All the Young Dudes ( Sirius' Perspective )

The War : The Rat

Okay, so your heart is broken

You sit around mopin’

Cryin’ and cryin’

You say you’re even thinkin’ about dyin’?

Well, before you do anything rash

Dig this

Everybody plays the fool sometimes

There’s no exception to the rule

(Listen, baby) It may be factual, may be cruel

(I ain’t lyin’) Everybody plays the fool

 

Sirius opened the door, and James was dead.

The world stopped, shattered, and rearranged itself, trying desperately to accommodate this fact. It came back together disjointed, made all of sharp pieces, an inescapable cage in which Sirius found himself trapped.

That was James, there, on the floor. That was James, with his glasses askew, and his hair tangled, and his eyes open. That was James, unbreathing, unseeing, unfeeling. There wasn’t a single spark of life left in him. He was a body on the carpet.

It’s not real, Sirius thought, as he stepped into the house, This is a dream. He could smell something burning in the kitchen, cloying and sweet. Lily must have been baking.

I’m going to wake up.

In the living room, there was a seemingly random collection of objects. A broom, a watering can, Harry’s stuffed dog – which for some reason had been enchanted, five times larger, the size of a real animal. James’s wand was on the sofa, next to a polaroid picture. He hadn’t even had time to grab it.

Any second now, I’ll wake up.

The stairs groaned underfoot, old and creaking. Sirius felt the bite of the cold night air through the gaping maw of the wreckage. Lily was there, in Harry’s destroyed nursey, curled next to the crib. Her cheeks were stained with tears that had already dried.

I’ll wake up, and it’ll be over, because this is a dream.

She was dressed in a checked blue pinafore, hair braided. Our Halloween costume, Sirius thought, numbly, the memory resurfacing from so many months ago – back in early spring, when things had still been…before everything had…

“It’s perfect!” Sirius cried, drunkenly, trying to push himself up off the sofa. After a moment, he gave up and settled back into Remus’s arms, insisting, “I’d be Toto, obviously, and Lily would be Dorothy. Prongs can be the Scarecrow, since he hasn’t got a brain—”

“Oi!” James protested, narrowing his eyes from across the room. He was sitting on the floor in front of Lily’s armchair, and she ran her fingers through his hair, giggling.

 “—Wormy’s the cowardly lion, Remus is the tin man. Done. Halloween’s sorted.”

“Yes, but remind me why we would be wearing these costumes?” Remus drawled, smiling as he took a lazy sip of firewhisky. Sirius smacked his arm, playfully.