Marauders - Always - Part One

I'm Taking Him Back

Dora was kissing his forehead. She was rubbing his back after a nightmare, a steaming cup of tea clutched in his hand, sitting in front of the fire in the living room, her voice soothing and soft. Singing, almost.

"Nothing can ever heart you when mummy is here, I love you so, so much..."

And a flash of Voldemort's face - jarring, painfully juxtaposed over Dora's own kind one in the memory... but only for a moment before it was Dora's face again. She was cackling maniacally, her eyes bright with a hungry expression of enjoyment... "Nothing will ever hurt you when mummy's here," she mocked in a sing-song tone as instead of a soothing brush of knuckles against his cheek, there was sharp pain that ran though his nervous system, flushed his face and wrecked his body, making James scream out in pain, tears pouring over his cheeks - not for the nightmare she was soothing him of but the nightmare he was now living... "Mummy would never hurt you, Jamesey..."

And the living room seemed to collapse upon itself, like it had been made of orgami and the paper was folding up into a new shape, the pain and laughter still filling his head...

The memory of him on her lap was a picture in his hands now, black and white and torn.

And he was on his broomstick, Derek Bell was coaching him, pointing to the corners of the pitch, the sunlight catching his blonde hair so that it shone and James was staring up at his hero, honored beyond measure to be there, learning from the boy that he thought was the best quidditch player ever. He put his arm 'round James's shoulder and he was saying something about the wind direction and the way the broom would handle at higher altitudes, how that might effect James's angles a bit when he went to turn or take a dive... It didn't matter what Derek was saying with his mouth - it was his face that James was hearing. James was going to be in the tourney because Derek Bell believed in him and Derek's face was bright, flushed from flying all morning, and his blue eyes full of enthusiasm and confidence...

And all of a sudden the handsome young man was marred by a sneering grin where the joyful one had just been. 

"Doesn't matter what I believed in Potter," Derek Bell's voice said, "I'm dead. I was weak and foul and a lover of filth, a blood traitor, an enemy to wizards... I would have bowed to the Dark Lord the first time he challenged me... just like you will do now... because you, like me, are a coward."

And what had been an encouraging arm about the shoulder became electric... Pain shooting across James's shoulder blades so that his back arched and he gasped as it felt as though his spine was trying at folding in on itself.

"Oh what a brave little boy, playing quidditch for Gryffindor, wearing your precious little trainers and snitch-covered pyjamas," came Derek Bell's mocking tone, "Those certainly prove you've got what it takes to be a man, don't they, Potter? Being sorted to Gryffindor house and wearing all your precious little lion's gear... Can't possibly be a coward if you're a Gryffindor, can you, Potter?"

And the pitch folded up around him and reconfigured itself, it was the Bell Towers now and he and Sirius were sitting on the steps outside the castle by the jarred entrance doors, their fingers lazily gripping cigarettes, smoke rising up from their lips into the sky. These were serious talks, the sort of talks that you can't chance somebody coming down from the dormitories for. Talks about lovers and feelings, things you bottled up deep down in your chest, things you didn't tell anyone else except the moon and the other part of your soul, the part you knew wouldn't judge you no matter what.

"Sometimes I wonder, James, if I'd never met you and Moony if I'd have turned out as bad as my brother?" Siris lowered the cigarette from his mouth and looked over at James, purple-blue in the night.