, it’s not weird. Well. Maybe it’s a little abnormal. But we’ve been doing it since first year. Not in a weird way though. In a ‘you’re here and I’m here and we’re safe’ way. It’s more of like, staying grounded in reality.” James cuts himself off, realizing that he’s rambling as he sees amusement flicker behind Lily’s eyes. James reaches for his hair again.

“Anyways. What I meant to say was that there really will be empty beds up there, if you want. But you also don’t have to be alone, if you don’t want to be. It really wouldn’t be any different with five than it is with four.” By the time James finally manages to shut up, he’s mumbling. That might be the most embarrassing thing he’s ever said in front of Lily. And he once serenaded her in the middle of the Great Hall, to which she responded by dumping pumpkin juice all over his head. But that wasn’t private. Maybe it should have been. Most people woo their crushes a little less publically, but their relationship had always been like that, at the time. This is different. This is something that has never been publicized, something that was just the marauders.

But Lily– kind, fearless, wonderful Lily– just tugs him towards the stairs with a soft smile.

When they reach James’s dorm, his three best friends have already enlarged James’s bed, just slightly– they used to all fit without the spell, but they all had growth spurts between fourth and fifth year– and gotten underneath his covers. Lily walks straight to them, James in tow, and crawls under the blankets.

James wakes up the next morning with Lily’s cold nose pressing into his neck and Sirius’s hair in his mouth. Not a bad start to the day. Or it would be if he didn’t also wake up with puffy eyes, more exhausted than when he went to bed.

He turns his head to spit out Sirius’s hair and sees that Remus is also awake, the fingers on one hand still twined with Sirius’s and the others brushing through Peter’s hair.

“How are you doing?” Remus whispers over their friends’ heads. James shrugs, then winces when he feels the movement shift Lily in her sleep. “Sorry,” he whispers, more of a reflex than anything.

“S’okay,” she replies. “I was already awake, just didn't want to be.”

“Yeah that’s fair,” James replies. Remus sighs.

“Well, not to ruin the mood, but since the brains of this operation are both awake, can you two figure out what we do now?” James asks. He tries to say it like a joke, but by the end of the sentence, he just sounds tired.

“We’re gonna try Regulus’s plan,” Lily says, moving her face out from his neck and laying her head on his chest instead as she looks at Remus. “Right?”

“Yeah,” Remus sighs. “Desperate times call for desperate measures and all that.”

“He’s not that bad,” James says. “I believed him when he talked about Voldemort, he knows he’s a bad person. And I never thought I’d say it, but it turns out Dumbledore kind of sucks too. He did leave Sirius and Regulus in that house. My parents offered to look out for them, both of them, in our second year. And everybody knows the minister of magic will do anything Dumbledore says. He could have gotten them out if he wanted to, he just didn’t want to. And he’s not going to stop. He might not be the one pointing the wand, but he’s gonna kill–” James cuts himself off before he says Harry’s name. He feels Lily shudder against him, knowing she heard the unspoken end of his sentence.

“So Regulus can’t be that bad,” James finishes. “Not if he’s trying to be better than them.”

Remus gives him a look he can’t decipher, before looking over at the clock on James’s bedside table. “Shit. We’re late,” he mutters. “Do we wake them up so they don’t miss lessons or do we let them sleep because last night was shit?”

“You wake them up,” Lily says. “We’re sticking together for the foreseeable future, and I’m not missing lessons.”

“You say that,” James retorts, “Because you’re not going to be the one to actually wake them up. You have no idea what you’re about to unleash on us.”

“I live with Marlene McKinnon, I think I’ll survive,” Lily shoots back, flicking his ear. “Come on now, boys. Let’s get a move on.” She rolls off the bed and walks towards their bathroom. Neither James nor Remus make a move to wake their friends. “Cowards,” she mutters before drawing in a big breath and shouting at the top of her voice “Oi! We’re late!” and dashing inside the bathroom to escape the wrath of Peter Pettigrew and Sirius Black.

She really is amazing, James thinks as Sirius sends a pillow straight into his face.

By the time the five Gryffindors make it down to breakfast the bits of normalcy they managed to conjure up that morning have disappeared. They head for their spots at the table without any enthusiasm, despite it being the second to last Friday before the winter holidays and despite them being the marauders– who always have more energy than anybody else in the room. That precedent is not going to be fun to compete with today, James thinks.

As soon as their butts hit the benches, the rest of their friends start asking questions.

“Are you guys alright?” Marlene asks softly at the same time Mary loudly asks, “What the hell happened to you lot?”

“We’re having a bad day,” Remus replies icily.

“Already?” Marlene says under Mary’s “All five of you?”

“Yes.”

The five of them don’t say another word, and the surrounding Gryffindors don’t take long to get the hint and stop asking questions. Four out of five of them manage to get something in their stomachs. James wraps a couple slices of toast in a napkin and puts the bundle in his pocket to force Sirius to eat during History of Magic.

A group of third years at the Hufflepuff table  gather their books and head for doors. It’s time to go already? James thinks. Shit! He panics and swings his gaze to Regulus’s spot at the Slytherin table. He’s looking at his plate, which seems untouched. Evan sees him though, and gently taps his elbow to Regulus’s. The dark haired boy jolts upright, looking at Evan with panic in his eyes. His other three friends straighten, trying to find the danger Regulus sees. Evan moves his hands slightly, in a gesture reminiscent of surrender, and nods his head in James’s direction.

Regulus’s gray eyes snap to James’s face immediately. His eyes are wide, still panicking. When did he get so young?James wonders sadly. He holds his gaze, trying to project safety in his direction. Regulus’s eyes get smaller by a fraction. James looks at Regulus, then very pointedly looks at the doors of the Great Hall, then back to Regulus. Meet me in the hall? Regulus nods.

James stands quickly and gathers his books, grabbing some more toast and leaning in to tell his friends, “I’ll meet you in History, I’m going to talk to him.” Remus and Lily nod. Peter and Sirius look confused so James rolls his eyes back over to Regulus, who is also gathering his books. James doesn’t wait for their response.

In the hallway, James turns the handle of the first door he finds– a broom closet– and hurries inside. He shuts the door most of the way, waiting for Regulus’s black curls to appear on the other side. It takes less than a minute.

“Reg!” he whispers, knowing better than to reach out and grab him. Even so, he still flinches before joining him in the cupboard. Deja vu, James thinks. Regulus just stares at him.

“How are you doing?” James whispers

“I’m fine,” Regulus responds politely. “And you?”

“I’m not fine and neither are you. Here.” James holds out the second slices of toast he grabbed. “You need to eat something.” Regulus’s eyes squint and his head tilts slightly to the side in confusion. “Just do it,” James says, rolling his eyes. “Please?”

Regulus grabs the toast and takes a bite. “Thanks,” James says, relieved. Regulus’s head tilts again, sending his curls into his face. A few strands get tangled in his lashes. James shakes his head quickly, forcing his brain to get back on track. “Right,” he says. “We’re in.”

Regulus’s eyes brighten and his face lifts. “Yeah?” he breathes. James looks at him, seeing the eleven year old boy from the boat looking up at the stars.

“Yeah.” The edges of Regulus’s lips curl upwards, ever so slightly, before he turns and opens the cupboard door. He peeks into the hallway to see if the coast is clear.

“Tonight,” Regulus asks, “Same time, same place?”

“Sure Reg,” James smiles at him. Regulus’s smile grows by half a centimeter. Then he takes another bite of toast and disappears around the corner.