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Home Safe


The first snow came not long after Sirius’s birthday. The boys were out on the grounds most of the day that day, forming snowballs to hurl across the lawns at unsuspecting victims, laughing and getting snowballs hurled back at them. Sirius’s ridiculously long Gryffindor scarf wound about his neck and flapped along behind him as he ran after James, playing and kicking up the snow dusting as they went, bursting into their animagus forms at the edge of the Forbidden Forest the moment they were out of sight and running through the trees, paying a form of tag while Peter and Remus breathlessly took a seat on a log just inside the shadows, listening to the stag and the dog crashing through the trees beyond, barking and honking about.

The first Quidditch game - Slytherin versus Gryffindor - was coming up, too, and so James was spending a good deal of time on the pitch with his team, going over practice plays, which he was constantly coming up with at random all over the castle. They’d be sitting at dinner and he’d suddenly launch across the table and grab the quill out of Remus’s pocket (Remus always had a quill in his pocket) and start scribbling on the back of his hand a load of X’s and O’s that indicated movements of the players… “Yeah, yeah, excellent, yeah!” he’d mutter, scribbling along.

“You know, that’s not healthy,” Lily Evans said, looking over from her jacket potato one evening as he did it. “Did you know they can pull those marks out of your skin years and years later? Iodine will make them show right up, clear as day! I saw a documentary about it once on the telly. They never really go away...”

“Brilliant! So if I wash it off in the toilet before I write it down I won’t lose it?” James exclaimed, “Iodine you say? Shall I just bathe in it?”

Lily rolled her eyes, “You’d look like you’d fallen in an inkpot!”

James smirked.

“Careful Potter, she might see how many times you’ve written Mr. Lily Evans on yourself in Potions,” Sirius snickered.

“I don’t even!” James haucked a bit of bread at Sirius’s head and rolled his eyes. He looked at Lily, “I don’t,” he added firmly.

“Do you draw little flowers with it too? And hearts?” Lily teased, elbowing him.

James turned red, “Bloody hell.”

Sirius hooted with laughter.

Meanwhile, the castle was preparing for the holidays, as well as quidditch. Hagrid had started bringing in trees and putting them up about the castle to settle before they were to be decorated by magic. The suits of armor were strung with wreaths and Father Christmas caps and, per tradition, Sirius stood outside Professor McGonagall’s classrooms late at night training the nearest knight to sing.

“No, no, mate,” he said, next day, pausing outside of the Transfiguration classroom in the third week of November, “It’s not Voldemort can duck my brick - that doesn’t even make sense. What do you reckon, I’m to be chucking a brick at him? I mean it’s not a terrible idea, but that’s not how the song goes. It’s Voldemort can suck my ---

“MR. BLACK!” McGonagall stood in the doorway of her classroom, arms crossed, eyes narrowed, staring at him.

Sirius looked back at her, then up at the armor again, “If you’d just got it right the first time we wouldn’t be in trouble right now, you bloody idiot bit of rusty tin!”

He was in trouble with Lily Evans before long, too. She marched up to him in the common room one night, an angry look about her face. “Sirius Black,” she said sternly and he looked up from the game of wizards chess he was playing with James. “You’re a prat.”

“What? What’d I do?” he asked, confused.

“You and that bleedin’ song! The first years have learned it from the suits of armor and they’ve been singing it all evening while doing their homework!”

Sirius’s eyes lit up and a great grin spread across his face. “Excellent.”

Lily shook her head and marched off, muttering to herself about how mortified she was and how ashamed Sirius Black ought to be - teaching a load of eleven year olds a song like that! But James reached across the chessboard and gave Sirius a very smooth high-five as Remus scrambled off the couch, abandoning his History of Magic book, hurrying to do damage control with Lily across the room.

It was the day before the first Quidditch game of the season - James was on pins and needles and hadn’t shut up on it all day, so the Marauders and Lily had sort of shoved him off on poor Frank at the breakfast table, who was the nearest victim that was actually on the team - when the owl post arrived, bearing the Daily Prophet. James was so busy babbling on to Frank that he didn’t immediately open his copy, he sat holding his mail from Bubo, talking about how Frank’s beater skills were impeccable and one of the reasons he was confident they’d win. But whispers were spreading like wildfire around the room and Sirius launched himself over the table to grab the paper from James, trying at yanking it out of his hand and managing to rip a part of the page.

“Bad dog!” James said, turning to look at him.

Sirius’s eyes sparkled and he tugged it away, “Woof,” he said thickly.

Lily snorted into her pumpkin juice.

Sirius looked at her with a grin. “Something funny, Evans?” he asked.

Lily shook her head - she’d managed to make pumpkin juice come out her nose and it was burning, she had tears in her eyes from it, but it was just so bloody funny...

Sirius took a sip of a mug of hot chocolate and unfolded the paper.

LUCY MINCHUM -- HOME SAFE! GRAND-DAUGHTER OF THE MINISTER FOUND ALIVE BENEATH THE DARK MARK IN HOME OF MURDERED MUGGLES
A story with both a happy and a sad ending, Aurors investigated a muggle home during the small hours of the morning that had been set with the Dark Mark in the sky. They found that followers of the Dark Lord had massacred a family of five muggles. The aurors leading the investigation conducted a thorough search of the home in hopes of finding some purpose that they would have come under attack from the Dark Lord, but no evidence was found that could explain why he had chosen that family as his victims.
They did however discover Lucy Minchum, who has been missing for nearly three months, alive and unharmed. The Minister himself disapparated to the scene to confirm Lucys identity and brought her to St. Mungo’s to confirm her health - healers were amazed to confirm that Lucy Minchum was unharmed during her time with the Dark Lord and the girl is expected to be released from the hospital after a routine period of observation, some time this afternoon.


“Bleedin’ hell!” Sirius exclaimed, and he looked up at Remus, who’d been reading the article over his shoulder. “Unharmed! What’s the Dark Lord playing at?”

Remus shrugged, “Unharmed and without any conflict, just returning the kid? That’s… odd.”

“Certainly is,” muttered Sirius, “Gotta be more to it. An ulterior motive of some sort.”

James had taken the paper and read the headline by now and he injected, “Well, I mean, kids can get annoying. She probably annoyed him. I reckon ol’ Voldy wouldn’t be all too hard to annoy. Couple repetitive questions and you’re done.”

“Kids aren’t annoying, they’re precious,” Lily Evans injected.

James rolled his eyes.

Peter took the paper and looked it over. “It is weird that there was nothing wrong. She doesn’t even look bruised!” For the article was accompanied by a photo of Harold Minchum holding his granddaughter up, his arms around her waist as she carried her out of the muggle home.

“Don’t you want children one day, Potter?” Lily asked James, ignoring Peter, who was reading the article with flickering eyes.

James shrugged, “I dunno. I s’pose.”

“Well I do, I want two.”

“I know,” James said before he could stop himself. He flushed. “I mean… you… you’ve told me before.”

Lily turned red, realizing that he was right - she had told her stag about it, at least - and she turned back to her breakfast quickly without another word.

James turned back to his, too. “I mean I might like my own children more than I like other peoples’...” he muttered to his oatmeal.

“What do you reckon Moldy Voldy’s playing at?” Sirius questioned, staring at the back of the Prophet as Peter read it. He looked to Remus.

“Dunno,” Remus answered with a shrug, “But it can’t be any good.”

The first game of the quidditch season happened to be on the day of the full moon and so Remus would be missing the game. Sirius, wanting to show James some support, had the hard decision of letting Remus go out to the Shrieking Shack alone for the afternoon. “I will be there before moon rise, I swear it. If the game goes too long I’ll leave, but it’s his first game a Captain and… it doesn’t feel right to miss it entirely.”

“I understand,” Remus said, smiling as he kissed Sirius, standing in the dormitory, his bag all packed for the Shack, “I’m just going to sleep most of the afternoon anyway, Padfoot.”

Sirius murmured, “But I like sleeping with you.”

Remus smirked.

“I mean actual sleeping - blimey, you’re as dirty minded as I am!” Sirius exclaimed, then his eyes twinkled and he said, “I’ve corrupted you, then, haven’t I?”

“Terribly. I was innocent before I met you.”

Sirius leaned closer, standing on his tip toe to reach Remus’s ear and whispered, huskily, “It’s far more fun being corrupted, isn’t it now, Moony?”

Remus got chills that ran up and down his spine at the tone to Sirius’s voice and his fingers dug into Sirius’s hands. He stared into Sirius’s eyes. “You have to go see the quidditch?”

Sirius nodded, “Absolutely.”

Remus kissed Sirius and Sirius bit onto Remus’s lower lip gently, tugging it with his teeth as Remus tried to remember how to breathe properly. “Merlin’s beard,” he whispered.

Sirius snickered, kissed him proper, then pulled back and said, “That’ll give you something to think on if you get cold out there. Here, wear your sweater.” He turned and snatched Remus’s thick red sweater with the arm patches up from the foot of the bed, helping him shrug it on, eyes still closed, lingering on that kiss…

Truth be told, Sirius lingered on it, too, touching his mouth every now and then as he followed Lily Evans and Peter Pettigrew across the grounds that afternoon, toward the Quidditch Pitch. He glanced behind him at the Whomping Willow and smiled.

“What’re you grinning about?” Lily asked.

Sirius looked back to her, “Nothing.”

“It doesn’t look like nothing,” she accused.

Sirius smiled, “Feeling a bit like a lunar-tic, I suppose,” he muttered.

On the way to the stands, Sirius popped into the locker rooms, telling the others he’d catch them up in a second, and he wished the team good luck as he hunted down James, who was staring up at the play on the chalkboard - a play nobody had wiped away from the last time Derek Bell had been there. He was staring up at it the way a devout parishioner might look upon the holy grail and Sirius stepped up beside him to stare up at it, too.

“What if we lose?” James asked.

“Somebody’s got to,” Sirius answered.

“Everyone’s counting on me,” James said. “What if I let them down?”

“You do your best and you won’t let them down.”

James swallowed his nerves, “It’s just, these are mighty big shoes to fill - Derek and Andy both were excellent Captains. What if I suck as Captain?”

“You definitely don’t, I’ve seen the team members’ faces after practice. They love you, mate. You’re doing grand. And if you don’t win, so long as you gave it your all and had fun, you’ll be a winner anyway.” Sirius patted James’s shoulder, “You’ll be brilliant.”

“Thanks Sirius,” James murmured.

“Anytime, Captain.”