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Smoking On the Beach


“Look at you, playing with a stick.” James smirked.

Sirius was carrying a broken bit of tree branch and hitting things with it as he walked through the woods along the edge of the Black Lake. He’d successfully rerouted James away from the hot afternoon sun-covered pitch and into the shady coolness of the forest, and he had a cigarette hanging from his jaw as he walked along. His hair getting shaggier and shaggier, officially longer than James’s was, and bits of it hung in his eyes, even with his Gryffindor scarf tied up in knots as an attempt to hold it back from his face. He grinned around his cigarette and murmured, “Sticks are the best.”

“And you wonder why your animagesty is a dog.”

“Animagesty, huh?” Sirius laughed, “That may be the best one you’ve ever said. It’s animagus, by the way.”

James picked up a stick, too, “I’ve said it wrong so long that it’d be almost a tragedy to get it right now. Ungarde!” He suddenly leaped toward Sirius, brandishing his stick as a sword. Sirius’s eyes danced and he turned on James quickly, slashing left and right with his own stick, smirking as he took two quick steps forward and had James on pointe within seconds. James laughed and dropped the stick.

Sirius smirked, “Mother made Regulus and I practice fencing when we were wee bairns.” He tossed his own stick and watched it disappear between the brush. “I always won.”

“Wee bairns, huh?” James laughed. They had reached the little beach shore where the Marauders often went, and James looked about for a rock to skip over the water, Sirius standing behind him, looking away toward the castle, smoking earnestly now. James found just the right stone - smooth surface, flat and even, and he frisbeed it over the water, watching it touch down four times before sinking.

“Two more years,” Sirius said.

James looked up. He’d been looking for a second rock. “Hmm?”

“We’re done with this place in two more years,” Sirius clarified.

“I love it here.” James looked around and spotted the old log that Snuffles liked to drag up and down the beach by it’s branches and he sat down. Sirius stayed standing by the water’s edge. “I can’t imagine being anywhere else, really,” James said.

Sirius said, “Neither can I.”

“So what’s with the done with this place bit?” James asked.

Sirius shrugged. He drew a long drag from the cigarette.

“You’re coming back to my house this summer, yeah?” James asked.

Sirius turned ‘round, “Did your parents ask me?”

“You have your own bedroom,” James pointed out, “Do you really need to be invited?”

Sirius looked happier than he had in awhile - in either timeline, James suspected. “Eating Mrs. P’s roast and playing Wizard Chess with your dad...”

James laughed.

“Do you… do you reckon Remus will go live with Veigler in his bloody Icelandic castle?” Sirius said with disdain.

“Dunno,” James answered. “Why? Are you jealous?”

“Of what? Living in a castle?” he waved his hand at the school across the lake, “Got a fair bit of experience living in castles, haven’t I?”

James said, “No. Of Veigler.”

“The fuck would I be jealous of him for?” Sirius demanded. “Did you see his ruddy hair? Man needs to be introduced to a bleedin’ comb, and a scissor while we’re at it! Wilder than Hagrid’s hair! Ferfuckssakes - we should start swearing Veigler’s beard instead of Merlin’s beard...”

“I meant because of Remus.”

Sirius made a face - “Remus will end up with a bleedin’ beard like that and it’ll be grotesque… better at least shampoo it… doesn’t need to be having no greasy-as-Snape fur forest on his stupid face,” he responded, nearly continued on and then changed his mind and turned away. He threw his cigarette into the wet beach sand and smushed it out with his boot. He stared down at the smoldering cigarette for a long moment, contemplating it and all that he wanted to say about Remus, then he turned about to look at James. His eyes were sad again.

“You alright?” James asked, thinking he was about to get a confession of Sirius’s love for Remus and that maybe he could use this moment to restore those two at least. That would fix so much of what was wrong…

Instead, Sirius said, “Remember when we were young and stupid…”

“We still are young and stupid,” James pointed out.

“...and we jumped off that train bridge in the woods that one summer?”

“Yes.” James said this warily.

Sirius was shaking a new cigarette out of the pack and he pointed to the castle with a nod of his head and a jab of the elbow, “I’ve been thinking --”

“No.”

“But it’d be fun. Look at that astronomy tower. It’s begging to be jumped from.”

“No.”

“But picture McGonagall’s face.”

“You’d give Minnie a heart attack.”

Sirius looked up at the castle wistfully, “...the wind in my hair, the ground rushing up, the thrill, the way your brain sort of shuts off thinking…”

“Shut off real fast if you bleedin’ die,” James pointed out, “We were stupid to do it then and that was with water under us. You remember that math Remus did?”

“So we magic the courtyard full of water. Wake up Ravenclaw fuckers! You lot have oceanside apartments now!” Sirius grinned at the thought of it.

“Sirius Black, I’ve said no,” James said, sternly.

Sirius laughed, “Yes mother.” He chuckled, turning to focus on lighting his third cigarette of the day already - and he’d only been up as many hours.

James ran a hand through his hair to mess it up and said, “Give me one of those.”

“We’re almost out.”

“The way you’re smoking them, I’m surprised there’s as many as there is.”

Sirius shook another from the pack, “I ought to put a duplicating charm on one. It’ll be like the popcorn. Cigarettes for everyone.” He walked over and handed James the cigarette and sat beside him, tipping his wand to light it for his mate.

James took the first pull off the cigarette and grinned, “A good deal more valuable than the popcorn was.”

“Funner to get rid of too.” Sirius winked as he breathed another long drag off his.

James lowered his cigarette from his mouth and held it between two fingers - this was really the part of having a cigarette he liked most anyway, the holding it. It felt cool in a way he couldn’t quite explain. He liked the strange undertone of the smell too - not the smoke itself, but the actual tobacco the twangy secondary smell it had. He’d told Sirius that once and Sirius had said it was because the cigarettes were menthols, which was also why the smoke had a slight minty flavor. It sort of reminded James of toothpaste, the taste. Like smoke and toothpaste. He wasn’t sure anyone in the world really liked the taste of smoking.

He did like smoking on the beach with his best mate, though. This was the closest he’d felt to Sirius since the time turner and he was just really glad that Sirius was still there to smoke with. He shuddered at the memory of Sirius’s eyes - at the things that had gone unsaid between them in those last few seconds…

Sirius was leaning against his knees staring down at the sand on the ground before him, his ripped-up jeans safety-pinned and patched in a couple places. James could see his wrist from where he sat and his eyes moved up to Sirius’s face as he blew out a cloud of smoke, his mouth forming an O around the streaming smoke… It was a shame, how much everything had changed, how horribly broken apart Remus and Sirius were. Sirius needed Remus, nearly as much as Remus needed Sirius...<

“He still loves you,” James said. “Remus, I mean.”

Sirius twitched as though James had pinched him.

“And what’s more is that he misses you.”

Sirius brought his cigarette to his mouth, shakily, but James could tell the way his eyes were flickering about that Sirius was listening.

“He told me that he wants you back. That he just wants you to be healthy, Sirius. He’s worried for you… and so am I.”

Sirius looked over at James, then back down at his feet and he closed his eyes. His hand went over his heart and he patted his chest. Achyls was pressing her palms against his heart, running her fingers over his heart strings, plucking them like an instrument to be played. He pictured her bony fingers running over them like a harp… Wretched shementor, he thought, You wretched thing.

“Sirius, we love you and want to help.”

Sirius stood up, paced about for a moment, and finally he turned and said, “Getting late, we should probably head back to the castle... if we’re going to.”

James stared at Sirius’s back for a moment. “If?”

Siris said, “Well. We’re already out here. I mean… we haven’t had a night in the forest since --”

“The dementor in January,” James replied. “Because the forest is teeming with them.”

Sirius stared at James. “Ground control to Major Prongs - Minchum ordered them away, remember? Fucking Achyls is the only one he missed.”

“Well… tell her to get the fuck out of here,” James replied.

Sirius laughed.

James hadn’t really been kidding, but he laughed too because Sirius had and it seemed the thing to do. Then Sirius tossed his cigarette down and put it out the same as he’d done the others and he transformed and he was a dog, and he ran about the beach quickly. He started barking at James playfully and ducking about, hopping around and crouching then pouncing up, his paws hitting James’s knees and leaving big muddy pawprints on his jeans. He lapped James’s face and ran about a circle around the log twice before grabbing onto the end and tugging - James and all.

“Oi!” James cried, his legs flying up as he tipped backward off the log and Sirius went running, dragging it as quick as he could, making low growling noises as he shook it, rustling dead leaves that still somehow managed to cling to the dead branches. “You idiot,” James laughed from the beach sand he’d landed in. “Face the wrath of stag, you dog,” he announced and he transformed and for a moment there was a deer laying belly-up on the beach before he scrambled over and on to his funny narrow legs and sort of shakily stepped across the sand, his hooves sinking awkwardly.

Padfoot barked at him, jumping about him, his dog feet much better equipped for the wet sand and pebbles than hooves were. He leaped a couple turns about Prongs, then ran into the trees, the stag gaining better control over his legs, and then running after him.




Late, late that night, they got back, stumbling into the dormitory in the dark, having navigated the corridor with the Marauder’s Map, which James was glad he’d thought to toss into his bookbag. They climbed into their beds and James fell asleep near to instantly, exhausted from all the running, which he claimed was twice the exercise as a stag than it was as a human because he had more legs to move and those antlers to hold up… But Sirius lay awake long after James’s breathing had slowed and steadied. He rolled out of bed after awhile, when he knew that James was certainly asleep and he could hear Peter’s snores and figured Remus must’ve been asleep at the other end, too, and then he rolled out of bed and went over to his desk, yanking open the drawer where he kept the letters.

He ran his fingers over them.

He looked over his shoulder at the sound of creaking bed springs. Remus was sitting up, squinting blearily at him through the dark. “Sirius?” he asked quietly. “You alright?”

Sirius shut the drawer abruptly. Remus wondered what was in the drawer, why Sirius had been just staring into it the way he had been…

But he didn’t say anything.

Remus didn’t want to fight, and Sirius’s silence was so absolute that he didn’t dare to say anything more… he frowned, eyes green, and rolled over, back into his pillows, trying to force himself to go back to sleep… to ignore the way Sirius had stared at him…

Suddenly there was a weight at the end of the bed and Remus looked down to see Snuffles, curled up in a ball down there at his feet. Snuffles rested his chin on Remus’s shin and closed his eyes. Remus hesitated, then, “You can come up under the blankets if you’re cold.” He patted the mattress beside him.

The big black dog blinked at him.

“You don’t have to.”

But Snuffles got up and padded across the bed and Remus held up the blanket and the dog slid underneath, belly crawling about, turning around, under the duvet and curling, a tight knot, tucking his nose beneath his tail, his side pressed into Remus’s chest. Remus cautiously put his arm about the dog… and when Snuffles didn’t pull away, he leaned his cheek against the dog’s shoulder.

Finally, Sirius fell asleep.