Disclaimer: I do not own the characters or the setting, and am only borrowing them for a moment.
“Sirius?”
He looked up with some surprise, starting to clear away the solitaire game he'd been playing while waiting for his best friend. “Yeah, Prongs?” he asked, slightly worried at the look on James Potter’s face.
James glared at him for a moment until Sirius got the idea that the situation was serious enough not to use their nicknames and sat down beside his friend. “Well, it’s final,” he murmured. “He’s after us specifically.”
Sirius gulped audibly as he slid the cards into a robe pocket. Voldemort after James and Lily. . . . He shook his head to clear it and looked back up at his best friend. “W-what’s he after?” he asked softly, still trying to get grips on the idea that a power-hungry madman was after the man he was looking at.
James chuckled hollowly. “Believe it or not, Harry.”
Sirius had been grappling with shock before, but now he was completely numb with it. He wasn’t quite sure how he managed to get his jaw and vocal cords to work together. “Harry?”
“Ask Dumbledore,” James answered with a shrug. “Hate to say it, mate, but I’m not sure how much I can tell you with the risk of being overheard.”
Sirius nodded. “James. . . .”
James shook his head. “We’ll need a secret-keeper,” he told his friend, and from the way he was taking things so calmly Sirius could only suppose he was in some sort of shock as well. “I told Dumbledore that you’re the only man for that job.”
Sirius nodded, and he managed a shaky grin. “Thanks, mate.”
James returned that grin, no steadier than Sirius’s had been, but it made Sirius feel better anyway. James leaned back in his chair, looking up at the ceiling from behind his spectacles. He seemed to be trying to get a grip on himself, and Sirius, who knew he didn’t have a grip on himself, let him. Finally, however, James turned back to Sirius. “If anything happens””
“James, no. It won’t. It can’t. Don’t talk like that.” Sirius only managed to get the words out in strained phrases. He had a sudden, quickly repressed memory of Regulus’s funeral, which Remus had convinced him to attend. He hadn’t seen his brother in years, and hadn’t been able to get along with him in ten. That had still hurt a little, though” he wasn’t sure he could handle the thought of James being dead.
“Sirius, remember who we’re talking about. We both know it might. If anything happens to me I want you to promise me you’ll help Lily and Harry.”
“Nothing’s going to happen,” Sirius murmured again. He seemed stuck on that phrase; his brain refused to move from it and face the possibility James was talking about.
“Padfoot!” James growled. Sirius looked up at him in surprise, and James continued. “I don’t want it to happen, either. But I know it might, and it’s not going to do me a damn bit of good to deny it. Please will you just listen? ’Cause if it does . . . Lily’s gonna need some help, and I’m gonna need you to be there for her. And for Harry. Sirius, please.”
Sirius nodded. “I just don’t want to think about it,” he said. “I just really, really don’t want to think about it.”
“What do you think I want to do? It’s my death we’re talking about!” James exclaimed. He ran his hand through his already disheveled black hair and tried to relax. “Just . . . you remember what Lil was like when her parents died, don’t you?”
Sirius nodded. That had been a car crash in their seventh year of school, and a nightmare. Lily had been a wreck for weeks, and hadn’t really been able to concentrate on anything much.
“Well, she’s gonna need some help, even if it’s just around the house” or to get her out of it. You and Remus and Peter could definitely help.” He shook his head. “Just for awhile. I know Lily; she’ll move on. But Harry. . . .”
“James, I’m his godfather, of course I’ll take care of him,” Sirius answered.
“I know,” James answered with another shaky grin. “You’re also his old man’s best friend, and as much as I love, Lily, there’s some things I know she’ll never do.”
“Such as?”
“Well, you know what Lily thinks of Quidditch.”
Sirius nodded in defeat. She didn’t like it very much.
“Well, you know. I just want his life to be as normal as you can make it. And he’s not going to have his father to take him to Quidditch games.” His hazel eyes met Sirius’s grey ones and both of them chuckled. Quidditch. It was obvious that James was focusing on the ordinary to keep from having to deal with the thought that he really might be gone while Harry was growing up.
“Even if you’re not gone, James, I’ll be taking Harry to Quidditch games,” Sirius pointed out.
“But if I’m gone you won’t be having one fire whiskey too many because I won’t be there to take you home,” James pointed out. “And of course Lily isn’t going to tell him the stories of what we did at school. The Map, the pranks, the story of how his mum and I finally hit it off.”
“You mean the story of how long it took his mum and you to hit it off,” Sirius corrected teasingly.
James shoved him. “Oh, c’mon, man, I’m serious. Lily’s certainly not going to tell him all the things I got into. Neither is Remus. She’ll blackmail Peter into not doing it. If anything happens, that’ll make you the only person who’s willing to tell him about all the crazy stuff his father used to do.”
Sirius nodded, immediately sobering. “If anything happens,” he repeated. The reminder of why they were having that conversation brought him back to earth, and it told him how little he’d managed to move from his original reaction to the subject. He shook his head again. “James, nothing is going to happen.”
James sighed. “I’m not so sure about that,” he murmured. “But I really, really want to believe you.”
“Why shouldn’t you?” Sirius demanded as he stood up. “If you’re going to make me you’re secret-keeper, then there’s no chance he’ll get anywhere near you. Right?”
That startled a laugh out of James. “You’re right. I’m talking crazy talk, aren’t I?” he stood up, and the two men walked out of the room and into the night. Both of them searched the air instinctively, but all they saw were stars and sky, no Dark Mark. Everything was peaceful here tonight.
“I better Apparate home before Lily starts to worry,” James murmured, toying with his glasses. Before he did so, he turned to Sirius. “But honestly, Padfoot, if anything happens. . . ?” he asked with forced flippancy, obviously trying to make the question seem light and offhand.
Sirius smiled sadly. “Don’t worry, James,” he answered seriously. “I promise I will.”