the_debt_of_time

"Was he playing with the Snitch?" Remus asked.
"Yeah," Harry said. "I thought he was a bit of an idiot."
"Of course he was a bit of an idiot!" Sirius said. "We were all idiots! That's what being
a teenager is for. Well, not Moony so much."
"Did I ever tell you to lay off Snape?" Remus asked, still feeling guilty—even all
these years later. "Did I ever have the guts to tell you I thought you were going too far?"
"Yeah, well. You made us feel ashamed of ourselves sometimes. Nowhere near as bad
as.. ." Sirius hesitated as his eyes darted back to the fireplace where Harry still sat looking
at the two of them. "That was something."
"And, he kept looking over at the girls by the lake, hoping they were watching him!"
Harry snapped.
Sirius looked at Harry as though he was expecting for him to blurt out "and one of
them looked just like Hermione!" Thankfully, he did not.
"Oh, well, he always made a fool of himself whenever Lily was around," Sirius finally
said, shrugging. "He couldn't stop showing off whenever he got near her."
"She threatened to hex him," Harry pointed out.
Sirius snorted; the noise almost caused Remus to lose his own composure as
memories of James wearing porridge on his head, rubbing sore hexed spots, and once
putting out a fire on his trouser leg came to mind.
"Well, I didn't say he was very good at it," Sirius said. "Your dad could charm house-
elves, professors, his friends, and he probably could have done well with other witches, but
the only one he ever had eyes for was your mum, and she never fell for the stupid tricks
that he tried with her."
"How come she married him?" Harry asked miserably. "She hated him!"
Sirius laughed at Harry's dramatic exclamation. "Oh, she did not."
"She started going out with him in seventh year," Remus said, remembering the way
Mia clung to his arm when Lily burst into the common room and jumped into James's
arms as though she had not spent the previous six years hexing him for looking at her the
wrong way.
Sirius smirked. "Once James had deflated his head a bit."
"And stopped hexing people just for the fun of it."
"Even Snape?" Harry asked.