when i met you

120

"Hey, Haz —"

"ARH!" Harry jumped away from Umbridge's office door when Lexi snuck up on him trying to break in with the knife Sirius had given him. "Lexis!"

"Shh!" she shushed him mockingly and pushed open the door, "Thought we were meant to be quiet."

Harry followed her inside and shut the door, "Did Fred tell you?"

"George, but I like how you assumed it was Fred," she replied, getting down on her knees with the floo powder and motioning for him to get down beside her. "Of course I was going to be here if you were going to talk to Pads and Moony. Go on." She shook the container with the powder at him.

Harry stuck his head into the fireplace alongside Lexi, he took a large pinch of powder and dropped it on to the logs stacked neatly beneath him. They exploded at once into emerald green flames.

"Number twelve, Grimmauld Place!" Harry said loudly and clearly. Soon, they were looking into the kitchen where Remus was hunched at the table.

"Moony!" called Lexi elatedly.

"Lexis! Harry!" he said, looking thoroughly shocked. "What are you—what's happened, is everything all right?"

Lexi nudged her brother. "Yeah," said Harry. "We just wondered—I mean, I just fancied a-a chat with Sirius."

"With both of you actually since you're here," added Lexi.

"I'll call him," said Remus, getting to his feet, still looking perplexed he hurried out of the kitchen. Remus returned with Sirius at his heels moments later.

"What is it?" said Sirius urgently, dropping to the ground so he was eye-level with the Potters. Remus knelt down too, looking very concerned. "Are you all right? Do you need help?"

"No," said Harry, "it's nothing like that... I just wanted to talk... about dad."

They exchanged a look of great surprise and Lexi jumped in, "Harry saw something..." He immediately into the story of what he had seen in the Pensieve.

Sirius and Remus exchanged looks and didn't speak for a moment. Then Remus said quietly, "I wouldn't like you to judge your father on what you saw there, Harry. He was only fifteen —"

"I'm fifteen," said Harry heatedly.

Sirius intervened, "James and Snape hated each other from the moment they set eyes on each other, it was just one of those things, you can understand that, can't you? I think James was everything Snape wanted to be—he was popular, he was good at Quidditch—good at pretty much everything. And Snape was just this little oddball who was up to his eyes in the Dark Arts, and James—whatever else he may have appeared to you, Harry—always hated the Dark Arts.'

"Yeah," said Harry, "but he just attacked Snape for no good reason, just because—well, just because you said you were bored."

"I'm not proud of it," said Sirius quickly.

"Look, Harry," started Remus, "what you've got to understand is that your father and Sirius were the best in the school at whatever they did— everyone thought they were the height of cool—if they sometimes got a bit carried away —"

"If we were sometimes arrogant little berks, you mean," said Sirius.

Remus smiled.

"He kept looking over at the girls by the lake, hoping they were watching him!" said Harry a couple minutes later.

"Oh, well, he always made a fool of himself whenever Lily was around," said Sirius, shrugging, "he couldn't stop himself showing off whenever he got near her."

"How come she married him?" Harry asked miserably. "She hated him!"

"Nah, she didn't," said Sirius.

"She started going out with him in seventh year," said Remus.

"Once James had deflated his head a bit," said Sirius.

"And stopped hexing people just for the fun of it," said Remus.

"Even Snape?" said Harry.

"Well,? said Remus slowly, "Snape was a special case. I mean, he never lost an opportunity to curse James so you couldn't really expect James to take that lying down, could you?"

"And mum was okay with that?"

"She didn't know too much about it, to tell you the truth," said Sirius. "Look, your father was the best friend I ever had and he was a good person. A lot of people are idiots at the age of fifteen. He grew out of it."

Lexi interjected here, "Would you say that as his best friends, when you talk about him, you glorify who he was? If you loved him so much wouldn't you see him differently to Snape?"

"Well, yes, of course," said Remus, "but you must understand that in both versions of the story, there are two truths."

Sirius considered this, "Maybe... maybe we exaggerated some of the things he did, but that was only cause James was such a bigger than life person that those exaggerations seemed real."

"Hold on, Harry, how did Snape react when he found you'd seen all this?"

"He told me he'd never teach me Occlumency again," said Harry indifferently.

"He WHAT?" shouted Sirius, causing Harry to jump and inhale a mouthful of ashes.

"BUT —" Lexi shouted over Sirius' rambling — "it's alright because I'm helping Harry with it. I know Occlumency, and I got twelve O's, he's in good hands."

Sirius calmed down, "Yes, he is."

They all fell silent. Footsteps were heard.

"Is that Kreacher coming downstairs?" asked Harry.

"No," said Sirius, glancing behind him. "It must be somebody your end."

"Quick, Harry, let's go!" Lexi backed out of the fire without a goodbye and pulled Harry out too, flinging the invisibility cloak over both of them.

The flames went out.

Okay so it's really just a copy and paste of the book :/ 

🚨 This is the final chapter FOR THE YEAR (2023) 🚨

🚨 I'm going on holiday over Christmas so you'll have to wait till mid-Jan for the next chapter and then I'm on holiday again plus school starts so beginning to mid-Feb we should be back to regular posting! 🚨

Thank you all from the very bottom of my heart for all the love and care you give to my story, it means so much! Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, and a Happy New Year!

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