“The world seemed to be a better place, when we were all together. Perhaps one day, maybe one day it will all be alright again. I hope you are well, my solar companion.”
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.
Does anyone else remember Jily fic circa 2006 where Sirius was constantly hyperactive and Remus did nothing but eat chocolate whilst reading and Lily was an uptight shrew with curves in all the right places who yelled angrily all the time and James was a smooth lothario who fucked every girl with a pulse and Peter’s absence was explained in an author’s note right in the middle of a paragraph (I dIdnt include PeTERBecause I HATE HIM URGHH xoxoxox lol!!!! *~*~*~*~*~!!) or was that just a fever dream I never quite escaped from?
This is the equivalent of pulling out our awkward middle school photos and waving our acne-ridden, awful-haircut, baby-faced visages for all the world to see.
I always appreciate people who depict HP’s main cast as people of colour, not only because it gives me simple enjoyment and peace, but also because I have four years worth of backlog of people giving me nonsense for daring to use my imagination about more POC in a world that has magic and dragons
“Sirius” says Evans, whipping away a tear, “It’s hard to be a bad boy when you’re lovely. And you’re lovely, which makes you not a bad boy.” Nobody has ever called you lovely in your entire life, and she’s grinning from where she’s lying across James’s legs and you kind-of love her. Not like that obviously, but you do all the same, in the same way you love James, or Remus or Pete. She’s made it onto your list and you wouldn’t give her both kidneys, but maybe one and a bit of bone marrow, or some shit. If she really needed it. You take a drink from the bottle you’ve just nicked off Remus.
sirius: you know when you really just want coffee but you’re drinking a coffee and you already had three this morning but you have another one in the coffee pot and there’s also a coffee cake on the counter and-
like, i totally appreciate that HP fandom is still so intense and all the creativity that still gets poured into it, nearly 20 years after the first book came out, but ngl every time i see one of those edits with the original Marauders being represented by like, some impossible perfect Millenial instagram models with artfully tousled hair and pouty lips it always throws me bc those dudes were in their prime in late 1970′s england aka an era when looking like a led zeppelin reject was about the peak of popular young male hotness
like you know this is what they looked like, don’t try to fight it
I’ll bet you’d look adorable grasping at the sheets on my bed
no matter how many times u compliment me im not making ur bed
- conversation between Sirius Black and Remus Lupin, (regrettably) overhead by James Potter and Peter Pettigrew in the Gryffindor boys’ dorm, Hogwarts, 1976
What she means: THE MARAUDERS DESERVED BETTER. CAN YOU IMAGINE HOW REMUS FELT WHEN HE WOKE UP ONE DAY, ONLY TO FIND OUT THAT TWO OF HIS BEST FRIENDS WERE KILLED AND THAT HIS OTHER BEST FRIEND WAS SENT TO AZKABAN FOR THEIR MURDER? CAN YOU IMAGINE HOW SIRIUS FELT BEING STUCK IN THAT AWFUL PLACE FOR 12 YEARS, KNOWING EVERYDAY THAT REMUS DESPISED HIM, AND THAT HE CAN’T DO ANYTHING ABOUT IT? HOW HARRY WAS BEING RAISED TO HATE HIM AS WELL WHEN HE SHOULD HAVE BEEN ONE OF THE CLOSEST PEOPLE TO HIM? AND JUST WHEN REMUS GOT SIRIUS BACK, JUST WHEN HE GOT HIS BROTHER BACK, FINALLY KNOWING THAT FOR THE PAST 12 YEARS HE’S HATED THE WRONG PERSON, HE HAS TO WATCH SIRIUS FALL THROUGH THE VEIL, LOSING ONE OF THE ONLY GOOD THINGS IN HIS LIFE FOR GOOD.
