James Potter loved many things. He loved quidditch, he loved Gobstones, he loved his friends, and ever since his second year, he loved Lily Evans. He never understood how people could claim some kinds of love were stronger than others; to him, he felt it all the same. He felt it deep and he felt it hard.
He felt love when his mother would hug him tight and rub her hand slowly across his back. He felt love when Gryffindor won the quidditch cup and his teammates hoisted him high on their shoulders, their shouts of praise filling his ears. He felt love when Remus fell asleep face down in his textbook at the library. He felt love when he saw the smile on Peter’s face after he beat him once again at wizard’s chess.
Most recently, he fell in love when Lily introduced him to Disney movies.
He laid across her lap on the couch at her house in Cokeworth, and she ran her hands softly through his hair as whatever fantastical world she had chosen to put on the telly would pull them in for the day.
That was how he found himself currently jogging up to Sirius’s bedroom door, VCR tape in hand. James pretended to lean casually against the doorframe, keeping his left hand behind his back.
“Pads, I know what we’re going to do today,” James said with a cavalier smile.
Sirius glanced up to look at him before going back to writing, “Oh, and what would that be?”
James walked into the room and flopped down on the bed, ignoring the question, “oooh, what’s that, writing another letter to Moony?”
Sirius blushed, ignoring his question as well, “What’ve you got behind your back?”
James took the bait, pulling the VCR out to hold in front of his face, “We’re going to enter the magical world of friendship,” he said with a smile.
Sirius sets his quill down and turns to look at James. He tilts his head sideways to read the title at the angle James is holding it.
“Toy Story?” he asks.
“Yes, it’s a wonderful movie. Or, well,” he looked down through his glasses to read the back of the box, “at least Lily told me it’s a good one.”
“It can’t be that good,” Sirius scoffs, “that cover looks ridiculous.”
Sirius sniffed, holding James against him a little tighter as the toys all leaned in close to the tiny radio to hear what new toy Andy had received for Christmas. James pushed his glasses up, using the edge of his sleeve to wipe his tears.
“That was a good movie,” James said as he leaned into Sirius’s side.
“Hey Prongs, I’ve got an idea,” Sirius sat up.
“What?” James asked, sinking deep into the couch between the cushions now that he didn't have Sirius to prop up against.
“I’ll be right back,” Sirius said, running over to the stairs.
He came back a moment later, quill in hand and only wearing one shoe.
He plopped back down on the couch next to James and turned his shoe to show him. In his delicate writing was ‘PRONGS’ all across the bottom of the rubber sole.
“Now, if I ever get lost, they’ll know I belong to you.”
James quickly leaned down to undo the laces of his beat-up, red Converse. He pulled off his right shoe once he got the laces off enough to just rip his foot out. He took the quill from Sirius and scrawled along the bottom in blocky letters ‘PADFOOT.’ He cast an easy stasis charm and then a water-repelling charm to both of their shoes to keep the ink imprinted to the soles.
“There, now we belong to each other,” James said with a smile.
Sirius was confused by the white flakes coating the street of Godrics Hollow; October was too early for snow. It wasn’t until he breathed in and tasted the ash that the panic set in.
The front door was already ajar. His mind supplied dreadful, nightmare-fuel images of the worst that could’ve happened.
What he saw walking in was worse than anything his mind could create.
It was his own name, in James’ chicken-scratch scrawl, staring him in the face from the foot of the stairs.
Sirius slowly walked over to where James lay at the bottom of the stairs. He sunk to his knees, seeing his brother’s glassy eyes staring up at him. His mouth was open as if he was still yelling. It was the most awful thing Sirius had ever seen.
He gathered James up in his arms and held him desperately against his chest. He rocked back and forth, the stairs digging into his back as he buried his face in James’s hair. It struck Sirius how wrong it felt.
James always gave the best hugs. He would wrap both arms around and jam his chin into his shoulder, pulling Sirius tightly against him. It wasn’t right for James’s head to be below his chin or for James to be so heavy in his grasp.
James was usually the one holding him up. Sirius never thought that this was how it would be if the roles were reversed.
Harry’s cries filled the silent home. The sound cut through Sirius, and he stopped crying almost immediately, holding his breath to listen. The soft cries continued.
He felt his heart stop for the second time that night. Harry.
His godson was alive.
The cold air of Azkaban clung to Sirius’s body almost as well as the grime. He huddled as far into the back, dark corner as he could. The stone wall was just as cold as the icy ocean below. His knees were pulled up to his chest, as he wrapped his arms around his knees and pretended it was his Moony hugging him.
No, Moony wasn’t his anything anymore. He would never forgive him.
Sirius would never forgive himself.
Not Moony–that was too painful. A hug from James. If he closed his eyes and held his breath long enough, Sirius could almost feel James’s chin digging into his right shoulder and his glasses pressing up against his ear.
A dementor swept past, pulling all the happy memories from him. Sirius couldn’t feel James holding him anymore.
“No, no, please, no,” he cried, holding himself tighter, wishing to feel the embrace a moment longer.
He had only been here a year, and he had already lost so much. Most of the memories of baby Harry were gone. He had clung to the memories of his godson tightly in the beginning. Harry’s beautiful laugh was the first thing the dementors stole. Sirius tried not to think of his godson often, a futile attempt to preserve what little of the boy he had left.
He had a hard time remembering Lily’s face sometimes. Her face would warp in his mind whenever he thought of her for any length of time. He remembered her bright hair and her soft, green eyes. He couldn’t remember anymore, though, if that freckle was under her left or right eye. He forgot what her nose looked like all together–it was a gaping hole in the middle of her face whenever he thought of her.
Sirius buried his face in his arms and cried until the dementor got bored and floated away. He sat for a moment, thinking through all his important memories to see if the dementors took anything else vital.
He could no longer remember the book Moony kept on their bedside table in their flat. After thinking really hard, he could’ve sworn the cover was red, no, blue, but the title was escaping him. Sirius sighed. It was his fault; he had been thinking of lying on Moony’s chest and how he would read aloud to Moony before bed. He was trying to pretend they were still in their flat, and the Potters were still alive, and there was no war, and everyone was happy.
Sirius was afraid of the day the only memories of their flat he would have left were the fights. They both had a temper, and that flat had seen some of the worst of it.
Sirius unwrapped his left arm from around his legs and pulled off his left shoe. He started pulling at his left pinky nail, almost completely torn in half from Padfoot clawing at the walls. He yanked at it, and sticky blood started to slide down the side of his hand. He rubbed his stinging nub with his right-hand pointer finger, coating it in blood. He flipped the shoe over and wrote over his own faded writing.
Sirius wrote in thick, shaky, blocky letters, ‘PRONGS.’
He transformed into Padfoot, using the shoe to prop his head up on.
As he drifted off to sleep with the simple mind of Padfoot, he thought about how James would always belong to him, but Sirius would never belong to James again.
Sirius couldn’t remember anymore why he woke up every morning and rewrote ‘PRONGS’ on the bottom of his left shoe.
It was Prongs, though, which meant it had something to do with James. Sirius would do anything to keep James alive, so he woke up every morning and grabbed his quill.
He thought about asking Remus, but he had already asked Remus too much. Remus always got this very sad look on his face like it gutted him that Sirius didn’t have these memories almost as much as it gutted Sirius to admit he couldn’t remember.
Sirius was too much of a coward to admit to anyone, especially Remus, that he couldn’t always remember James. It was hard; Sirius wanted to tell Harry everything. It wasn’t fair that Harry got the least time with James out of anyone. James loved like he breathed–effortless and necessary. James’s love poured out of him like the sun’s rays filled the sky.
Harry had never known that love, and damn it did that not make Sirius feel guilty.
Out of everyone that James loved, Harry deserved that soft, easy love the most, but he was the only one who didn’t have it. James’s son was the only one not to know what it felt like to be loved by James Potter, and wasn’t that a tragedy?
Remus leaned forward, his hands clasped tightly in front of him on the table. That pained look crossed his old friend’s face once again.
“I’m not sure, honestly,” his friend admits quietly after a few minutes of silence.
“Oh,” Sirius’s heart ached in his chest at that revelation.
Remus reached over as if to grab Sirius’s hand before changing his mind and setting it flat on the table between them, “I think it was from a movie. I’d never heard of it, but Lily was showing him all these animated children’s movies, and he fell in love with them.”
“Disney,” Sirius said softly, remembering.
“Do you like Disney movies?” Sirius asked Harry, leaning against the railing to the city of London below.
“What?” Harry asked.
“Disney movies,” Sirius repeats, “your dad loved them,” he said softly with a small smile.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen one,” Harry admits honestly.
“We’ll have to watch one,” Sirius said.
“I don’t know why, but I can’t imagine him watching movies,” Harry said.
That elicits a laugh from Sirius, “Oh yes, he loved movies. Once your mother showed them to him, he was obsessed.”
Sirius briefly considered telling him about the shoes, but he couldn’t remember what movie or why they had done it. Harry didn’t know about Sirius’s memory problems, and he wasn’t inclined for him to find out. Everyone else already thought he had gone mad–and maybe he had–but Sirius couldn’t stand the thought of Harry thinking of him like that.
He sat on his bed, holding Sirius’s left shoe–the only thing he had left of his godfather. Dumbledore gave it to him after he finished destroying his office. Apparently, it had fallen off before Sirius fell through the veil.
Harry hadn’t even noticed.
It was just a normal shoe. It had fraying laces, and there was a worn patch on the side–probably from where Sirius always sat with his feet crossed.
He held the shoe delicately in both of his hands and stared at it.
That very first summer after Hogwarts, when his friend's letters weren’t coming through, sometimes he would wonder if he dreamed it all up. As the days turned into weeks, it seemed less and less likely that it had ever happened. Harry would lay awake at night, panicked and trying to run through every single memory of the past year–desperate for it to be real.
He felt that same fear set into his bones now. It felt as if he looked away from the shoe for even a moment, it would disappear, and he would realize that none of it had ever actually happened. As if Sirius had never been real.
The first few days of the summer, he would do this. He would go about his days doing chores and existing in the disdainful company of his relatives, and at night, long past when the other residents of 4 Privet Drive had fallen asleep, he would sit and hold the shoe.
There was nothing particularly different about this night. It was a warm night in early July, and he had left the window cracked open for Hedwig to come back in through from her nightly hunt. There was a soft breeze, but sweat still clung to his back despite the cool draft. Harry couldn’t recall what prompted the urge to change his routine.
With the shoe held in the same reverence as always, he flipped it over. And that was when he saw it. Not for the first time, Harry wished he had his wand. He pulled the shoe up to his face and squinted. The letters weren’t any clearer. He carried the shoe over to the window and tilted it towards the moonlight.
Harry ran his thumb down the elegant sloping letters of ‘PRONGS’.
Harry stared at the dusty nameplate.
Despite only being months ago, it felt like it had been years since he, Hermione, and Ron had bunkered down at Grimauld to plan their Horcrux hunt.
Sirius’s bedroom was exactly like how he had left it. Although, what had been a thin layer of dust at the time had become a thick blanket coating every visible surface. Harry didn’t know it was possible for a room to have this much dust. If any of the rooms at Privet Drive had even one-tenth of this much dust, Aunt Petunia would never have let him live to see another day.
Harry had hoped it would hurt less to walk through his godfather’s bedroom now that he had spoken to him again, but his chest ached just the same.
He had left this room to clean out last. With one last long look around the room, he grabbed the flat stack of unfolded cardboard boxes and began piling the books and papers from Sirius’s desk into the box.
Harry made his way around the room slowly and methodically. He let his eyes linger on every sloping letter in his godfather’s handwriting, at his face in every photograph. Every book he picked up, he would flip over to skim the synopsis. Harry wanted to preserve every inch of this room. He wasn’t ready to lose every scrap of the only family he ever knew.
Harry spent most of the day inhaling the dry, powdery air of Sirius’s childhood bedroom. He decided it was best to call it quits for the day when he couldn’t tell anymore if the stinging from behind his eyes was from the dust or the panging in his chest.
Harry pushed up his glasses and rubbed his hand across his face as he turned to leave the room. His shoe caught on the edge of a box full of books, and before he could think, he was falling. He knew not to put his hand out–he didn’t feel like having a broken wrist today. His elbow caught his fall and subsequently broke through the flimsy floorboard by the corner of his godfather’s bed.
With his elbow throbbing, Harry examined the new hole in the floor. He expected to see the hallway below, but he didn’t. Instead, what stared up at him was a pair of old red Converse and a stack of VCR movies.
Harry pulled out the shoes first. There were little doodles all around the white, scuffed edges. Most of the doodles were formless blobs–a product of time, wear, and his father’s awful handwriting–but the ones he could discern were a snitch, some scattered stars, and a rat. The last one hit Harry once again with the awful fact that his father really had cared deeply for Pettigrew. He decided not to stare at the doodles any longer.
Harry ran his finger along the plastic beads strung along the top of the laces. Up by the toe of the shoes, in plastic, lettered beads spelled ‘JAMES’ on the left shoe and ‘POTTER’ on the right. He was learning more about his father’s personality in the two minutes holding his shoes than he did in the first seventeen years of his life.
And then he flipped the shoe over.
On the bottom of the right shoe, in his father’s indiscernible, chicken scratch, blocky lettering was ‘PADFOOT’.
Harry was suddenly struck with the memory of holding a different shoe up to the moonlight on Privet Drive late one night and seeing ‘PRONGS’.
Harry had never understood why it was there on the bottom of his godfather’s shoe. He had thought about it over and over, on and off, for the last two years. He had chalked it up to his godfather’s way of dealing with his grief–a small, sentimental way to keep his dad close to him.
But, no, it wasn’t grief. It was something his father had done as well.
Harry set the shoes aside and reached back into the hole for the movies in the hopes of stopping his eyes from stinging.
He shuffled through the various movie boxes and took just as much care looking at their titles and summaries as he did with the books. Grief and a memory hit him once again. A colorful picture of posing toys with the title ‘Toy Story’ stared up at him, but what hit him was the word at the top: Disney.
Sirius had wanted to show him a Disney movie. Was this the movie he wanted him to see?
Harry stood up with the VCR tape. As he went to leave, he turned back to look at the shoes again. Impulsively, he made his way over to his godfather’s desk and picked up a quill.
When he was done, he grabbed the shoes carefully and tucked them under his arm before shutting the door softly behind him.
“Hey Ginny, do you want to watch a movie?” Harry called out as he walked down the stairs.
And if anyone noticed that the bottom of Harry’s left shoe said ‘Prongs’ and his right shoe ‘Padfoot’ from that moment on, they never said so.