James arrived home in the late afternoon, stepping through the floo into the living room at the cottage, carrying his broom and the framed portrait of Regulus under one arm. Lily was laying on the couch, the telly on, her feet up on the arm of the couch, head propped by a pillow, holding a ball of yarn in her chest. The yarn stretched across the gap from where she lay to where Dora sat in the chair beside her, knitting a tiny pair of baby booties in the softest white wool yarn Lily had ever felt.

Lily sat up when James came in. "Is Filch going to be able to fix the portrait?" she asked, laying the ball of yarn on the couch as Dora paused in her work, looking up at her son with as much expectation as Lily had on her face. 

James turned and rested his broomstick against the corner of the fireplace so that the handle was braced against the mantel, well out of reach of the flame. "Better," he said

"Better?" she asked, eyebrows raised with curiosity.

James held out the framed portrait to her and she took it up in her palms, carefully, her eyes widening as she beheld Regulus's face smiling and blinking back up at her. Lily looked up at James with a gasp, then back down to Regulus. "Oh my goodness. Filch did even better than I ever could have imagined..."

"It wasn't Filch," James said, slinging off his jumper and draping it over the arm of the couch Lily had been using as a footrest. 

Dora cocked her head to look as Lily held out the portrait for her mother-in-law to see. "Who did, then?" Lily asked. 

James shrugged. "I don't know."

The telly sounded with tinny sitcom audience laughter.

Lily laughed, "You don't know? How do you not know?"

James told her the story about running into the seagulls and losing the portrait and that, when the seagulls had retrieved it from their Ravenclaw friend, the portrait was fixed, framed, and - well honestly much improved over Remus's original rendering.

"So some kid repaired the portrait?" Lily asked, looking confused.

"One of the D.W.O.'s friends," James said, shrugging. "Although they said Declan claimed he didn't even realize he had the portrait at all when they went to fetch it from him."

Lily paused. The name sounded familiar. "Declan," she murmured. "I think I remember a Declan in Ravenclaw." Her brow cinched as she tried to remember.

"He's done a lovely job if he did it," Dora said. "It's a very nice portrait."

"It looks exactly like Regulus," Lily said. "There's more details than even Remus was able to capture... Whoever did this knew Regulus very, very well." And loved him very, very much, Lily thought. 

"Well Declan is in the Seagulls' year - two years under Regulus would've been - and a Ravenclaw, so I can't imagine he knew him too well," James said.

"What did he look like?" Lily asked. She felt like she vaguely remembered someone named Declan but the memory was elusive, slippery like a fish swimming through water, uncatchable and shimmering even as she tried to place the face to the name.

"He had blue hair," James laughed.

"Blue?" Lily laughed.

"Like... electric blue."

"Oh my."

Dora said, "He must be a metamorphmagus."

"Like Maryrose was," James said. "Perhaps he knew Maryrose and that's how he knew Regulus?" he suggested. "Perhaps the metamorphamaggies had a club or something of that sort."

"Metamorphmagi," Lily corrected him.

"Them," James nodded.

"Perhaps," Lily agreed. She took the portrait as Dora handed it back to her and she stared into Regulus's blinking face. "Can you hear me, Regulus?" she asked gently. But the portrait just smiled at her, a sly little thing that suggested a bit of mischief was a foot - a playful thing that reached his eyes.

"He hasn't said anything as long as I've had him in my possession," James said. He checked the watch on his wrist and said, "We ought to bring it to Sirius and Remus."

Lily hesitated, "Ought we check in with Remus and be sure that Sirius's... tantrum... is quite over and he won't go ruining it again?"

James shrugged, "I don't think we ought to be keeping it back from him anyway. It's his brother - and... in the end, it's Sirius's to do with as he chooses, I suppose."

Lily stared into Regulus's eyes. Her heart wanted to protect the portrait in all the ways she'd failed protecting Regulus himself. She nodded, though, and handed James the frame. She felt a deep tug in her heart and she ran her palm over her stomach.

I will love you better than I loved him, she thought, promising the baby she knew was buried deep within her. I will love you with all of my strength so that I never, ever let you down as I did him.

James held the frame, looking the portrait over, and sighed, tucking him under his arm again. "D'you want to come?" he asked Dora and Lily.

Lily nodded, but Dora shook her head, gesturing to her knit booties and the telly, where Mork & Mindy was playing. "You lot go and when you come back, I'll have dinner ready. Bring the boys if you'd like. I've made fresh pumpkin bread."

James hummed with appreciation at the thought of the pumpkin bread, warm with butter melting upon it, along with the stew he could smell the scent of wafting from the kitchen. "I rather think we should keep all of it for ourselves."

"I've made quite enough to fill your belly and the boys' right up to the brim," Dora said in a mock scolding tone, "Don't be selfish."

James grinned, "I can't help it, mum, you're such a good cook, what's a lad to do?" he swept over and bent to kiss her forehead and Dora smiled, reaching up to pat his cheek before he pulled back. "C'mon then, Evans, let's go so we can get back to fill our bowls."

Lily nodded and took James's jumper from the arm of the couch, putting it on her own shoulders and pulling it closed. It was still warm from him and she smiled as his lip hitched up on his tooth and hugged her into his side. "Is it alright if I wear this?" she asked - late, seeing as she already had it on.

"You look good in my clothes, Mrs. Potter," he told her, and he reached for the jar of floo powder.

Sirius was laying on the floor next to his record player in his and Remus's room. Bob Dylan's voice warbled from the needle and Sirius's eyes were closed. The new Dylan album - Slow Train Coming - was playing.

Don't you cry - and don't you die -

and don't you burn

like a thief in the night, he'll replace wrong with right

when he returns...

Truth is an arrow and the gate is narrow
that it passes through
He unleashed his power at an unknown hour

that no one knew
How long can I listen to the lies of prejudice?

How long can I stay drunk on fear
out in the wilderness?
Can I cast it aside, all this loyalty, all this pride?
Will I ever learn... that there'll be no peace...

that this war won't cease..
until he returns?

Sirius's fingers dug into the pill of the carpet, digging in among the fibers.

Remus stuck his head in the door and stared at his husband's form - torn jeans so his knees were bare, Queen blazoned across his chest, and his arms out at his sides like he'd fallen onto his back from a great height, hair all splayed out... "Sirius?" he called softly.

Sirius opened his eyes and sat up, reaching for the needle's arm and pulled it from the record with a hiss. He stared at Remus, but didn't speak, just raised his eyebrows.

"Lily and James are here." He paused. "James has Regulus's portrait fixed."

Remus had ended up telling Sirius about James's plan to have the portrait fixed. Sirius had asked after it when they'd gone to bed the night before and Remus had decided it was best to tell Sirius the truth, that it had been damaged, but that James was trying to have it fixed. Sirius had nodded shortly and refused much more of a conversation about his breakdown or the portrait or any of what had transpired between him and his brother. They'd just gone to bed and neither had mentioned the portrait again the whole day.

Sirius drew a deep breath and slid the record from the player and into it's cardboard sleeve.

"Are you alright?" Remus asked.

Sirius drew a deep breath, "Yeah. I'm just feeling heavy," he said, shrugging.

Remus glanced over his shoulder, back toward the living room where the Potters and Peter were waiting for him and Sirius to come out and decided they could hang on a moment, and he slipped the rest of the way into the room, crossing over to where Sirius was and sat down beside him so close that their sides touched as Remus put his arm over Sirius's shoulder - where it very nearly naturally landed due to the difference in the lengths of their torsos. He leaned forward so he was looking sidelong as Sirius's face, eyes gentle.

Sirius said, "I don't know if I want the portrait to return."

Remus considered this a moment. "No?" he asked gently.

Sirius shook his head, "Isn't that horrible?" 

"I don't think it's horrible," Remus said. "But I'd like to know why."

Sirius ran his hands over his knees, pausing to pick at the loose threads at the edges of the holes in his jeans. "I'm very glad the portrait got fixed and I love that portrait so much, I do, because you drew it. I hope you know that I love that you drew it?"

Remus nodded.

"It's just that every time I've let myself be close to Regulus, I've ended up hurt very badly. And he's - he's gone. He's gone and it's a picture that's hurting me. And I think... I think it's maybe time that I don't allow him - or any of my family - to have that sort of power over me. I want to be happy. I want to be happy with you, my Moony, and I can't if I keep letting my family tear me apart. Does that make sense?"

Remus nodded again.

Sirius looked over at the Dylan record laying on the floor by his feet. "I'd rather remember good things that Regulus and I shared... and, yeah, a lot of that came during the time I had with the portrait, but I --" he bit his lip. "The portrait turned on me once, Rey, and I'm afraid it'll do it again and it isn't even really him. It's just a portrait, right? The portraits aren't - they aren't really the consciousness of their subjects, are they?"

Remus ran his hand down Sirius's shoulder. "Different people have different philosophies about what the portraits are - if they're consciousness of the subject or of the artist..."

"Well that can't be," Sirius interrupted, looking solemnly at Remus, "You'd never treat me like that."

"Well it's more like the artist's perception of the consciousness of the subject, if that makes sense?"

Sirius shook his head - it didn't really.

Remus said, "It's like how I might describe you differently than someone else would. For example, I'd say what a wonderful, loving, handsome person you are - but James might talk about you being very funny and adventurous. We each see you slightly differently. Without being able to see the mind and motive of a person, the artist can't fully capture them from the omniscient point of view. Some people say the portraits are sort of like that. Others say the actual spirit of a person comes and goes in the portrait, like a window into their life beyond - wherever that might be."

Sirius nodded. That bit made sense.

Remus hesitated, "So you - you don't want the portrait?"

"Not yet," Sirius answered. "Maybe one day, but not quite yet."

Remus nodded. "Alright." He let his arm drop from around Sirius and stood up. "I'll tell them to hold onto it for you."

Sirius nodded. 

Remus paused in the doorway. "They also invited us to dinner."

Sirius looked up, "I'm not hungry, really."

"Dora's made stew and pumpkin bread," Remus said.

Sirius pushed himself up from the carpet. "Oh for that I'm always hungry."

Remus chuckled, "I had a feeling."