"You've had nothing that's mine," James said, and he felt close to laughing in Lestrange's face. "You haven't even come close. The fact that you think you have-- that's what's pathetic."
He had made Lily and Sirius trust him, maybe, but they had never belonged to him the way they had belonged to James. They had never loved him, or felt loyalty to him, the kind of loyalty that would make them fight for him, lay down their lives for him. Even if he'd taken advantage of Lily, he had learned nothing about her that James knew. Making her vulnerable like that, hurting her like that, was nothing that James ever wanted to know.
And there was more that James was going to say on that subject, but the bark cut him off. He whipped his head around to look at the canine blur coming towards them, and his heart leapt into his throat. Padfoot.
Not just any Padfoot, either-- no, that was his Sirius, his Padfoot. It had to be. Any other Sirius would have simply walked up to them, because Lestrange didn't get under their skin the way they got under his Sirius's. He didn't think any other Padfoot would simply rush to bite Lestrange without being directly provoked, even if they saw him in a confrontation with James. And it was his Sirius that had been coming out here to meet him, that he'd been expecting at any second.
It was all happening so quickly, but James's emotions shifted just as fast; gone was the anger and disgust, completely overshadowed by nothing less than absolute elation. His heart swelled in his chest, and his eyes stung; at that moment, the familiar form of the black dog was the most beautiful thing he'd ever seen.