#sept77

James didn’t know what made him dig out the box he’d hidden at the bottom of his trunk at the end of the summer, but once the thrill of being back in school and seeing everyone started wearing down, James’ mood caused him to gravitate toward it. It was a small, cardboard box with the name of the local Quidditch shop stamped across the top. The logo looked relatively new and the colors weren’t faded, but the box was worn with use, stuffed to the brim and held shut with a thick purple ribbon. The ribbon had belonged to his mother, and the box was from an old gift— the last she had given him—, a pair of Quidditch goggles. The wrappings were appropriate considering the contents, which James removed piece by piece once he’d settled onto the couch in his new common room, pausing to read each letter from his mother. He’d arranged them each chronologically, noticing how her handwriting became messier with each letter. But one thing he hadn’t noticed before was the PS at the bottom of each correspondence, perhaps the most important thing he’d ever read from the woman. Take care of your brother for me. His hands shook as he sorted through the large stack, pausing every now and then to wipe at his eyes. Take care of your brother for me. He’d failed her this summer, and he didn’t know how to make amends for it.

Lily had spent the afternoon with Alice, giggling by the lake in lieu of doing anything remotely productive.  They’d meant to be studying but the weather had been warm and it was especially difficult to get Lily to do anything but bask in the sun on those last few straggler days of summer.  Summer was her favorite season and not one she saw much of at Hogwarts.  In the spring she was too busy with Finals to enjoy it but in September, she could soak up the last bit of heat as if she would store it to bring out during the winter for a happy reminder of the warmth to come.  By the time she made her way back to the common room, still some time before dinner, her hair was tangled from lying in the grass and she’d lost the will to be productive for the rest of the day.  She gave the password to the portrait, letting herself into the common room where she was surprised to see James sitting on his own.  A dark look was on his face, one she recognized from the train on the first day of school.  She set her bag down on the table near the portrait hole and crossed the room to where James sat on the couch.  “Can I sit?” she asked softly, careful not to disturb anything he’d laid out.  “What’s wrong?”  She didn’t try to hide the concern in her voice, given the last time she’d seen him even remotely upset he’d collapsed.  Twice.  And she’d suddenly learned that that possibility upset her.

James didn’t look over when she entered, but noticed the movement out of the corner of his eye. He reached up and tried to wipe the water away before she got too close, but settled for blinking hard when she sat next to him. “Uh, nothing, really,” he answered, though his voice was rough and an octave reserved for times when he was upset. “Just been thinking about mum lately,” he added, his voice thick like he’d been close to crying, but didn’t want to clear his throat for fear of giving the fact away. “These are all her letters.”

He didn’t know what else to say, didn’t know how to explain the weight of it all. They weren’t just herletters, they were her dying wish for him to keep his brother safe. And the knowledge that James very well could have lost his brother over the summer was pressing on him in a way he found he couldn’t relieve.

As soon as he mentioned his mother, Lily’s mind pulled out a memory from the Library, a different boy who exuded the same hurt James did now. And she thought of her mother, the idea of losing her.  As it had that day in the library, the idea took her breath away and she felt with all her heart for James.  

She bit her lip as she watched him across the couch.  His eyes stayed fixed on the slips of paper and she tried to find something to say to comfort him.  Or to at least let him know that if he needed to talk to someone, he could always talk to her.  “I’m sorry,” she said after a moment, a hand reaching out to settle on his forearm, fingers lying lightly against his skin.  “If there’s - anything I can do…”

Sirius was miserable and sticky and hot. He hated summer, hated even the tail end of it. He’d been dying to get back to his and James’ room and just strip to relieve himself of this awful heat. He’d already shoved his shoes in to his bag and was walking around barefoot. His shirt was unbuttoned and sweat was collecting at the base of his neck. He hated summer.

He wound his way up the stairs to the dorm and walked inside. “I swear, Jim, I’m not doing a single fuckin’ lap on the pitch til it stops bein’ hot as a dragon’s ass.” He didn’t even notice the tension in the air. He walked by them to get a glass of water, and only once he had it and turned to them did he pause. “……Somethin’ goin’ on?” he asked, noitcing the rather somber expressions they were wearing. “Did I interrupt somthin’?”

And once again, James didn’t bother looking over as Sirius entered, though the lack of tact made the corners of his lips twitch upward. He didn’t care what form Sirius took when he came around; he just cared that his brother was back. He was safe. He wasn’t dead. "Nah, mate," he shook his head, gaze fixed on the letters. "Just looking over some of mum’s letters."

James didn’t move a muscle when Sirius came in but Lily couldn’t help but pull her hand back from where it had been resting on James’ skin. As soon as she did it she couldn’t fathom why.  She draped it over the back of the sofa and leaned back into the opposite corner from James, pulling her legs up under her.   A hundred quips rested on her tongue but none seemed appropriate as she watched continued James with concern filled eyes, pulling her gaze from him for only a moment to check in with Sirius, the memory of the library filling her gaze.  

A look of shock crossed Sirius’ face; they’d barely spoken of Dorea since her passing, and Sirius had preferred it that way. All the letters from her that he’d kept for years were back at their father’s house, shoved in a box in the back of the closet he and James had shared. He had no idea why James’d be looking at them now, but having it brought up so suddenly set Sirius off in ways he couldn’t explain.

He stiffened, his grip tightening on the glass in his hand, almost to the point that he was afraid it would crack. He knew that look, that somber, forlorn sort of look on James’ face, and from the way Lily was looking at him…

He didn’t know what possessed him to say it. He cringed the moment he did. But before he could stop himself, he snapped, “Well whatever it is, let it go. She’s gone. Reading those letters won’t make it better. Put them away, James, where they belong.”

Sirius was right, but James couldn’t let it go. There was something bothering him, weighing him down, and he had to find some way to release the tension before it dragged him down for good. They’d gone too long without talking about this, and maybe it was that fact that made him address Lily instead of Sirius. He needed to talk to someone. "Mum always told me to take care of him," he told her quietly. "Ended every letter with the PS. It used to say ‘take care of Sirius for me,’ but in fourth year—" a year and a half before Sirius had officially moved in, "she started signing them, ‘take care of your brother for me.’" He set the letters down and shook his head. "And then I lost track of him. Didn’t take care of him like she told me to." He’d failed her.

Sirius reaction didn’t really surprise her.  Though she’d seen him gripped in the sadness of losing his mother, she’d seen him since and knew that wasn’t a weakness he liked to broadcast.  The depth of it, though, the harshness to his words. That took her by surprise. 

And then James was talking to her instead of him and she could feel the tension as it built up around her.  “James,” she breathed, protesting that train of thought even in that one word.  “You made yourself sick with worry while he was gone.  What more do you think she would have wanted from you?” She was careful with her words, concerned for both boys and unwilling to make things more fragile than they already were.

This was not was he was expecting to face from today, the reality all over again of how quickly and howeasily Dorea had decided she wanted to be his mother. How willingly she had taken him in and loved him. He’d never known about that part of her letters; she’d never said anything like that in her letters to him. She’d never needed to. She had known since they’d met that he would always look after James when he could.

So really, he’d failed her too in leaving him behind.

Sirius set down the glass too hard and the bottom of it chipped. He didn’t care. He didn’t look at James, didn’t glance at Lily. “You didn’t lose track of me,” he snapped, his voice a low growl. “I left. And I swear onanything holy if you blame yourself one more fucking time—” What he’d do, he didn’t know, but he figured he got his point across all the same.

"You’ll what?" James snapped back. He folded the letters and pushed them back in the box before he stood and glared over at Sirius. "Explain to me how this wasn’t my fault. How I wasn’t the one who drove you away. How I wasn’t the one who made you feel like you were back at Grimmauld Place. How I wasn’t the one who argued with you and made it seem like I was turning my back on you when you needed me. You can’t, can you? Because I did all of those things.” It wasn’t fair to do this now, not with Lily here, but he was angry. He was scared and he was tired. "I thought you were dead." It had been said before and James had nothing to gain by saying it again, but he needed for once to see that the impact of that had hit Sirius. They needed to fight in a way that was healthy, so Sirius could see what that meant. He needed to see that the problems could be solved and they would still be brothers by the end of it, to learn what forgiveness was. "And I hated myself for it because if anything happened to you, it was my fucking fault.”

She considered leaving, quietly backing out into her dorm or out of the Common Room completely.  As the brother’s opened boxes they’d long kept sealed and hidden in the corners of their hearts, Lily felt like an intruder.  A guest who dropped in at the wrong place and time and had no business being privy to the things being said in front of her now.  

And yet she couldn’t do it.  Couldn’t bring herself to leave.  She stood only moments after James did, though she didn’t know why.  To get between them if something more than angry words were exchanged?  To lay a calming hand on James back?  She did neither thing, instead standing awkwardly to the side of them, waiting and listening and hurting for both of them.

Sirius was not in a place where he lacked words this time. If anything, he had too many and he had them too well. “I don’t know what I’ll do, but so help me, James if you don’t stop blaming this on yourself I willfind a way to get it through your thick skull that this had nothing to do with you!” Sirius was rarely so articulate as when he was angry; he forgot all notions of trying to hide the way he’d been raised to speak in his haste to snap back the biting words he usually had. It wasn’t so harsh today, but it was bad enough.

"No one ever cared before, you thick prat, how was I meant to know? I can’t just know these things, James, you of all people should know that. When I ran away from home not a single person looked for me or tried to find out where I was, don’t you think that set the tone? It wasn’t the first time I ran out and it won’t be the last. I left because we were fighting all the time and that’s how it started. I’m not calling you the kind of person my mother was - is - but you have to understand that it scared me to think I was fucking it up all over again, but it has nothing to do with you! If anything happened it would have been on me. I left, and if I’d gotten myself killed it would have been because I was stupid, not because you upset me, you idiot!”

If Lily hadn’t been so close, James would have hit him, because words were not coming to him. They usually didn’t when he was angry. He was rarely articulate when he was in a rage, and it was easier to fistfight with Sirius and get the frustration out that way than to talk about it. But Lily was right there, so he balled his hands into fists at his sides instead and tried to sputter out some words. "I’m not them!" He snapped back. "Nobody is! Can’t you tell—after all the things we’ve done—everything we’ve been through, don’t you know? I’m different! I care about you—you knew that!" At least, he’d hoped Sirius would know that. "I worry ‘bout you all the time—youknow that! This wasn’t different!”

None of what Sirius said came as a surprise to Lily.  They hadn’t been friends very long but given the nature of the first two times they’d truly conversed, their understanding of one another surpassed most.   She honestly never thought she’d hear him explaining it to James, though.  As they fought, she listened, realizing how much went unsaid between them because of how close they’d always been.  Why explain something you think will never apply?

She was honestly surprised, seeing James hands ball into fists, that he didn’t take a swing at Sirius.  The way the boys were glaring at one another, pain so clear on both faces, it frightened her.  James’ words struck a chord, though, even with Lily and she stepped just one step forward, wrapping one her hands around one of his fists, her other hand lying flat again against his forearm, this time for a very different reason.  “James.”  Her voice was staccato, almost as it she was warning him back.  As if the simple pause between shouts could temper their flaring anger, or at least remind him to better his hold on it.  Because the road his words were heading down wouldn’t do anyone any good.

“No,” he snapped. “Let him. Let him hit me if he fucking wants to. He can show me how different he is from my family.” This was something he’d never been able to get James to understand. All he’d ever seen in Sirius was the pain his family had caused him, and that James hadn’t done so made him different. But that wasn’t the only thing Sirius saw. He stepped forward, well within James’ reach, and somehow he was looking down at James despite that fact that the other boy was taller. “You go ahead and think what you want, but they were my family. They cared about me once like you do now and if you think for one second that it’s never occurred to me that it could happen to me twice then you never understood why itkilled me when it happened.”

Sirius was furious, but most of it wasn’t directed at James; he was somehow just the catalyst in all of this all over again, though this was the argument they’d never had. “You think it was just horrible all the time because I never talk about it but it wasn’t. I was happy there for years, James. Just because they’redifferent doesn’t mean I hated them. I tried, I stuck it out because I didn’t want to turn my back on them and if you think all they did was push me around—” His jaw clenched so hard it hurt. “For all I know you’reexactly like them. I’ve never known any different! When you tell me you’re my family, I don’t know what else it could mean. I can’t tell the difference when words and empty and when they’re not, James! I can’t! So when the fighting started I was scared. It doesn’t mean anything else, ok?? It just means I was scared! I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you because of some stupid thing I’d done and I thought it was happening all over again. I don’t know how to make things right and I don’t know how to fix things so I just ran, and that’s it.”

James paused when Lily set her hands on his arm, but Sirius’ words — the first three sentences, in fact— caused him to absolutely deflate. Concern replaced the anger etched onto his face, his features softening and lips parting in surprise. He let Sirius go through the entire rant, quiet even a few moments after his brother was finished. “They hit you?” He asked, his voice soft. He wasn’t surprised by it since he knew what those sorts of families were capable of, but it still hurt to hear, to know that anyone could ever lay a hand on Sirius, that there had ever been a time in James’ life where he wasn’t around or didn’t know well enough to protect his brother. He didn’t know how to say any of that, though it was written well enough on his face and in his voice. "You’re not gonna lose me," he finally managed, though he didn’t know if Sirius would believe him anymore. "Been six years, mate. I never go anywhere," he pointed out. "I know it sucks, but you have to talk to me when you’re scared, okay?" He pleaded and gently tugged away from Lily. He pulled Sirius into a hug and sighed, "It doesn’t matter what you do or what we disagree about, ever. You fix things by talking to me. We’re brothers, right?" He pointed out and pulled back to look him in the eye. "Sirius, you can tell me anything."

As Sirius goaded James, it was all Lily could do not to tell him off, instead fixing him with a look meant to do it for her.  But then he continued talking and the look faded with haste from her features.  Her hands still held James’ arm but there was no resistance there anymore. He had lost any fight still in him and she couldn’t blame him.  A familiar anger burned in the pit of her stomach at the revelation, one she’d nursed quietly ever since Sirius had first told her about his family.  She stamped it down now, this was neither the time nor the place, but resolving it to the list of things Walburga Black would one day need to answer for.  

She released her hands on his arm the moment she felt James move for Sirius, clasping them around each other and stepping back as he stepped forward, once again feeling like she was intruding on a moment between brothers that was too precious for her to interrupt.  

The look he got from Lily and the shock on James’ face was enough to make his anger deflate just enough that he could stop. It was a relief to not have to speak anymore, to be allowed to fall back in to silence before he said something he didn’t want to tell. He’d already said too much, and any more out of him would only make it worse than it already was. He exhaled heavily, not quite a sigh, and his shoulders dropped from their stiff, defensive stance. “……Yeah. Couple times, but they did worse than knock me around.” What those things were, he wouldn’t say, but getting punched in the jaw wasn’t the worst of his fears by far.

He stiffened at first inside James’ embrace, not sure what to do with it after their outbursts. He finally sighed and slid his arms around him in return, though he looked up to glance at Lily, his expression difficult to read. “Talkin’ never did me any good, y’know,” he muttered. “Always made it worse….. It’s just….” And there he was, right back to fumbling with his words again even as James found his. He ran a hand through his dark hair, and the sweat still clinging to the strands made it stand on end, much like James’ always did. “If she….. if my mum could—” He shook his head. He didn’t believe James would ever do that to him, but sometimes he would swear he still felt the burning in his chest where her curse had struck him. “Can’t, Jim……Can’t always tell you everythin’ even when I want to.”

James nodded and pulled him onto the couch, knowing that when these moods struck, Sirius just needed people around him to comfort him, so he knew they weren’t going to leave him. “I know, mate,” he murmured and beckoned Lily over to sit on the other side of Sirius. He had no idea how close they’d actually become, but he figured he might as well try to acquaint her with the simplest way to calm Sirius down. He slipped a hand through Sirius’ arm and used his free one to fix his brother’s hair. “I know you can’t, Sir. You don’t have to, okay? You never have to tell me anything you don’t want to. But if you’re upset, or you’re worried you’ve upset me, that’s all you need to say. We’ll figure it out from there. We always do.” He stopped playing with Sirius’ hair and wrapped his arm around his brother’s shoulders, then indicated for Lily to do the same, to the extent she was comfortable. Physical contact had always calmed Sirius down.

As Sirius let himself relax into James’ embrace the look he shared with Lily saw the red haired girl smiling softly at him, a smile that spoke volumes without ever saying a word.  James didn’t really need to beckon her over, from the moment Sirius even mentioned his mum she’d been itching to wrap her arms around him and assure him that that would not happen again.  She only waited long enough to be sure she wasn’t intruding where she wasn’t wanted before settling onto the couch beside Sirius.  

They’d sat this way before, her head resting on his shoulder, her fingers laced through his with a fierce tightness meant to promise that she would never let go.  “James is right, you know,” she murmured after a moment, staring at their hands as she couldn’t see his face without lifting her head and having no desire to do so.  “Only I reckon you’ve just made it worse for yourself.”  Neither James not Sirius had a decent view of the small smirk on her lips now but she was sure Sirius could hear it.  “I owe you one drunken break down in the middle of the night, after all,” she pointed out.  “You’re stuck with me as well now.”

Sirius pressed himself against James, leaning all his weight against the other’s shoulder while his arm slid around Lily to keep her closer to him. He leaned his head against her, his eyes closing. Just feeling their weight on either side of him was calming, as was the hand in his hair and the other wrapped around his own. They’d both done this for him before, and it was strange how easy it was to just fall in to it with both of them instead of one or the other, as though it was always meant to be this way.

"We were fightin’ all summer, Jim…. Didn’t think I had to say I thought you were upset." There was more to it, but he didn’t know how to explain at first, so he said nothing. He chuckled softly when she spoke, a smile turning the corners of his mouth. "Dunno, maybe just a drunken night, Lils. We’re sorta past the other part, don’t’cha think?" He squeezed her hand gently and turned to kiss her hair. It gave him another moment to think, to try to find the words. "….Never wanted forgiveness before," he finally said. "Dunno what it looks like, I guess." He shifted slightly to lean his head on James’ shoulder now. "I know you’d never, Jim. I know that. I just….. I knew my mum would never either, y’know? And then she did….. It’s different…..but it’s not….I guess."

"Wait," James frowned and shook his head. "I’m sorry—this isn’t the point of any of this, but you had a drunken break down?" He asked Lily before looking to Sirius. "And you where there for it? When was this?" No, not the point at all. He sighed and kissed the top of Sirius’ head. "Mate, forgiveness is pretty simple when you get down to it. All it means is that even after you disagree, have a knock down drag out fight, you make up. You don’t punish the other person for whatever they did. You get the feelings out in the open, find a solution, and then be friends again." He didn’t know if that made sense, but it wasn’t a concept he’d had to explain before. "I need you to stick with me, mate, or I’m gonna go out of my mind. You’re my brother. That means I’m with you through anything and everything, right til the end. It means I’m not going anywhere if you’re not with me. Got it?"

Lily’d realized as she’d said it that it as only a matter of time before she had to explain the evening to James, at least in some fashion.  She was oddly okay with the idea, now that she’d done it, but this was certainly not the time.  “It’s a long story but there were family troubles all around this summer,” she sufficed to explain with a shake of her head.  “Later,” she added.  A promise.

James did a fair job of explaining forgiveness, of explaining what it meant to him for Sirius to be his brother. But Lily knew it wasn’t as simple to accept as all that.  It had taken years for her to trust that Marlene would never turn on her as Petunia had, years that were dashed away when Sev broke her heart and reminded her again that trusting people to love you is dangerous.  She understood better than she cared to how knowing a thing and believing it were very different.  “I don’t think it’s something you’ll ever really wrap your head around,” she said thoughtfully.  “One day you’ll just know - really know like you haven’t felt before - who really will never leave you.” And when that day came, she knew she had every intention of being counted among those names.

Sirius couldn’t help it; he snorted. Of course James would pick up on that in the middle of all of this. His hand squeezed Lily’s shoulder gently. “Back in June. Disappeared for the weekend. You didn’t even blink, Jim.” That was all he was going to say about it; the rest was up to Lily if she wanted to say or not.

He took all their words in silence, not sure what to make of them. He’d never really faced the idea of forgiveness before. His family had never offered it, and his friends had never needed to give it before now. He had never wanted it, and had never considered it. She said he probably couldn’t wrap his head around it, but he tried regardless - he wasn’t sure what else to do but try to figure it out. The one thing that stuck with him, though, was James telling him he needed him. That grounded him, it always had, so he nodded mutely. He looked down, pulling his hands in to his lap where he did all but wring them together. “……How do I fix it?” he finally asked, brows knit together again. “How do I….? I don’t understand…..”