Chapter 3
Sirius Black was getting rather sick of his best friend’s complaining.
It wasn’t just him, either—he could tell by Remus’s rolled eyes and Peter’s glazed stare that the others were getting annoyed by James’s constant gloom. For the past three weeks, since their very first Herbology lesson of the year, James had spoken of little else, grumbling as to his awful luck.
“And to think, I volunteered our group!” James said as they walked into the Great Hall after the class in question in late September. “I could have been with Evans, just the two of us partnered together for the whole year. But no, Sprout had to go ahead and switch Barker with the only bearable person in my group!”
That, Sirius had to grudgingly admit, was a fair point. It really was rotten luck for James to have neither been paired with Lily, nor have his cousin in his group to offset the addition of either Daisy Barker or Preston Pucey. Instead, Kumar had been transferred out and James was left to deal with the two annoying Ravenclaws. To make matters worse, she seemed unwilling to switch back when James had asked her a few days ago. Sirius wasn’t unsympathetic to his friend’s plight—well, he was, but only because the idiot wouldn’t shut up about it.
“I can’t believe my chance with Evans was taken from me after being lorded over my head like that,” James sighed. “It was tantalizing! I just wish—”
“For the love of Merlin, shut up!” Remus finally snapped, causing James to stop short and look over at him with an affronted gleam in his eyes. “Listen, James, we get it, you fancy Lily, but you’ve been going on about the Great Herbology Injustice for weeks now. Either get over it or find something else to talk about!”
James narrowed his eyes, and Sirius knew that the only reason Remus got away with yelling like that was because he was still recovering from the full moon two days before. He suspected Remus knew it too, because the boy glared relentlessly at James in an uncharacteristic challenge, and it was James who backed down this time, sitting down at the table with an undignified thump.
“But what am I to do?” He asked forlornly as the other three boys sat around him. They all reached for lunch. “She laughed in my face when I asked her out after last year’s Quidditch game.”
Ah, yes—while James had always enjoyed riling up Evans, it was only in the past year that he’d developed this desperate crush on her. He’d finally mustered the courage to ask her out after he won Gryffindor the Quidditch cup, only to be shot down by an incredulous and largely disdainful Evans. It had deflated James’s ego quite considerably, though it had to be admitted that it took no time at all to build it back up.
“You could buy her chocolates,” Peter suggested. James seemed to consider this idea, but Sirius and Remus exchanged exasperated glances and nipped that suggestion in the bud.
“That’s ridiculously sappy,” Sirius said, rolling his eyes, ignoring the pang in his chest.
“More to the point,” frowned Remus, “It’s a bit creepy.”
But James wasn’t convinced by either of their arguments. Sirius was, admittedly, a bit miffed that James was listening to Peter, of all wizards, over him or Remus (who did, in fact, have excellent insight), but if nothing else, it was a testament to just how lovesick their friend was. “No, Peter’s right, don’t girls love that sort of thing?”
“Not when it comes from someone they don’t trust or like, mate,” said Sirius bluntly.
“What Sirius means,” said Remus, shooting him a glare that succeeded, in part, in making him feel a little guilty, “Is that chocolates are a gift that can easily be tampered with, and with your reputation for pranks, Lily has little reason to try them, even if you don’t mess with them.”
James began to deflate, but his eyes caught a figure behind Sirius and Peter and motioned for them to join the boys. Sirius glanced back over his shoulder and stifled an irritated groan—James’s cousin Anjali had broken away from her Ravenclaw friends and was approaching the Gryffindor table with a bemused look on her face.
It wasn’t that Sirius hated Anjali Kumar—on the contrary, she was a genuinely nice person. It was just that Kumar was… well, kind of boring. She was a quiet Ravenclaw who was always unruffled and calm, defined more by her cousin James or her friends Henrietta Silverfoot and Ifeoma Okoye than she was by anything personal. She wasn’t annoying, but she wasn’t interesting either, and Sirius Black preferred to spend his time with interesting people. He tended to feel quite indifferent about the likes of Anjali Kumar, but as she was his best mate’s cousin and practically James’ sister, he had to deal with her rather dull, unremarkable personality more than he ever wanted.
Disliking her still seemed to be too strong a statement; it was more that he could hardly bear to spend any extended amount of time with someone so painfully normal. Still, he knew that Kumar hadn’t actually done anything wrong, and she really was a rather nice girl, which was more than he could say for some of her dormmates. Ultimately, it came down to the fact that he was able to stomach their stilted interactions, and he wasn’t willing to risk his friendship with James; so he always managed to maintain distant cordiality with her.
“Yes, James?” She asked. She nodded politely at the other three, and Sirius found himself nodding just as politely back.
“Should I get Lily chocolates?” He asked her immediately, foregoing a greeting. “Peter says I should, but these two don’t think it’s a good idea.” Kumar’s eyebrows rose, but she didn’t look entirely surprised.
“I doubt she’ll even try them before tossing them, sorry, James,” she said, not unkindly. James’ face fell, and Sirius saw Kumar’s eyes softening.
“Mind if I sit here, Black?” She asked, gesturing at the seat next to him.
“Go ahead,” he said impassively, hiding the urge to gnash his teeth. Honestly, he’d literally never met anyone so completely uninteresting before. Still, his polite mask seemed to fool Kumar, because she offered him a quick, grateful smile as she sat down to face her cousin.
“James, why don’t you talk to her?” She asked in her quiet voice.
“I try!” James complained. “She doesn’t want anything to do with me!”
“Have you really tried to talk to her, or have you just sort of shouted at her to go out with you across your common room?” Kumar asked knowingly.
James fell silent.
“Lily Evans is a mature girl,” she continued. “If I’m not mistaken, that’s why you like her. Well, mature girls are hardly ever won over by a final goal in a Quidditch match or a box of chocolates. They help, of course, but you ought to talk to her, really get to know her, too.”
To his consternation, Sirius saw Remus nodding in agreement with Kumar, and James was clearly turning over her words in his head. Even Peter was hanging off of her every word, as if by osmosis he’d suddenly become an expert in picking up girls. He scoffed, and all eyes were drawn to him.
“Er—no offense, Kumar,” he said politely, “But I think you’re simplifying the situation a bit. Evans here already has such a bad impression of our dear James that she won’t listen to what he says if he just tries to talk to her. He’s got to get her attention some other way.”
Kumar was raising her eyebrows again, and her brown eyes pierced into his grey ones. He could tell by the skeptical look on her face that she didn’t agree—and, to his extreme discomfort, she looked almost as if she could see the emotions he was trying so desperately to hide. Then she shrugged. “You might be right, Black,” she said mildly, deferring to his experience, “After all, I’ve never picked up a girl, and I haven’t been in the same House as Lily Evans for three years. You lot would know best, of course.”
(This was what Sirius meant—she was always so agreeable and placid, not even a sarcastic remark thrown in. Didn’t she ever push back on anything?)
James, who either didn’t hear Kumar’s concession or didn’t care about it, responded to Sirius. “Then how do I get her attention first?”
“Easy,” grinned Sirius, jerking his head at the Slytherin table. “There’s always Snivellus.”
His best friend began smirking, and Peter’s eyes lit up. Even Remus, who on the rare occasion made the odd half-hearted appeal to stop provoking Snivellus, seemed to have no problem with it this time, chuckling to himself as James’s eyes lit up.
Next to him, Anjali Kumar pursed her lips. “Well,” she said after a moment, “It seems you don’t need my help anymore, James. I hope you know what you’re doing—remember, Lily is still friends with Snape, even if the rest of us can see how prejudiced he is.” Her jaw tightened the slightest bit, and her gaze turned slightly disapproving. “Though I suppose if the rumors about Gryffindor-Slytherin Potions classes are correct, then Lily Evans has already seen you bully him.”
With that final word of warning, Kumar got up and started back towards her friends at the Ravenclaw table. James called a thanks, and she acknowledged it with a quick smile before she sat down and pulled out a book from her bag. Sirius had to stop himself from rolling his eyes at the sight—typical. No life outside of homework for that one. Honestly, it never stopped shocking him that she was somehow related to James; but it was no matter, for they had much more important things to talk about now, like exactly what they wanted to do to old Snivellus.
“I was thinking,” said James, leaning forward in his seat, brown eyes glinting mischievously, “What about a nice, steady stream of water over his head for a day?”
“Might force him to finally wash his hair,” chortled Sirius.
Peter laughed. Remus rolled his eyes, but a tiny smile quirked at the edge of his mouth.
“We ought to get him shampoo, while we’re at it,” James added. “We could charm a whole bottle to squeeze out on his head during the walk from the dungeons to the Great Hall.”
“James, mate,” said Sirius, a wide grin spreading across his lips. “This is why I love you.”
The other three laughed. Sirius kept his exuberant smile plastered on his face. Something in his chest was squeezing him painfully tight.
* * *
The truth was, Sirius was in love with his best friend.
When he’d met James Potter on the Hogwarts Express three years before, Sirius had immediately forged a connection with the other boy. James was funny, outgoing, and whip smart, and he had this sort of magnetism that put nearly everyone around him at ease. The only problem, Sirius had known, was that he was a blood traitor.
Though Sirius had hated his parents from a young age, due to the constant beratement and abuse he’d suffered at their hands, he was still a little boy who wanted nothing more than their love. He’d bought into their Pureblood supremacist ideology; of course he had, he’d been brainwashed with it since the moment he’d started performing accidental magic, in diapers. By the time he turned ten, there was a constant war raging in his head. He desperately yearned for the love and affection of his parents, but he resented them deeply for hurting him (and worse—Regulus) over and over again. When he got his Hogwarts letter, he was entirely torn: he knew that the only way to escape his parents’ influence was to end up in Hufflepuff or Gryffindor (Ravenclaw, while generally avoided, was not normally grounds for disownment or shame), but a rather large part of him, one that sounded awfully like the seven year old version of him begging tearfully for a hug from his father, wanted to make his parents proud.
But when he met James Potter on the Hogwarts Express, the two of them forged an instant connection. James made him feel like he was worth something, and by the time they got to the castle, Sirius knew that blood traitor or not, James Potter was the kind of person he wanted to associate with. Sirius didn’t ask to be Sorted into Gryffindor—he didn’t have to. The assurance that somebody cared about him had boosted his courage immensely, and he knew the instant the hat was placed on his head that he would turn Hogwarts on its head.
James and Sirius grew close with Remus and Peter, who shared their dorm, and for two years, everything was fantastic. Sirius, of course, had to learn (or rather, unlearn) some hard lessons: for example, ‘Mudblood’ was a dirty slur and was generally referred to as ‘the M-word,’ and the appropriate term was ‘Muggleborn.’ Wizarding ancestry actually had very little to do with talent; Peter had one great grandfather who was a half blood in a long line of pureblood forefathers, and he was a mediocre wizard. Lily Evans, on the other hand, was brilliant, even though she was the only witch in her family.
It was James and Remus who taught Sirius all this, with patience and without judgement. They worked on him meticulously throughout first and second year, teaching him to acknowledge his own prejudices and then to grow past them. When they found out that Remus was a werewolf in third year, Sirius was shocked and delighted to find that though his first instinct was to recoil, his second was to tell himself to unlearn his prejudice and support his friend.
And when he’d confided this to James, late at night while Remus recovered in the Hospital Wing and Peter snored peacefully beside them, James had turned to him and beamed. It had been dark and shadowed, but the moonlight from the window had caught the left side of James’ face just so, and there was a proud, soft gleam in his left eye, and his cheek pulled up in a true, warm, kind smile, and Sirius’s stomach swooped, and…
…oh.
Oh.
He liked James.
From the moment he had the realization, in late October, to the present moment nearly a year later, his feelings for his best friend had grown and grown, and now Sirius knew that he loved James, really and truly and deeply, more than anyone else he’d met before.
And James, funny, outgoing, clever James, was painfully straight and in love with a girl who was nothing like Sirius.
And Sirius loved James, so he bore the absolute misery that was James’s nonstop chatter about perfect Lily Evans with a teasing grin plastered on his face and genuine advice bursting from his lips.
And nobody, not even perceptive Remus, knew the truth.