#prince!james

There was a vibrant hum in the palace as you walked down the stairs, hearing aggravated groans filled with words that you simply knew they’d have swallowed had you already been in the room. You expected no less in your parents’ absence, everyone wanting to have their say in managing the situation at the gate, nearly hundreds of men and women gathering in angry hoards as they tugged at fencing, threw at windows, and cursed into the air. There were many opinions, always were, however, a queen and her husband missing and leaving her children to command her country while she was indisposed, prompted all the more than usual.

The door to your mother’s office opened from inside, strange faces meeting you as you stepped into the doorway, a silence shivering over the small space as James sighed, almost relived as men backed away from the corner, they’d talked him into, merely bowing their heads in acknowledgment of your presence.

“Ah,” he began and brushed his shirt into place as he nodded towards you. “Little sister, I assume you’ve come to enlighten us on the only right way to handle our little predicament?” he mused, and you knew his tone to have a familiar mix of sincerity yet belittlement to it.

Your brother was an odd creature, unlike either of your parents, unlike you for that matter. Never one for the politics of your home, the weight of your family, much rather cooped up in his room with his paintings, he’d have himself starved yet inspired instead of sitting about the throne dealing with issues of state. He was wise in his personal endeavors, but foolish in his belief that the Potter name held no purpose in his life, despite your shared responsibilities he’d always managed to twist your lives to benefit his own, though admirable for some, it left you plastered in his misfitting shoes.

“Consider the problem already solved,” You began and as if on cue, Lily came stumbling into the room behind you, momentarily stealing the men’s attention before demanding eyes fell back onto you. “Though I’m sure my parents appreciate council being offered so graciously to their children, I can assure you that we are capable of managing our own affairs,” You explained and cleared your throat as you stepped aside, hands folded in front of you as you waited for them to understand your request.

“I think what my sister is far too kindly trying to say, is that our mother fairs well without a bunch of old men telling her what to do and so will we,” James agreed and with a tired shrug he plumped down onto the leather office chair, gesturing the gaping men out of the room with an outstretched hand as he smiled at you. “So, what’re you going to do?” he asked once the room had cleared, assuming you’d miss the way his gaze lingered but a second too long on the woman who hovered at your side, hand resting on her gun halter as she looked at her feet.

“What I always do,” you informed him, allowing an arrogant smile to tilt into your lips, knowing it had no place there yet having no control over it all the same. “Clean up your mess.”

It was not long before you were pulling your coat around your body, ignoring the warnings that Lily was mumbling, a well-known mantra much like the one she’d heard from Regulus when he was training her to be your guard and much like you did to him, you paid the words no mind. You pulled the hood over your head as you reread the map on your phone to guide you in your escape, feet leading you past the staff rooms, through the fire escape that led you right into the hidden gardens where James thought he could smoke in secret.

“Princess, your parents wouldn’t approve of this,” Lily whispered, peering around the lawn as you opened the hidden latch that was made by the very person you were running to see. “Now is not the time to take this risk, not when they’re not here to get you out of trouble.”

“I have no choice, you know that, and they’d know that as well,” you bargained, knowing she had no intentions of making you stay when she followed you out of the gate and to the outside, the shouting and stomping growing louder as the two of you looked around for the car that he’d sent for you.

Not a word more was exchanged on the way from the palace, familiar apprehensive looks shared as the driver kept his eyes on the road, only looking down when his phone chimed with a text from the man in question, you presumed. You were unnervingly accustomed to the entire ordeal, knowing that despite the risk you were taking, the reward would be far greater, worth much more as you considered your choices. Lily was right when she spoke about your parents. You were making your own bed, as they’d taught you to, but they’d never approve of who you were inviting into it. You thought you’d have more time, time to butter them up to what was shaping up to be a yearlong conversation in hope for peace, but you’d never accounted for riots at your front door or death threats with blood stains thrown through your window.

The car eased to a still in front of the cold brick building, a hand on your back guiding you out of the street, away from wondering eyes as you looked back to see if Lily was close behind, the route was no different than before, the unhappy glares and whispered musings of disapproval being of no bother as you waited to be taken to his door.

“Princess,” a voice snarled, and you had no restraint as a frustrated breath left your lips, your mission was brought to a stop as a man stumbled into your way. “It’s been quite a while since we entertained royalty on this side of town,” he noted and you mustered a look of faux surprise, shaking yourself from the grip on your back as you looked him up and down.

“That might be true, but I am not here as royalty.”

“Aye? Who are you here as then?” he persisted and you scoffed, knowing that by the sudden silence that sauntered into the air the man in question was not far from the little scene that’d been formed, disrupting his time.

“My friend,” the thick accent fled through your senses as though it filtered through your veins, his frame begging your gaze to drift to him and it obliged, always did, a teasing smirk on his lips as he looked down at you from atop the stairs. “Does anyone have a problem with that?” he prompted, and it was as though the simple words held piles of threats as the men separated to make room for you to walk.

“Princess,” Lily gave a frustrated scoff as she was stopped at the foot of the stairs. “Be careful,” she insisted before you followed the man of the house to the office that you’d spent many nights hiding from the world, debating a settlement for families only known as foes.

“Sirius,” you sighed, closing the door behind you and smiling when he pushed himself onto the empty desk that sat askew in the corner of the bare room, his eyes trailed slowly over your face, trying his best to decipher why you were there without you saying anything, he had a frustrating habit of doing so quite successfully. “I need a favour,” you breathed after a second that seemed to last forever, squirming slightly under his gaze despite it being far from strange.

“I assumed as much,” he teased, nodding for you to go on as you walked towards him, tugging the hood from your head, fingers moving to ease everything back into place.

“There are people rioting in front of my home, threatening us, promising to kill us,” you began and stilled right at his side, looking down at the city as it lay in the streets, cars pulling up and then pulling away after mere minutes, a notion that you would’ve questioned in the past had you not learned to keep your nose from his business.

“I saw,” he leaned back against the wall to see you again, no doubt missing the smile that dipped into your mouth as he proved without much prompt that he cared at least slightly if you had managed to escape unharmed. “How did you get out?”

“Same way you get in.”

“Clever girl,” he tutted, and you’d have laughed at him if you weren’t to be in his debt in the future. “What exactly do you want me to do, hmm? Riots at the palace seem more like a job for the police, no?”

“They’re wearing your name, Sirius.”

You didn’t know how long you were supposed to pause after that. You were somewhat expecting him to jump to his own defense, half expecting him to accuse you of mistrusting him, yet you knew neither was to happen. Trust was a rather strong word to use for whatever the relationship was that you had. You knew he was true to his word, knew he would not allow you to come to any harm and though your power was much less than his own, you’d try to do the very same for him. Though beyond all of that, you knew that as many troubles lay with your name, there were many that laid with his own. He was a criminal, after all, some of the worst of his kind and you were in his home, begging him to help you when you knew it would earn you heaps of problems in turn. Your mother would have your head, she’d have his too. She didn’t take out his family, his entire line of kin just for you to allow their kind right back into your lives.

“They’re not mine,” he offered, and his hand settled on the table next to yours, tilting his head to see what you were looking at, humming as if to acknowledge your train of thought. “That’s part of our little agreement, is it not? Our little settlement of peace? I may not harm your family as revenge for what your mother did to mine, and you let me make a quick buck off taking out the bad guys the police miss,” he sighed at that, noticing the way you rolled your eyes at his almost mocking tone as he mimicked words that you’d spoken out of serious intents to do good. “Those men are trying to hurt you, Y/n, if they were mine then I’d have them tied and beaten already, you understand that don’t you?”

“Of course, I do,” you sighed, and though you should be very much appalled by his words, you found an odd sense of comfort in his reassurance, smiling with him as he nodded at you.

“Good. Now, do you want me to take care of it for you?” he asked and needed no answer to know that that was exactly what you’d come here for. “I sent men down as soon as you texted me. The gate will be cleared by the time you get home,” he explained and chuckled softly at the shock that sifted onto your face. “You think I’m not the first one to know when you’re in trouble, little bird?  Though, I’ll admit, you were very brave coming all the way here, would not have known you were nervous had it not been for those,” he informed you as he pointed to your shaking hands, you’d hoped your grip on the table would’ve hidden it, but it seems you were very wrong, warmth spreading across your cheeks.  “You’re shaping up to be quite the leader, you know, your mother would be proud.”

“So would your father.”

“Oh, I would not say that, bowing to a Potter is what he regrets most.”

“I’m sure,” you smiled, looking up to the door when Lily stumbled through it, just like before, the same look on her face as she looked between you and Sirius.

“Your parents were just brought home by Regulus and the rest of the CIA,” she explained, holding the phone out to show you the picture of them arriving at the palace and you had to shake your head at the timing, Sirius’ words being anything but empty as there was not a single soul out on front of the place, barely any evidence left behind of the reason for your visit except for abandoned signs and makeshift weapons.  

You could hear the commotion all the way from James’ room, right down the hall and though you couldn’t see it you could picture the poor maids scurrying out of his way, and with a subtle look to Lily and a scoff, she opened the door just in time for him to burst through it.

“Morning, James, sleep well?” he didn’t care for your teasing, at least five ties draped over his one arm, the coloured paper cards of his speech in the other and you wanted to laugh, but it wasn’t nearly as amusing as it should be when he frowned at you.

“You joke? Can’t you see I’m in the midst of a crisis?” If only he could fathom the true meaning of the word, still, you stepped down from the little podium in front of your mirror and smiled at the stylist to dismiss her, context clues aside, you didn’t think his scene was entirely fashion-related. You had a feeling the drinks he’d drowned himself in the night before was getting the better of him this morning, though he’d not admit that and you knew better than to point it out to him. So, you handed his speech to Lily instead, biting your lip to hide the satisfied smile when you realized that her smudged lip gloss was the very same shade that shimmered on the corner of your brother’s lips.

“Calm down, would you, you’ve done the same speech at least a thousand times,” you tutted, picked the sage green tie to complement his eyes and match the lines of the intricate pattern on your dress, it reminded you of something your mother used to say about unity, how looking the part was half a step closer to being it.  “You use a whole bunch of fancy words to hide the fact that the country is actually in danger and then just briefly glance over the fact that you are taking yet another year to find yourself instead of being crowned in mom’s place,” the last tug to force the knot into place was just a little too rough by the way he stumbled, rolled his eyes, that mess of curls on his head clearly not combed yet as it fell about his face.

“I don’t see you stepping up for a shiny crowning title riddled with responsibility,” he bit back, and you scoffed, moving on to fix the collar of his blazer and then straighten the crest pinned on his pocket.

“That’s because, big brother, I’m already doing all the work without the crown and the title and the praise,” you had no sense being bitter about it, you’d rather pull the strings from the shadows than stand there in the spotlight telling lies and not getting anything done in the process. James yawned, you’d think he’d planned it perfectly to your comment but really you had a feeling he was just barely awake and stumbling around with his big boy feelings on his sleeve as always, hence the moaning and groaning you were so very accustomed to.  “Now, go down to Dobey in the kitchen and ask him for one of his magical hangover cures, and then on your way back, have Dad slap some colour into those cheeks of yours so the press doesn’t write another article comparing you to the walking dead.”

“Sometimes I think you forget that I’m a full four years older than you,” you didn’t prove him wrong much when you took the crumbled piece of fabric poking out of his pocket to wipe the lip-gloss from his lips, both him and Lily growing flustered, James’ cheek heating up under your touch and Lily looking away just a tad too quickly for it to seem casual.

“How could I forget when you take every petty chance to remind me.”

With a lot of grumbling and yelling, mostly from James though some from your mother, you’d managed to get out of the palace, it was a whole ordeal even just getting out to the palace grounds, there were too many people for such a short notice press conference. Still, you linked arms with Lily who had a steady grip on her gun from over her blazer, just in case, and whispered lightly about whoever one of you saw in the crowd first, entirely out of character, but Lily has always been your friend first and your guard second, only she did a very good job of acting like the second was by choice and not by pay.

“Don’t look now,” she whispered, and you knew your part, kind smile and dainty steps as you looked over the people and not at them, the perfect shot to portray that classy princess they so wished you to be, but that didn’t mean you weren’t excited to hear who she was looking at. Lily had a way of disguising her surveying for gossip as surveying for danger which had her look the perfect unsuspecting spotter. “I can’t believe they came out of hiding long enough to grace us with their presence,” the intrigue left your system in a second, she didn’t need to say much more for you to piece together exactly who she was talking about and it made your body run cold.

“The Lupins are here?” you weren’t sure how she heard you, you spoke so softly you barely heard yourself. Maybe it was just his parents, they’d been talking to your parents through letters for months now, maybe they just stopped by to see them quickly and they’d run back to their little island on the other side of the globe. “Is he…”

“Yes,” her voice was softer now too and were your mother not leading the bunch of you directly to the podium for James to speak, you would’ve run right back into that palace until they were on a plane and you were assured they weren’t ever coming back. “He’s looking at you, though he looks a right mess- could at least have ironed his suit before stepping out in the public eye after so long.”

You couldn’t believe it, Remus Lupin. The sheer audacity he had to come back here after all this time of complete silence, no letters, no explanations, just left you to try and go on with your life after what he’d done. It was always just the four of you, him and James, you and Lily, you’d rarely spent a second apart before things changed. Honestly, making you fall in love with him was one thing, abandoning you when you dared to acknowledge it was another and you had the right mind to knock him right off his feet the first chance you got. He left you as a naïve, lovesick teenager, and now when you’d finally moved past that, rewritten yourself, he had the nerve to show up to your home and make you rethink everything and you hadn’t even set your eyes on him yet, spoken to him yet.

“Breathe,” Lily reminded you, a soft squeeze to your hand when she took hold of it where it rested on her arm, aside from the letters in your journal you’d burned years ago, Lily was the only one who knew how your heart used to beat for his grace, the pompous bastard that is Prince Remus Lupin, so unlike his father is was laughable. “He’s sitting on the far right, just look straight ahead and you’ll miss him,” she handed you over to a very confused James, hoping that a look from Lily would be enough to explain why his usually calm and collected sister looked like she was about to faint right into his arms.

You shook your head, plastered on a pretty smile, and gripped the podium for dear life, thank goodness James couldn’t talk himself through a speech at a reasonable pace, words rushing out of his mouth faster than his mind could plan them- you wouldn’t have to pretend for too long. You considered yourself to have changed quite a bit since all of you were kids, you’d stayed the same in the parts that counted but the parts that hurt, the ones that made it hard to go on, you’d left those in the past, traded them in for attempts at bravely, traded your meekness for willingness, pushing for more- you weren’t completely similar to the girl who felt destroyed when Remus left for Hogwarts to get away from you, yet you felt her aching inside of you all the same upon knowing he was here.

An odd thing, all of this, trying to be brave while allowing the weakness in you a place to flow freely and have its moment. Yesterday you were talking to the leader of the mafia surrounded by horrendous, murderous people and you felt stronger than all of them, today you were surrounded by noblemen, royalty, family and a man you’d known for years only as the boy who broke your heart and you felt small enough to be picked up and taken away by the very breeze that shook through the trees around you.

You allowed your eyes to search for his, steal a guilty glance despite how much worse it could make you feel, and you tried your best to hide your reaction. He looked the same, you didn’t know how that was possible, how his eyes so beautiful they still begged you to get lost in him, how you could look past his own surprise at seeing you and in a second experience every single good and bad feeling he’d ever made you feel all at once.

There was movement behind him, you were distracted but you noticed it, everyone was so focussed on James’ talking and your parents standing behind you and the appearance of the Lupins, why anyone would be walking around didn’t make any sense. You thought you saw a face that shouldn’t be there, someone out of place, someone you’d seen only in darkness so how it was allowed in the light you weren’t sure, so you dismissed it, shot it down instead of looking to Lily to have her check and maybe if Remus wasn’t looking at you and James wasn’t talking and the idea of Sirius sending texts to your phone stuck in your room wasn’t consuming you, things might have turned out different. Instead, a horrific sound filled the air of the garden, people scurried, James was pulled away, you swore you’d seen that face before, and the pain of the past couldn’t measure up to the feeling of your flesh ripping apart or the coldness that filled your veins as you fell back into Lily’s arms or the surreal wetness of your own blood dripping onto your fingers. You couldn’t think with all the noise, couldn’t breathe from pain, couldn’t see from the shock but you knew for sure that there was about to be hell to pay.

It was silent and unthinkably loud all at once, the only voice that was cutting through was your mother’s, she was the only calm one, giving orders, calling for people and then you saw Lily- she looked so worried, so guilty even though it wasn’t her fault, as soon as you could fathom the idea of speaking, you’d tell her that. You’d tell your mother about what you’d been doing behind her back. Tell James to stop messing around and properly take Lily on a date. Tell Remus to go to hell.

Surely you could think yourself out of this one, reason yourself out of it, but the truth was it hurt like hell, and not once, not since you started working with Sirius, did you think you’d be the one getting shot. Maybe you were naïve, made friends with the wrong foe, you thought Sirius Black was the first in line to take out your family once he had the chance which is why you solved that problem but clearly there was someone bigger out there, someone who had no intentions of peace and unity and talking it through- if only they knew how much trouble they’d just gotten you into.