Dear Brother.
“Dear James,
I cannot be in this house anymore. I don’t know where else to go so I’m running to you and I’m sorry and I’ll get out of there as quick as possible, I just need somewhere to go.
I’m so sorry
Sirius.”
Sirius did not have a happy family. Not at the beginning, anyway. Walburga was horrible and cruel and Orion was nothing better. His family was cruel and horrible.
James remembers the night he and his parents took Sirius in. It was raining. It was raining hard.
He remembers that part of it so well because Sirius was terrified of storms. He hated them so much to the point where he had to cling onto James to get through them. He would be mumbling and whispering ‘I’m sorry’ long into the night until he cried himself to sleep. He was able to deal with them better after third year, but James still used to slip into Sirius’s bed on those stormy nights.
He hates Sirius’s family.
Or he used to. Until Sirius was his brother and Effie and Fleamont took him under their wing and he was able to be free, did James not hate Sirius’s family.
They were a family. Just as they were with Remus and Peter and with Lily and Marlene and eventually Dorcas. James misses his family, sometimes. He opens the next letter he grabs.
“Prongs! I got the most fantastic idea! I’ll tell you after class!”
A note. Just passing notes. James smiles, and reads through the rest of the small notes they used to pass back and forth, until Moony would slap their hands and Peter would laugh too hard to keep quiet.
James reads more.
Does he purposefully avoid the letters he knew he never opened, from a time when he wasn’t speaking to Sirius over a prank that went too far? Maybe.
———————————
Eventually, James gets into some of the letters stuffed deeper into the box. Old love letters to Lily, old notes passed between friends, old prank plans, old study routines, so many old things.
He sits there, reading a note to Lily.
“Evans, your hair is like the sun, your beauty unmatched! If I could give you my every waking moment, I would. I’d love you forever and I’d never let you feel sad again!
I’d grow you a garden and walk the oceans for you, I’d give up even my broom! I’d give up anything! (Just not my friends, sorry!!)
Would you do me the honor of accompanying me on a date this weekend? Hogsmeade? I know a great spot for a picnic!!”
When he finishes reading, he finds himself laughing. How lovesick he was, and how lovesick he still is. If he wanted to, he could go and check things off of his list for the future.
Smiling, he reaches into the box, and takes out the letter, his smile dropping instantly. He’d recognize the letters, the curve and perfect penmanship of each one anywhere. The way the letters are elegantly looped into each other, forming an alphabet like a stormy sea.
No, scratch that. No seas.
His hand begins to shake as he holds the letter, perhaps gripping it too tightly in its perfect envelope, one of the only letters in the box in its envelope still.
He swore he’d never read it. Never again, not after the first time. The boy he tried desperately to claw out of his mind was back, the memories flooding into his brain without warning, just by looking at the words on the flimsy paper envelope.
He wouldn’t read it. He swore.
James opens the letter.