Throughout James’ earliest years, tiny handprints and scribbles covered the walls of the Potter family home. Many will forever remain, thanks to his parent's wish to preserve these small gifts from their little miracle. They are enchanted to stay for all time to tell future Potters the stories of their son.
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James fell in love with art when Fealmont bought his first coloring set at two years old. The colors fascinated him and drove his imagination. He drew on everything he could get his little hand on. trait his mother found endearing and annoying in equal measure. As he aged, James's drawings grew from the scribbles of a toddler to grand depictions of the fantastical imagination of a little boy. Fearless knights fighting dragons and rescuing their loves; courageous wizards and witches vanquishing evil and driving out darkness; and valiant goddesses taming the universe to shelter those who inhabit it from its cruelty and bathing them in its beauty Every dream, vision, and idea James had was captured in his art, but more than any of this, his creations preserved his love for those he holds closest. While he loved running away into a world of his own design, his favorite drawings were those of him with his parents. Flying on their brooms, helping his dad brew potions, storytelling of bygone Potters, or tending to magical creatures with his mom—these moments were James’ favorites. These moments are where love is stored to be carried with him for the rest of his life. What is the point of art anyway, if not to preserve the greatest of loves for all time?
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As James aged, his art began to take on new meaning. It was no longer strictly for self-expression but also for self-preservation. His art became his sanctuary. James often has too many thoughts running rampant in his head and too much energy to sit still for more than a moment, but when he sat with his journal, a sense of calm washed over him as he allowed himself to pour all he has ever been and all he ever will be into the pages. He’s spent hours drawing the world around him—his parents, owls, and even his Quidditch heroes. Although, the one thing he never got to draw was the one he wished for every night before closing his eyes. Friendship. Someone like him to go on grand adventures with, to laugh at his stupid jokes, to push magic to its limits, and to challenge all the Wizarding World has ever known or believed to be true. That is all James truly wants in a friend: someone to share everything with.
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It’s finally happening. Hogwarts. A place that feels like it should only exist in your dreams It is the greatest magical school in the world, and the one place James has been itching to go to for as long as he can remember. He would learn how to become a great wizard and a master of magic, and maybe make some friends along the way. All he had to do was make it onto the Hogwarts Express.
Nobody tells you that the hardest part of getting on the train is finding somewhere to sit. The aisles and compartments are packed with students. Tearful-eyed first years already missing home and returning seventh years ready to wrap up their time at the school and get to living their lives, James considered it a miracle when he found an empty compartment at the back of the train, tucked away from the madness. He strides into the compartment, pleased to have it to himself, to grant him a moment to find his barrettes. After getting his trunk on the shelf overhead, James makes himself comfortable and pulls out his sketchbook. He begins drawing Platform 9-34 as the background for the enchanted Hogwarts Express. As ink lines seep into the page, James is filled with the sense of calm he has only ever felt when creating, and he allows himself to disappear into his art. It’s here that he can be everything he is and everything he wishes to be.
The door to his compartment flies open, slamming into its pocket. James is startled back to the present; his head snaps up, and he comes face to face with the intruder.
For the first time, hazel meets blue, and for a split moment and an eternity, the world stops. It was an odd feeling looking into a stranger's eyes and seeing your soul reflected at you. To see everything you are and everything you crave embodied by a single being. His heart is pounding in his ears, and his magic is pulsing through his veins with an overwhelming feeling of "rightness," like this was meant to happen, was always destined to, and the universe would always ensure that it did in every lifetime. It felt like everything finally aligned, like finally finding where you truly belong as you are on the cusp of giving up, and a piece of James he didn't even know he was missing snapped into place.
"Mind if I sit here?" the blue-eyed boy asked. "Go ahead, mate plenty of room." James breathed out, never breaking eye contact with this newcomer.
"I'm Sirius, by the way."
"James, James Potter."
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James likes to think he’s good at what he does. For the most part, he’s not wrong. When you’ve been drawing as long as James has, you create your fair share of portraits. He’s done numerous portraits of his parents, and they turn out beautifully, truly capturing the essence of their beings. So, why is it so damn hard for him to draw Sirius?
He’s the most beautiful person James has ever laid eyes on. With steel blue eyes that always rip the air from James’ lungs and a plush mouth that up-turns into a sinfully beautiful smile, Sirius is a work of art in and of himself, so all James needs to do is switch the medium in which that masterpiece that is Sirius Black is portrayed.
His drawings of his best friend are mostly Sirius, but there is always something missing. The fire that burns in Sirius radiates the warmth that James wishes to spend the rest of his life basking in; it burns with such intensity that one must stop in awe of its power and scorches the souls of those who've ever thought to cross him. Maybe that’s the hardest part of drawing Sirius: when drawing someone who burns as he does, one can never truly hope to capture his likeness; it must be experienced, basked in, and worshipped.
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Laying with Sirius is where James belongs. Completely connected and intertwined is how they were always meant to be: an extension of one another, two parts of a single whole.
It’s here that James finally understands what he’s been missing in his efforts to capture his lover's likeness. It was never the fire of Sirius that his pieces lacked because that isn’t truly who he is at heart. Laying here and looking at his sleeping partner, it was clear. Everyone sees Sirius’ fire, and more than a few have been burned by it, but what James sees when they are alone together is Sirius' heart, his vulnerability, and his soul—things no other being has been granted the honor of bearing witness to. It’s a privilege that he's bestowed on James and James alone, and he thanks whatever gods there may be for allowing it to be him, for letting him be the one who gets to worship at the altar of Sirius Black. So, when he pulls out his parchment and quills to begin sketching the beautiful man laying alongside him, James knows this time it’ll be perfect because he sees Sirius in all of his breathtaking glory.
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Sirius has known from the moment he met James that the young man was something of an artist. It was the first thing he noticed when he found him hunched over a sketchbook on the train all those years ago. He loved James’ art. It was truly magnificent. His beautiful portraits of Mrs. Potter, his fantastical dreams of becoming great heroes, and even the comic strips he’d enchant to play out in real-time for Sirius's amusement took his breath away. Sirius always told Prongs he loved his work and thought it was understood that he accepted James and all he was completely and without reservation.
which is why he finds it particularly odd that James is hiding something from him.
It’s a sketchbook. Sirius has caught glimpses of James drawing in it when he wakes up, but James is always quick to stash it away before he can ever get a look. Before he can ask James why his lips are on Sirius’s, causing his body to bloom with warmth, his mind becomes soft and fuzzy. Nothing else matters in those moments, but like all great things, they end, and Sirius has never been one to leave well enough alone.
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Sirius and James share everything—food, a bed, clothing, and occasionally a toothbrush (whether or not James knows that is irrelevant), so it’s not snooping when he digs the journal from under the mattress. After all, it’s their mattress. So really, if James didn’t want him to find it, he’d have hidden it somewhere less adjacent to Sirius.
Sirius can hardly believe what he sees upon opening the journal. It’s him. Dozens of pictures of him It’s him like he's never seen himself before. Each piece is more beautiful than the next. They show the various ways he loves his partner. In one, he’s laying asleep with his head on James’s shoulder; the next, his head is thrown back in laughter; after that, a portrait of him with his "James" smile; in another, he’s draped over their bed with the sheet covering him but still exposing part of his arse that is littered with the bite marks of a man staking his claim. They're beautiful. He’s beautiful. Sirius isn’t oblivious; he’s aware he’s been blessed with good looks, but the way James sees him, this is something incredibly foreign; it’s entirely other.
As he sits there on their bed, flipping through the book, Sirius feels his eyes well with tears. The love that is embedded in these pages is unlike anything he’s ever known. He can see it in every stroke of ink that graces the pages and can feel how it’s seeped into the parchment to be stored forever. It’s here on these pages that Sirius can see how profoundly he is loved. It’s a love Sirius has never known and never would have believed he deserved if not for the gorgeous man he got to call his. To see himself through James’s eyes changes something in Sirius; he can feel self-doubt and loathing shifting, rolling off his shoulders, and cracks healing because a love like this is all Sirius has ever truly craved, and now he has it enshrined in ink for the rest of time. And after all, isn’t that really what art is for?