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Never Give Up, Prongsie


Remus pushed open the door to the boys’ dormitory to find Sirius curled up on his, Remus’s, bed, facing the wall, and James in his own, also facing the wall, opposite to Sirius, so that the boys backs were turned defiantly toward one another. Remus sighed and stepped inside, followed by Lily, who hovered nervously in the door a moment before pushing it just to close behind her. Remus cleared his throat, “Alright, you lot. Both of you, listen up.” Neither James nor Sirius moved to look. Remus looked at Lily.

“James? Sirius?” Lily pressed, then, “You’re both -- you’re both being horrible to each other!” she said, and when Sirius glanced over his shoulder at her, she continued, “Being a couple of idiots, honestly…”

“I’m not an idiot,” Sirius said, tone defensive.

“Well you’re certainly acting like one!” Lily scolded. “You’re both bent out of shape for thinking the other one is doing exactly the same thing when really neither of you is! James, Sirius doesn’t think you’re weak and pathetic! And Sirius, James doesn’t think you are, either. An awful thing happened and it’s not anybody’s fault. At least not anybody here, that is.” She looked from Sirius to James, a frown of concern on her lips. “You lot need each other something fierce. Don’t you understand that?”

Sirius rolled so that he was sitting up in the center of Remus’s bed and looked across the room to where James lay on his own bed, his shoulders hunched in. “Is it true, James? That you don’t think of me as weak and pathetic, then?” Sirius asked.

James could feel all four of them staring at his back. He sat up slowly, and stared at his knees, his hands in his lap sort of fiddling with the duvet. “Of course I don’t,” he answered.

Sirius sprang from Remus’s bed, over Peter’s and onto James’s, wrapping himself ‘round James’s torso with his limbs all tangled up ‘round James’s frame, knocking his glasses askew and planting a huge kiss into the messy disarray of his hair. “I’M SORRY, PRONGS,” he shouted as he flew across the gap between them, landing, his knees bending ‘round his mate as he pressed himself to James’s body. “I DON’T RECKON I’LL EVER FORGIVE MYSELF FOR BEING SUCH A PRAT TO YOU… I MAY NEVER STOP HUGGING YOU, I FUCKING MISSED YOU, I WAS SO WORRIED I WOULDN’T SEE YOU AGAIN, THAT YOU MIGHT THINK I -- THAT VOLDEMORT MIGHT HAVE --- THAT I --- THAT --” and he lost his words and simply pressed his face into James’s hair.

James bent his arm as best he could ‘round Sirius to pet his shoulder, though the angle was awkward on account of Sirius’s legs criss-crossing over James’s arms so that his mobility was quite limited. James said, “I didn’t think I would be getting out of there alive, I thought --” he paused, then, “I’d sort of given up when you came and --”

“NEVER GIVE UP PRONGSIE, I’LL ALWAYS COME FOR YOU!” Sirius shouted. “Even if it bleedin’ kills me to do it, I’ll come for you. The moment I realize. And I’ll realize sooner next time, I’ll see it in your eyes before it gets to this. I’ll --”

“Next time?” James asked and he laughed, “I sincerely hope there isn’t a next time.”

“You know what I mean,” Sirius murmured, and he held onto James all the tighter. “The metaphorical next time.”

“Yeah, the metaphorical next time,” James nodded, and he pushed the nightmares he’d been having out of his mind, tried to swallow up the feeling that any moment, the door could burst open and Voldemort would be there… as though Voldemort could be lurking around any corner.

“I won’t ever let him lay a finger on you again,” Sirius vowed. “Even if he kills me, I won’t.”

James felt an unexplained heaviness in his heart because, above all else, he could remember the sound of Voldemort’s breathing in the room as he waited for James to move after each bout of the cruciatus curse, as he allowed James to come back to himself for only just so long before inflicting the next round of the torture… and he shivered. The overwhelming sense that there wasn’t anything any one of them could promise like that without the potential for it being broken stirred in him, sending ice-cold splinters to his spine.

“None of us are going to let him,” Remus said. “You’ve got all of us protecting you, keeping you safe, mate.”

James closed his eyes and felt tears slip out from beneath the lids and onto his cheeks. Lily and Remus stepped up ‘round the bed and each of them collapsed into a heap of hugging Jame and Sirius both, Lily’s cheek pressed to Jame’s shoulder as Sirius hugged from behind and Remus’s face pressed into Sirius’s neck, their arms all about one another.

At that moment, the door pushed open and James opened his eyes, looking up, half expecting it to be Voldemort after all… and instead, there was Peter Pettigrew.

Peter looked rather stunned to see the pile of them, all hugging one another, considering how they’d left him not even an hour prior. Something else must’ve happened that he was left out of once again, as usual, he thought. Peter hesitated, then put down the empty rucksack he carried, which he’d used to haul all the treats to the corridor earlier. He hesitated, lingering in the doorway. “Sorry,” he murmured, shrinking back and reaching for the door handle…

“Wormy,” James said, “Where’ve you been? C’mon mate.”

It was all the invitation he needed. Peter pushed the door shut again, dropped his rucksack, and rushed to join the others, kneeling on the bed before James, his short, stubby arms only just making it around the heap of his friends.




It was that night, after the others had fallen asleep, that Sirius sat on the desk chair, reading one of the books that he’d borrowed on pest control, his feet up on the frame of Remus’s bed, tilting the chair back so it stood on only two feet. He was scratching his head, his fingers raking through his hair. Desperately, he searched the pages, stifling a yawn. He refused to get into bed until he was flea-free - for Remus’s sake. But the bed was certainly extremely alluring... He looked at Remus’s curled form under the blankets, then glanced over the other two. Peter lay, sprawled across his bed, a licorice wand still hanging from his mouth, where he’d fallen asleep eating, a bit of drool falling over his lips and onto his pudgy cheek. Sirius grimaced and looked to James.

James was shifting uneasily in his bed, the blankets pulled tight ‘round him as his legs kicked against the sheets. His fingers closed ‘round the hem and his eyelids fluttered slightly.

Quickly, Sirius pushed aside the book he’d had sprawled over his lap and sat up, the front two feet of the chair clunking against the floor. Stepping over to James’s bed, picking his way through errant quidditch supplies and tossed off cardigans and books and what have you, he leaned over his mate’s sleeping form. “James,” he whispered. “Prongs.”

James woke, fiery fear in his eyes, trashing out as though to shove Sirius away “Get off of me, get away!” he cried, and his fists flew, catching Sirius in the jaw and knocking him backward, nearly into Peter’s bed, but Sirius caught himself on the nightstand before he would’ve fallen on their poor, chubby friend. “Get off of me, leave me alone!” Hysterical tears were pouring over James’s face.

“Mate! Mate, mate - James - James, it’s me. It’s Sirius.” He sprang back toward James’s bed and grabbed onto his shoulder, stilling the trashing, and holding James still while his eyes focused better and his breath steadied. “It’s alright, it’s just me.” Sirius let go of James only when it was clear he was coming out of whatever nightmare he’d been having more fully, and reached for his spectacles, sliding the thick frames over James’s nose.

“Sorry,” James murmured, his face glowing red as he averted his eyes from Sirius’s. “I didn’t mean to --”

“S’alright,” Sirius said with a shrug, “Merlin knows I could’ve used a fucking punch in the jaw for the way I’ve been acting.”

“Still,” James murmured, and he struggled to pull himself up to sitting. He looked down at his palms, a sheen of sweat over them, then back up at Sirius. “I wouldn’t have punched you, or told you to get away.”

“Think I was Voldemort, then?” Sirius asked. When James nodded, Sirius replied, “Fucker wishes his hair was as grand as mine.”

James couldn’t help it -- he laughed.

Sirius laughed, too, and he smiled at James. Then, “Hey, want a cuppa tea? It’s tradition, after all. One of us has a nightmare, the other one fixes him tea.”

James nodded, “Tea sounds brilliant.”

“Alright, c’mon then,” Sirius said, and he held out a hand, tugging James up to his feet. “We’ll let these two duffers be.”




Downstairs, Regulus awoke with a start in his dormitory. His back was pouring sweat and his fingers clutched into the sheets as he panted, heart rate right through the roof, it seemed. He glanced through the dark at the beds on either side of him, the great lumps of the others sleeping soundly, their chests rising and falling, and he was relieved that, at least, the shouting he’d heard had been only in his own mind. He closed his eyes, trying to catch his breath, and then sat up, abandoning the sopping sheet, realizing he’d never get back to sleep in that pool. He rolled out of bed and shoved his feet into his slippers, pulling on his night robe and cinching the waist before striking out into the common room. He knelt on the plush green carpet before the roaring fireplace, watching the flames dancing in the hearth.

There wasn’t a lot he could recall about the place he’d been that night - with Voldemort. But one thing was certain in his mind. He had been there before. He did not know when, he did not know how, but at some point in his life - or perhaps in a lifetime prior, if there was such a thing - he had been in that cave. And there were a great many terrible memories that surrounded that place, a great maelstrom of terror in his mind that grew violent and rough as the most terrible sea rage, swallowing him up whole. Even this terror he could not identify, however. He only knew it existed.

There was a quiet crack, too familiar to startle Regulus, as a house elf appeared beside the hearth. It wasn’t Kreacher, just one of the Hogwarts elves, wrapped in a flour sack emblazoned with the Hogwarts crest. The elf barely paid attention to Regulus at all, but turned to the fire and drew the poker from the rack that held the tools by the hearthside. Nudging the log, cinders fluttered onto the brick beneath the fire, like dark snow, and Regulus watched the embers turn white-hot before smoldering back to their natural dark orange.

A particular piece fell from the log - a chunk of wood, oval in shape, burning amber-colored as the heat left it. Regulus felt a jolt of a memory at the sight of it, could nearly see the links of a silver chain caught in the pale light of the flickering lanterns that filled the cavern, could see the outline of the Dark Lord’s face, staring up at it - a locket - as it hung from his long fingers. And the Dark Lord had smiled at it. Voldemort. Smiling.

Regulus squeezed his eyes shut tightly, trying to remember more about the locket.

“I is begging you to pardon, Master… but... is Master alright?” the house elf’s voice creaked as he returned the poker to the rack.

Concentration interrupted, Regulus opened his eyes. “Yes, sorry.”

The house elf nodded, and held up his fingers, ready to click them and depart, but he offered, “If Master is needing anything… I is happy to be of helping.”

“Thank you,” Regulus said, his voice on autopilot. With a crack, the elf was gone, then, and Regulus quickly looked back to the fallen ember, hoping that it would jog his memory once more, but it had turned out all the way now, and all that was left was a bit of charcoal ash.