Exam Season
It's been almost two months. Not one, but two, TWO MONTHS. Can everyone stop talking about Sirius Black!? Okay, okay, just inside voice shouting.
Alexander woke up again to his three roommates "whispering" about it. AGAIN.
He turned around, the little sunlight coming through the lake by the windows in the room. He didn't bother to greet the other Slytherin boys in the room. Boring fucks. He went straight to the bathroom they shared, he took up half the counter space, not like they put an effort anyways. Every morning since he got there Alexander had spent about five whole minutes seeing if the bump in his head was gone, right now, three months in, he could still make the outline, sure he was hallucinating it by this point, but he could see it. Then he moved to his hair, it was not messy, it was a proper mess. He groaned and turned on the shower. At least he had enough time to stop by the library before breakfast, he was done with yesterday's book, he had found that History of Magic was a great class for reading and finished it up there.
He made his way through the common room, felt like a freezer now that the winter weather was setting in. Snape was ranting about another prank they'd set off on him--someone cast a rain cloud on his head, which was fitting since he was the rain of everyone's parade. Bitter asshole. And Snape was sure it was Potter, Lupin and Black, he spat his name. I swear to Salazar himself. Snape kept on ranting about him.
Luckily, the walk to the library was quiet, no one wanted to head this early to the library, it was the first Saturday in exam season, so everyone would be having a late morning, sleeping in. A wonderful thought. The empty library for himself.
Or so he thought.
Madame Pince had grown fond of him, he had this odd thing about himself that made adults take a liking to him, they rarely thought he could do any wrong, Madame Pince for instance, actually helped him find books on Legilimency which he'd grown interested of a few months back. A favour she rarely offered, and was rarely asked for, she was a bit scary and with a mean face.
His usual spot was perfect, towards the back of the room, in the bay of one of the large windows. He'd make a sort of pillow out of his robe and lay down reading for hours on end. No one went that far in the library unless they meant to enter the Restricted Section, hard enough task as it is, Alexander hadn't managed it yet. He was keen on getting in some day.
This time, he'd managed to snatch a novel from, he wasn't sure actually, might've nicked it from one of his dorm-mates, no actually, that was last week. This was one novel Lily recommended, Little Women, she said it was from a muggle writer but that it was so good he couldn't miss it, she even lent it to him after potions, of course. Lily wanted someone to talk about it with and had noticed how much Alexander spent buried in books. She'd joked that he should've been sorted in Ravenclaw.
Little Women was headed for a bit of a slow start, so when he started hearing footsteps, his interest piqued. He popped his head from his hiding spot to find none other than Sirius Black.
Alexander didn't hate Sirius, honestly. He'd been in quite a few events and functions he attended as well, their families were close. But Alexander kept to himself around that crowd, never seemed to get the right comment in so he'd leaned to keep quiet rather than embarrass his family. Sirius was graceful there, of course, always nice, always courteous, always knew what to say to get a laugh or an interested nod, and above all, he knew what to do to spite his mother. Walburga, the scariest witch Alexander had the freight to have seen.
And he got why everyone kept talking about him in the Slytherin common room, and bed room and table, and every other second in the day. Those who were in the know were shocked from the beginning, those who weren't in the know, were let in by Bellatrix, who seemed rather fond of critiquing her cousin. And EVERYONE kept it going.
It wasn't the first time Alexander saw Sirius in the library at odd hours, seemed they shared that little habit. So far, though, they never acknowledged each other's presence. Sirius walked to the shelf next to Alexander's window. He pulled up a book from the shelf, Learning Learning Spells.
"Crap book." Alexander's inner monologue escaped him. "Won't help with exams either."
Sirius stared at Alexander. "Anything on reading spells in?"
"No, just shit about studying harder and a few spells for reciting stuff, enchanting books like a howler to read, crap like that."
"I'll try it anyways." Sirius seemed unsure what to make of him, he was probably the only Slytherin he'd had a civil conversation with all year. And the only one who wasn't whispering about his family being horrified at him or whatever.
"Isn't that Evans' book?" He pointed at the thick bright pink edition of Little Women on his lap.
"She lent it to me, some muggle book she said I'd enjoy. Bit slow."
"Not worried about the History of Magic exam monday?"
"Not much to study when your family was half responsible for it, and yours the other." Maybe bringing up family wasn't the right move, seemed to shut Sirius right down. Said he'd go drop off the book in his common room.
...
Lily was right. He had spend the whole day, except for the food breaks, reading the book. He got halfway done on Saturday, finished it Sunday. It was brilliant. He had no clue muggles could be so interesting, he was fond of that Laurie fellow, like it reminded him of someone, but the March Sisters were the best part, he was torn between liking Jo and Amy, they were both so right and so wrong, he thought to himself. He got why Lily gave him the book, he needed to talk about it to someone urgently.
Monday before breakfast, he was camping outside the Gryffindor common room, which was in a very inconvenient part of the castle if you asked Alexander. The landing of Gryffindor tower, which was far enough from his own common room, also happened to be a very common path to get to the great hall. People kept walking past him and questioning why would a Slytherin be sitting next to the portrait of the Fat Lady. Then the worse of all happened.
"Fraternizing with the enemy, Wilde?" Snape didn't know how to mind his business.
"At least I'm fraternizing with people, Snape, your ape-y friend left you behind?"
He groaned, "what would your family say about it? I mean we all heard what they did to Black when he was sorted with that lot, I wouldn't be surprised if that happened to you next." Leave it to Snape to say the worse possible thing.
"Piss off." Alexander took off, book hidden beneath his robes. Away from him.
...
Alexander get early to potions class, he'd written a small piece of parchment, "thank you", and put it between the pages of the book, he left it in Lily's seat without saying a word.