#this was initially planned as the prologue for my 'james potter does war crimes' fic

[witchofimber]

Certain Dark Things

I'm being deliberately coy about tagging this, but cw for vomit and gore and lots of sadness

James didn’t show up drunk.  

Remus had expected him to. Had told Sirius the night before - “You can drink as much as you want tonight. But tomorrow morning, you need to be sober.”  

Sirius had opened the whiskey with his teeth. “Fuck. You.”  

“Yeah, I’m a real bitch. Making sure that James doesn’t have to deal with his sloppy-drunk best friend at the – you know what? Forget it. Do whatever you want.”  

“James is going to be drunk!” yelled Sirius as Remus stalked away.  

“James gets to!” He’d slammed the door behind him.  

Once upon a time their bickering had had a warmth to it. Another thing to be buried.  

So Sirius wasn’t drunk, but neither was James, and somehow that was worse. He stood there, one step in front of Sirius and Remus, his face hard and cold as a marble saint. He didn’t even seem to feel the rain.  

Everyone knew what James had done. Everyone, and no one was talking about it. But Sirius and Remus were the only ones who had the truth of it; the full, bloody extent. Moody had pulled them into his office three days ago and showed them the crime scene photographs.  

“I’m not going to arrest anyone over this,” he’d said. “And as far as I’m concerned, I don’t know who did this. It’s a cold case. It’ll be lost in the system by the end of the month.” 

“I don’t understand,” said Sirius. “There’s a fucking war on, why would anyone be - “ 

Remus trod on his foot. “Thank you, Alistair.” 

“Remus, are you - “ 

“Look,” he hissed. “Sirius, look at the fucking photos.”  

Sirius looked. And looked. Even when Moody pulled them back into the folder, Sirius kept his eyes on the woodgrain of the table where the image had been. Remus didn’t need to. Those images had burrowed inside him, squatting nestled in his cortex to writhe like maggots. He’d never be free of them again. 

Moody had swallowed, coughed. “I just – they'll disappear, like I said. But I thought someone should probably know.” 

After that, Sirius had started drinking about it. Remus had stuck to chain-smoking and staring at the walls and occasionally walking around his flat and calmly, methodically breaking things. He was running low on smokes and plates and patience.  

Lily’s sister was there. She’d left her husband at home but bought her baby, and Remus wanted to beat her bloody just for that. Halfway through the service the little brat had started crying, and James had given his first sign of life. A single flex of his fingers. Like he almost reached out.  

Now they were outside and the sister – Petunia, that was it – was giving James little half-glances out of the corner of her eye, like she wasn’t sure whether she should speak to him or not. Remus bared his teeth at her until she looked away. No one was getting near James.  

The parson was still talking, something sombre and soothing. The priest had been a mistake. Watching anyone talk about God at a time like this was laughable, obscene. All of this was obscene – the Weasleys clutching each other’s hands, and Amelia Bones probably already writing a press conference about this in her head like the dark could be pushed back through sensible legislation, and Alice Longbottom curled in on herself like a dying flower, with Dumbledore hovering protectively behind her. Dumbledore would want to talk to him afterward, find out what he’d learnt when he was undercover with the Yorkshire pack. The mission he’d blown, because he’d heard the news and come running. Well, Dumbledore could eat shit.  

Three days ago, he and Sirius had fucked for the last time. It had been awful – emotionally, obviously, but also just objectively bad sex. Out of rhythm, teeth gritted, eyes closed. Remus had dug his hands into Sirius’s hips and thought I have to know, I have to -  

After, lying back-to-back, he’d asked, “Why didn’t James tell me you’d switched the secret keeper?”  

“Because we thought you were the traitor.” He didn’t roll over, didn’t even look at Remus. Remus considered screaming, or cursing him, or punching him in the kidneys. Instead he just got out of bed. There wasn’t much point in doing otherwise.  

The parson paused. Everyone was looking at them – no, at James. There was something expected here. Words? No, James had said he didn’t want to speak.  

Sirius coughed. “James, it’s time to - “ 

“I know.” His voice was the closing of a great cell door. “I know.”  

James bent, digging his fingers through a mound of earth. He stretched out his arm. And then he stood, paralysed. A single crumb of earth teetered, toppled, was caught with his thumb.  

The moment stretched, lingered. Everyone was frozen in amber, waiting for James to make his move. Cry, Remus found himself begging. Cry, scream, something. Just don’t follow them down.  

And then James gasped like he’d been punched and dropped the dirt.  

It was tradition. That’s what you did at funerals, you let the loved ones scatter the earth, close the grieving, some Christian bullshit that Remus didn’t remember. But he covered his mouth against a scream as it fell.  

Lily’s coffin gleamed darkly, swallowing the dirt into ink. It was a fine thing, even finer because it was so exactly itself – a box, a prop, an object you understood from Halloween cut-outs and film scenes before you ever had to face one in life. If you worked hard, you could say it wasn’t real. You could pretend there was no one inside.  

But the coffin on top was too small. You couldn’t unknow its contents. You couldn’t unknow the dimensions of the tiny body inside.  

And the cruelty, the useless cruelty of – of making a man start to bury his wife and son.  

“We pray - “ said the parson, and suddenly James was spinning on his heel, stalking down the hill and away from the church. Dumbledore moved forward, and Remus barked ‘NO’ and set off after James, Sirius dogging his heels. Nobody followed them. It was either cowardice or mercy.  

The mud sent him and Sirius slipping into each other. James’s footsteps were sure. Even the earth seemed to give way for his passage. And hadn’t he earned it? What could dirt do in the face of such grief? The trees of the little copse by the graveyard seemed to snatch away from him, even as they flung themselves into Sirius and Remus’s faces. The thorns that raked his cheek were almost a relief. It was something to feel. He hadn’t felt anything since the news.  

James stopped by the fence, hands gripping the gnarled wood. Remus stopped; Sirius didn’t. He was at James’s side in a second, all careful hands and cooing voice, so unlike anything he’d ever been with Remus. It was enough to make one hate Sirius. Remus felt the bitterness in his throat. There were thoughts that should send you straight to hell, and he had one then. I’m the least loved now. To think that at a funeral. He had deserved Greyback. He had deserved everything, and maybe Sirius had too, but James hadn’t. James, who had been kind.  

I don’t even know what some of these spells are, Moody had said.  

“James,” murmured Sirius, and then James turned and vomited in the dirt.  

Remus stared at that red, wet mound. There had been nothing recognisable in the images Moody had shown them. Human mince. No hand that had once followed Remus’s in Charms; no mouth that had once said we could call it the Marauder’s Map. Wait – there had been an eyeball, anointed in a halo of gristle and bone. Pale blue, bloodshot. Like he’d been crying when he died.  

I’ve seen a lot of shit, Moody had said, but I didn’t know magic could do that to a body. 

Too late, always too late, Remus stumbled forward. “We’re here, James. If you want to – talk.”  

Stupid. Fucking stupid. What could there possibly be to say? What could language do, what was its point, in a world where this could happen, where high on the hill that grave was being filled? They should line up the whole world and cut out their tongues. Harry is dead. Let that be the last sentence.  

“No.” James straightened up, vanished the vomit with a wave of his hand. Remus almost wished for it back. Evidence of humanity. There was nothing in his face that had ever loved. It was like looking out into the far whistling plains of being, great dark vistas of emotion where terrible things moved in the shadows. Frank Longbottom had faced those depths and gone insane. Frank might have been lucky.  

We had to put him down ourselves, said Moody. There was nothing else to be done. We couldn’t heal him but – it was still moving.  

“No,” said James again. “I don’t want to talk. I want to win this war.”