Marauder crack

Family Tree

The Potters have breakfast like royalty. Mrs. Potter - Euphemia - prepares toasts and gingerbread cookies with nut butter. Mr. Potter - Fleamont - makes coffee, Chinese spice tea, and flavoured goat milk from their own.

Sweet almonds were served separately. They have cranberry juice, pumpkin pies, and chocolate with orange. It's not the first time that Sirius has sat at their table. But it always seems to him that eating with the Potters is like celebrating Christmas morning.

-It's all delicious- he says with his mouth full.

- It's nice to have you home, honey. James hardly eats. Have you seen how thin he is? He's hardly wider than his own wand!!

- Mom, with that again? - Argues James twisting his face and narrowing his eyes.

-It's love, Euphemia- says Fleamont. -The boy will get fat when he gets married. It is the law of life.

Despite the buns, the chocolate, and the cakes, the reason why Sirius feels the best at the Potters' house has never been food. What he likes is having Mrs. Potter ask him three times if he wants anything else, and let Mr. Potter stroke his shoulder and call him "son." With that, Mr. and Mrs. Potter, let him sit at his table and let him camp in the backyard and worry about the way things are taking in London, "With so many prejudices against Muggles" in the words of Mr. Potter. "Has always been there, you can imagine, but something is doing everything worse".Besides and especially, the Potters also care about Sirius.

- What are you planning to do now, son?

He explains to them that he planned to leave home when he finished school anyways. That he's not going to leave Hogwarts, that he has savings in Gringotts, and several family members he can still count on. Other renegades like him, like Uncle Alphard, who always promised help if anyday he got tired of his mother. "You've already lived with Beelzebub, everything goes up for you from there" Alphard used to say.

- And after school, honey? - James's mother sits with them at the table, in front of a glass of coffee in which the spoon is stirring itself.

Sirius shrugs.

- I do not know yet. Maybe the Auror program, I'm not sure.

- Sirius wants to travel the world on a motorcycle- James interrupts.

- Or join the Monty Python flying circus.

The Potters don't know who the Monty Python are but they smile at him anyway. Mr. Potter gives him that comforting pat on the back and he expresses his conviction that everything will go well for him because he will always have people who help him and because he doesn't lack talent at all.

- James has told us many times how well you do in DADA's lectures, son.

There is a sharp, sudden, thick silence.

-It's a family talent, Mr. Potter- Sirius says, without staring at him. Trying to make a joke... or maybe not.

- DEFENSE against the Dark Arts, I mean. Of course.

Mr. Potter pats him affectionately on the back again but this time, he barely feels it. Across the table, James is busy trying to change the conversation, trying to get the air to flow again in the kitchen of the Potters, and make the food digestible again. They all talk about school, about classes, the first thing that comes to mind, that greasy hairball called Severus Snape.

- He is the one obsessed with the Dark Arts.

- Severus, Dominus's son? - His father suddenly seems interested.

- Do you know him?

-His father? yes.. of course, yes. He was the healer chief at St. Mungo's.

He had a singular talent for potions. He got cures that no other healer would have believed possible. - There is something gloomy, little lit up in his tone of voice. - In fact, there was an investigation of the ministry to find out what kind of arts he used in treating him.After he was widowed, he fell in disgrace. An unclear matter, as I recall.

He had to leave the hospital.

James blows out.

-He seems as useless and idiotic as his son.

Sirius watches Mr. Potter's expression carefully. Serious and almost... scared?

-I would call Dominus Snape many things but idiot nor useless are among them, James. I wouldn't like to know what that son of his had to learn to survive in such a household.

- Not to wash his hair, Mr. Potter, James, and I can confirm that matter.