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Marley Riggs is having a bad night.
Working thirds at the trauma center meant that, generally, every night could be counted upon to be at least a little bad—but even held to her own skewed personal standard, Marley is currently having the night from hell.
“Ma’am,” she tries again, clinging to her composure with nails and teeth as her grip on the phone turns white-knuckled, “I’m not sure if you fully understand the implications of what I’ve told you. Your sister and brother-in-law are in surgery. Your nephew—”
“We’re estranged,” the woman on the phone says, in a biting tone that climbs clear over Marley’s voice of measured professionalism. “If I’m listed as an emergency contact then it was a clerical error. Fix it.”
Marley takes a deep breath. She looks over her shoulder at the tiny four-year-old sitting in a quiet corner of the waiting area. Little Harry Potter is clutching a well-loved dog stuffie that the paramedics on the scene had recovered from the wreckage, silently nodding or shaking his head in response to the questions a kind nurse from the pediatric level is asking him. He hasn’t said a word since he got here, green eyes glassy and traumatized.
Marley thinks of her brother’s baby girl in any similar situation, and turns back to the phone.
“No problem, ma’am,” she says brightly. “But just so you know, as a mandated reporter, I’m obligated to give your name to the police. Leaving a child in your care unsupervised at the ER in the middle of the night after an auto accident would make a clear case for criminal neglect, Mrs Dursley.”
The woman on the other end of the line sputters, outraged, but doesn’t actually manage to string any words together.
“If you’re concerned about mistakes in the paperwork, I’d be happy to go over it with you when you get here,” Marley adds pleasantly.
“Fine,” Mrs Dursley says, and hangs up.
“Lord have mercy,” the receptionist, a part-time college student named Ricky, says with feeling as Marley slams the phone back into the cradle. “I could only make out half of that conversation and I still feel like I need a pint.”
“Pull the contacts back up, please,” Marley says, leaning over his shoulder. “I want to make sure we tried everyone.”
“We did,” Ricky assures her, scrolling back up through the patients’ information. “The Dursleys were the last on the list, and I can sure as shit see why.”
It’s late, nearing ten o’clock, and reasonable to assume that people are turning in for the evening. Still, Marley finds herself glaring at the names on the list, willing one of them to appear as if by magic.
They’re over-staffed for the night, and it’s a rather slow one. The only other patient that EMS drops off is another auto accident, a middle-aged man with whiplash and a broken nose from the airbag when it deployed. The nurse from pediatrics gets called away and replaced. Ricky heads to the cafeteria and returns with a peanut butter sandwich and some apple slices for Harry to eat. One of the officers who had been on scene at the accident arrived at some point, off-duty now but still in uniform. Her brow furrows to find the little boy sitting unclaimed in the waiting room.
“Any news yet on Mr and Mrs Potter?” the officer asks them in a low tone. Her badge says Connor.
Marley says, “They’re still in the OR.”
A muffled conversation behind the automatic glass doors becomes louder as it gets nearer, and then the doors slide open to admit a very large man and a very thin, severe-looking woman. Marley just knows, in the pit of her gut, that these are the Dursleys. They prove it a second later.
“Hurry up, then, I’ve got work in the morning,” the man grumbles, before parking himself on one of the benches just inside the door. His wife approaches reception with quick strikes of her kitten heels on the polished tile.
“Well?” she asks. “What do I need to sign?”
Behind the desk, Ricky actually says “what the fuck” out loud. Marley can’t even scold him, because honestly, what the fuck? Officer Connor stands up from where she had been kneeling next to little Harry’s chair—and Marley has never seen someone make standing up look like a threat before, but she’s seen it now.
“Okay, Mr Potter, how about we walk over to those vending machines?” the nurse says quickly, clearly eager to remove the kid from what is proving to be an uncomfortable situation. He stands up and takes Harry’s hand, and adds, “I bet some hot chocolate would hit the spot.”
Harry doesn’t so much as glance at his aunt on his way past her, hugging his dog stuffie to his chest and letting himself be led quietly to the other side of the atrium. Marley has seen it before—kids in these situations largely tend to either shut down or just go to sleep—but that doesn’t make it any easier to watch.
“I told you, my sister and I are estranged,” Mrs Dursley says tersely. “I have nothing to do with her family, and I want nothing to do with her family. I’ll sign whatever I have to.”
“Your nephew could become an orphan tonight,” Marley whispers.
Something comes and goes across Petunia Dursley’s face that makes her look, however fleetingly, as human as the rest of them. And then she straightens her blouse with a nervous little jerk of her hands and says, “That has nothing to do with me. She has her own life, and I have mine. Lily made her choices.”
After six years and two promotions, Marley Riggs might be about to lose her job. She opens her mouth around something that will almost certainly make her immediate supervisor put his head in his hands and consider his own resignation—
—when thudding footfalls from outside interrupt.
The automatic doors slide open, but not fast enough; a young man clips his shoulder on one of them. It barely slows him down. He collides with the reception counter and blurts, “I’m—I got a call, a voicemail—about an accident—I was in the garage, left my bloody phone in the office—”
This frantic, wild-eyed energy is actually much more familiar ground than Mrs Durlsey’s icy demeanor. Ricky falls right back into routine as he says, to the young man who can’t be much older than himself, “It’s alright, mate, at this time of night people can’t be expected to check their phones right away. I.D.?”
The man digs his wallet out with shaking hands, flipping it open and turning it around. Ricky glances at the I.D. and then his eyes dart over to catch Marley’s.
Marley steps away from Mrs Dursley and calls out, hopefully, “Mr Black?”
Sirius Black, the first name on the Potters’ list of emergency contacts, Harry’s legal godfather and next-of-kin, whirls in place to face her. He’s quite handsome, or he would be, if he wasn’t grey-faced and bedraggled by fear. Abandoning his entire wallet with Ricky, Mr Black crosses the room in long strides, eyes darting from Marley, to the police officer, and then landing on Mrs Dursley.
There’s a very loaded moment between them, and Mrs Durlsey’s lips pull back in distaste, but Mr Black disregards her almost immediately. By the time he reaches them, Marley has his full attention.
“Jamie and Lil?” he asks hoarsely by way of hello.
“They’re still in surgery,” Marley says. “They were brought in just a few hours ago. There were groceries in the car, so we can only assume they were on their way home from the shops when a lorry at the intersection ran a red—”
“Oh my god.”
Mr Black shoves shaking hands through his hair, and takes a deep breath.
Then, abruptly, he loses what little color is left in his face. He looks like someone who has been faced with the absolute worst-case scenario and yet managed to think of something to make it even more horrible.
“Harry wasn’t in the car, was he?”
Marley takes him by the arm and tells him firmly, “He was, but he’s fine. Superficial cuts and bruises. Three stitches on his forehead. Paramedics usually err on the side of caution with children, and the EMTs who responded to the call transported Harry here along with his parents, just to be safe.”
Mr Black nods, but Marley can tell she’s losing him. He’s already looking around the room for some sign of his family as he asks, “Where is he?”
Officer Connor says, “I’ll go get him. Why don’t you help Ms Riggs here get some paperwork filled out in the meantime, Mr Black? We’ve had a hell of a time trying to get answers for this kid tonight.”
“Call me Sirius, please,” he replies absently. “I’m—yeah, I can do paperwork.” He looks like he’s forgotten his own middle name and street address and probably the alphabet as well, but he’s holding it together admirably. He goes where Marley steers him without a fight.
“What’d you threaten them with to get them to show up?” Sirius asks her when he’s seated with a clipboard, jerking his head back at where the Dursleys are holding council by the sliding doors.
“Criminal negligence,” Marley replies without missing a beat. It earns her a crooked grin, the half-hearted facsimile of what must usually be a wide, shining thing.
But Sirius’ hands are still shaking, and he hasn’t lost that haunted, frightened look in his eyes. He scrawls through the paperwork quickly, not carelessly, but with the efficiency of a person who has filled out Harry’s information at doctor visits and dental appointments a hundred times before. He knows the answers to questions about vaccinations and allergies without second-guessing them.
God, Marley wished he had picked up the phone earlier. She could have been dealing with a person who actually gave a shit about his family this entire time instead of the Dursleys.
She looks up when Officer Connor approaches, guiding Harry by the hand. Harry shuffles along as listlessly as he’s done everything since he got here two hours ago, but he jerks to a stop when he sees the person next to Marley.
“Uncle Siri?”
Sirius is out of his chair so quickly Marley didn’t even see him move, suddenly five steps away and kneeling and opening his arms for Harry to run into, and Harry does.
His little bandaged face is screwed up with tears and his bruised eyes are wet and he’s finally crying. He finally feels safe enough to cry, sobbing into his godfather’s shoulder and clutching at his jacket with both hands, stuffie discarded on the floor beside them.
“Oh, Harry, Harry, thank god,” Sirius chokes out. “Oh, it’s okay, kiddo, it’s okay. I’ve got you, I’m here. It’s okay, you’re okay.”
“I didn’t know where I was, and my head hurt,” Harry wails. “And mummy and daddy wouldn’t wake up and I want to go home!”
“I know, love. I want to go home, too. How about we stick together until we figure out what’s going on?”
Sirius hoists Harry up into his arms and scoops the stuffie up off the floor. Harry hides his face away in Sirius’ collar, only curling an arm around his plush toy again when his godfather tucks it against his little chest.
It’s a relief to finally see the child acting like a child, as heartbreaking as it is to listen to him cry. Sirius still looks like he’s having the worst night of his entire life, bar none, but he’s standing a little firmer on his feet now that he has Harry to look after.
“I called Remus on my way here,” Sirius tells both Ricky and Marley. He doesn’t try to talk over Harry, rubbing circles on the boy’s back. Marley perks up at the mention of the Potters’ second emergency contact. “He sleeps like shit usually, so he tends to turn Do Not Disturb mode on before he goes to bed. Only lets calls from me, Jamie and Lil through. He’ll spend the next twenty years hating himself for missing your call earlier, so go easy on him when he gets here?”
“Of course,” Marley says, heart softening for the Mr Lupin who sounded so weary and wry in his voicemail greeting. “He’ll be here soon?”
“Yeah, he’s probably breaking a couple dozen traffic laws as we speak,” Sirius says, and then looks sideways at Officer Connor as if he wishes he hadn’t. She smiles and makes a big show of Not Listening to their conversation while she helpfully gathers the paperwork that had scattered when Sirius all but threw the clipboard aside moments ago.
“Uncle Remy’s coming?” Harry pipes up, his voice scratchy and warbling.
“Of course he is, his favorite person in the whole world is here,” Sirius says, giving Harry a little jostle. “I’ll have to beat him away with a stick when he sees you.”
Harry smiles, much sooner than Marley might have guessed he would smile, and turns so that his face is only half-hidden in his godfather’s shoulder.
When Remus Lupin arrives, he goes straight to Sirius and Harry, and gathers them both into his arms in an embrace that lasts what feels like a long time. He looks ready to carry the weight of them for miles if need be.
Sirius soaks his presence up like a sponge. Harry pats Remus’ scarred cheek in hello, and Remus turns his head just enough to kiss Harry’s tiny palm.
“Any news?” Remus asks in a low tone.
“Nothing new since I’ve been here,” Sirius says, glancing at Marley. She grimaces sympathetically and shakes her head.
“They’ll be alright,” Remus says softly.
“Mhm,” Sirius replies at length, lips pressed together, clearly at his emotional limit. Remus seems to understand, and tucks Sirius’ head beneath his chin.
The Dursleys decide then that they’ve been ignored long enough.
“Am I going to have to sit here all night?” Mr Dursley fairly thunders, drawing eyes from all corners of the otherwise quiet atrium. “Some of us have work in the morning.”
Now, if Marley would have had to guess which of Harry’s uncles would have been the one to immediately instigate a row, based on their very brief acquaintance, she would have definitely guessed Sirius, with his dark ensemble of ripped jeans and combat boots and faded leather jacket. Contrarily, Remus, dressed in a rumpled button-down shirt and soft cardigan, looks as though he drifted quietly out of a library or a museum to be here, as likely to pick a fight as a moonflower.
But his gentle edges sharpen as he looks around. His eyes, under the unforgiving fluorescent lights, are a very bright brown, almost amber.
“Moons,” Sirius mutters, “c’mon, leave it.”
“What is it you do again, Vernon?” Remus says a bit too pointedly. “I could have sworn you worked at the mall.”
Mr Dursley’s face turns red, and then purple. “I work in sales.”
“Yeah, that’s right, that hardware store,” Remus says, nodding agreeably. His tone is conversational but he’s clearly aiming for the throat with every word. “You’d better go, then. Would hate to keep you away from those drills. Someone might decide to build a birdhouse this weekend, and they’d simply be lost without you.”
Mr Dursley levers his considerable bulk out of the chair, furious enough that Marley shuffles back involuntarily as he advances.
“Now, you listen to me, you bleeding fr—”
“Vernon, enough,” Mrs Dursley says, “let’s not stoop to their level, let’s just go home.”
Maybe because she doesn’t want to cause a scene; or maybe because Officer Connor is standing at Marley’s shoulder, watching Mr Dursley very carefully.
Blustering, the man storms out the door, almost flattening a nurse coming back from her break. His wife lingers long enough to scowl at little Harry, who turns to hide his face in the side of Sirius’ neck.
“Don’t you dare look at him like that,” Sirius barks, properly angry.
“I won’t look at him ever again, how does that sound?” the woman snaps. “Take my name off his emergency contacts. I’m done.”
“That’s right. You are done,” Remus agrees. “And the next time you and Vernon need repairs, or come up short on the mortgage, or want to weekend in Paris and come ‘round ours looking for a babysitter, I’ll remind you—we’re done.”
Mrs Dursley’s face is very still. Sirius is bouncing Harry gently, murmuring to him under his breath, but his grey eyes are glued to her over Remus’ shoulder.
“But even then, if something were to happen to you and Vernon,” Remus goes on, softly, savagely, “and, god forbid, little Dudley was sitting in a hospital all alone—frightened and hurt and waiting for someone to take him home—they would call Lily. And Lily would be there. She would move heaven and earth to be there. And she wouldn’t rest until your son knew that he was safe and loved and cared for, even if you couldn’t be with him anymore. And you know that.”
The woman blinks rapidly, her pocketbook clutched to her chest. Her gaze moves from Remus, to Sirius where he stands just behind him, and then lingers for just a moment on Harry’s tousled, birds-nest hair.
Mrs Dursley swallows, glances over her shoulder towards the parking lot, and then seems to steel herself.
“Take me off the list,” she says in a tone brooking no argument.
“Consider yourself gone,” Sirius replies, just as firmly.
When she’s left, and the door has whooshed closed behind her, Remus sighs. His shoulders slump and he pinches the bridge of his nose, rubbing hard at his eyes.
It feels like a storm just blew through. Ricky unnecessarily rearranges stuff behind the counter to give himself something to do.
Sirius looks at Marley and says dryly, “Now imagine what Christmas must be like.”
Marley barks out a laugh before she can help it. Harry looks up at the sound of it, and gifts her with one of his precious sunny smiles.
“Those two have a kid at home?” Officer Connor asks in disbelief.
“And he’s an unholy terror, but only because he’s spoiled completely rotten,” Sirius replies, assuaging any concern about the Dursleys’ parenting. He shifts Harry away from his shoulder and holds him up, looking the child in the face and asking him gravely, “We don’t know anything about getting spoiled rotten, do we?”
“Not me,” Harry agrees with wide green eyes, a perfect angel.
Remus shakes his head at the two of them, and glances sheepishly at Marley. “I’m very sorry about that,” he murmurs. “I normally have a much better hold on my temper. She just, ah…pushes my buttons.”
“That woman could make a nun swear, mate,” Ricky interjects from the desk. “Honestly, we’re not bothered an inch.”
Remus smiles, nodding his thanks. His eyes stray back to Harry and Sirius, like the needle of a compass swinging around to face north, and he says, “Why don’t the two of you find a place to sit comfortably? I’ll get you a coffee, Pads.”
“And some biscuits, I should think,” Sirius says, with Harry bundled back in against his chest. “Harry’s been a star tonight.”
“No surprise there,” Remus says warmly, cupping the boy’s face and stroking a thumb across his bandaged forehead. “Make sure Siri stays out of trouble while I’m gone, okay?”
Harry nods solemnly, and Sirius allows himself to be herded towards a chair even as he grumbles, “Oh, as if I’m the one who nearly got into a fistfight with my adoptive brother-in-law at the hospital—”
Remus kisses him, presumably just to shut him up. “Coffee privileges are dwindling by the second, sweetheart.”
He then kisses Harry on the head, and the dog stuffie as well when Harry holds it up, and turns to follow the signage on the wall toward the cafeteria.
Sirius looks down at Harry.
“Do you see how he bullies me?”
His godson giggles. The frightened child EMS brought in hours ago has vanished completely, disappeared into the shadow of this bright-eyed, quick-to-laugh likeness. Sirius digs his phone out of his jacket pocket and taps on a mobile game app before delivering it into Harry’s grabby hands.
Only then does Sirius glance up at Marley ruefully. “I promise I’ll finish the paperwork now.”
Officer Connor looks amused as she passes over the recovered clipboard.
Marley decides that Harry Potter is as safe as houses. She returns to her rounds, knowing he’ll be well looked after now.
As bad as her shift was when it began, it turns out to be rather wonderful—because at something approaching two o’clock in the morning, she’s able to deliver the news to the exhausted couple in the lounge that James and Lily are both out of surgery and doing well. James hasn’t woken up yet, but Lily has, and she’s demanding to see the three of them immediately.
Even after a sleepless, horrible night, smiles spring readily to Sirius’ and Remus’ faces. Sirius stands up without waking Harry, who is sleeping soundly against his shoulder. Remus folds his cardigan over his arm now that it isn’t being used as a makeshift toddler blanket. Marley is late to go to lunch, but she’s pleased to show them the way to the room where the rest of their family is waiting.
“Oh, you didn’t have to stay all night,” Lily says as Marley steps back into the hall.
“‘Course we did,” Sirius says thickly. He started crying at precisely the moment he met Lily’s eyes. “We’re not going anywhere and neither are you and James. We’re stuck with each other forever.”
“Until the very end,” Remus says. It sounds like he’s smiling.