Prologue
James Fleamont Potter was born under a new moon on the 27th of March, 1960. It was pure darkness within the clear sky when he breathed his first, at 2:36 a.m. His mother, Euphemia “Effie” Potter, gave birth to her son in the middle of muggle London and thus, could not apparate into her own home. This means that the first time James Potter ever breathed, it was that of pure outside air and maybe that was the reason why he turned out as he did. His first breath decided everything.
His hair grows a wild and free black, he knows how to ride a broom long before he can walk, his vision goes to shit, he starts only wearing quidditch uniforms, the large birthmark on his cheek grows darker, he doesn’t know how to tie shoes until he reaches ten, he makes friends with every person he speaks to longer than five seconds, and everyone loves him.
He speaks both Latin and Tamil, and he’s quite amazing in the charms he learned before hitting age eleven. He wears muggle clothes more than wizard and he borrows his mother's makeup, thinking she doesn’t notice but she does.
He helps his father with his experiments and is posted on ads if the product becomes usable enough. He doesn’t like that and his father has told him he can stop if he wanted to, but he still continues because that makes his father happy and James Potter loves seeing his father happy.
He continues strutting around like a businessman from ages five to eleven and never once is heard complaining about it. He flashes his perfectly white smile at every person who looks in his direction, he shakes the hand of everyone he meets, and he speaks more professionally than he should as a child.
No, he doesn’t complain, but he used to cry. He used to cry at midnight in his room alone in the dark because he was exhausted but he didn’t want his father and mother not to smile if he quit and so he continued, for over five years. And he would have continued if he didn’t receive his letter.
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Sirius Orion Black was let into the world under the light of the sun. It was a warm day with a warm wind breeze that traveled through all of Paris and through the walls of the Black manor that stood lonesome on the cliffside. The first thing Sirius ever heard in his life was the light sound of the waves hitting the shore, the first thing he saw was his mother's face. And though doubtfully, maybe, Walburga Black had stopped then and looked at the purest of forms she was cradling in her arms and just maybe, she had thought that this child did not deserve the life he would live, just maybe before she had forcefully pushed the bundle into the present medi-witch’s arms.
And in those moments when Sirius breathed his first, his fate had long since been decided.
His hair grew long and curly black, he learns how to read at three and to write at four, he grows up with French, and then he learns Latin at the mere age of six, and Italian classes are what his parents buy him for his tenth birthday to congratulate him for reaching the “doubles”, his cousin, Andromeda, teaches him English when he begs her not to rat him out for skipping his Italian class.
He starts wearing eyeliner and lipstick just to spite his parents some more. A little surprise from him on his eleventh birthday and he thinks it went well if his mother punished him for it and so, he started wearing it regularly, though not around his parents. He didn’t want to have a crippled back from the slashes at only eleven years.
Not long after Sirius had turned two, Regulus was born. And Regulus was his complete opposite. Regulus never disobeyed their parents and accepted the beatings he was given (which were extremely rare) without a word. Witnessing that, Sirius knew immediately Regulus was going to be the heir of the Black family. And so, he taught Regulus English which their parents barely spoke and taught him many things both Walburga and Orion would never want their future heir to know.
Those teachings never did change how Regulus acted but that was fine with Sirius because he knew his brother believed everything he’d told him.
Sirius was raised more by Andromeda than he was by his own parents and maybe that was around the time when he stopped thinking about them as parents at all. Just as the people who gave him his existence, which he was eternally grateful for because he never wanted Regulus to suffer by himself in that household.
Sirius was certain his parents had been relieved when he’d gotten his letter, almost an entire year without him must have sounded like a dream to them. Though before they let him go, they had a very stern talk about him being sorted into Slytherin or else they would disown him, which definitely didn’t make Sirius feel better.
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Remus John Lupin was born during the sunset of March 10th, 1960. And he cried. He’d cried for hours without anyone knowing how to make him stop. He cried until sunrise. Maybe he’d cried the tears for the rest of his life that night because Remus Lupin never did cry again. At least not in front of people. He barely cried after his birth and even with his eyes red, he never shed another tear.
The first thing he smelled was that of burnt popcorn his father had made during the anticipation of meeting his firstborn child. Remus was allergic to popcorn. He almost died after being in the world for thirty seconds. The first thing he saw was his mother's beautiful blue eyes. Possibly the last time his mother would ever look at him that lovingly.
These small things that happened when he was born were what undoubtedly turned him into the person he ended up being.
His legs grew long, his hair became an unruly sand color, and his eyes took after his father. Brown. An ugly brown he decides when he learns for the first time what the word means. He hides his face in books since he learned how to read, he goes on walks while his mother works, he doesn’t go to school so he teaches himself, and his face grows more freckles every summer.
He doesn’t know how to befriend people his own age. He’s friends with the seventy-year-old couple that lives in the house next to his. He’s friends with the seventeen-year-old boy who works part-time at the local grocery store. He’s friends with the thirty and twenty-year-olds who smoke pot near his house. He’s friends with this seven-year-old who walks by his house every day, walking her dog. But none of them are his age. When he turns eleven none of them are anywhere even close to his age.
But being around those people was better than being with his fifty-something-year-old father home alone, with his mother at work. And so he keeps hanging around those people. He’s been doing so since he was four.
Because shit happened when he was four.
When he was four, he was napped when he was waiting for his father outside. He was bitten by a werewolf and hell, that was shit. That was shit if Remus Lupin had ever felt shit. He was sent to st. Mungo’s after that and when he returned home, his mother refused to look at him and his father had become an alcoholic. So much had changed during one month. So much had happened and Remus Lupin was only four years old.
That was when he started to stop being around his father, which ended up with him being alone with people four decades his senior. His father did awful things when he drank and Remus didn’t want to be around that.
One of the only good things Lyall Lupin had done after he’d started drinking was make their basement the wolf's den. He made the walls metal, and made the door impossible to open from the inside. The wolf howled and scratched and threw himself at the walls and door but he was never let out, only two days after the full moon. “Just in case” is what Lyall said but Remus knew his father just wanted nothing to do with him.
So in summary, when he received a surprise visit from Albus Dumbledore, he felt he was supposed to be ecstatic to be able to leave for a while. But he wasn’t.
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Peter Oliver Pettigrew breathed his first breath during the solar eclipse of October 2nd, 1959. He was asleep when he was born into the world. Sleeping. And he slept for the next forty-eight hours. He slept for so long his mother had thought maybe he’d died but the doctors assured her that was not the case, just that Peter was… peculiar. And that’s what he was told from that moment on.
When he didn’t enjoy things other kids did he was told it was because he was “different”, when he stopped eating for multiple days straight without getting hungry it was because he was “unique”, when it took him longer to learn how to read and write than others his age he was told it was because he was ”special” when he wasn’t able to raise his voice at anyone he was told, “that makes you better than them”.
So yes, anything he did after he was born, using different words and wording, all came back to peculiar. That’s what he was. Weird. That’s what everyone always called him though not one of them had the guts to actually say how strange he was to his face but they didn’t need to. He did it enough to himself every time he saw himself in the mirror.
Unlike the others, his path wasn’t decided from his first breath. No, it was the moment on his third birthday when his Ma looked him straight in the face and just plainly said, “You shouldn’t want to be like the others. Being different is never a bad thing, you should want to be different.” He was three. He was three but those words never left him because right, he shouldn’t be like the others and so he decided not to be.
He grew into a chubby stumpy kid. His hair was a light brown and his eyes were a breath of fresh air to anyone who looked into them long enough but not many did. Not many did because he was never one to first approach people and when he was eight, a rumor spread around the school about how he’d pounded a thirteen-year-olds face into the ground which he hadn’t done, just finally snapped and shouted some profanities but nothing physical happened. Merlin knows where that rumor started. But the point was, that ever since then no one actually ever even tried talking to him. Everyone avoided the ground he walked on which he did cry about to his Ma sometimes. But “kids being kids,” she said, and, “they’ll get over it.”
But they never did.
And so, when Peter’s letter arrived in the mail, he really had no one to go and scream about it to. Because hell, he was ecstatic. His mother was more than enough though.
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James Potter believes in fate, that there’s something tied around everything that happens in life.
Sirius Black does not. Sirius Black prefers doing things in the moment rather than waiting to have fate fix his problems.
Remus Lupin has never had the time to think about it. He finds fate kind of funny, because how would the universe know how to pull just the right strings for things to happen the way they do?
The first word Peter Pettigrew learns the meaning of is fate. He loves the concept of. Does he believe in it or not though? Even he isn’t sure.
So, is it just fate or coincidence that brought together and then apart these four young wizards?