Chapter 36: Culpable
Harry flatly refused to speak to Hermione unless it was about the spell they were looking for or a book which might hold reference to it. Even then, she smirked and sniggered and insinuated. Weeks – months even – he had been completely blind to what Sirius's attention truly meant and now that he knew he was mortified to have been so utterly stupid. This, he realised too late, was how Lily had felt after the spell had been removed from James's eyes and the truth made plain before her. He was not angry so much as embarrassed to have been so ignorant. There were so many signs that he ought to have recognised; he had seen them, obviously, but had chosen to read them differently.
He had no idea what to do come the fourth of January, when the Hogwarts Express would return. Sirius would be back, head in his lap, arm around his shoulder, smile on his face, and this time Harry would know what it was about; he was lost for how to act. Before, when he thought it was friendliness, he paid it no mind, enjoying being so near the younger version of the man he had loved as family and friend.
Now, though. Now it was different.
Thirteen days he spent worrying about it. Thirteen nights he spent sleeping fitfully, if at all. The train would be back in a day and the poor boy was still desperately lost for an appropriate reaction. "What am I going to do?" he groaned.
"Well, that would depend on what you want," Hermione said sagely.
"What I want?"
"Yes, what do you want from Sirius?" she asked.
Harry blinked slowly, trying to sort out the meaning of the deceptively simple question. "I… don't know."
"Do you want him to leave you alone?" she pressed.
"No, he's my friend."
"Do you want to snog him?"
He flushed a deep crimson and dropped his eyes to stare at the book in his hands. "That's not really something I ever thought about."
"Well, think about it now," she told him. "Because he's going to be right back here trying to get you to kiss him by this time tomorrow and he's going to know there's something different. You'd better figure out what you want before he thinks you don't like him." The girl turned back to her dusty old tome, reading through the archaic script and leaving Harry with his thoughts.
What did he want? He stared, unseeing, at his own book as he imagined what it be like if Sirius stopped being Sirius, if the boy sat down beside him at a respectful distance and kept his hands and arms and head to himself, if he stopped winking and subtly insinuating himself into Harry's life, if he was only a friend and nothing more. While such actions would have been more normal and appropriate, he couldn't imagine Sirius doing things that way. Perhaps it was because he had taken to invading Harry's personal space almost as soon as he arrived in this time, but to have him do anything else seemed wrong somehow. Still, he was sure he ought to prefer things the proper way, the only-friends way. He sat and thought on the matter for so long that Madam Pince came and ejected them from the library.
"Well?" Hermione asked.
"I don't know," Harry replied truthfully.
oOo
The train pulled into Hogsmeade Station early, its return trip made easy by good weather and magic. As the students spilled into the common room, laughing loudly and shouting their greetings to one another, Harry sat stock still on the couch, determined not to make a move until he saw how Sirius behaved toward him. He hoped, rather foolishly, that the past two weeks of dilemma were merely the product of his overactive imagination and a pining for the lost Nymphadora Tonks and her continuous invasion of his personal space. If Sirius acted the same, then he would know what Hermione said was true; if not, then Harry could relax and just enjoy his Godfather's company while he still could.
James led the Marauders into the common room, hauling his trunk behind him as if it held something of far more gravity than clothes and presents. His every step was slow and ponderous. Sirius and Peter and Remus followed at an equally sedate pace and with faces so sombre it was unnatural.
"What's the matter?" Harry asked, fearful that James had tried once again to win Lily and failed beyond redemption.
The boy only shook his head sadly and went to their room. Sirius followed with barely a greeting to Harry.
"His dad's sick," Peter informed Harry, his voice thick and eyes more watery than usual.
"What?"
"Spent the entire holiday at St Mungo's," he said sadly. "We went to visit yesterday. He looked awful, all grey like he had no blood left in him."
Harry's jaw fell as much from the fact that Peter was actually concerned as from the ill man being his grandfather. While he had read the letters the Potters sent their son, partaken in the baked goods and candies the boy's mother sent weekly, he had never really connected them to himself. They had been long dead before Voldemort attacked, and he had never seen any photographs of them. So, to him, they hardly felt like family at all, but they were. Thinking of them now, it saddened him that he would be there to bear witness to one of them passing away. As with James, he wished he could let the man know who he was, but as a stranger he would never be granted permission to enter the hospital let alone sit at the bedside of the dying man.
"Do they know what's wrong?" he managed to ask.
His shaggy blond hair fell in his face as he shook his head sadly. "Prongs said the healers and nurses spent all week running charms and spells over him. Couldn't find anything. They told Prongs that he's just old."
"Rubbish," Harry muttered.
"Yeah."
The mood did not improve as the boys unpacked, or during dinner, or breakfast, class or lunch the following day. James remained drawn and quiet, concern stripping him of even his confident strut. He sat alone in the library studying or writing letters home when before he would have been at the centre of attention in the common room, singing a rude song and sending harmless hexes at younger students just for fun.
When they tried to keep him company, he turned them away. "Just need some time to think," he muttered and they could only share a concerned glance and walk back to Gryffindor Tower.
"Any news?" Harry asked.
Sirius shook his head. "Nothing good."
He had been nearly as withdrawn as James since returning from holiday. As the days passed and Sirius grew no more boisterous than James, everyone knew just how grim the old man's prospects really were. The loud and playful Sirius Black would never have made himself so sombre over a short-lived illness. Harry could understand his feelings in the matter. Charlus Potter had all but adopted him after he ran away from home. If he had not offered the boy a place to stay, then Sirius would have been forced to return to Grimmauld Place. From what he had said in the past months, Harry knew that Charlus had more than just accepted him into the house; the man had insisted he stay, sent a house-elf to take possession of the boy's things and even squared off with one very irate Walburga Black when the woman came pounding on their door, demanding they hand over her 'good for nothing' son. He likely loved Charlus Potter as much as Harry would have loved his Godfather if he had actually managed to save him from the Dusleys third year. Harry knew how devastated he was when Sirius was killed; he suspected he knew how pained Sirius was now.
Not caring that it might be taken as flirtatious, Harry put his arm around his friend. Sirius made no move to respond, just continued to slump on the couch and stare at the fire but finally the boy leaned into him and muttered a 'thanks' that sounded nothing like the smirking reply he would have given prior to the holidays. Whatever Sirius's feelings might have been, right now he was only after some comfort.
The days turned into weeks, but James never cheered. Letters from home held no hope, and they all began to wonder when the letter would arrive requesting the boy return to say his final farewells. Peter's attempts to cheer him up earned some momentary, if wan, smiles, but he soon fell back into his reading or letter writing.
"Um," a quiet voice interrupted their quiet table one evening. "James?"
The boy looked up and offered a slightly more enthusiastic smile to the girl. "Lily."
"Your dad… how is he?" she asked.
His smile fell as his shoulders rose in a half-hearted shrug.
"Oh," replied the girl slowly. She stood there a moment, shifting her weight anxiously between her feet but saying nothing more for a painfully long time. "If…" she paused again, "if you wanted someone to talk to, I wouldn't mind."
"Okay," he said, hint of a smile taking over his face as the girl hurried back to her own table. "So that's all it takes to win her over."
"If only we'd known," Sirius said with a playful smirk once again touching his mouth, "I would have poisoned the old bastard ages ago."
James snorted. "Git, you wouldn't have the heart to hurt him; you love him more than I do."
"And for damn good reason," he agreed, taking advantage of his friend's momentary return to cheek. "But you've more to gain if he croaks, so really it ought to be you to do him in."
"Too suspicious," Peter chimed in, stroking his chin and narrowing his eyes at them. "The Aurors will know it was him what done it. No, it needs to be someone without a connection to the old man, someone they would never even look at because he has no place in the man's life... Moony!"
"They'd never suspect the Prefect," James agreed.
"But they might if he was a dangerous and deceitful thing," Sirius waggled an eyebrow. "Just look at how he's managed to woo that new girl away from her books. No, he's a devious creature, that one. Anyone can see it just by looking at him."
"Wormtail, then," Remus suggested. "Look at that angelic face, all innocent blue eyes and cheeks just begging to be pinched." He demonstrated his point by pinching the boy's cheek until he cried for mercy.
"They'd suspect him instantly for that very reason," James argued, peering sideways at the boy. "Too innocent, they'd say."
"That leaves only you, Harry James Granger," Sirius decided. "No one would suspect you would have anything to do with this crime. No blood connection, just enough deviousness in your face… yes, you could easily get away with it. Remember not to get caught or Prongs will never get the girl."
"And look how a boy with no blood connection joins you in mourning, Prongs," Peter pointed out.
"It's solidarity," James agreed. "That's why they wouldn't suspect him."
Harry had been fighting down his laughter until they dragged him into their demented game of who-should-do-it. He forced his voice as sober as his amusement would allow, replying, "You don't think the physical similarity would be suspect?"
"The old long-lost brother ploy," Sirius growled, tapping a finger against his chin in consideration.
"That git couldn't pass for my brother," James snorted.
"Look at the evidence before you, Prongs," Remus shook his head in disagreement. "No, if you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. If we look at only the possible, it's the long-lost brother ploy."
"Damn," the boy swore dramatically and hit the table with his fist. "Then my father will live forever and the girl will never sympathise. I'm doomed to live a life of loneliness!"
"And bad acting," Sirius added with a smirk. They laughed loud and long and for the first time in over a month, drawing a few odd looks from the Gryffindors closest to them, but not caring one bit.
As their laughter petered out slowly, Sirius patted his friend on the back. "Prongs, happy as I am that you've got your humour back, what the hell are you still doing sitting here? The girl came looking for you."
"Invited you to sit with her," Peter agreed with an eager nudge to his friend's ribs.
"Get your arse over there before she realises what a horrendous mistake she's made," he ordered, pulling James up by his tie and pushing him toward Lily. "Go on!"
Breath securely trapped inside their lungs the remaining Marauders and Harry all watched as their friend wove a nervous path around the common room to find Lily Evans in a chair a short distance from the fire. Lips were bit as the girl looked up, fingers crossed as the smile pulled at her mouth, relieved sighs released when she pointed to the chair opposite and James, for the first time since the train ride to Hogwarts six years ago, was actually permitted to sit with her.
"Not doomed after all," Harry smiled.