Characters not mine.
(Originally written for the disabilities challenge on comment_fic. Prompt was "Lily had forgotten that not all injuries could be treated with magic.")
The actual cuts were relatively easy to treat, although a few of them had been made with healing-resistant spells and the best she could do was clean them with the appropriate potion, wrap them up, and hope that they wouldn't scar over in the twenty-four hours they would take to heal. Not that Sirius would care - in the months since she started dating James, she'd learned that he was a little less concerned about his appearance than she would have otherwise guessed.
It wasn't physical scarring she was worried about.
James had dragged Sirius, half-conscious, into the common room at three in the morning and actually levitated himself up the girl's dormitory steps so that he didn't slide back down when he tried to get her. Lily still didn't entirely understand why he hadn't taken them both to Madame Pomfrey - she'd had to attend to a nasty bruise on James's face that turned out to be a chipped cheekbone as well as Sirius's cuts, but James had been adamant that he needed to take Sirius home, not to the hospital wing.
"Is there any place else you both are hurt?" Lily asked, rewinding the bandages.
James shook his head. Sirius whimpered something in the back of his throat and reached for his best friend, grabbing him by the shoulder and pulling himself to a sitting position. James let himself be used for leverage, and didn't seem to mind being clung to for a few moments longer than necessary afterwards.
Lily shoved the bandages back into her potions kit and zipped it up, trying not to interrupt their moment, although she was desperate to know what happened.
"'M gonna bleedin' kill Bella and Lucius Malfoy," Sirius mumbled finally.
"Shh. You're hoarse," James said.
Lily blinked. "You were off the grounds."
"We had our reasons," James answered, looking up at her and adjusting his glasses. The look was as stubborn as ever, but it wasn't the stubborn one she was used to seeing on him. It was . . . harder, somehow.
"Really?"
"They were Sirius's reasons," James answered, glancing back at him. And Lily knew she wasn't getting anything else out of him. Not unless Sirius wanted to tell her, which was unlikely. Lily had taken James away from the possessive little boy in Sirius, which only compounded the idiot teen's distrust of any kind of authority.
Not for the first time, she wondered how exactly James reconciled being Head Boy and backing Sirius up.
"Still," she said slowly, "Madame Pomfrey might have known how to heal from some of those spells - "
"I had to take him home," James repeated.
Before Lily could tell him that what he was saying made absolutely no sense, Sirius reached up to rub his temples. "Prongs, don't make me translate for your girlfriend," he rasped. "I've already lost my voice."
Lily blinked. Sirius had not seemed to be mentally prepared for their conversation.
Then he did something he'd never done before. Sirius Black looked straight at Lily and gave her a clear answer. "I promised my Uncle Alphard on his bloody death bed that if he couldn't be around as family counter-example to Mum for Regulus's teens, I wouldn't just abandon him."
James bit his lip. "Sirius - "
Sirius glanced at him. "I did. 'M gonna kill Malfoy. Then Padfoot's gonna rip Bella's intestines out. Slowly."
Lily wasn't sure what to do. If it had been James, or a girlfriend, she would have dropped everything and wrapped them in a hug. If it had been Remus Lupin, putting a hand on his shoulder, showing she wanted to be there physically, would have been the right thing to do. But Sirius was more aloof than that. Unless they were wrestling, he didn't even touch James.
She settled for sitting on the carpeting in an I'm -not-going-anywhere sort of way. "What did they do?"
Sirius shook his head. "Recruited him."
"Oh."
What else was she supposed to say? She suspected, as much as anyone else, that both of them were Death Eaters. She supposed that with Sirius's family, he was certain.
"Sirius - " James started.
"Don't," Sirius said. "Just don't. You don't. . . ." His voice broke. It wasn't just from overuse. "He's my little brother, okay? He's barely sixteen. Just a kid." He swallowed. "That Bella would - I'm gonna kill her."
"Sirius - " Lily realized that this time, it was her speaking.
"Shut up, Evans." He slumped against the couch and yelped as he hit one of the bandages cuts wrong. "I promised Alphard. Andromeda's married, Andy's farther out of the family circle than I am. And we see each other at school. I guess he thought I could . . . but then Bella got him, and . . . and I can't do the whole family thing. He's the only brother I've got. The last family I had a chance with."
It was the most he'd ever said to Lily in seriousness. And that broken speech hurt. Petunia only didn't like her. Sirius's little brother was standing on the opposite side of a coming storm.
James, on the other hand, seemed to know what to do. "Padfoot," he said. "Sirius? Look at me." He turned towards his best friend, put his hands on Sirius's shoulders and leaned in.
Sirius did anything but meet his eyes.
"I'm your brother," James said slowly. "I'm your brother. And it doesn't have anything to do with anything stupid like blood. Mum and Dad and I . . . we let you in, we didn't ask any stupid questions, we just set an extra place at the table. I'm your brother."
"Not the same," Sirius mumbled, but he put one hand on top of James's.
Lily scooted closer to the boys, so she was leaning against the couch between them. "Sirius. It was his choice. Not yours. Even if you wanted to protect him."
James glanced down at her. Lily wasn't certain if he approved or disapproved.
"I'm your brother," James repeated. "And Lily and I are serious, so she's sort of a sister-in-law. And we know you're not going anywhere, and neither are we, because unlike your shit-for-family, we go both ways. All right?" He lowered his hands so Sirius could pull away towards the arm of the sofa.
"Yeah, Prongs," Sirius mumbled, but he didn't sound like he believed it.
He glanced down at Lily and tried to smile. "Thanks for patching us up and not just knocking your boyfriend out and going back to sleep," he said quietly.
"Any time," Lily answered, and she meant it.
They sat there for most of the night. James eventually slid off the couch and wrapped his arms around her, and they both watched and listened to Sirius in silence. She'd meant to come down and heal them quickly by magic. But for this, the only thing they could do was simply be there, as Sirius struggled to let go of the last of his first family in the arms of his second.