LUCY:

Sirius flew backwards out of the fireplace with a startled look on his face.

"What is it?" I asked. "Is everything alright?"

He blinked, staring at the fire in silence for a moment before speaking again. "Yeah, I think so. I don't think we can use the Floo network to communicate anymore, though, so I suppose you'll have to wait until tomorrow to talk to your friends."

"What happened?"

"Someone tried to grab me," he said. Then he grinned. "And I escaped." With that, he threw his head back and laughed.

Professor Lupin cracked a grin. "You've always loved a good escape story."

"My own record gets better and better with time," Sirius quipped back, pushing himself up and taking a seat at the table across from Professor Lupin. He propped his feet on the table and crossed his arms over his chest. "Well, that wasn't exactly what I had in mind, but that was better than no communication at all with those three."

"What all did they have to say?" Professor Lupin asked, since he had only walked in ten seconds before Sirius was so rudely interrupted by who I was assuming was Umbridge.

"Well, I passed along Molly's message," he muttered. He glanced at me. "I'm guessing she already tried to talk to you?"

I nodded. "Saturday night. I, er, well, I genuinely appreciate the concern. She said it wasn't my fight. But, well... I think it is." I paused for a second, shrugging. I turned to Professor Lupin. "It sounded like Harry and Ron and Hermione all shared that same opinion."

"I also mentioned that Dung was the witch under the veil," Sirius informed him with a grin. "Harry seemed a bit put out by the fact that he's still being followed, but I reckon he'll get over it soon enough. I'm sure he'll find the disguise hilarious come morning. Oh, and the first words out of Harry's mouth? 'Hi, how's Lucy?'"

"I told you he worries too much about me," I mumbled.

"I'm not surprised. He really is just like James in that regard," Professor Lupin said with a sad smile in the direction of Sirius.

"Really?" I asked, looking back and forth between the two.

"Oh, certainly," Sirius agreed. "He had a talent for making sure people were as safe and happy as possible. Merlin, he was a nightmare sometimes, always making sure we were drinking enough water and getting enough sleep. I can't even begin to tell you how many times he tried to slip me sleeping potion. I was quite the insomniac, you see, and he often disapproved of my late-night escapades around the castle with Marlene McKinnon seeing as we often returned with a new bruise or scrape or two."

"Er... late-night escapades?" I asked somewhat hesitantly.

"Oh! Not like that," he chuckled. "No, no, we never dated. She was far too smitten with Dorcas Meadowes to so much as glance in my direction. Her loss, really. But anyway, yeah, the two of us often slipped out at night and had adventures."

"One time, they 'borrowed' a wheelchair from the Hospital Wing and smashed into a statue," Professor Lupin said with a grin. "And then they fell down a flight of stairs trying to escape Filch a couple days later."

"So many bruises that week. So many bruises." Sirius shook his head. "It was worth it, though, and James didn't need to worry about the sleep I lost having fun. I got all caught up in Transfiguration class."

"Transfiguration?" I repeated incredulously.

Professor Lupin glanced at Sirius out of the corner of his eye, his grin growing more mischievous by the second. "Oh yes. Transfiguration, and Charms, and History of Magic, and — "

"Oh, shove off, Moony," Sirius said with a loud laugh. "History of Magic was the best class for sleeping! I reckon even you had the occasional kip in that class, Mr. Gryffindor Prefect, Professor Binns put me to sleep faster than any sleeping potion ever has."

I nodded, biting my lip to keep from smiling. "I'll admit I've, er, taken a kip or two in that class. Or... well... maybe more than one or two. Harry, er, takes better notes when I doze off, actually, so in all honesty you could argue I'm doing him a favor."

This time, they both laughed.

"James always took his best notes after a full moon, knowing my notes were likely to be rather terrible," Remus commented. "Otherwise, he just doodled in class. He was a very gifted artist, actually, so his doodles were always impressive."

Sirius snorted. "He even doodled on essays. The professors all loved it, even McGonagall. I think she particularly enjoyed his essay on how to transfigure tortoises into hares and vice versa. Lily had told him the Muggle story about the race between the tortoise and the hare, so he had the little doodles chasing each other around the parchment."

I grinned. "That's brilliant! Who won? I don't think I've heard that story."

"The tortoise," Professor Lupin said. "'Slow and steady wins the race' is the moral of that story."

"James thought it was ridiculous, of course, because you have to be fast to win a race," Sirius added, "but he did let the tortoise win every lap around the parchment. He got perfect marks on that essay. Potions was his best subject, though, he got perfect marks on everything in that class."

I winced. "Harry did not inherit that particular trait. He hates Potions. Well, to be fair, we all do," I mumbled.

"To be fair, we would have hated it too, but Slughorn was alright," Professor Lupin said. His eyes darkened. "The bitter irony of it all is that James wanted to be the Potions professor, and he would have been a bloody good one, too, nothing at all like Sniv — er, I mean Professor Snape."

"You don't have to filter yourself around me," I said with a small smile. "I promise I can handle it."

He looked somewhat embarrassed for a second before smiling back. "Right. Well, James was exceptionally gifted with Potions, and he always got along well with the younger kids. He had quite the fan club, really, being a popular Quidditch player and eventual Head Boy. He would have been a great professor, and he certainly wouldn't have been anyone's boggart."

"That still makes me angry," I muttered. I snorted softly. "Neville still talks about Snape in his grandmother's clothes, though, whenever he gets upset about something Snape says or does. I doubt anyone will forget that any time soon."

"I haven't heard this story!" Sirius said, looking back and forth between the two of us. "What's this about Snivellus and someone's grandmother?"

"He was Neville Longbottom's boggart," Professor Lupin spat. "So, naturally, I had to find a way to make it funny so Neville could defeat it. I told him to imagine Snape in his grandmother's clothing, and it did the trick."

Sirius threw his head back and laughed. "I would pay good money to see that."

"Find me a Pensieve and I'll show you sometime," I said with a shrug. "Cedric... well, Cedric gave me a book on memories for my birthday this year, and I've managed to extract a memory a couple of times. I'm a bit out of practice, considering, well, everything, but I'd be willing to start again just to see that memory one more time. I think it's fair to say it was the best DADA lesson we've ever had." I looked down at the table and idly circled a knot of wood with my finger. "How long will it be until I'm able to remember him without it hurting so much? You've both been talking about James easily enough, at least I think so."

Professor Lupin thought for a moment before answering. "There will be a day where the light starts to make the darkness more bearable. There's no way for anyone to know when that day will be, because grief has no timeline, but you can't give up. It will come, and you'll be ready to face it when it does."

"The happy memories will always be happy memories no matter what happens," Sirius said. "Like the time James hexed someone down a flight of stairs for calling Lily a Mudblood. That was truly one of his finest moments."

"I bet she appreciated that," I remarked.

"Oh, Lily wasn't even around, if I'm remembering correctly," Professor Lupin chuckled.

"Nope!" Sirius reported with a grin. "James and I were walking down the hallway, and we overheard this kid talking about her to one of his friends. A single hex sent him flying down the stairs, and he was unconscious before he hit the landing at the bottom. We both got a month's detention, James for the hex and me for laughing instead of helping the idiot. He loved fiercely, that James, and eventually, I remembered that love more so than, well, everything else of the last thirteen, almost fourteen years. The sorrow and the anger will always be there, because it's not fair what happened to James, or Lily, or your family, but the darkness will never be able to completely overcome the light that lies in those happy memories of yours."

My mind wandered a bit, back to Tahoe. I managed a tiny smile. "Like the time he sent me flying off the back of a Jet Ski?"

"Jet Ski?" Sirius repeated, glancing at Professor Lupin.

He glanced back at Sirius, grinning. "How do I explain this? Hm... well, alright, to put it as simply as possible, a Jet Ski is essentially a Muggle motorcycle but for water."

"That's wicked!" Sirius exclaimed. "Merlin's beard, I want to try a Jet Ski! I wouldn't fly off the back!"

"I wouldn't be so sure," Professor Lupin remarked mischievously. He turned back and nodded at me. "Exactly right, Lucy. Hold on as tightly as you can to those memories. Something tells me we'll be needing to rely on our happy memories more than ever in the days ahead."

"Just remember to keep making happy memories, too," Sirius added. He smiled. "The more mischief you can manage, the better."

I nodded, feeling a bit lighter. A bit lighter, in the sense of being a little less heavy. A bit lighter, in the sense of pushing back a little against the darkness. I smiled a bit wider, a bit brighter. "I'll do my best."