Alike, But Not Alike

Sirius and James had been best friends for so long that they could scarcely remember having intensely disliked each other on first meeting. The affinity between them was so perfect that, in their arcane and often illicit research projects, or skirmishing with their mutual enemies, they were often able to act as one person. But during the holiday in which Sirius took up permanent residence at the Potters' home, they began to talk to each other in a way that was a bit new. Sirius's abrupt flight from his parents' house had somewhat shaken the adolescent illusion of invulnerability, and in fact they both increasingly had things on their minds that they had to struggle to find words for. These conversations, which generally took place as they lay in the twin beds in James's room, in the hour before sleep when they were both most inclined to contemplation, were often elliptical, exploratory, full of halts and silences.

One night, James obliquely brought up Sirius's persistent lack of interest in girls. He did this by jokingly chiding Sirius for having been rude to a group of girls during an expedition to Diagon Alley earlier that day. Sirius had visibly disdained Malvinia Benet's vivacious attempts to flirt with him, a repeat of a performance that James had seen many times, with slight variations.

"Mind you, I can see why you were put out," James said dryly, "I mean, what with her so obviously liking you, and whatnot." It irritated James no end that Sirius could not accept admiration at face value; he deemed it mean-spirited to scorn the esteem of one's peers. But Sirius, apparently, could see nothing but greed in it.

"What I know is," Sirius said, "the world is full of people - girls, women - who want something from you. Your reputation, whatever. They want to own a piece of you, and maybe they call it liking you. Or even love. But I don't."

"It doesn't have to be like that," James insisted. "All right, a lot of those girls just want a boyfriend they can show off to other girls, but as long as there's just one who..." The heat suffusing his face warned him to stop. Who wants your true self, and not your social self, he wanted to say, but couldn't. He was getting too close to his own private hopes and fears. Because really, all he knew was that she didn't like his social self. That he might show her his true self, and she'd not want that either, was a possibility he had no wish to contemplate.

"I know all that," Sirius was saying, "That's just it, James, I know what it's like to have someone not want anything from you except just to be with you."

There was a brief silence. This was something that James had been worrying about, but now that Sirius had actually brought it up, he wondered what he dared say about it.

"You can't just keep messing about forever, you know," he offered tentatively. Looking across, he could faintly make out his friend's profile, staring at the ceiling it seemed, or the darkness. He thought for a moment that Sirius would not answer, and the subject would be dropped. But then Sirius replied,

"Why not?"

"Well, you want to have the real thing, some day, don't you?"

"That's real. I know you think it's just..." Sirius waved a hand.

"No, I know you always...But, still..." James threw both hands up briefly.

They fell silent for a while, partly because they lacked words, partly because they didn't really need them to understand each other, at least somewhat. James did know. Sirius had always. But still...they wouldn't be schoolboys forever, as they were just beginning to realize. What then?

"We've been childish," Sirius said suddenly, and James recognized that he was about to try to talk his way through whatever answers had been running through his mind, swinging blunt declarations as though he were clearing undergrowth with a machete. He settled back to listen.

"We've carried on for years like there was no world outside of Hogwarts. And part of it is, I truly don't care about a lot of what people consider being grown up. I can't make myself care and I never could. But there are some things that I do think it's important to be a man about. One is, what's going on. You have to stand with the right side. And not just in words. You have to do something."

There was a pause. James did not reply; Sirius knew his thoughts on this, as he had begun to say the same sort of thing himself. Loudly and often, in fact.

"That's one. The second is, that you are my brother, James. My real brother. Whatever happens, I'm going to be the person you can come to. And I will do something."

James made a small noise of agreement. He didn't entirely trust himself to speak.

"And the other is, I'm going to honour this thing that I have with him. I don't care what anyone else calls it. It' s not even just about that. It goes much deeper than that. Really, it was the first moon that I spent with him, in the Shack, I knew that I was in it for life. I couldn't do that, and go back. It was the rest of our lives."

"Well, we could never leave him alone like that again," James said. He fully understood that much at least.

"Exactly," Sirius replied, "we agree about that. But it means one thing to you, and another thing to me. There's no denying it."

And there it was. Alike, but not alike. James had hoped he wouldn't have to deal with this, but Sirius had said it, had claimed his difference, and there was no denying it.

"I don't care what anyone else calls it," Sirius repeated firmly, "Not even you."

"I don't call it anything," James said, "I was just worried. I didn't know you had it all thought out like that."

"Yeah. Well." Sirius flopped over and burrowed into his pillow, done with talking for the time being. "G'night, Prongs."

"Night." James lay awake for a while, but eventually he sighed, stretched, and surrendered to his ordinary peaceful sleep.