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Finally Coming in Handy


James sat on his bed playing with the new snitch from the locker rooms. Sirius was laying on the next bed, his palm splayed over his chest, staring at the ceiling as James snatched the snitch from the air and held it in his fist. The little silver wings flapped wildly and he turned it over, looking at the pattern etched into the gold. James sighed and sank into the pillows, letting the snitch go and watching it buzz about above his head, zipping left and right, trying to decide which way it wanted to go to get away. He rolled his neck so he was looking over at Sirius. “Padfoot?”

When Sirius didn’t reply, James rolled onto his stomach so he was facing Sirius and let his arms hang over the side of the bed. He stared across the gap between beds, and said, “Are you lot planning something stellar for my birthday?” he smirked, “To make up for landing me in detention for it?”

Sirius didn’t respond.

“Padfoot.”

Still no answer.

“I was thinking,” James said, “April is coming. April Fool’s Day.” He grinned, “Remember you said you had an excellent prank you’d been meaning to tell me about for it? We ought to begin planning, don’t you think? Want to work on that now?”

Sirius looked over at James.

“I’ll get the Map and some parchment, and…”

Sirius shook his head, “Not right now, Prongs.”

At least he’d said something. James counted it as a triumph.

“Alright,” he said, “But soon, yeah?”

Sirius nodded and closed his eyes.




Next morning, at breakfast, Sirius was pushing about his eggs with his toast when a letter plopped onto his plate, dropped by Adolf, the Black family owl. He stared at the tight script on the front of the envelope, his jaw tightening. James was turned, talking to Frank Longbottom and Remus was carefully watching his food, avoiding Sirius as much as Sirius was avoiding him. Peter was the only one that noticed. He looked from the letter up to Sirius’s face. “Ooh, unlucky it landed on your breakfast, mate,” he said.

Sirius reached for the letter and shook off the catsup that had stuck to it. “I wasn’t hungry anymore anyway,” he murmured, and he wiped the envelope with his napkin.

Suddenly Lily reached over and took the envelope away. “No,” she said, and she shredded the envelope up into tiny confetti bits, letting it rain down over a bowl of congealing oatmeal, which she then stirred it into and pushed aside, effectively completely destroying the letter. She looked at Sirius, “She’s not allowed to hurt you anymore.” Her words were firm.

Remus’s eyes rolled up to peek across the table, then back down to his plate.

“Who isn’t?” squeaked Peter.

Sirius got up without a word and walked out, which was what got James’s attention. He whirled around, “Sirius?” but Sirius was already gone. He looked at Lily. “What’d you do to him, Evans?”

“I didn’t do anything,” she said.

James sighed and grabbed his bacon from his plate, and he got up, pulling his bookbag with him… “He say where he was going?”

Peter said, “He got a letter and Lily ripped it up and he left.”

James turned to Frank and Ali, “See you lot on the pitch,” and back to the others, “And you in class…” he turned away from the table and hurried out of the Great Hall. He was on the stone staircase, nearly to the second floor when Lily caught up to him. “What’re you doing?” he asked.

“Helping to find Sirius.”

James took the steps two at a time and she followed, matching his gait. They were headed to the trophy room passageway because that seemed the most logical first place to look.

“What’d you rip up his letter for anyway?” James asked.

“It was from his mum,” Lily said.

“His mum? She’s written him again?” James asked.

“He told you that she’s been writing him?” Lily looked surprised.

James looked surprised. “Writing him? As in more than the -- well, twice now?”

“More like at least once a week,” she answered, “Since the start of term.”

James scowled. “Why didn’t he tell me?”

Lily shrugged.

They reached the passage and James held open the tapestry entrance for her for a moment before ducking in behind her himself. They lit their wands and started their ascent through the school, pausing to look in the alcove. But there was no Sirius there.

James sighed, “There’s about a hundred thousand places he could be in this castle.”

Lily looked at James, “Where’s your Map?”

“Bloody hell. C’mon. It’s in the dorm.” James waved for her to follow and bolted into the corridor.

“I can’t believe this thing is finally going to come in handy!” Lily said as she hurried after him.

“It comes in handy loads of times!” James replied.

“Usually it’s like no it doesn’t go that far or something,” Lily argued.

“The Map is brilliant so sod off,” James said.

Lily smirked at the back of his head, at his defensiveness over the Map. It was sort of adorable.

The reached the portrait hole and James shouted the password and ran through, followed by Lily, who followed him right up the boys stair and into the Marauders’ dorm. She stopped at the doorway as James threw himself onto Remus’s empty bed and leaned over to get the Map from under the mattress. Lily looked around - at least this time there wasn’t any furniture stuck to the ceiling like there had been last time she’d been in the room. But it was still a mess. Her eyes flickered over a collection of empty bottles lining the window sill and cluttered on the nightstand by Sirius’s bed.

“He’s been drinking.”

James tumbled forward from Rey’s bed to get up and looked over at Sirius’s bed, where Lily was staring. “Like a fish.” He frowned, “I dunno where he’s getting it all from, honestly.”

Lily had been wondering that as James said it.

He held up the Map and unfolded it on the foot of his bed, tapping the blank parchment with his wand. “I solemnly swear that I am up to no good,” he announced. Webs of ink sprawled across the parchment, unfurling like liquid, twisting and rolling across the page. Lily watched, mesmerized, as always, by that bloody thing. He waved for her to come over. “Help me find him, Evans.”

She picked her way carefully over the minefield of dirty clothes and textbooks that littered the floor, until she’d made her way to his side, and she bent over to look at the map as well, her hair hanging over her shoulder in a red curtain that pooled on the bed beside the Map. Bent over like this, she could smell a good deal of James’s aftershave scent coming up from the mattress, and that musky undertone that was his natural scent. She glanced over at him, his eyes searching the parchment frantically, and felt her stomach hitch. She realized rather suddenly that she was alone with a boy in that boy’s bedroom and how dangerous that sort of thing could be and yet she knew - beyond a shred of doubt - that she was safe here because James Potter was not the sort of boy that would make something like be that dangerous.

It occurred to her how very, very different James Potter was from people like Mulciber and Avery, indeed, how different James Potter was from most boys.

“Seen him yet?” James asked.

Lily realized she was supposed to be looking for Sirius Black on the Map, not staring at the side of James Potter’s head, and she turned to look down at the Map again, “No,” she replied.

“He couldn’t have left the grounds,” James murmured.

Lily said, “Is there anywhere in the castle that you can’t see on the Map?”

James said, “No.”

Lily frowned.

James paused, running his hand over his chin as he stared at the parchment again, eyes scrolling around for Sirius once more. Then, “Well, there’s the Secret Room, actually.”

Lily looked over at James.

“The Meeting Room, where we go for the Order meetings? It doesn’t show up on the Map. We tried mapping it and it won’t stay on the Map. I dunno why. Probably one of the magical properties of the room, I reckon.”

“Well, let’s go check there, then,” Lily suggested.

So James gathered up the Map and they rushed out of the dormitory and out to the corridor. They passed Frank and Ali coming in the portrait hole to get Ali’s textbooks and Frank saw the Map as they went by, “What’s that?” he asked.

“Nevermind, Frank!” and James ducked off.

Lily ran after him.

Frank looked after them a long moment, then turned to Ali, “And she says she doesn’t like him? She’s literally chasing him all over the castle.”

Ali laughed, “They’ll figure it out eventually.”

Frank shook his head and held open the portrait hole for her.

Lily and James sped down the stairs to the seventh floor and made their way to the corridor where the Secret Room was and James handed Lily the Map as he walked up to the blank span of wall and cleared his throat. “I need the place where somebody could hide… I need a hiding place… I need Sirius’s hiding place…” he murmured as he paced. He knew it had worked when Lily gasped and he looked up to see the golden thread running through the wall paper and Lily numbly handed him back the Map.

“How did you lot figure out this thing was here?” Lily asked as the door slowly fleshed itself out. “I mean, what made you chant and pace in this particular spot in the castle?”

“Sheer dumb luck, really,” James replied. “We were looking for a place to hide the bicorn horn, that we could brew the potion to become animanimanguses --”

“Animagi,” Lily corrected.

“-- and I was complaining and pacing and here we are.” He waved his palm.

Lily shook her head.

James grinned as the door knob popped out of the wall and he reached for it, pushing open the door and waving for her to go ahead in first. Lily hurried through as James glanced both ways up and down the corridor before ducking in after her.

He groaned the moment he’d stepped inside.

Lily was staring around at the looming piles of stuff that seemed to go on and on up into an infinite ceiling. There were desks covered with old books with funny titles and a broken globe that spun pitifully. There were old cabinets and empty bird perches and baskets of stained clothes and trunks spilling assorted objects… There was a pair of muggle skis, and somewhere far off in the dark came the broken voice of one of the suits of armor, singing bits of the carols that Sirius had taught them every year - though not with enough vigor to have been a new one. This armor had been singing that song alone in the dark of this place for a long while. There were clocks and boxes and broken quills and somebody had balled up a set of singed-looking curtains from the Gryffindor dormitory beds.

“Jiminy Cricket,” whispered Lily, in awe.

James whispered, “Would be easy to hide in here.”

Lily nodded.

“Easy to get lost in here.”

“Yeah.”

James looked about, “Alright, let’s split up - we’ll cover more ground that way.”

“Literally says it’d be easy to get lost and immediately suggests we break up. Honestly.”

James said, “I just want to find Sirius.”

“I know.” She paused, “Alright, how’s this. We have to monitor where each other are. If we get separated too far, we’ll turn back. We need a signal.”

“We could call each other’s names.”

“That’s no fun.”

James smirked, “Does everything need to be fun?”

“Well.”

“Alright how about this. CAW CAW!” he yelled, making a loud bird noise, cupping his mouth with his hand so the sound echoed off the walls of rubbish all around.

“Perfect.”

So they split up and James went one way and Lily another, each looking for Sirius. James passed by ruffled dress robes and furry earmuffs, an empty fish tank, a tower of books on dragon taming with fire-burned covers, a muggle pogo stick magicked to bounce about on it’s own, and loads of other things in teetering stacks and piles of random assortment. This place had probably been building itself for as long as time had been at Hogwarts. He pictured students from hundreds of years ago running the same dumb luck him and Sirius had done, never to return for the rubbish they’d hidden in here… He wondered if they’d ever intended to or if they’d hid them with the intent of never coming back for them.

He paused. “CAW, CAW!” he yelled, checking on Evans.

From over the stacks came her voice. “CAW, CAW!”

James continued on walking.

On her side of the piles of things, Lily had found a broken broomstick, a melted candelabra, flying books, a good deal of bent keys, and piles of chipped tea cups she recognized from Divination. She ducked below a good deal of cobweb, which was mercifully empty of the spider who’d built it, and she came ‘round a corner to a bit of a clearing in the stuff.

Lily looked around the clearing, the way things had been packed tighter ‘round her as though it had all been methodically moved. She backed up and jumped in surprise when she stepped into something, and she turned around to find a large framed mirror behind her, with pale grey glass reflecting in a strange, quavering way that old glass sometimes does. She looked up at the top of the frame, at the letters engraved across the top…

Erised stra ehru oyt ube cafru oyt on wohsi.

“Well that makes no sense,” she murmured, wondering what language that was.

Her eyes met her own in the reflection and she stared at herself, at her hair on her shoulders and she reached out a palm to touch the glass. But he funniest thing happened. When she moved, her reflection did not. She stared at it in confusion, but the expression on her face in the mirror didn’t react. “What the…?” she whispered and she tried waving to no avail.

Then, as she watched, James walked up beside her in the reflection.

“Look at this weird mirror, Potter.”

He didn’t say anything, so she turned around to say something to him and… he wasn’t there. She looked back at the reflection. James was very clearly there, one hand on her shoulder no less! She reached up and patted the spot where his hand was in the reflection, but there was no one there.

Lily felt hot and cold all at once. Was she going mad?

“CAW CAW!” she called out, her voice shaking with nervousness. He didn’t answer right away. “JAMES?” she yelled.

“CAW!” came his cry from quite far off. Then, “EVANS?”

“POTTER? C’MERE. WHERE ARE YOU?”

“WHERE ARE YOU?”

Lily was staring at the mirror. “OvER HERE.”

“OVER WHERE?”

“MARCO!”

“POLO!”

“MARCO!”

“POLO!!!”

This went on for several moments as James crashed ever closer. Lily stared at the mirror, watching as the reflection-James turned to reflection-Lily and whispered in her ear, making her laugh…

Suddenly the real James burst into the clearing. He had a bent top had upon his head and carried his wand in his fist. Lily looked at the reflection, then back at him. “Did you find Sirius?” he asked. A stupid question, seeing as there was no Sirius in the clearing.

“Does it look like I have?” she asked sarcastically.

“Perhaps you did and set him into the wild again,” James joked, grinning in that stupid way.

In the reflection, Mirror-James grinned exactly the same way. His hair was messy and wild in the reflection. In real life, he was still on the Sleekeazy bit, his hair all slicked back and ridiculous looking. She frowned at the reflection.

She tilted her head to one side in confusion.

“What? Are you alright?” he asked.

Lily nodded. Then, “Look at this weird mirror, Potter.”

James went over and stepped up beside her, staring at the reflection. James hesitated, “It’s just us.”

“Don’t you think that’s odd?”

“Evans, it’s a mirror. See, that’s what they’re for… reflecting stuff.”

“But we look different,” she said.

James raised his eyebrow, “We do?” He looked at the reflection in the mirror. They looked exactly like themselves.

“Don’t we?”

James looked at her, laughing. “You’re mad.”

“I’m not!”

“Are so,” he smirked.

“Are not!”

“Are. It’s a mirror, Evans. It’s how they work. C’mon, we have more important things to do than stare at ourselves in mirrors all day… though one couldn’t blame you for wanting to.” His eyes twinkled and he turned away.

But there was something hypnotic about that reflection, something that she had a hard time tearing away from… She watched herself in the mirror turn to James, who was still there beside her in the reflection...

Suddenly, James grabbed her hand and tugged her away. “Evans. C’mon, we’ve got to find Sirius.”