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Near Death Experience


Newt Scamander had not left Remus’s side, even after he and Pomfrey finished up the task of removing the appendix and getting Remus mended up, even when Tina collected Bradley from the hallway and pushed the loose curls of Newt’s hair back to kiss his forehead, he stayed in the stool directly beside the lad.

“He’s - he’s going to be alright, Mr. Black,” Newt said after a couple hours of silence, when Pomfrey had left the room and the suitcase was closed up, leaning forward, hitching the heels of his boots up on the highest rung of the stool and laying his arms over his knees to create a place to rest his head. He squinted across the bed to exactly where Sirius was, under the invisibility cloak.

Sirius had been hovering there beside Remus’s opposite side for several minutes beneath the invisibility cloak. He pulled it off in surprise. “How did you know I was there?” he asked.

Newt smiled a sort of tired smile, “I have Dougal. I know how invisible things look.”

Sirius folded the cloak and put it on the foot of Remus’s bed in a silvery heap. Newt stared at it for a long moment, then turned to half look at Sirius before casting his eyes down at the sleeping boy between them. “He’s doing very, uh, well, very good.” Newt laid a palm over Remus’s cheek and forehead in an awkward sort of way, covering half of Remus’s face with his hand, and said, “See here, his fever’s finished.”

“Thank you for fixing him,” Sirius said quietly. “I wish I was good at saving people like you are.”

Newt’s mouth trembled into a smile. “Perhaps one day.”

Sirius laughed, “Not with my grades.”

Newt said, “Grades only measure how much you can memorize, not how smart you are.” He hugged his knees. It struck Sirius again how awkward Mr. Scamander really was. “My grades were dim as a fiddlerbee’s glow.” He chuckled.

Sirius had no idea what a fiddlerbee was. Some crazy creature that he’d probably discovered in like New Zealand or Guinea or some wild place he’d been during his lifetime. Sirius wondered if there was one flying about inside the case.

Sirius realized for maybe the second time ever how incredible that someone as famous and storied as Newt Scamander was sitting here, taking care of Remus. Not just taking care of him, but watching over him, talking with the nervous boyfriend, and worrying just as hard. Newt Scamander was just as humble as he ever could be - it was like he didn’t even know he was famous. Sirius imagined if he was famous that he would become a colossal self-centered arsehole and forget all his friends like the stereotypical rock star. It was pretty cool, he thought, that Newt Scamander was above that. “Newt, you are a good person. You’re a really good person. A lot of people wouldn’t try saving the life of a werewolf when they were hurt like that. And you do. You do stuff like this all the time, don’t you? With all creatures, not just werewolves?”

Newt nodded. “It’s - it’s part and parcel of being a magizoologist. You - you care for the, uh, the things you love properly.”

Sirius looked at Remus. “I wasn’t loving him very properly,” he said. “I just let him be ill all week.” He took Rey’s hand up in his own.

“I’ll bet you - you were helping him,” Newt said. “You tend to him more than you, uh, you realize. I re-remember during summer, when you were both staying with, uh, with us. You were very attentive to him.” Newt nodded, “You’re a good person, too, Mr. Black.”

Sirius stared very hard at Remus’s hand. He wasn’t sure what to do with the words that Newt was saying. He wasn’t sure he could accept it. He wasn’t sure that Mr. Scamander wasn’t mistaken.

“How is that dementor of yours, speaking of?” Newt asked.

Sirius looked up. Newt was staring right at him. Right in the eyes.

Sirius said, “Still there. Sort of looming. Sort of… of swooping about my heart… just… waiting for a chance to grab hold and squeeze it to death.”

Newt touched his own chest, “It only has the power to if - if you allow it to.” He looked down at Remus, the eye contact finally too much again, and he said, “Remember that, Sirius, if you’re - you’re ever in a spot when… when it feels like it’s taken hold. It only has the power so long as you give it to it. True - true about any dementor, you know.”

“How so?”

“They feed - on happiness, on - on the soul. Nobody can take your happiness or - or your soul away from you. Unless you give them that power. It’s - it’s the hopelessness that’s their weapon. They come with an air about them to give you the hopelessness… and... and hopeless people, they - they don’t guard their souls as properly as they - they should and that’s when the, uh, the dementors, that’s when they feed. The hopelessness is - is a venom. Like a snake. A patronus works because it - it can’t feel hopelessness.” Newt shifted his feet a bit. “Few people can - can truly say they’re immune to dementors. But… but if they hold onto hope before them they - they can rebuild their souls. Even in the darkest places… even in the - the worst situations… when… when you think you will not see the light again. You… you will.

Sirius contemplated this.

“So sorry.” Newt sat up and sighed, “You - you know, I think the worst part of - of having been everywhere and seeing quite a lot is that you - you know such a lot of - of things that you cannot change, even when you wish to, and the only thing you can do is - is hope that your words stick… and… and are remembered.”

“What?” Sirius gave Newt a funny look.

Newt answered. “Just… just remember. Please, dear Sirius.”




Peter was alone in the dormitory. He hated being alone. He tried messing about with Sirius’s stereo just to get some noise in the dorm, but he didn’t really know the spells Sirius used to make it play and he couldn’t even get it to turn on so far as he could tell. The power button didn’t work, at anyrate. He did a bit of homework, but he had questions and didn’t want to waste his time at it if he was just going to get everything wrong and Lily Evans wasn’t downstairs helping the first years with their homework tonight like she usually was (Peter did a lot of homework at the table under the guise of helping but really asking just as many questions as the first years were, sometimes even more). He didn’t know where James had gone off to - he’d disappeared from the hallway after Sirius had snuck into the hospital ward under the invisibility cloak.

He was eating chocolate, reading his latest Hardy Boys novel, when a funny feeling went up his arm. He pushed the sleeve of his jumper up and looked down at it… nothing seemed odd at all. Just a funny pain, he thought, and he turned back to his book. It was no more than a paragraph later that he noticed a glow in his skin… a red burn, like a shadow, a whisper of a memory of the ropes that had lashed about his wrist… just about a year ago… in the parlor room of the Lestrange’s manor.

The chocolate bar fell onto the bed, and he held his arm out before him like it was a dangerous object, his eyes wide, staring as the shadows of the ropes seemed to glowed brighter… sending a funny tingling, burning feeling up his arm. His eyes widened.

And then, almost as quickly as they’d begun glowing… the marks faded away.

Peter stayed staring at his arm for some time, his arm shaking nervously.

He had to go and find James.




“EVANS!” James looked at her, appalled. “What the bleedin’ hell kind of snuff film are you making me watch here?!” On the screen, a shot had just run out and the little deer was calling out for it’s mama, and James’s jaw was practically set to the floor as he stared in astonishment at Lily Evans through the dark. “Did you know that was going to happen? What the actual fuck, Evans?”

Lily couldn’t help but laugh at the shock in his face, “Shhh. It’s important to the story…”

“They bleedin’ shot his mum!” James said, “This is for children?”

“Yes.”

“I’m writing a strongly worded letter to the Disney corporation about this,” James said.

“Will you watch the movie? Look at the cute bunny.”

“Is that going to get shot next?” James asked.

Lily laughed, “By gum, James.”

“It is, isn’t it?”

Lily looked up at him. “You’re an idiot.”

“I’m not! I’m just… I’m sensitive.”

“Sensitive!” Lily snorted.

“I AM!” James cried, “Especially to deer!”

Lily said, “James, it’s animated, you know that, yeah? Means it’s not real. This never happened.”

“I almost got shot by a hunter once.”

Lily looked at him as the screen flickered. “What?”

“Yeah,” James nodded. “Back at Summer. Had a camping trip with the lads, we stayed in the woods out back of the old Dumbledore house --”

“As in the headmaster?” Lily asked, confused.

“Yeah, he’s from Godric’s Hollow, same as me. I live just ‘round the lake from his old house. There’s a terrific camping spot overlooking this big ol’ valley out there and we pitched tent in the clearin’ by the valley. It was early mornin’ and I went for a walk as a stag, wanderin’ about, munchin’ on some grass, you know, doing stag stuff --”

“Stag stuff,” Lily snorted. “Merlin’s beard.”

“Don’t laugh at me.”

“I’m not laughing at you, I’m laughing at stag stuff,” Lily giggled. She composed herself. “Do go on.”

“Anyway,” James said pointedly, “I was doing stag stuff and BA-BOOM this gunshot echoes ‘round the whole valley and I mean it was close Evans, the bullets were hurtlin’ by me like raindrops - just showerin’ over me. Probably a machine gun or some rot. Just shooting like mad at me and I was havin’ flashes of my life - near death experience, it was.”

She was staring at him with wide eyes in disbelief. “Bloody hell, Potter.”

“Yeah,” he nodded, very solemnly, “You nearly lost me Evans. What would you have done, then?”

Lily tried to think of some funny thing to say. Nothing came to mind.

A smirk danced on James’s face. “Would you have missed me?”

“Classes would’ve been a good deal quieter,” she said.

James said, “You know… we all face death. Everyday. One of these days, Evans… one of these days it could be any one of us that gets it.” He stared at her, his eyes boring into hers. “Life’s short, love…”

She nodded, her mouth dry.

“Do you reckon that you really want it to end without ever having given me a date?”

Lily felt her heart seizing up.

“Do you?”

“I --”

“Evans… go out with me,” he said, “Please.”

And suddenly the door burst opened and Peter Pettigrew came running into the room and flung himself at James and Lily, landing with a great thump on the bed between them. “OH THANK GOODNESS I FOUND YOU LOT!” he cried out.