first year - alone (sirius perspective)
Sirius didn’t remember when his mood had changed after the holidays. He returned to school as resentful as ever, glad to be away from his parents but yearning to be with his brother. But slowly, day by day, he began to feel better. It was around James’ bright personality, Remus’ mystery, and Peter’s presence that Hogwarts warmed the lonely boy back up, as they began their rise as pranksters. Sirius had his own personal vendetta against the slimy first-year and relished in getting him back after their first term. The other marauders didn’t know that Snape had taken his part in ridiculing the Black heir in his red and yellow tie, sometimes stalking after his older cousins, repeating their insults in harsh whispers when passing in potions. In the first few weeks, Sirius had envied the boy for being in Slytherin, still not quite accepting his circumstances as much as he had shown. But very quickly, he had realised the boy was a slimy git and had no trouble bothering him at all.
The new term had been more eventful than ever, and only in the first few weeks. By Valentine, he had begun talking to the Blonde Gryffindor girl Marlene and relished that he was cooler than his friends. The valentines weekend had been the most exciting, pranking the Slytherin house, and seeing the fruits of their efforts on the holiday morning. The girl dragged him off, which he didn’t mind. They spent the morning walking around the fields, mostly talking about their prank, and then about quidditch, which he was surprised the girl was so interested in. He almost forgot that the whole thing was meant to be a ‘date’, as he was bantering with the girl as he would with his mates. It was only after they had reached the common room again that he noticed Marlene blushing as she said “That was really nice, Black.” Unfortunately, he was stupid enough to reply without thinking, saying “Yeah, you’re a good mate.” The other girl then turned around to join her friends, and he could never stop hearing about his stupidity with girls, brushing off his date as his ‘mate’. He never heard the end of it from Marlene, but they did stay good friends. Obviously, the marauders didn’t need to know about that, so when he heard about Remus’ time with Lily, he jumped right into the subject.
After that eventful day, Sirius seemed to be restless all during the night. He could never get to sleep easily most nights anyway, but it seemed that the adrenaline of the day was still rushing through his veins, keeping his mind awake, and consequently, his body. He gave up counting things, or trying to recite answers to dull homework questions to bore himself to sleep and had tried remembering the boring melodies of the music his mother played at their family gatherings, and the Latin his mother had forced the two Black boys to memorise, a gruelling experience. He had tried everything, even attempting to change his inner monologue to French, German, or the other languages he was less familiar with. Soon enough, he gave up and went to sit by the same window he had gone to on many restless nights. He scanned the February sky, finding the constellations he could never forget, picking out the other shapes he knew, and trying to recount the names of each faint star in the sky.
The night sky of the Scottish highlands was far brighter than that of the London house the Blacks lived in, but Sirius could remember the night sky in the French country, that the boys had only visited so many times, to please their now long-gone great-grandfather. The man didn’t speak a word of English, so their father’s lessons had paid well. Their mother had sent Sirius to the countryside in a fit of rage when Sirius was eight, unwilling to care for him that summer, electing to only have their youngest child at home, the better behaved of the two. So he spent most of the time caring for his old relative, learning stories of the Black’s history, of their great force and power, and learning more names he couldn’t remember at eleven.
During those summer nights, Sirius had slept in an old room. Being a Black estate, the room was bigger than the one he shared with his dorm mates currently, yet it felt so cold, and lonely, he didn’t sleep much those nights either. It was once Sirius was delivered back to the Black estate’s front door, and into the embrace of his younger brother, that he vowed to never be alone like that again. Sirius had never spent a night alone sleeping, even at Hogwarts now, sharing a dorm with three other boys who very quickly became friends from strangers.
Hearing the rustle of bed curtains, Sirius was pulled from his thoughts, watching as Remus stood up from his bed, and made his way to the same window he sat at. His late-night company had become more frequent, as both boys didn’t get enough sleep as is. They had made a system of bringing scraps of parchment and a quill to write every night, not wanting whispering to wake the sleeping boys in their dorm. When Sirius would talk with James, he would cast a simple silencing spell on their bed curtains, but when he wasn’t able to sleep, he preferred the embrace of the moonlight.
‘What are you thinking about?’ Remus’ messy scrawl wrote along the page, before passing it over to the long-haired boy. Stars, he wrote back, not bothering to explain it, and instead turning back around to look up at the night sky. He was left alone momentarily, as the other boy paused to look up at the same night sky. Silence had become comfortable between the two of them, unlike Sirius and James’ constant ramble about anything, and Peter’s need to fill up any moment of silence, always fidgeting when things get too quiet. Remus was mysterious in the sense that if he didn’t have anything to say, he wouldn’t. It took a few weeks at the beginning of term to get anything from him in general, it was only once classes had kicked in and they had begun their scheming that he was an active participant in marauder discussions.
So the quiet between the two boys had become an abyss, but not space. It was a space of knowing, that the other person was just as sleep-deprived, but only one of them would need to be dragged out of bed the next morning, Sirius could never be an early morning person, yet Remus seemed to work robotically, waking up between 7 to 7:30 each morning without fail, despite staying up to all hours the night before.
Neck starting to ache, Sirius sat up and decided to try sleeping once more, hoping that the fatigue of keeping his eyes open would wash over his mind, and lull him to sleep.
At some point that night, it did.
The first day back at classes after the Valentine's stunt was a memorable one for the marauders. Some Slytherins were still unfortunate enough to be sticking to surfaces still, but by then, they had wounded their pride and asked for a teacher’s help if they still couldn’t wear their shoes. The boys couldn’t help but laugh as a certain slimy Slytherin in their class was stuck to their broom when they had finished the first few warm-up laps since they had been attempting to take off and land and fly a few laps for those more skilled.
James and Sirius zoomed around on their brooms, much faster and more agile than any of the other boys, as Peter was quite shaky on his, and would tend to fall back and cruise along with Remus, who would barely get off the ground most lessons. The boys had been distracted cheering on Lupin to see Sirius almost get shoved by a lurking Snape, and make his way tunnelling to the ground, until they heard a loud crack, and a distressed Madam Hooch coming to his aid. Too busy writhing around in pain, clutching his left arm to his body, Hooch sent him right up to the hospital ward without a say from any of his friends. They protested to follow him up, but their flying teacher demanded he was properly seen to before Madam Pomfrey had to deal with any more children.
It wasn’t until late lunch that they had been told Sirius was awake, and they were allowed to visit him in the ward. Upon hearing the news, the three remaining marauders raced to the hospital wing, some complaining about missing their lunch, but all equally eager to see their injured friend. Madam Pomfrey begrudgingly let the boys in, asking for them to keep it brief.
Sirius was very quickly bombarded with questions on how he was, how any of it happened, and what his situation was like. He relayed to them what Pomfrey had told him earlier, when he woke up from being passed out, and entirely woozy from countless painkillers. He had broken a bone in his arm, which was nothing that a good spell or prescription of skele gro could fix, but knowing his troublesome character, Pomfrey insisted on keeping him overnight.
The boys had only been with Sirius for about 13 minutes until a screeching voice paired with the scariest witch in the world came striding into the Hospital Ward. “Sirius Orion Black! Where are you this instant?”
One look at the boy’s face and you could see him grimace hearing the voice of what happened to be his mother, only recognisable by the stern woman Remus saw at the station and the same, husky, shrill voice that screamed at him on their first day through the howler. Since then, Sirius had only received one or two more, but it didn’t make it any less recognisable.
Madam Pomfrey very quickly came to the aid of the now-confirmed Walpurga Black and tried to calm down the voice that had woken up many already. This only seemed to rile up the old woman anyway, as she demanded to take care of her child with her own methods. The Black matriarch had brought with her the family doctor, who would take a better look at the heir, as Pomfrey’s work seemed to be much inferior.
The three boys had to make their way out of the wing now, slightly petrified by the old woman, but also ushered away by their injured friend, not wanting them to have to deal with the screaming lady.
After a very brief and painful checkup, the Doctor came to the same conclusion of a broken arm and begrudgingly agreed with keeping Sirius at the school.
Now assured of her son’s alright state, Walpurga took to yelling at the boy for his carelessness, and offering him the same insults and warnings as usual.” You stay OUT of trouble, young boy! Or we will take you out of this school!”
Sirius brushed it off, and once the lady had left the school again, after ensuring that “The school will hear about this!”Sirius had pleaded with Pomfrey to bring his friends back, but unfortunately the lunch had ended, and the boys were already at their next class.
That afternoon, Sirius was once again visited by the marauders, who also brought Marlene and Mary with them. Marlene had insisted on seeing the boy, and since she and Mary were always attached by the hip, the other girl came along too. The girls seemed more concerned about how he was feeling, and sympathetic about his overnight stay, but the boys had already become set on ‘getting that bugger back’, completely convinced that Snape had meant to trip their friend.
Eventually enough, his visitors were sent back to their dorms, and Sirius was left alone once more.
Curfew had meant he had no more visits due that night, no more pesky mates, or younger brothers. It had been the unique occasion that not many children hurt themselves within that week of term, and once Pomfrey had left her office and gone to her quarters, Sirius was left completely alone. Having shared a bedroom with his sibling since they were born, Sirius had never spent the night alone. On nights when he couldn’t possibly fall asleep, he could listen to the soft inhale and exhale of his younger brother, listen to the curtains rustle when Peter shuffled to the bathroom in the middle of the night, listening out for the telltale signs of Remus Lupin being awake on that very same night.
There was none of that in the hospital wing, just deafening silence, which had never seemed so loud before, but Sirius couldn’t even remember falling asleep alone in his whole life so the quiet seemed to strangle him.
Left with nothing but his intrusive thoughts, Sirius began to reminisce. His thoughts brought him back to the summers before school, where he and Regulus would run around in the blaring hot summer sun, and jump into the lake by the family estate. He remembered drying off, lying bare in the sun and feeling the warm embrace of the summer sun. He could almost feel the water droplets falling on his face as he just remembered.
The memory seemed to turn sour, as he remembered his mother reprimanding them mere minutes after, and looking over to his brother, trying to stand up tall, and seeing his shoulders shake as he had begun to cry. Regulus had always been sensitive when they were younger, and Sirius could do nothing but lash out to protect him from his mother's yelling. He could remember the aftermath that day, his mother turning to the cold boy, and Sirius following his impulse, jumping right back into the river, and emerging soaking from head to toe once more. He could hear his mother's screams in the distance and had to sit outside in the cooling afternoon, shivering without a towel to dry himself with.
Trying to change his mood, Sirius tried to go back to the feeling of the summer sun blanketing his skin, and the golden tan that painted their skin, and all the freckles on his nose from that summer, but thinking about the warm sun left him uncomfortable tucked in the stiff covers of the hospital bed.
The same process began to repeat, thinking of some old memory, and it turned sour. Every time, he would try to go back to the times when it all seemed alright, but it always seemed to be tainted, changed forever after he remembered the bad parts. The moon seemed to rise well into the sky before Sirius fell asleep out of pure fatigue. The last thing he could remember was the full moon shining its light onto the floor of the ward, and Sirius fell under thinking of the warm memories of his friends, which were yet to turn sour someday.