4keep in mind my writing is no where near as good as that of the person this is for. (rachel, metaphors) this was beta'd by the fabulous clara (lydiamartins) so she must have made it better though.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY RACH you're one of my closest friends and the sort of person everybody needs in their life. you're so sweet and so fab and you deserve the best and ily rachelly.
harry potter is not mine but fred weasley is. (he's also alive, his death was just an april fool's joke a month and a day too late.)
The world is celebrating, rejoice and serenity thick in the air, but Sirius is in Azkaban and James and Lily are in the world behind the veil fifty years too soon.
THEY WERE SO MUCH — so fucking much and what happened should never have happened, not to them.
James was the sun, source of light in all of their lives, ridiculously overbearing, bright, temperamental, fiercely protective, and as a majority of Hogwarts believed, quite hot—
Lily was rain, kind, unexpected, ferocious, quick-witted, varying from a light drizzle to a hurricane, her heart a cloud overflowing with love—
They clashed, both worthy opponents, like fire against wind, Dumbledore against Grindelwald, McGonagall against their Divination professor, but unlike all wars, their peace was achieved with both sides victorious. Together they were a stronger, louder, energetic, enigmatic, happier, bursting with colors and every other cheesy adjective Sirius can't think of.
James was the debt Sirius would never be able to pay back — the one who'd turned Sirius' life around and given him love, happiness, so so so much more than he deserved. He was the laughter and the thrill after a prank, after successfully dropping some love potion into Slytherin captain Dolohov's pumpkin juice, after kicking ass in Quidditch. He was the rainy days they'd both get drunk and talk about the War, their families, everything and anything, he was the beacon of hope when Sirius showed up at the Potter's door, tired, hungry and striving for a home and a family. He was the conquest to get over a hundred detentions, the result of the best decision made by his parents.
James was Prongs, a pledge to never let down his friends. It had been him that had given each of them a home, a group of friends, a family, and it seemed only fitting that his death that took with it all the strings that bound together the Marauders — look at them now.
He was the kindest, stupidest, smartest, liveliest and bravest prat who didn't get enough at all.
He was someone who'd never get a chance to live to see his son play Quidditch, who'd never get to make jokes about his wife's scarlet hair and name again, who'd never get to look outside and appreciate, despite the war, all the beauty nature had to offer.
There were times when Sirius was jealous, envious of what they had and meant to each other, miserable at how their love, at how Alice and Frank's love, surpassed his feelings for his friends, upset because all he had that was his, only his, was his stupid motorcycle.
A part of him believes it was his wistful glances that tore apart their family and another believes it was his indecision to trust himself that took their lives. It was as much Wormtail's fault as it was his because if only he had been their Secret Keeper, if only he hadn't been so so so stupid and caused the two most wonderful people to lose their lives.
Lily was the evidence that not all sisters were like Cissy and Bella — the girl who'd gone from yelling at him to go make out with the Giant Squid to calling him one of her closest and dearest friends. She was the triumph after he heard her say "Um, yeah, I kind of fancy him too", the fun he'd get out of joking with her, the lifelong bond initiated when they'd sat down in Hogsmeade with three butterbeers each and laughed about girls, boys and James.
She was the light in her eyes on her wedding, the warmth when they'd talked wistfully about their respective siblings, the compassion that could overwhelm the worst of the wicked. Lily was both the sister and mother he'd never had, but most painful of all, she was a mother who only got a year with her son. She was a silver lining cut short by a twisted knife.
(She'd even gotten Snape to love her, Merlin knows how.)
Together they were the A-Z pickup lines, spilled apple pie and screams of frustration, they were eye rolls and smirks, 'hate' and love, the notes passed in Transfiguration and the threats to jump of the Astronomy Tower. They were fights and hasty make ups, wedding rings gone missing, the days everything but them felt hopeless, the few things that even Azkaban couldn't take from him.
They were his worst regrets but his best memories, and even the Dementors couldn't touch them. (Some days the pain of it all is so much he wishes the Dementors could just take his soul and be done with it.)
Together they were fire and together they were love.
But everything they were would always be a were and never an is because they were gone, gone, gone and it was all his fault — poor Harry would grow up with Lily's dreadful sister and NO JAMES AND NO LILY.
They were a bucketful of golden memories and good times but bigger would always be the things they'd never get to be.
They'd never get to celebrate Harry's fifth birthday by teaching him how to fly, never taste the victory their deaths caused, never get to argue over the names James Junior and Dumbledora for their second child, never share a dance on their twentieth anniversary, never grow old together, never make more memories as the years passed, never touch people's lives like they did with him, Moony, Alice, and countless others.
They were the cost of the war, the sacrifice that brought upon victory but of all people to take, why the ones who had a thousand galaxies to leave behind, why not somebody like him, somebody less deserving — WHY, WHY, WHY.
They were newly bloomed flowers with stems uprooted too soon, and like a child picking only the best of flowers for a pretty flowercrown, they were taken because of their encompassing warmth and love, too strong for evil to bear.
But they were also proof that Death can love, and with sparing pity, It took Lily and James together — if only Death had been kind enough to take Sirius with them as well.