The Marauders: Year Six #Wattys2017

Invitation

Invitation

Sirius and Lily were on the beach - the sun streaming down - Lily laying on a beach towel on her stomach, letting the sun tan her back while Sirius sat beside her, his legs crossed. He was sitting in a hole he'd dug himself, leaning against a sort of pseudo-chair back he'd built up with the sand from it. Sirius had Lily's Transfiguration textbook open on his knees. A large umbrella stuck out of the ground a bit away, and beneath it Petunia and Vernon Dursley were sitting side-by-side on a blanket.

He looked up, sunglasses on and reflecting the beach around them, and he said, "Evans, I've been thinking."

"About what?" she mused. She had her eyes closed, her head resting in the crook of her arms, hair in a knot on top of her head.

"The full moon is on Saturday."

Lily opened one eye.

"I... I was curious if... if your mum would mind... if Prongs came for the full moon night."

Lily hesitated.

"You said James could maybe visit us while we were here," he reminded her, "And it's the first real full moon I've been away from Moony really in some time..." Of course this was a bit of an exaggeration, he'd missed a couple full moons that year alone, but Lily didn't know that. And it really was bothering him, how far away Remus was for the moon and how little he could do to help him... or how little Remus needed his help, maybe. He kept picturing one of two things in his head - either Remus being perfectly fine because Ned Veigler was administering the massages to the muscles that Remus needed the knots worked out of and giving Remus loads of aconite and bathing him in hot springs like he'd talked about in Hogsmeade that one day... or else that Remus was laying about in a big mostly-empty, drafty old castle in the dark, crying himself to sleep as the muscles in his back knotted so deeply that Remus would walk like a hunchback for the rest of his life and all because Sirius hadn't been there to rub his back.

He really needed the distraction.

Plus James had asked no less than three times in two days about whether Lily had invited him to come visit yet.

Lily said, "Well, I guess. I know mum won't mind."

"Brilliant." Sirius smiled and looked down at the Transfiguration book. Then back up at her. "Evans?"

"Hmm?" she'd closed her eyes again and now opened them to look up at her.

"Can you help me with this revising? I wanna make sure I get an Outstanding on it come 9 August so McGonagall's real proud of me. Please?"

Lily rolled over and scootched so she was sitting on the edge of Sirius's ridiculous hole-chair he'd made himself and leaned over his shoulder to see the text. "Alright. What do you need help with?"

James came charging down the stairs in the Potter's house a little after lunch that day, so fast his trainers skid on the carpet halfway down the stairs and he nearly fell, only just catching himself on the railing with both hands, dropping the two-way mirror onto the floor.

"Smooth," Sirius said from the mirror.

"Shut up," James hissed and he caught the mirror up from the floor and shoved it into his pocket as he came 'round the corner into the living room.

Charlus was laying on the couch, a blanket over his lap, a cup of ice water at his elbow, and a thick book with a picture of a starship on the cover in his hands. He held a handkerchief balled up in his fist and James could see the edges of the cloth were singed. He slowed to a walk as he neared the couch and came to a stop at the end where his dad's feet set. Charlus held up one finger, finishing a paragraph, his lips moving over the words, and then he slid a bookmark into the page and lowered the volume to his lap, looking up at his son.