[ao3]
A short, dark alley. Dead end on one side, just another street on another. Traffic is scant, both of the people and vehicle kind, and James notes, rather unhelpfully, that this is one of those fancy villages with enough budget to pave their main roads with terracotta bricks.
He backs up one more step and finds himself against the wall – why is there a wall here anyway? – and one of his companions in the cul-de-sac exhales a snicker. “What now then, pretty boy?” he asks James, and James doesn’t respond, because he doesn’t know, honestly.
He doesn’t even clearly remember how he ended up here. Three against one, no more energy for his magic to be of any use, and his brain a useless, throbbing, spinning mess in alcohol.
“Who are you?” James asks them, his words tangling around his mouth, his eyes drooping beneath his specs. “I’m magic. I can take you. I’m – magic.”
The others laugh. “Magic, god. I reckon you’re the kind of fucker Jeanne can take out even sober.”
“Who?”
He doesn’t get an answer – but he does get a punch to the face. His glasses get skewed on his face at the impact, and the discomfort of having awkwardly shoved, possibly damaged glasses on a face gets eclipsed by the immediate pain blooming on his jaw.
“Not anything much now, are you?” one of them says, and James doesn’t know if it’s another person talking, or the same from before. Come to think of it, maybe there’s just one of them?
“I’m magic,” James just says again. He feels like laughing. He shouldn’t, and he really should probably stop saying he’s magic, in case a ministry official is around monitoring the streets or, worse, his magic decides that now is the time to go erratic, but – well, he doesn’t know what he’s doing. Here, in general, what have you.
He sees the guy raise his arm again, fist tight and lips in a sneer, and James braces for it best he can.
But it doesn’t come. Another person has appeared, and he’s on James’s side, apparently, because he’s holding the guy’s arm back. James can’t make him much in the dark. And in his inebriation.
“Leave.”
“Who are you?”
“Sirius Black.”
Ah. Sirius Black. Sirius Black, James knows.