"You got a write-up in the Daily Mail," Snape sneered, shoving a crumpled paper across the table. "And I know you won't bother reading it, so I did. They said it was "a play as strong as Corbyn's shadow cabinet, and even more disjointed", which I have highlighted. And there is a suggestion that you're mentally ill, which we know anyway –"

James snatched the paper and shoved the front page into his mouth, and then failed to swallow it and spat it back into his hand. Coughing, he wiped at his mouth. "Well," he said, "it's not news then, is it? And if it took them until April to publish it, well. It's bullshit." He lobbed the crumpled page into the bin.

"There is a suggestion," Snape said, "from a teacher at this school, who is unnamed in the article," and he took a sip of tea, "that we are all at risk from Dumbledore's woolly-headed liberalism. And that it is to the detriment of the pupils to have mentally ill teachers, that you're a bad example," and he nodded at Remus. Sirius stood, scraping the chair-legs on the staffroom floor.

"And having a scumbag bigot for a maths teacher doesn't add up either, does it?" he said. "Or a teacher who never washes his fucking hair, who sets thirteen-year-olds Fermat's last theorem as a pre-homework brain teaser, who dresses like a bloody undertaker –"

"You're not one to talk about fashion sense," Peter said from the corner. The room fell silent and the silence stretched like thinly-scraped butter over cooling toast and James stood up as well.

"Hang on a minute," he said. "Did you just stick up for Snape? Bloody hell, is this because we laughed at geography?"

Peter shrugged, lip twisted as if he'd just eaten a load of sherbet. "He's got a fair point. We're being laughed at in the national press, because that Lockhart idiot went to the papers to get his byline and his picture on the front page. And you're all sticking your heads in the sand and pretending that we can all hold hands in a socialist utopia and nobody will complain about you two shagging, or the fact that you've both been in psychiatric hospitals. And that Dumbledore will be head here forever and the new head will be just as accepting. Well, I don't think so. And this school is being damaged by it, and our reputation is – "

"Are you still talking?" demanded Lily, scowling at him. "We're a school. Nothing more, nothing less. We should be teaching kids that they can get jobs, have careers, find love, no matter who they are. We should be examples of tolerance and equality and acceptance, not hate. Who gives a fuck what the press say?" She shifted until she could put a hand on Remus's shoulder.

The bell rang for afternoon classes. The room emptied, apart from Remus and Sirius.

"Don't listen to Snape and Peter," Sirius said, fiercely. "They've been reading that awful blog again, Tom Riddle's, you know? The one with a column in half the papers in the country. They're trying to look tough. I suspect they're both Leave voters," and Remus huffed out a laugh.

"I love you," he said to Sirius in a low voice, and Sirius kissed the top of his head.

"Come on then, loverboy," he said. Remus looked up, and smiled, and kissed him.

"I suppose we've got some minds to pollute."

Class that afternoon sped by, as quickly as the early spring storms had been and gone, and as quickly as the green leaves bursting onto the trees. That night, Remus and Sirius were sat in Sirius's kitchen, watching James angrily making a spaghetti Bolognese, and then Lily turned up with a pot plant she'd got from the market by the railway station, still furious.

"How fucking dare Peter?" she said, marching in and presenting Remus with the plant. "It's a succulent, so even you should be able to keep it alive. We can always ask Frank Longbottom," and she pulled off her woolly hat. "Was Peter always this much of a fuckwit?"

Sirius tilted his head slightly. "I think he has changed recently. He was always fairly parochial in his outlook but I thought that was because he came from a tiny village with one bicycle and she'd never sleep with him. He always resented us for being, well – "

"Handsome?" said Remus. "Clever, witty, charming?"

James shoved some spaghetti into a pan. "He always thought we looked down on him because he isn't as fortunate in life as we are," he said, glasses steaming up from the kettle. "But he never seemed to have a problem with Sirius's sexuality, or the mental illness thing – "

"Or maybe he never mentioned it? We knew he had some slightly alarmingly neckbeardy attitudes to women, but we figured he'd grow out of it," Sirius said, leaping up to grate some Sainsburys knock-off Parmesan. "And," he added, "he was always a good teacher, but his year tens all scraped Cs in their mocks, even the genius ones. So he seems distracted. Fuck, maybe he was that unnamed teacher in the article. We need to get the Phoenix back up and running."

"That's not a bad idea, actually," Remus said. "Maybe after exams, I've got a thousand and one PPQs to mark this week alone. But we should start it back up, making get the unions involved – a lefty liberal loon's newspaper. Mental health in teaching is underreported and under… helped. I lost the thread of that one, but we could do that," and he took a sip from his glass of wine.

"With the right-wing press gathering momentum, and more and more kids getting scared – Tomasz Wozniak said his mum's been getting abuse in the streets – we could do something really great here," Lily said. "A sort of Private Eye/Libération hybrid, maybe?"

"First of all," James reminded them, "and loathe as I am to be the voice of reason, we have exams. A month to go until A-levels, and I doubt my history class know anything at all about the Russian revolution. And nor do they care. Come on, dinner," and they ambled over to collect their food.

As they ate, Sirius kept one hand tightly on Remus's thigh, which made eating spaghetti difficult but was worth it for how Remus blushed.

"Okay, you lot," said Remus, riffling through a battered copy of Tess of the d'Urbervilles. "Today I'll probably be giving you all some more past paper questions to do, because at this stage practice is the best thing you can do, but first of all I wanted to remind you that you will be discussing this in relation to the pastoral. And the most important feature of the pastoral is, Sama – "

"Contrasts, and opposites?" she said, straightening her hijab. "Light and dark, innocence and experience, nature and manmade? Idealism and realism, et in arcadia ego, a lost time and a lost youth. And then, turning away from that, people like Auden use it ironically."

"Nice one," Remus told her. "I would give you a gold star but I'm all out, sadly. I can offer vegetarian marshmallows," and he handed her the box.

"I didn't know you're a vegetarian, sir?" asked Finn from the back of the room. "Is it Mr. Black's fault?"

Remus laughed. "Enough about my personal life, Finn – but no, I'm not a vegetarian. I eat mostly vegetarian food though, but I figured vegetarian stuff would mean that more people could eat it, regardless of any dietary restrictions." He smiled.

"Mr. Black says you're a muesli-wearing cliché, and he's bloody right. Actually, Snape says the same but he says it in a very different way," Finn said, taking the proffered marshmallow.

"Anyway," Remus said, waving his book at the class, "we have two weeks until the exam. You're on study leave by rights, aren't you? Why are you all here?"

"We like your teaching," Sama said, and she grinned. "Plus my little brother's teething and he's grizzling all the time, so it's better to come here really," and then she looked a little sheepish. "And I do maths as well, but if I revise in Snape's room it's really loud – could I use your room?"

Remus shrugged. "Of course, as long as you don't disturb the others. There's the library as well, although I have it on good authority that Mrs Pince won't let you take even bottles of water in there. Feel free to sit here and enjoy the arcane delights of maths," and by that Friday she had taken the maths exam and emerged, pale and clammy, to the bright May sunshine and her English books.

James had sat himself in the corner of Lily's room, hiding from a fourteen-year-old Stormfront reader and future Holocaust denier, and was gazing enraptured at the way the various potions and lotions threw up rainbow highlights in her hair. "You're staring again," she said, trying to stifle her smile.

"I can't help it," he said. "But, light of my life, can I ask if your lab bench is supposed to be on fire?"

It was not supposed to be on fire, but after a deluge of fire extinguisher and swearing, it seemed mostly contained. They went to lunch, and sat in the canteen next to a gaggle of year nine girls clearly interested in their relationship. The day sped away, until James rounded the corner and came across Sirius sat with his head wrapped in his arms, curled up against the floor of his classroom.

"Hey," he said. "What's up? Want me to get Remus?" and Sirius sniffed and nodded, but clutched at his arm when he went to leave.

"I'll text him," Sirius mumbled into his sleeve, but did not move, so James dug his phone from his pocket and texted Remus from his own phone. Sirius watched, but did not move, and James reached out to pull him into a hug. "I just. I don't know what it is, if it's the Snape thing or the newspaper thing, but all of a sudden I feel a bit rubbish. Completely rubbish, actually. I am a landfill," and he choked out a laugh. "I don't know what Remus sees in me," he said, very quietly.

"Have you been taking your medication?" James asked, scanning Sirius for any signs of damage. "How low are you feeling? Are we talking about – "

"I've been taking my meds," Sirius said, in a voice that might sound angry if it were louder. "Not every bad mood is that, you know. I'm so worried my classes will do badly. Except they're all brilliant and they work hard, and in a way I'm jealous of them for their youth, you know? They get to live for the first time and all we can do is watch ourselves get older and greyer and uglier – "

"You'll never be ugly, silly," James said. "And I understand what you mean, and I know where you're coming from, but you're a good teacher. And Remus loves you, and I love you, and my parents love you and Lily loves you. Your entire class is in love with you, and I don't blame them."

"Are you coming onto me?" said Sirius, a little less morosely. "I have a boyfriend, you know. I'm just also very aware of the crushing inevitability of death – "

"Has he been listening to My Chemical Romance again?" asked Remus, appearing round the corner. "I've tried to stop him from doing that. He listens to them in the bath, it's all very embarrassing," and he sat down on the floor as well. "I love you," he said to Sirius.

Sirius sniffed. "I love you both. In very different ways, of course," he added. "Thank you. Sorry, I'm not – not quite sure what that was," and he scrubbed at his eyes. Remus kissed him on the cheek.

"Well, I think you were due a meltdown. James screamed for five minutes at a potato the other day," Remus told him.

James elbowed him in the ribs. "Yeah, and you tried to convince me that the greatest film of all time is not Top Gun, which I would have thought would be right up your street given that it's got lots of half-naked men in it – "

"First of all, the greatest film of all time is Withnail and I," said Sirius, firmly. "But Remus thinks that the best film is Girl, Interrupted which tallies with neither of our impressions of mental health treatment – "

"It has a good soundtrack," James allowed. "But if you're into that hipster shit, surely you like Wes Anderson?"

"I have a yellow teapot because it's very evocative of his aesthetic," Remus admitted, and Sirius laughed.

"I think, gang," he said, "that we are long overdue a pizza and films night. Sleepover at mine?"

"I live at yours, idiot," Remus said, and kissed him. "As long as we get something with pineapple on, I'm game."

James cried four times during The Royal Tenenbaums, and Remus got so maudlin when watching Dead Poets Society that they had to put on Grease and Lily arrived just in time to sing along with every single song, and if Remus reached out to hold Sirius's hand during "Hopelessly Devoted to You", nobody commented on that. And Lily wiped her eyes surreptitiously on James's shoulder as they got in the car at the end that flies, but nobody commented on that, or the flying car.

The exams approached, coming over the horizon bristling with spears and questions about UCAS and clearing and retakes. They seemed to be over in minutes, months of preparation and tears and the occasional meltdown distilled into two questions and a wobbly seat in the exam hall. And then summer was streaming past, bright blue skies and soft breezes and Remus in a pair of hideous red shorts and nothing else, sunbathing in the garden until he tanned. Sirius, pale as ever and haughty about it, smothering himself in suncream and then helping Lily with the back of her neck, where he was delighted to see that she had a green eye tattooed. "Xenophilius talked me into it," was all she would say. And ice-creams and spliffs smoked out the window or up the chimney when they were too lazy to get out of bed and put clothes on, and then all of a sudden it was results day.

Remus was up half the night, too anxious to sleep, and fretting and biting his nails until they were bleeding. Sirius sat with him and rubbed his back and made him endless cups of tea until at last Remus dozed off, and by 8am they had heard that Hogwarts had got the highest state-school results in the county and got dressed and headed into school, both unshaven. Sirius had visible teeth-marks on his throat, half-hidden by his collar. The hall was crammed with teenagers hugging each other, waving their cream pieces of paper around, talking to reporters, and a few were in tears. McGonagall headed to the crying ones with a packet of biscuits. Frank Longbottom was also in tears after being presented with some sort of tree from his biology class, and Remus's A2 class swarmed him to give him a signed copy of Terry Pratchett's Guards! Guards and tickets to Cadbury World.

"Fourteen kids from single-parent families have got into Russell group unis," James said to Sirius as Remus loped back over. "And Phillip Baxter, the one who was in hospital all last year, beat his target grades. Thank fuck for that," he added, passing them a cup of tea each. "Christ, I barely slept, I was so worried – and then I find out Mairead Massey got the highest history mark the school has ever seen! Christ alive," and he took a long sip of his tea.

"We made it," Remus said, quietly. "Well, not that it's about us at all, but we made it, didn't we? My first year at Hogwarts, down. I assume that we'll all be going to the pub quiz later?"

So they did.