BOYS
As soon as a low stone fence ran along the road and Sirius saw the long-awaited house under the tiled roof, he felt at seren peace.
He stopped the motorcycle at the wooden gate and turned off the engine.
The Potter house was hidden from prying eyes behind a huge old oak tree and a dense green garden, but even through the thicket, he could see the light burning warmly on the first floor, where the kitchen was, and on the second floor, in Mr. Potter's study.
Sirius took a deep breath of the air he had known since childhood, closed his eyes for a moment, and then quickly put the motorcycle on the footrest, got off, and pushed open the gate.
"Grass. It's everywhere you look. It's tall, green, and rippling like a green sea. The sunlight seeps through the thick leaves of the great oak tree above them in dazzling, thin rays. He and James run down the hill through this sea. Down to the river.
'The last one in is a stinking troll!' James shouts as he runs, and Sirius pushes him. James pushes back, but loses his balance and is pulled down with him. They fall into the grass. Laughing, they roll down the gentle ravine. They fall on their backs, and the hot summer sky spreads over them, so blue that it hurts their eyes. Having flown down, it seems they are now taking off into the bottomless, clear blue."
No sooner had Sirius entered the courtyard than there was a loud crash somewhere nearby. He froze. Obviously, a fight to the death was going on nearby. If his ears were to be believed, it was in the small stone shed where the Potters kept all sorts of junk and where he and James had spent half of their childhood.
Sirius gently removed his hand from the lilac bush near the gate and looked at the shed.
At that moment, something slammed inside, frightened human voices rang out, then something slammed again, and green smoke poured out of the small round window. There was a scream of pain, a desperate curse, and finally James, even bigger and clumsier than last year, fell out and pushed the door open as if a herd of rabid rhinos were chasing him out of the shed.
The door rattled against the lock and creaked open again with a mournful squeak.
James exhaled an angry breath, grabbed the unstable tower of crates full of broken time turners more comfortably, and made his way carefully down the overgrown path.
Sirius crossed his arms over his chest and leaned against the gate with a smile. It wasn't every day he saw a picture of Prongs working without the aid of magic.
The square glasses had slipped down to the tip of his nose, and there was no way to fix them, so James walked with extreme caution, feeling the path with the toe of his sneaker, apparently afraid of stepping on a gnome or a nargle in the dark. His tousled hair had probably collected all the cobwebs from the barn; a large spider sat on the back of his head, and judging by the look of his stained jeans, which were still smoking a bit, they had gotten the lion's share of the potion that had caused the explosion.
Apparently, the change from the dusty environment to the fresh air of the garden was too abrupt. James stumbled back, took a deep breath, and sneezed, sending his glasses flying into the grass and the crates hitting the ground with a deafening clatter, spilling their fragile contents onto the grass. Broken gimbals began to disappear and reappear one by one, clicking and clattering. James began to step on them in horror, as if they were running cockroaches, but then one of the crates still in his hands fell on James' foot. Pouring out all his pain in the most obscene way, he swung and kicked it, sending it flying across the garden and crashing into the exact spot where Sirius' head had been a few seconds ago.
