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Not Just One of Many


Charlus carried Dora’s basket of knitting on his arm as he entered James’s hospital ward a little bit later. She was sitting in her chair, watching as James slept, having been given a sleeping potion. Dora held his glasses in her hands, having slipped them from his face as his chin had dipped and his head rolled into his pillow. He still held the little yellow envelope in one hand across his chest. Dora looked up as Charlus lowered himself in the seat next to her, putting her knitting onto the floor gently. “‘Ello you,” he said quietly, bending to kiss the top of her head and folding his lanky frame into the chair beside her. “Has he woken up at all since I’ve been gone?”

“Just for a little bit before they put him back down,” Dora replied. She shifted her chair so that Charlus could put his arm ‘round about her and she could lean her head on his shoulder and he could rest his chin on her forehead. “Looks like it’s another Christmas in St. Mungo’s,” she murmured, “Becoming a bit of a Potter family tradition.”

Charlus murmured, “At least we’re all together another year.”

Dora nodded and held onto his hand.

“What’s that Jamesie has?” he asked.

Dora smiled to herself. “It’s a get well card. From a girl.”

“A girl!” Charlus exclaimed.

“Indeed,” whispered Dora. “A little girl named Lily Evans with ginger hair, and, as James described them, the most greenest eyes you’ve ever seen.” She looked up at Charlus with a smirk.

“Ohh blimey, not the greenest eyes! Oldest catcher in the book!” Charlus murmured. “Well. We always knew there would come a day… being my son and all, he was sort of destined for it… Just one of many after him, I reckon.”

Dora shook her head, “I’m not so sure she’s just one of many for James, dear… You should’ve seen him talk about her.”

Charlus chuckled, “He’s fourteen, Dora, of course she’s just one of many.”

Dora smiled to herself. “We’ll see.”

Charlus patted her arm. “I’ll ask him about her next time he wakes up,” he said. “Find out a bit more about this future daughter in law of ours,” he chuckled, amused at the foolish idea of it…




“Remus.”

Rey’s eyes were closed.

“Reyyyyyyy.”

He’d fallen asleep nearly ten minutes before, waiting for Sirius to finish the page they were on...

Sirius tapped him on the shoulder with his index finger, reaching ‘round from beneath him. Remus had fallen asleep laying in Sirius’s arms on the couch.

They’d been ‘studying’. It was Sirius’s idea, when Remus had said he had to muddle on the Transfiguration holiday reading assignment and Sirius had wanted to relax and muff about instead, he’d come up with the idea that he, Sirius, ought to sit down on the couch and spread his legs real wide-like and then Remus would sit in the hollow of him and Sirius would look over his shoulder and they’d read together. Well, the reading together bit had lasted as long as it took for them to discover that Rey read at a very fast pace and Sirius at a very slow pace so that Remus had read all of the page twice before Sirius had read it once.

“Moooooooony,” Sirius murmured in his ear, “Moony-kins.”

Remus stirred.

“Oh you like being called Moony-kins, do you? Wakes you up does it?”

“What are you on about?” yawned Remus.

“Just finished the page, and I’m ready for another,” Sirius explained.

Remus looked up at the clock, “Bloody hell no wonder you don’t study… it took you over a quarter an hour to read that all.”

“That’s exactly why I don’t,” Sirius declared, though it was really just because he hated studying. “Oi, Moony-kins, I have a question --”

Moony-kinds?” Remus asked, having only just now properly heard it.

“Yes, that’s you,” Sirius explained, “Listen, my question is very important. Do you reckon that it ought to be pronounced onety-one instead of eleven?”

“What?”

“Twoty-two… threety-three.. Fourty-four… hey, that one actually works out alright…”

“Sirius, what in bloody hell are you talking about?” Remus laughed, turning his head.

Sirius explained, “Well, see, I was reading here in this book about the eleven laws of human transfiguration here --”

“What?” Remus looked at the text before them. “No you weren’t, that’s not what this chapter’s about…”

“...and I saw the number eleven and I wondered to myself who named the numbers. I mean… obviously that guy was a real tosser… Couldn’t think of a thing to name it better than zero? What kind of horrible name is zero?”

“It’s not really a name though,” said Remus, “It’s a number… numbers don’t have names really, they just… are that number…”

“Sure they have names. What else do you call it if you don’t call it zero, you git? And what good is having a name if you don’t let anyone call you by it?”

Remus shook his head.

“Rey?”

“Yeah?”

“Let’s go have an adventure. I’m tired of studying.”

“We read one page,” Remus pointed out.

“Yes but it’s boring.”

“Oh having me sit in your lap like this is boring, is it?” Remus teased him.

“No, well, that I’m rather enjoying. It’s the book that’s a snore.” He looked at the window, it was dark and there was a frost going up on the pane. “C’mon there’s loads to do about the castle, it’ll be grand.”

Remus, who was a week out from a full moon and already starting to feel it in the creakiness of his bones, hesitated. Leaning against Sirius like this was like laying on a warm hot water bottle and his spine had never felt better in his life, he was sure of it… he really was loathe to move. And it was sooo late, the thought of running about the castle was exhausting. But the look in Sirius’s eyes… the plea he wasn’t speaking… Remus knew it was dangerous how easy Sirius could get him to agree to something, just a look of his eye, a touch of his hand and Rey’s senses were done for.

“Alright, where are we going?”

Sirius’s mouth broke into a grin and he pulled himself up and over the arm of the couch, out from behind Remus, and stood up as Remus shifted to sit forward. Sirius thought for a long moment - what to do, what to do… What did he want his first midnight adventure with his Moony to be? What could two dogs like them get up to that would be new and exciting for Remus with a low chance of being caught? (After all, he had to break him in to the idea of being caught before they actually did it - Remus would not fare well in detention, Sirius decided, the same way he wouldn’t fare well in jail.) Then it came to him and he grinned. “C’mon.”

“Where?”

“You’ll see.”




James didn’t want to wake up when he did. He’d been in the middle of a very good dream, which had started out as a very boring dream…

It had started as a dream about - of all things - Divination class. He’d heard Mopsus’s voice to start - calling his name through darkness before the Divination room had faded into view… and then he’d suddenly been sitting on his stool and Peter had been talking about his crystal ball and the stuff he was seeing in it - stuff about his mum… He was telling Peter that the crystals was showing the future and not the past like he thought, when out of the corner of his eyes, he noticed Lily Evans in his own crystal ball and everything else was just extra… though in the dream he kept talking on and on, his actual consciousness was focused on that reflection of Lily Evans. He saw her spinning about at the end of his own outstretched arms… in front of a fountain, wearing a pretty pink knitted hat and matching mittens and she was laughing… and her eyes were sparkly… Reflection James pulled her into him and she didn’t say no… and stared into her eyes and instead of her casting them away, she stared back up right into his…

He woke very suddenly, feeling as though he’d been dropped from a very great height and only just landed. He looked around, getting the idea he wasn’t alone… which he was not. Dora and Charlus were there, though Dora was asleep and Charlus was balancing a book on the edge of the bed - his one arm still ‘round his wife as she slept, the other struggling to turn the page of the book and hold it at exactly the same time.

“You ought to leviosa it up,” James murmured.

Charlus looked up to see James awake and smiled, “Well hello you.”

“Hello.”

Charlus put the book down on his lap. “My wand’s up that sleeve,” he explained, nodding to the arm that lay captured beneath Mrs. Potter’s lovely sleeping head.

“Aha,” James said, smiling. He cast his eyes downward at the yellow envelope, remembering the way Lily had looked in his dream, wishing it was real.

Charlus smiled back. He glanced at Dora, then back at James. “Your mother said something about a girl coming to call.”

James nodded.

Charlus said, “Your mum’s practically planning your wedding already…” Going for playful-dad, he rolled his eyes, “Doesn’t understand what it’s like being a young buck, does she?”

James looked up. He wanted to laugh at the phrase young buck, but knew he’d have to explain it and he couldn’t without telling his dad about the animagus and all that and he knew Professor McGonagall and that could lead to a whole mess, so James suppressed it and simply asked, “A young buck, ‘ey?”

Charlus nodded, “You know… wild and free… free to see all the girls you like…?”

James shrugged. “Well, I suppose I’m technically seeing Annalee McKinnon. I was at the Yule Ball with her when this lot happened…” he waved at his bandaged chest. Suddenly, he realized he had never gone back to see her. He’d left her sitting at that bloody table with Peter Pettigrew. He’d have to write to her and apologize about it as soon as possible. “Don’t reckon I’ll be seeing much more of her anymore, though,” he speculated. He didn’t feel too upset about it. She was sort of dull. But then even stars were dull when they were compared to Lily Evans.

“Aha,” Charlus said, smirking, thinking he was right about James having loads of girls back at Hogwarts. He mentally rolled his eyes at how mushy Dora had got over this one girl. Women just don’t understand men’s need for sowing the wild oats, he thought.

James was still staring at that yellow envelope though.

Keen to continue proving his point, even though Charlus knew the answer already, he asked, “Is that from Annalee, then?”

James shook his head, “This one’s from Lily Evans. She left it when she came by.” He smiled that one smile… “She’s invited me to a cinema. As friends.”

“Sounds like a date,” Charlus said.

“Oh no. Not with Evans it’s not,” James shook his head. “She underlined and highlighted the word friends. She’d probably hex me worse than this here if I dared call it a date to her face.”

“I thought she fancied you?” Charlus asked, confused, for this wasn’ the picture that Dora’s words had painted in his head at all… He’d pictured all the ladies of Hogwarts swooning after his wild-haired son…

“I wish she fancied me! Blimey, she could have me anytime she wanted if she did,” James said with a chuckle and a blush. He looked up at Charlus. “Oh Dad, she’s beautiful and I love her so much… I’ve never felt like it before… but there’s something about her… whenever I look at her, blimey, I just see my entire life making sense if only she’d look back at me.”

Charlus stared at James in disbelief at the words.

James pleaded, “Dad. You have to tell me how to act around women.”

“How to act around women?” Charlus asked, still hung up on the my entire life making sense bit.

“Yes,” James nodded, “I must be going about it all wrong and… well… you have mum, so you obviously did it right and I really… really want Lily Evans to notice me, dad.”

Charlus said, “You need to just be yourself, son.”

“She doesn’t like my self. She says I have a big ego and calls me names like toerag.”

Charlus chuckled and looked at Dora. “When I met your mother,” he confessed. “I tried everything to impress her.”

“That’s what I do with Lily,” James said, disappointed. So he’d already been doing everything Charlus had done to get Dora and it wasn’t working. He’d hoped for a big, revealing answer to all his troubles.

Charlus was about to say more - but they were interrupted by that red haired nurse, coming to change James’s bandages - and Charlus never got to say what he’d been about to… that Dora Potter hadn’t been impressed at all until he’d stopped trying so hard and simply been the real himself around her...