Better Late Than Never

Sometime after he and Lily had fallen asleep again (Harry had woken up a few times in the night crying uncontrollably, a terrific fear in his eyes that didn’t belong to a one-year-old), James shot up in bed in a cold sweat and all the color leeched from his face. His dreams were a constant repeat of Halloween, and his throat felt as raw as it did when he had screamed for Lily to take Harry and go, because he wasn’t sure if he was going to make—

No. He was alive. His family was alive. James tried to shake away the bad feelings, but they clung to him like a second skin. They were suffocating him.

Looking over, he saw Lily’s face in sleep, lips puckered and brow furrowed with worry, like even her dreams couldn’t provide her with the reprieve she needed. He decided not to wake her.

James gently pulled the quilt away from him and tucked the extra part beneath Harry, should he roll away from Lily at any point during the night. And, because he was a paranoid worrywart, he placed a cushioning charm on the floorboards beside his half of the bed. Just in case.

Quietly, he shuffled toward the door, not quite sure where he was going but needing someplace to think. James had a hand on the door knob when he heard Lily whisper, voice rasped with sleep, “Go talk to Remus.”

He couldn’t help his grin. “Will do,” he whispered back, and took Lily’s subsequent sigh as one of approval.

If James knew anything about Remus Lupin, and he liked to entertain the notion that he did, it was that he was a creature of habit. Some part of James, amidst all the chaos, had kept track of the fact that the full moon was nearing. Rooming with a werewolf for so many years tended to familiarize a person to their tics. Remus’ happened to be bouts of insomnia.

James didn’t have to look very long or hard before he found Remus in the backyard, sitting on a wooden chair that seemed seconds from falling apart, gazing at the moon. It was shrouded in clouds, tendrils of light seeping out from behind the fog.

Wordlessly, James summoned another chair and pulled it up beside his best friend.

“Nine days, right?” James said quietly, wondering when whispering became the only way he had a conversation anymore. His preferred mode of communication wasn’t usually weighted down with the world.

Remus nodded wordlessly, his hands clasped in front of his mouth. Peeking out from beneath the cuff of his jacket were pink, raised scars. They looked too fresh to be that old. Maybe from the last full moon? But that couldn’t possibly be it, because James couldn’t remember Remus hurting himself—

It hit James quite painfully that he hadn’t been around for the last full moon. Or the one before that. Perhaps even the one before that—the question wasn’t which full moon, it was whether James could even remember the last one he’d been able to go to.

“Where’d you get those, Moony?” He asked, taking Remus’ wrist lightly, thumb hovering over the pink scars.

“Went for a quick trip into Diagon Alley. Mucked around a bit. Got them at a discount rate, really. It was a steal. I nearly congratulated myself on my savvy shopping expertise,” Remus said, sarcasm dripping from his voice in thick, syrupy drops.

“Moony—”

“Don’t give me that look. You don’t get to decide when jokes are appropriate or not. Not when—” Remus clamped his mouth shut then, refusing to let any more words spill from it.

James didn’t need Remus to finish, but he asked him to anyway.

“Not when what?”

Remus’ voice was ragged when he answered. “Not when I thought I was going to be the only one left.”

James expected it. Really, he did. But that didn’t stop the words from digging knives into his heart, twisting and pushing deeper all at once.

“Moony, I’m so—”

“No! Don’t apologize!” Remus cut him off, sharp and quick. “I mean there’s nothing to apologize for, right? You’re alive. Sirius is alive. Everyone’s alive! I should be happy. Grateful.” He let out one hysterical giggle. The gleam in his eye was manic. “But I’m not. I’m not grateful at all. I’m selfish. So goddamn selfish, Prongs. I can’t even appreciate the fact that you’re here because I keep thinking about the full moon and how sure I was that I was going to spend it completely alone and that two of my best friends were dead, one killed at the hand of the third and I was so sure, so sure—” A sob devoured the rest of the words in Remus’ throat, forcing its way out of his mouth in a desperate, strangled scream.

James didn’t hesitate in what he did next. Gently, he draped an arm across Remus’ shoulders, pulling him close despite the canyon between their chairs. They moved in a way that vaguely resembled a rocking motion, meant to be soothing but ending up jagged and painful and maybe a little bit peaceful.

“It’s okay, Moony. It’s okay.” James didn’t say that things would get better. He didn’t say that they would be okay. He wasn’t sure if they would, and he wasn’t going to lie.

“Sometimes I wish we never left Hogwarts,” Remus said darkly. The moonlight was on them and yet he was still shrouded in darkness, the fringe of his hair casting dark shadows over his eyes. Tremors rocked through his body. “I wish the biggest problem in our lives was our OWLs. Not Voldemort. Not Peter. Not even the bloody Order.”

“Moony, you need to listen to me,” James began firmly, pulling Remus’ face toward him so he would look him in the eye. “You don’t have to be sorry. There’s nothing to be sorry for. You thought Lily, Harry, and I were dead, Remus. You thought Sirius killed Peter. You thought you were all alone and I understand.” James had never felt such an acute sense of pain as when he thought he lost everything. It tore out his heart and crushed it into dust.

“You thought you were going to have to spend the rest of your life alone,” James continued, speaking slowly. His voice was still hushed. “Everything else has sort of gone to shit. It’s okay, Moony. If I’m going to be honest with you, part of me wishes I could run away from all of my problems and never come back. But if I did that, I am more than certain that Lily would track me down and hex me to all hell, so it’s not exactly my most favored route,” James said, slipping a joke in at the end in an effort to lighten up the mood a little bit.

The barest of smiles flitted across Remus’ features, lighting them up for a moment or half. “Yeah. She would. Hell hath no fury…” Remus trailed off, but the tension between them was already lighter.

Though Remus’ shoulders were still hunched and wound up beneath James’ arm, he knew that part of that was Remus’ body preparing for his inevitable transformation in nine days.

“We’re going to get him back, Moony,” James whispered, fierce and determined. “We’re going to get Padfoot back. You won’t have to worry about being alone during a full moon ever again. I promise.” Was it a big promise to make? Maybe. But James didn’t really care, because he fully intended on following through with that promise.

Remus said something then, his voice nearly indecipherable when filtered through the fingers covering his mouth. James asked him to repeat it, and when he did, James wanted to hit himself over the head with a bludger for not thinking of it first.

“Priori Incantatem. That’s how we’ll prove Sirius is innocent. That’s how we’ll save him.”

***

Sirius was becoming quite accustomed to life in a cell. Sure, it had only been a few days, but he was positive that a Ministry cell was only a rung or two above the cells in Azkaban. He wasn’t worried about inevitability of Dementors in the slightest. How could they take happiness away from a person who had none?

Hell, he’d even steal a kiss from one.

***

James could only think of one time he had been more restless than he was currently, and that was during the weeks leading up to Harry’s birth. Lily had smacked him a good one then and told him “You’re acting like you’re having the bloody baby!”

He was driving everyone up the wall, he could tell. That much was obvious. He’d always had a penchant for tapping his fingers whenever his mind wasn’t focused on anything particularly important, and now that little habit had become a full-fledged problem. Lily had taken to putting a Full Body Bind curse on him to keep him still, lovingly kissing him on the cheek before breezing out the room. It wasn’t as if he was getting much sleep, so being restless shouldn’t have been much of an issue.

They were a few feet away from Sirius’ cell. He’d always joked that one day he’d be visiting him in a jail cell, but now the irony was cruel and painful and he’d do anything to go back and prevent the joke from becoming a reality. James’ fingers were tapping against his leg until Lily smoothed her hand against them, all at once quieting the chaos running rampant in his head.

It was just Sirius. He shouldn’t be nervous to see Sirius.

But he was.

The three of them were walking half-crouched beneath the Cloak, which Dumbledore had returned to James for this occasion and this occasion only. Apparently, no one put it past him to take it and steal away in the night to do something eviscerate the near-constant boredom. He may or may not have done it a few times before, in several instances that may or may not have nearly ended with him getting arrested by the Muggle police. James was a firm believer in not using the past to judge someone’s future.

Remus walked a few feet in front, his shoulders wide and back straight. He nodded politely and stopped every once in a while to accept a consolation from someone who probably didn’t mean it. James had been told that the Ministry had been empty yesterday, in wake of the celebration concerning the obliteration of Voldemort. Today, the opposite was true.

Cells in the Ministry were old and seldom used. Once Azkaban began to be seen as a more adequate place to send criminals, Ministry cells became nearly obsolete. Hell, James hadn’t even recognized the path they’d taken to get to them. Having Aurors for parents, he’d been to the Ministry more times than he could count. Until today, he was sure he could create a map of the entire building blindfolded.

The Minister for Magic had dismissed the guard keeping watch in front of Sirius’ cell in preparation for their arrival. Remus muttered a spell and the door clicked. He held the door only a fraction of an inch open before looking at the space where James stood beneath the cloak. Lily squeezed his hand and adjusted Harry on her hip, where he slept peacefully without the help of any charms at all. They’d just had a stroke of luck on that end.

James pulled off the cloak, stepping closer to his best friend. His heart was bleeding in his throat.

“Are you sure you want to do this, Prongs?” Remus asked, his voice low.

“I need to do this,” James affirmed, looking back once at Lily and Harry, who were still half-shrouded in the cloak. Lily was holding her chin up high, eyes defiant, Harry cradled in her arms. They’d debated on leaving him behind, but neither were comfortable with leaving him anywhere just yet, and Lily refused to let James do this alone.

James walked into his best friend’s cell, and was immediately overwhelmed with the scent of death.