Disclaimer: I do not own Harry Potter.

A/N: Sorry for the delay here. My brain is all wrapped up in my other story (Still Left Behind), but I knew I owed another chapter over here.

The next morning dawned cool and sunny, and James woke before Sirius. He made his way quietly out of his room, knowing his friend would need the extra sleep given their very interrupted night. He was happy to find his mother alone in the kitchen when he went downstairs.

She turned in time to watch her son slide into his usual seat at the table, and she smiled at him tiredly.

“Morning, honey,” she said as she finished supervising the dish washing now taking place at the sink. With the flick of her wand, everything soared into its proper place, and she joined James at the table. “Are you hungry?”

He shook his head, his mouth opening in a huge yawn. “No thanks, Mum. Just tired.”

He didn’t look at her, but she knew there was something he wasn’t saying.

“Did you not sleep well last night?” she asked hesitantly. She knew to tread carefully here because of how intent Sirius had been on keeping their conversation a secret. But when James turned to look at her, she saw the sadness in his eyes, and she knew. He knew.

“Mum, he came back to the room in the middle of the night, and…” he couldn’t go on. He didn’t know why. But his mother did, and she did the same thing she had done just hours earlier with Sirius and pulled her chair closer to James.

“I know,” she said softly. “It’s hard to see your best friend going through such a hard time. But I want you to know how proud your father and I are of you. You are behaving exactly the way we’d hope you would. This is hard for Sirius and will be for a while, but I know that having you as his friend can only make this easier.”

James nodded slowly. “I know. And thanks for being proud of me. But I just wish there were something I could do to help.”

“You are helping,” Katherine Potter insisted, putting her arm around her only child. “Just keep being the friend Sirius needs you to be, honey. And I know you know this already, but it’s obviously really important to him that no one else knows how hard this is, so just make sure you don’t say anything to Remus or Peter.”

“Yeah, I know,” he mumbled. “He told me that last night.”

They sat in silence for a few minutes, and then James pushed his chair back from the table.

“I’m going to go try to think of things we can do to distract him,” he said as Katherine gave him a puzzled look. “It’ll be better than just sitting around till we go back to school. Is it ok if Remus comes back today?”

“Of course,” she said, nodding, as she too rose from the table. “Just let me know if he’s going to stay for dinner.”

“Thanks,” James said as he left the room. He was so lucky. He knew that. He just wished his luck would extend to the boy still asleep in his room. He couldn’t imagine that this map would do all that much to make Sirius feel better, but it was worth a shot.

Remus showed up at the same time he’d gotten to Godric’s Hollow the previous day, and the three of them spent the afternoon pouring through books to try to find the right spells with occasional success. Finally, as the sun started to set over the house, Sirius sat back and rubbed his eyes.

“Listen,” he told the other two, “we should just stop here. Peter has more books than we do. He gets home in what? Three days? Once he’s back, the four of us will get together and finish this. He should be in on it anyway. This will be the Marauder’s Map, after all.”

Remus nodded his agreement. “Good point, mate,” he said, tossing down his quill. “And besides, I could use a break.”

James threw down his own quill. “Yeah, so could I. Want to go outside and practice Quidditch? I haven’t played in a couple of days.”

Sirius and Remus exchanged glances, but they had both seen the look of eagerness on James’s face, and they couldn’t find it in them to say no, so the three of them trooped downstairs and out into the yard, grabbing brooms as they went.

They flew for over an hour until Sirius pleaded exhaustion. James was exhilarated, but he could see the toll that this practice had taken on his less-than-athletic friends, and he grudgingly joined them on the ground. It was time for dinner anyway, he reasoned, as they walked back into the house.

After they had finished eating, Remus had to leave, but he asked James to help him work the floo powder since he was using the Potters’ new brand and not his own. Sirius had gone back to looking over the map, so he waved absently to Remus as he left the room.

The moment James and Remus were alone on the stairs, Remus turned to him.

“He’s not doing too well with this, is he,” he asked bluntly, but it wasn’t a question. James was startled into honesty, and Remus’s eyes grew pained.

“Don’t say anything to him,” James whispered hurriedly. “He wants everyone to think he’s fine with it.”

”Well, then he needs to put on a better act,” Remus muttered, but he acknowledged James’s plea with a quick nod of his head. The two didn’t speak again until they reached the fireplace, and then Remus said, “If it ever seems like the right time, tell him I noticed?”

James nodded and then watched as his friend stepped into the fireplace. He couldn’t imagine when that time would be. After all, Remus still didn’t know how much Sirius had noticed of his own anguish before he’d told them about what they had come to call his furry little problem. He wished these two would talk to each other as much as they both talked to him. He couldn’t imagine how that would ever happen, though.