BackupLoveInterest

I'm deffinitely going to redraw some of these at some point (ahem hospital wing ahem) but I really like how they work together and I'm actually proud of some of them 💛

I chose the prompt Kind for the free space💛💛💛

James Potter had, in his seventeen years of life, made many terrible mistakes.

The first was befriending Sirius Black as a child. The second was introducing his good friend Sirius Black to the quiet, new friend he had made on the train, Remus. His third, and possibly most lethal mistake was suggesting, now that they were dating maybe they could separate themselves for long enough on Thursday evenings for playing board games with their other two friends— remember them? James and Peter?

And so now here he was, simply trying to set up, while glaring at Sirius perched in Remus's lap like perhaps the other chairs in the common room had been stolen.

"Professor Plum," Sirius announced, pressing the sealed envelope to his forehead with the gravity of a man receiving divine revelation, "in the conservatory, with the revolver."

"We haven't even dealt the cards yet," Remus said.

"The spirits do not wait for the deal, Moony."

Remus paused with just a ghost of a smile. James set down the little pewter candlestick. He knew that pause, he knew that smile.

"...alright," Remus said. "What are you seeing."

It wasn't even a question. James looked at Peter. Peter was holding the rule book he had clearly been hoping to actually use. They had a whole conversation in that look. They always do this, every time, I don't know why we expect otherwise, I really thought tonight would be different, it is never different, do you want to just go to bed, I really wanted to play Clue though, me too Pete, me too.

"I'm seeing," Sirius continued, undeterred, his voice dropping into something reverent, wavering and expansive like a stage magician "purple. Twilight. Velvet. Hyacinths—"

"Oh my god."

"—and roses, Moony, big lush roses, and green ferns, a conservatory absolutely rampant with—"

"Sirius."

"—and then bang." Sirius opened his eyes. He looked insufferably pleased with himself. "Revolver."

"Merlin, help us all." James said, to the ceiling.

"We could just play Exploding Snap," Peter said, to no one in particular.

Remus stared at him. Then he took the envelope out of Sirius' hands with the careful precision of someone who had eventually decided not to engage, set it in the centre of the board, and picked up the cards to deal.

"You're not psychic," Remus said.

"You don't know that."

"I do, in fact, know that."

"You're very closed off to the possibilities of the universe, for a man who turns into a wolf once a month."

"That's completely differe—"

"In fact," Sirius continued, pressing the envelope back to his forehead, eyes closing beatifically, "I'm seeing more now. I see… your trousers. Flung to the corner of my—"

Remus' hand closed over his mouth, and there was silence.

"Right," Remus said, to James and Peter as calmly as he could; a man who had made his bed and was now lying in it. "Please deal the cards."

The game, predictably, was chaos.

None of them, in actuality, knew how to play. Remus tried to keep track, making notes and crossing off suspects with methodical efficiency, then uncrossing them, then staring at his notepad with quiet suspicion. Peter kept returning to the rule-book and at one point announced they'd been moving wrong for the last three rounds; no one adjusted. James kept wondering aloud where the police were in all of this.

"It's a country house," Sirius said, with great authority. "The police don't come to country houses."

"Someone's been murdered—"

"Sirius, it's your turn," Remus interrupted.

Sirius accused Professor Plum in every room with a rotating cast of weapons — the library with the lead pipe, the billiard room with the rope. He suggested, in a voice that was somehow both innocent and not innocent at all, that Remus Lupin had perhaps done it in the dormitory, and was physically relocated back to his own chair.

"This is not the point of the game," Peter said, and no one acknowledged this.

James eliminated the kitchen by round four and stopped caring about winning approximately thirty seconds later, when Sirius leaned over to look at Remus' notepad and Remus let him — tilting it toward him without looking up, easy and automatic, and something in that small casualness made James feel like he was watching something private.

Eventually, out of other options, he reached across the board and picked up the envelope.

The table went quiet. Even Sirius stopped spinning the little pewter candlestick between his fingers.

James opened it. Read the cards.

He tipped the board over.

"JAMES—"

"I was right wasn't I — James — Prongs — I was RIGHT—"

"Peter" James said to him and only to him. "Have a nice night."

"You can't just— the pieces—"

"I can." He turned off the light on his way out and heard Peter following him dejectedly.

Behind him, in the dark; "I was right." Not even a question this time. Just Sirius, to Remus, quiet and certain.

And then Remus' voice, the smile audible in it even from the stairs: "You were right."

"I knew it—"

"You're still not psychic."

"And yet—"