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Weak and Pathetic


James was a couple corridors away before Lily caught him up, breathless for having to take two steps to every one of his strides. She took hold on his elbow to slow him, but James shook her off and steered himself down a hall that led to a secret passageway he and Sirius had discovered back in fourth year, running off from Filch after a particularly good prank on some Ravenclaws. Lily hurried to keep up. “Potter,” she said, “Come on, you might at least slow down a bit so that I could talk to you.”

“I don’t want to talk to you,” he replied.

Lily didn’t slow. “You always want to talk to me,” she teased, her voice sounding more confident than she really felt on the topic. She scurried as he paused at the frame of Alton Marinus, the wizard who invented the Aquamenti charm, his painted palm upholding a spinning orb of water. “C’mon Love,” Lily pressed, forcing a smirk to play across her lips, thinking these words would give him pause.

James looked at her, his spectacles riding down his nose, and pushed the frames up with his fingers. “Evans,” he said pointedly, shaking his head, “I haven’t got any wicked scars to show for it, alright, I haven’t got anything wrong with me for you to take care of. There’s nothing, alright, you’re wasting your bleedin’ time.”

Lily said, “I didn’t ask to see any wicked scars, alright? And I don’t think I have to take care of you or anything,” she added. “I just think it’s rather nice not to be lonely and --” The way James stared at her... something about his eyes made her stop speaking.

“I’m not blind, you know,” James said, “Whatever these glasses make you think.” He sighed and reached up, sliding the glasses from his nose. He hesitated and looked down at his feet. “I can see it in everyone’s face that you’re all worried about me, like I could crack at any moment. You and Remus and Sirius… you’re all just waiting for the second when I break apart and you’ve got to rush in to put me back together again.”

“That’s not --” Lily started, but James plowed onward.

“You’d think the way the lot of you are acting that Voldemort won or something. But he didn’t,” James’s voice was defiant, “He didn’t win, Evans. And I’m not about to break any second.”

“I know you aren’t, Potter,” she said.

James stared at his glasses in his hands. “All I want to do is forget what happened, you know? I want to move on and put it in the past and take all the power of it away so that - not only did Voldemort not win, but he didn’t even affect me whatsoever. And it’s really hard to do that if I’m being forced to constantly think on it and worry about it and what have you. It’s impossible if every time I look at you or Sirius I’m going to think about it - about what happened.” James took a deep breath. “Not that Sirius Black even gives a damn… hasn’t got a use for me now that he thinks I’m weak and pathetic, does he?”

“Sirius doesn’t think you’re weak and pathetic,” Lily cut in. “He just --”

But James held up his palm to stop her talking and, looking up at the portrait of Alton Marinus, he said, “Changing the tide,” and the frame swung open revealing a flight of stairs and James hurried up them.

“Potter!” Lily said, scrambling in after him, even as the frame nearly shut her out and she only just got in by the skin of her ankles. “Lumos,” she muttered, lighting her wandtip to be able to see. James had gone on without his lit - he’d been in the tunnel enough times to know every step without seeing it. She thundered up the short flight behind him and through a dark passageway with rough, hewn-stone walls. “Listen, it’s really not that Sirius thinks you’re weak and pathetic, if anything, he thinks he is.”

James snorted, “He is?” he asked, astonished, “How the bloody hell would he get that, after all he did? ‘Ey? Yeah right, Sirius Black think he’s weak and pathetic!” He scoffed.

Lily’s cheeks flushed. “He’s embarrassed! He thinks you’re angry with him, and that he was a terrible friend, for not seeing it sooner that you weren’t here.”

“Well… well maybe he is,” James said coldly. He stopped and looked at Lily’s features, illuminated by her wand. “I mean, only you are ninny enough to believe Severus Snape is even remotely --” he stopped and shook his head.

“I’ll have you know that Severus Snape ultimately helped to save your bleedin’ life, and without him --”

James let out a frustrated breath of air and threw his palms up, then turned away, “And here we go yet again - always defending Snape - after what he did to you last Spring --”

“I’m not defending him - not really… I… I’m appalled that he was there to begin with, that he would --”

“Help to plot my death?” James stopped short again and Lily’s momentum put her slammed against him so that they stood, chest to chest, him looking down at her and her up at him, breathless from chasing his long strides.

“He didn’t help to plot your --”

“No? Didn’t he, though?” James demanded, “Broke into the castle and allowed Voldemort to kidnap me, didn’t he? Masqueraded as though he were me, didn’t he?” James shook his head, “Evans, just because Snape helped you to get me out of that filthy prison, don’t forget for a second that Snaped helped me get there to begin with. He didn’t give a damn about getting me out of there. Whatever he did to play the hero… he did it out of selfish intent of winning you over.” His eyes were hot with the passion of the words. “Severus Snape is as dark as they come. Perhaps even darker than Voldemort himself, and twice as dangerous. Yes, that’s right, twice as dangerous,” he said, stopping her from arguing, “Because a dark wizard capable of blinding you into thinking his intentions are good -- a couple flashes of white light and all the dark he’s caused is out of sight, out of mind -- well, that’s the worst sort.” And before she could say another word, James turned and left the passageway, pushing open a stone door that led out into a hall just a couple turns away from the portrait of the Fat Lady.

Lily stared after him, biting her lip.




“What use will he have for me, then, now that I’m just weak and pathetic?” Sirius was asking Remus as they climbed the stairwells. They were paused on the top step of one of the moving staircases, waiting for the flight they needed to return in order to get back to the dormitories. Sirius was scratching the back of his neck with his long fingers, a frustrated grimace on his face as he did so.

Remus reached up and picked a flea off Sirius’s shoulder, pinching it between his fingers and tossing it aside. “James doesn’t think you’re weak and pathetic,” he said, shaking his head. “If anything, he thinks he is!”

“James Potter! Think he’s weak and pathetic?” Sirius scoffed at the very thought of it, “Alright, Remus, whatever you say, Remus.”

“It’s true!”

“After all he did fighting against the Dark Lord?” Sirius asked, “Surviving being literally tortured by Voldemort first hand? I reckon there isn’t a single person that’s less weak and pathetic than James Potter, except maybe you. While I, on the other hand, am possibly the worst friend ever. A terrible friend. You know, I’m exactly that. A terrible friend.”

“You’re not a terrible anything, Padfoot,” Remus said.

“I am,” Sirius said, and he paused before the Fat Lady, turning to Remus as he said, “I’m the most bloody, stupid prat there is, aren’t I? Looking Severus Snape right in the face, living right in James’s house, and not having a bloody clue that it wasn’t him. Not seeing it in his fucking eyes that my best mate wasn’t there at all!”

“Don’t be beatin’ yourself up on it,” Remus advised, “Even Mr. and Mrs. Potter didn’t see it, and they’re James’s parents. If anyone ought to have been able to see, it’s Mrs. Potter. And even she didn’t. The polyjuice potion was extremely good, and honestly it was a very smart move on Voldemort’s to have thought of it.”

“But it was Severus Snape, parading about as though he were Prongs, Moony!” Sirius agonized. “Anybody else and perhaps I ought to have been blind to it, sure, but not Severus Snape. I should’ve known the moment James said -- I mean Severus said that the Potter house wasn’t my home. Because it is. It always has been.”

“I know, mate,” Remus said, “I promise you that I know.”

“I should’ve known, Moony, that it wasn’t my best friend right then because James Potter would never fucking say that to me, ever in a hundred million years.”

“You’re right, he wouldn’t,” Remus agreed.

Sirius let out a great sigh, falling back against the wall beside the portrait, “And isn’t that exactly my problem, though, Rey? That James wouldn’t, but Severus did and I didn’t -- didn’t immediately --” He shook his head and although his stance leaning against the wall had begun as one of utter agony, it took only a moment before he was scratching his back on the wallpaper, closing his eyes as he shimmied.

“Bleeding hell,” Remus said, shaking his head as Sirius squatted and shook, rubbing the flea-bitten plane of his back all over the place. “I swear, Padfoot, if you give me fleas ---”

“I would never forgive myself for inflicting this sort of agony on you, Moonpie,” Sirius answered, groaning, “It’s bloody torture.”

“Think you know what the definition of torture is now, do you?” James Potter’s voice run through the corridor. Remus turned around to see James, Lily scurrying after him looking rather winded from having kept up with his quick pace all the way from the hospital wing. What bloody timing, he thought. If only they’d been but a moment sooner…

Sirius’s eyes popped open as he stood upright, abandoning the job of scratching his back against the wall. “I didn’t say --”

“Because I promise you haven’t any idea what real torture is like,” James cut him off.

Sirius’s eyes widened, “Oh I haven’t, have I?” And gone was his earlier contriteness, gone was the guilt and the agony in his eyes. Now his cheeks lit with the heat of anger and Remus closed his eyes, preparing himself for one of the Great Dramatic Discords of Sirius Black as Sirius drew a deep breath and fired, “Not a clue what it bloody feels like at all! I’m a fucking pampered little prat that’s never been through a thing, am I? Not at all the son of Orion and Walburga Black, two of the most ruthless, heartless Death Eaters there ever was. Not at all cruciatused by my dear old mother every time I set foot at home. Not at all disowned. Not as though I’ve ever been through a bloody thing myself! Only you, only you! Oh poor James, has been through so much in the last year, oh boo-hoo-hoo.” Sirius glared at James, “Cry me a river, then build a bridge and get the fuck over it, mate. You’re not the first one in the world to have gone through shit, alright? And you won’t be the last.”

James looked at Lily, “See? Just like I told you. Weak and pathetic.”

Something flickered in Sirius’s eyes. The fire that had lit his anger trembled - maybe even went out - and he struggled for a moment to keep his composure. His fingers balled into fists and his teeth grit.

Remus looked horrified, “James, he --”

“Save it,” James replied, and he looked at the Fat Lady’s portrait. “Let me in.”

The Fat Lady, who had been watching all of this with a bit of a keen interest - along with Violet, the witch from a painting downstairs who often snuck through the frames to visit the Fat Lady and share her wine - tried to act as though she hadn’t been riveted by the show. Several other paintings were doing the same around them. “Password?” she asked.

“I don’t know the password,” James said, “You might not have heard but I’m just getting back from being kidnapped and I’m rather tired and done with certain people, and I just want my bed, so please --”

“It’s Chudley Cannons,” Lily piped up over his shoulders.

“Good girl,” said the Fat Lady, and she swung open, though she looked quite hesitant to turn her back on the dramatics going on in the room before her.

James crawled through without a moment’s hesitation.

Remus looked at Sirius, “You had to do that, did you?”

Sirius’s jaw was set. “You heard him,” he answered, “Exactly like I said.” And he turned and crawled through behind James.

Remus looked at Lily. “Well,” he murmured, “That went horribly.”

“About as horrible as it could,” Lily answered.

“The odds of James having come up with exactly that turn of phrase...” Remus murmured.

Lily sighed, “I know. How anybody could think James is weak and pathetic --”

James?” Remus said, “No, Sirius thought James thought he was weak and pathetic.”

“Well James thought that Sirius thought that he was,” Lily answered.

Remus stared at her and he stared at him and several beats passed before Remus finally said, “Well bloody hell.” And hurried through the portrait hole, too, followed by Lily.

The portrait had only just closed behind them all when Peter Pettigrew came fumbling up the corridor, breathless from the long walk alone.