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It wasn't that Lily was a terrible date. James would be the first person to swear up and down that It Was Not Her Fault. It was just... how was he to restrain himself when, even after she affirmed she had nothing to do with Snivellus, that greasy bastard was right there, on the fairground. In the middle of their fucking date. Around muggles even.
Really, he should have kept a cooler head, but James Potter had never been known for having an even keel where Snivellus was concerned. Lily had the right of it when she yelled and called the Aurors. He was a monster, and the distinct lack of Sirius' grounding presence had resulted in an explosion of malicious accidental magic the likes of which he would probably never live down. He wasn't even sure the responding Auror and Unspeakable the Auror had to call would ever be able to rearrange Snivellus' unwashed limbs right way up ever again. Probably he would forever have a limp. Or worse. God. So many people had to be Obliviated.
Probably, he should be one of those people. He was sure now he was unsafe to be around... well, anyone, really... without Sirius there. And well Lily knew it. She had ringed her stuffy muggle sister and asked Petunia to pick her up.
Now, here James was, sitting on a curb in Whitehall, soaked to his pants after having gotten out of being carted off to Azkaban by the skin of his teeth, his wand confiscated pending the outcome of the Auror investigation on the disturbance. Because of course his Terrible Date Day wouldn't be complete if the heavens didn't break out in torrential downpours that stopped as soon as he was wetter behind the ears than a bedraggled stray kitten. Who the fuck gallivanted in the city during the fickle vagaries of London in spring? Idiots, that's who.
And James Potter was unassailably certain that there was no bigger prize idiot in all of Britain than he. How did Lily put it?
Ah, right. He wasn't just a "bullying, arrogant toerag" now. He'd graduated into an "ego monster of such epic proportions, Cthulhu itself would be unable to wrap its eldritch mind around your petty, small-minded jealousy."
And she was right, of course. He had been jealous. What else could he have been, but eaten at once by his envy of Lily's magnanimous, if cold, forgiveness of Snape, and that niggling feeling that seeing Snivellus' grotty dong dangling from the space where his beaky nose would be was utter hilarity Sirius would find absolute gold? Granted there were other, less palatable outcomes of his accidental magic. He had not intended for the nearby popcorn vendor's kettle to end up fused into Snape's hairy backside, which had protruded from the back of his neck so stubbornly, one arm wiggling out of his arsehole, the Unspeakable had to take the git in for further "corrective action"... Well, James had not intended for a lot of things to go the way it went today.
And now, he was alone, wandless, sopping wet, his fine robes muddy from the filthy streets, and that goddamn ring in his pocket burned a hole he would never crawl out of because he and Lily were over. Forever. And he didn't even feel terrible about it.
No, what was terrible, what was so unspeakably horrific was that Sirius wasn't even by his side to laugh it off.
Because it was funny, Merlin damn it all.
And he felt truly, for the first time since his Terrible Day had started, that he was a monster for thinking of having a laugh over the whole sordid affair with his best mate.
"Fuck this," he muttered, and reached into the pocket of his robe for the mirror that was to be his salvation. "Sirius?"
It was a mark of how remarkably in-tune Sirius was with his moods that he opened the mirror with a barely contained jubilant expression that quickly morphed into worry, perhaps even fear, as he took in James' disheveled, wet cat countenance. Sirius didn't even ask him whether it went well—the date or the proposal, though James supposed the doleful, sorry look he was sporting made it clear Lily Evans had just walked out on him and stomped all over his slightly-less-than-earnest pathetic little heart.
Could also be the fact that James bellowed an almighty sneeze that had the rain dripping down his hair splattering on the reflective surface bearing Sirius' handsome face. He wasn't sure whether he was going to laugh, cry, or fall ill from an inexplicable bout of dragon flu after freezing his bollocks on the pavement for the half hour it took to feel sufficiently like he was no longer going to go utterly hysterical with how this fucking day went.
"Where are you?" Sirius demanded, instantly alert and all business. James wanted to jump into the mirror and kiss him for not asking how he was or even what had happened for him to have ended up in a state so low, Slytherin's monster couldn't have reached him from the depths of the Chamber of Secrets.
"Whitehall," he sniffled, wiping what was certainly rain and not at all manly tears from his rain-fogged spectacles. Fuck, London in spring was cold and he was definitely coming down with something if the croak in his voice was anything to go by. "Outside the Ministry."
"Outside the—" Sirius cut himself off and nodded. "I'll be there. Wait for me."
"I'd Apparate to your flat, but they took my wand," he admitted with another heaving sigh.
"Merlin," Sirius said, shaking his head. "Right, well. It might be better for you to wait for me inside. London streets are busy even after nightfall, and I don't want you getting mugged."
"They can take the ring for all I care."
Sirius gave a slow blink, the sort he always gave James when James was being exceptionally idiotic or obtuse, and shook his head again. "Wait inside. I don't care if you want to be in the Ministry entrance hall or you want to freeze your bollocks in their bloody phone booth. I don't want you on the street. You look like the perfect mark for pickpockets."
James let out a watery laugh. The passing muggles who had seen him had given him a wide berth. Likely, they thought he was a vagrant. "I don't think muggles really want to mug a man in a dress, Sirius. But sure, I'll wait."
He didn't say goodbye. Sirius had never been one for what he'd termed ridiculous social pleasantries, and James had never gotten into the habit of farewells. Not with Sirius. Never with Sirius.
Once again, he was reminded of how terse and final Lily's clipped "I hope we'll never see each other again" had been when she left him in the Ministry holding cell. He wanted to cry, but not for the reasons he was sure he was supposed to have after the love of his life had called off their epic romance. Mostly, he was just relieved Sirius was coming. Whether it was to side-along him to somewhere safe, preferably warm, and not at all on a dingy muggle street, or take him out for a ride on that hulking monstrosity of a motorcycle, James didn't care. Did people really tear up over relief? If it had never happened before in the history of wizardkind, he was damned sure it had to now, because his eyes had only started to prickle when he saw Sirius' bright grin transform into abject consternation. And he hadn't even told him he'd almost gotten a one-way ticket to Azkaban.
There was no point in dusting off the seat of his robes when he got up. They were ruined beyond belief. Rain and mud and not a small amount of blood from Snivellus' suddenly rearranged limbs had dyed the brilliant blue velvet a most unfetching brown, the fashionable cut of the robes warped and shrunken in response to the cold and damp. And the worst: his socks were wet.
He cast a hangdog look at the denizens of Whitehall at night and slunk into the telephone booth leading into the Ministry. James had never been one to loiter on the streets of London; the city and he didn't exactly mesh very well, what with its swell of muggle population, its streets that never seemed to sleep, and its skies bereft of stars at night. There was one reason alone he was ever even found in London and that was to visit his best mate's shitty Camden flat. Even then, he'd always Apparated into Sirius' front hall rather than be caught out on what was formerly a rookery in Victorian-era St. Giles.
Reflecting back on why he'd accepted to go to a fair at The Strand with Lily, he supposed there was a second reason, but that no longer counted. They were finished. Probably just as well, because James couldn't help leaking insane magic—not around her, but Snivellus was a good enough excuse.
Sirius was right about one thing: James Potter was not a creature made for London at night. Whitehall, with its veneer of civilized gentility, lost much of its shine after dark. The strangers that passed the booth now were no longer snappily dressed white-collar workers, and had transformed into flinty-eyed creatures that would not have looked out of place in Knockturn Alley. He wasn't so helpless that he couldn't have fought his way out of a brawl if someone accosted him, but then he wasn't looking to getting arrested by the muggle authorities on top of the stiff slap on the wrist the Ministry had just given him.
He debated dialing to get back into the entrance hall, but it galled him to have the night time clerk look at him askance, not in the state he was in. Merlin, that woman took tea with his father whenever he had business here!
He was still unsure what he wanted to do; his clothes were clinging uncomfortably to his clammy skin, and if he hadn't felt like he was going to start screaming and not stop since the Aurors dragged him into the holding cell, he was certainly feeling that now. He had never been given to panic, but after the day he'd had, the way his knees knocked from the cold, and the abject misery of just Everything At Once, he was reasonably certain that a kind of partial madness was not inconceivable in his state.
Therefore, when someone knocked on the glass panel wall of the phone booth, he jerked and might have screeched like a child had he not caught sight of the cool gray of Sirius' eyes reflected in the lamplight outside.
James slammed the booth door open and once more felt the uncomfortable onslaught of tears as Sirius held a wadded pile of fabric out to him.
"Thought you might need these," Sirius said as James unfolded a set of robes, shirt, trousers, socks and, yes, Sirius' favorite snitch-printed pants still smelling faintly of laundry soap. "I've cast the Notice-Me-Not, so strip before you catch your death. And give me your shoes. I'll dry them."
There was something queer about stripping off to one's birthday suit in the middle of a well-lit London street even though logically, James knew that there was no one else to see his junk half shriveled into his crotch from the cold. He nearly moaned with relief once he was dressed in his best friend's neatly pressed, borrowed clothes.
"God, that feels heavenly," he muttered as he slid his socked feet into his once-more snug and not at all sloshy Oxfords. "I didn't know you still owned robes."
Sirius cocked a haughty brow, one corner of his beautiful mouth ticking up in a half-smile that would have made angels weep. "You're wearing the only one. This, mate, is what I'm meant to be buried in."
"Fuck off with that," James said. He didn't care for Sirius' flippant jests about funerary garb. Not with the times they lived in. "You're not going to ask?"
Sirius watched him for a moment, his face shrouded in shadow. "I figured there's time enough to talk." He gestured to his bike. Of course he flew here. "Come on. Let's blow this pop stand."
James expected Sirius to take him out on a scenic ride across the English countryside. Or perhaps hunt for trouble with Scotland Yard, messing around with his bike and no helmets or protective gear in the city. It had always been how they'd both blown off steam amidst the unfurling tension with Voldemort and his relentless pursuit of political power over magical Britain. Well, it had been a favored frivolity, until Lily had expressed growing concern that two wizards making a fool of themselves in the sky or on city streets, in full view of muggles, was an invitation to some kind of wizard gang war, and Dumbledore had concurred.
Having their wings clipped unceremoniously in the tense climate amidst the Voldemort issue had been just one of the many little things that James finally felt he could put to rest with today's debacle at the fairground. He had been itching to feel the wind on his face, the exhilaration of flight, the unfettered freedom of Sirius' ridiculous motorbike winking in and out of cloud cover, dodging rain and lightning and the occasional muggle aircraft. He was fairly certain it wouldn't have entirely assuaged the growing sense of absurd panic and restlessness brimming in his veins since Lily had called off their relationship, but it would have been a welcome distraction.
Instead, they kept to the streets, taking an exit to the city that led them out on the open road, until they came upon a solitary house on the moors somewhere between Essex and Wiltshire. He wasn't sure for a moment what Sirius was on about until he recognized the severe woman exiting the house, her expression ominous as she scanned the skies. Seeing nothing but the distant wink of stars, she pulled her wand out of her robe pocket and Apparated out of existence. Sirius parked the bike along a ditch half a mile from the house's dirt driveway and gestured for James to dismount.
"Why are we outside Bones' house?" he asked, his voice a quiet murmur to match the whisper of the wind on the rustling heath. "Was that Amelia?"
Sirius shrugged. "Thought you might want to do something to take your mind off Evans, and rough shit up in ways people won't expect. They've been expecting Death Eaters to pay Edgar and his family a visit, but I suppose Amelia's gotten tired of waiting. Stupid, if you ask me."
James stared at his friend for a long, charged moment, unsure whether the prickle in his throat was another sneeze or if it was something else entirely. Perhaps he should have asked Sirius to have taken him somewhere safe, where he could wallow in self-pity for a good long while. But right now, he was almost certain what he wanted to do was kiss that beautiful, half-curled smirk off Sirius' mouth and shoot bolts of lightning out of his fingertips at the first sign of Death Eaters darkening Bones' door.
"You're forgetting I don't have a wand," he shot back.
Sirius slanted him a flinty look as he withdrew another wand, pale and flexible and entirely too familiar to James, from a pocket of his leather trousers. His grandfather's wand. Possibly pilfered out of Fleamont's library, because what else was Sirius going to do but throw gasoline onto sparks. Henry Potter had been a firebrand, both in and out of the Wizengamot, and had he not passed right around the time Voldemort had first made waves on the political scene, the powder keg they lived in now might not have ever been a reality. "Then it's a good thing I brought you this."
That feeling intensified, and James wondered for a moment if his heart might actually explode from how fucking constricted it felt in the confines of his thin chest. He reached out, palm closing over the cool wood and Sirius' fingertips before the other man had a chance to fully withdraw his hand.
He flashed a feral grin at his best mate, feeling at once that invincible exhilaration suffuse him once more, the same he'd felt when his magic brimmed with unmitigated rage right before this afternoon's accidental implosion against Snape. His magic purred and curled in his veins at the prospect of riot and mayhem and perhaps, even saving Bones and his brood of seven bratlings in the process. Someone had to and since Amelia had left her brother to seek out reinforcements with the Aurors, it may as well be the two of them and that overfull feeling of magic rampaging in James' throat.
Fuck, but this was exactly what he needed.
"What're we doing exactly?" he whispered as the two of them skulked from shadow to long shadow of a neat hedge separating the Bones' land from the expanse of purple heath swaying in the breeze.
Sirius gestured to the long, exposed hedge row, the many shuttered windows lining the long walls of the Bones' home, the tightly shut front door. "Edgar's coming out on the west facing side of the house. Dearborn's in with him, last I recall the recon planning. That is, if he hasn't gotten bored of the wait the way Amelia has. House is warded to the high heavens and second only to—" he paused and grimaced as if the next words gave him a bad case of gas "—my parents' house. As long as they don't get Bones, no one's getting to the kids inside."
James scowled incredulously at the sparse set of wands the Order had dedicated to protecting Bones. Granted, Edgar was a bit of a blowhard with how he'd bragged about the protective spells surrounding his estate, but if he hadn't joined, there wouldn't even have been a man for every side of the bloody house. On top of his shitty day with Lily and that third-wheeling greasy git, he should add the fact that he hadn't joined Order reconnoitering in the week leading up to his failed proposal. He would have stomped all over this rubbish plan had he been party to its inception. Two wands to protect seven children and their foolhardy father? If Voldemort's people did show up, what would tonight have looked like if James hadn't caused himself to get unceremoniously dumped?
"There." Sirius pointed with his wand as the back door opened and two men filed out. James recognized the burnished gold of Bones' blond hair. Caradoc Dearborn was a hulking shadow behind him.
A quick flash on Bones' wand told them both they would patrol the west and south side of the house, where the back door was. James and Sirius would cover the front door, arguably the more dangerous assignment. More than one Order member had been murdered on their doorstep by visiting Death Eaters. James wanted to be livid.
"Were you actually on assignment here?" he demanded in a sibilant whisper.
In the faint light of the countryside stars, Sirius’ twist of a smile was oddly sheepish, a little self-deprecating. "No. But I figured you'd be busy with Evans tonight, considering..."
"Well I'm not," James replied, agitated. Why in the hell would Sirius—
"Look, I hadn't planned to be here at all. Amelia's more than enough to cover her arse of a brother, and anyway, it's just patrolling. We don't know for sure if Death Eaters are going to show up—" He cut himself off at James' look and gesticulated a sharp, wild, helpless gesture. "I didn't actually expect things to go sideways with Evans, you know? I'd planned to hear the good news from you then show up here for a good, old trouncing in case Death Eaters do come. I mean, not like you'd have time to hang at my flat or—"
James didn't know what else Sirius might have intended to say as an appropriate way to spend his evening alone while his best mate was out proposing to the girl of his dreams. He was heartily certain he would not have been entirely happy with Sirius' reckless streak, and he was almost glad when the first pop of Apparition, and that sickly, slimy feel of protective spells falling ripped through the air with a violence that was no ordinary magic.
He was here, he realized. Voldemort was here, and not simply his masked lackeys.
James only had a split second to flash another feral smile at Sirius, before he was brandishing his wand, and the quiet gloom of the night air sizzled with the overwhelming feel of his unrestrained magic. Whatever else Sirius wanted to say, James was beyond glad the whole debacle with Lily Evans had happened, or he would not have been here to see that wild answering grin bloom from Sirius' plush lips.
Words didn't matter, and neither did the borrowed wand in his palm. Tonight, with the clarity of hindsight of his failed romance and that wondrous glint of Sirius' eyes reflected in his spectacles, James Potter was pure, unbridled magic. And with Sirius at his back, his wand matching James' wild, wandless magic spell for spell, he would not have had this evening go any other way.
They were both still panting, and would have given chase at the last Death Eater Apparating away if Bones' youngest child hadn't started wailing fit enough to wake the dead. Two of the Death Eaters were unconscious and barely clinging to life, felled and unmasked, both by the unexpected blast of James' magic released in uncontrolled bursts that yet seemed to utterly keep Sirius, who had both times been in the blast radius, free from harm. He thought his friend would be a lot more torn up; one of the masked intruders was a second cousin or other, from the Rosier side. But now it seemed it was Sirius' turn to flash a feral smile at him at the unquestionable victory they'd gained over Voldemort's forces.
James no longer felt as if magic was leaking out of his pores, but one look from those molten gray eyes made him feel as if his skin was at once stretched thin over his beaming face, and too tiny to fit the brimming, overfull feeling expanding outward from his lungs. He was fairly certain this far exceeded that wild burst from earlier in the day with Snivellus, fairly sure it was more than that slow, quiet contentment he felt in Lily Evans' presence. Fairly sure he had never felt this exhilarated, this alive ever in his life.
It was as if the past twenty years had been one long, fitful slumber of school and Quidditch and Lily Evans. And here was Sirius Black, a heart attack waiting to happen, and James couldn't help but feel his body waking with the answering response in the sweat beading at his brow, the smile curling his mouth, and the pulse jumping in his neck, in his wrists, in his cock.
This was what it meant to be alive. This, and only this.
Sirius opened his mouth, probably to say something inane like how they should probably check if Caradoc and Edgar were still alive. James didn't care; he'd already seen the two of them slinking back into the house, weary and worse for wear, but breathing and not even maimed. All that mattered now was Sirius and those half-lidded molten eyes, the smile fit to tempt Satan, and the throb, the painful-sweet ache of something James had glimpsed before in a haughty eleven-year-old boy sitting in a train compartment on the Hogwarts Express, but was only now beginning to understand.
He was awake and alive, and the magic of Sirius' existence, the way he'd dragged him out here, in the middle of nowhere, to risk his life after having just escaped an Azkaban sentence and possibly a lifetime tethering himself to the wrong witch, was more than he could bear.
"Now that's done," Sirius started to say, "mind filling me in on what you were doing at the Ministr—"
"I think I love you," James interrupted. And then blinked as the words blanketed him, quieted his roiling magic, and suffused him with Sirius' presence, the distinct masculine smell of him, the unique tang of his magic, so exquisitely suited, so finely mirrored in James'. "I—fuck, I think I'm in love you."
He expected a humorous response. Or perhaps an incredulous one. He and Sirius had been fast friends; they were inseparable friends. They were absurdly close, closer than brothers, Remus was wont to say. But they had never been one for showy declarations. Not to each other. And James suddenly wanted to rectify that by showering the half-destroyed facade of Bones' house in disgusting pink paper hearts and confetti and all things frivolous and gauche to assuage the way his heart threatened to burst out of his chest once more, so full of this... this something he couldn't quite explain, couldn't quite contain, couldn't quite identify except that it had everything to do with the fact that he was alive and Sirius was here, with him, in this endless moment amidst both destruction and survival, with the devil in his smile and stars in his eyes.
But all Sirius did was give him that slow blink of heavy lids, and that maddening curl of his lips. And James didn't bother to wait for a verbal response as he tugged his best mate by the studded lapels of his leather jacket, and fused his mouth with his. The world and Lily Evans and her forgiveness of that greasy git could go hang. Well, not for eternity, but at least for this moment.
Because all he wanted, all he needed out of this night of all nights, was right here, mirrored in the fathomless star-filled molten eyes, and the hot wet fallen angel mouth moving on his. Tonight he may have been a monster, but Sirius made him feel more than human. He made him feel like he was magic.
And he was complete.