The Train To Hogwarts
It was the first day of Hogwarts, 1971. Platform 9 ¾ was full of families with new children to send off and similarly flooded with those who had wandered the school's hallways in the previous years.
Remus Lupin was only a first year, but he had gotten to the platform alone, despite the fact that he had little idea how to. After last night’s full moon, he did not want the assistance of his fosters. He was left aching and sore after his transformation, and Remus did not wish for any more parting gifts than he was already bestowed. The words of contempt etched into his ears, the teeth mark left on his tongue from the efforts to hold it, and the fresh bruise settling on his cheek were enough for him.
With his obvious setbacks and sheer inability to properly get a cab, Remus was one of the latest of the preteens to climb onto the train. Thus, he had nowhere that he knew to sit. His fosters had always treated him as something to be hidden, so he hadn’t gotten out much. Let alone made any wizard or witch friends around his age.
Somehow, every cabin seemed to be full. More accurately, too full for him to join. That answer was only further amplified every time someone saw his face. Remus knew he looked terrible, but he hadn’t thought himself to be that bad looking.
Then, about halfway into the train, (which, as Remus discovered, hosts a ton of space) he opened the door to find a nearly empty cabin. The only thing inside was a shaking boy with black hair.
Remus was about to step back out and give the ravenette some privacy, but he caught his own reflection in the glass of the window before he could fully exit. He didn’t look much different from the boy he was about to leave.
So instead of leaving, Remus sat down across from the shaking kid.
“Hello.” It seemed an ineloquent way to begin a conversation, and rather inconsiderate as well, considering the situation, but it did the trick. The boy startled.
“Hi- hi there.” Shakiness must be a common theme in the ravenette’s life, because his voice was as well.
“I’m Remus Lupin. What’s your name?”
“Sirius Black.” The short answer wasn’t surprising. Remus likely wouldn’t speak as much if he sounded so fragile when he did.
“What’s your favorite color, Sirius?” The kindergarten level question seemed to throw Sirius off, but that period of time was when Remus’s last true social enrichment had taken place, so the ravenette was going to have to get over it.
“I like dark green.”
“Why?”
“It reminds me of forests and the smell of rain. I like the smell of rain. What’s your favorite color?” Some of the shakiness began to exit Sirius’s tone, becoming further absent the longer they spoke.
“I like light brown.” Remus had expected that to be the last of the conversing. Surprisingly, it wasn’t.
“Why?” A reciprocation.
“Light brown reminds me of wood and old novels. I like reading books while it rains.”
The ravenette offered Remus a small smile. With how happy it made him, it was the bare minimum to offer one back.
“What kinds of books do you read?” Sirius asked quietly. Even with the soundproofing charms on the cabins, the boy seemed terrified of being too loud.
“Mostly nonfiction. Defense against the dark arts is super cool, so I usually read about that. Do you read a lot?”
“I suppose. I mostly hop genres, though.” The longer they talked, the more that the boy seemed to come out of his shell. Finally, he lifted his head.
Remus winced. Sitting directly on the boy’s cheek was a large bruise, not lacking in verisimilitude to his own. Before Sirius could notice, the brunette covered up his grim expression with a smile, pointed at his bruise, and said,
“We’re twinning!”
The bright reaction stunned the ravenette. It was just about the opposite of what he had expected from the peppy boy that had entered his cabin. But… it wasn’t unwelcome.
“We are.” The reply came with a chuckle.
For the next few minutes, the two first years sat in silence. Comfortable silence.
And wasn’t that the exact opposite of what Sirius was used to.
In the House of Black, there were only two manners of being. The first of which, and the most common of which, was stiff quiet. Sirius lived in an almost perpetual moment of waiting for the other shoe to drop. He would maintain near perfection just so he could maintain that silence and postpone the coming of the second mood. That being noise.
The noise was the worst. Something little studied by wizarding scientists (for obvious reasons) was how the cruciatus curse had differentiating effects between people. Reportedly, for Regulus, he felt like he was out of air. He could never breathe, much less yell back at their mother. Especially not with the excruciating pain. All he could find the oxygen to do was agree or disagree to be more obedient, and it didn’t take much torture to decipher what the better option was.
For Sirius, along with the blinding agony (which seemed to be the only shared effect between all receivers of the curse), everything was too loud. His ears became sensitive to everything around him, easily overstimulating his senses. The curse would come bearing the sounds of nails on a chalkboard, the squealing of metal against metal, and every unpleasant sound one could conjure up. That, along with the screaming of his mother as she cast the cruciatus onto him, was the perfect equation for both hell and a quiet, shaking boy sitting in a cabin all alone on his way to Hogwarts.
However, even amongst all of the silence in The House of Black, Sirius had never found comfort in it. And if he unwittingly had, it was still nothing in comparison to the way he felt in those few minutes.
But soon, and somehow not to Sirius’s upset, the silence was over. In its place was Remus’s voice.
“Can I help you with that shaking?”
The ravenette had barely realized that he still was. It was practically chronic at this point. If your hands are near constantly being forced into the air, what’s the point in taking them down? His body apparently didn’t see one, and certainly not so soon after a crucio.
Instead of voicing his doubts, he just replied, “Sure.”
“Can I see your hand?” At the brunette’s request, Sirius’s heart slightly fluttered. He had the momentary, customary panic of ‘Is he flirting with me?!’, before reassuring himself of how unlikely that was.
“Go for it.”
Remus’s hand was so warm in contrast to the ravenette’s, as the latter had always found himself to run cold. When he was a kid, Regulus teased him about being as cold-blooded as a snake, making him an obvious Slytherin. His mother took to the idea with pride. Somehow that was worse.
When the brunette began to hold his hand, warmth blossoming on the spots in which they made contact, the shakiness there ceased.
“I’m sure there’s some kind of science behind it that I can’t remember, but when someone’s body temperature rises, they stop shaking as much. It’s a trick I learned in one of my foster homes, some poor kiddo with chronic pain.” Remus spoke the part about his foster home quickly, but that didn’t stop Sirius from noticing.
“You were a foster kid?”
“Still am.” It was said in a bright yet somewhat bitter tone.
“That sucks.” Even though the ravenette had considered what would happen should his mother cut him out of the family tree, that being adoption, foster homes, or homelessness, he had never actually met anyone from either of those three backgrounds.
“Indeed it does.” The words lingered in the air for a moment before Remus continued on. “Now, do you want to stop shaking altogether? Even though we would have to basically lay on top of each other, I take it that would be much more comfortable than what you’re dealing with currently.” Although the boy was clearly anxious, his vocabulary seemed to only get larger.
After another moment of customary gay panic, Sirius managed to choke out a vague,
“Sure.”
And so it was.
Remus moved himself to the same side of the cabin as Sirius, laying his head down on the ravenette’s lap. Pulling out an unlabeled leather book and a pen, the brunette began to read, leaving small annotations throughout the novel.
The two fell back into the comfortable silence that Sirius had quickly come to enjoy. Absent-mindedly, he placed his now still hand on the head of the boy laying on top of him. It warmed back up nicely.
For a while, Sirius just stared out the window. The landscape flew past, providing constant entertainment. He could feel wind lightly hitting his face from the slightly ajar window. When his face grew too cold from exposure, Sirius turned his head to the book in Remus’ hands.
It seemed to be quite serious, a horror novel in fact. The ravenette read, ‘Annie tried to run, to escape, but she could not move.’ Of course, Sirius recognized the recurring language. It, however uninteresting, seemed consistent with most supposedly terrifying books. The boy laying atop the ravenette seemed to agree with him, because he grunted.
“God, this is rubbish.” Remus muttered.
“Why would you read such a stupid trope?” Sirius asked bluntly. Then he froze.
Suddenly, the shakiness was back tenfold. How could he say that?! Remus was sure to hit him, and he’d deserve it. Despite being miles from his mother, Sirius could feel her wand raising, hear the rustling of her long sleeves as she prepared to cast the curse on him, he could almost tell how she would enunciate it, with a casual laziness that always sent shivers down his spine. Always with a name that wasn’t his on the tip of her tongue. The name of a daughter that Walburga could not process her loss of. Even though Sirius was not a girl, he was not her, he was not Sop-
Remus chuckled.
“Masochism, I suppose. Do you have any better recommendations?”
It took a moment for the ravenette to come to terms with the fact that he had not been hit, nor cursed, nor yelled at.
“Why aren’t you angry?” Sirius couldn’t help but ask.
“Why would I be?” Remus returned.
“I was so mean. I’m not supposed to say something like that.”
“Hun, when you grow up in foster care, you hear worse. Plus, you were right either way. I said it myself, that novel is rubbish. I’m not angry at you.”
“Okay.” It was an odd feeling, getting away with something usually so taboo.
“So, about those recommendations.”
“Oh- I don’t read much fiction. I quite enjoy some titles about beasts, though, if you’d be interested in that.” Sirius offered, reverting back to the tone his mother had taught him to compensate for lack of social skills.
“That’d be great!”
The ravenette explained the novels and their contents to the brunette beneath him, drinking in the astounded look on his face every time Sirius mentioned a rarer title.
“You’ve read The Beats of Beasts too?! I loved the chapter on echolocation between different types of sirens, and the part about the knocking of unicorn horns to signify certain going-ons.” Remus started to move around and squirm a bit as he spoke, clearly excited.
“It’s a great book. Personally, I thought the pages about werewolves were interesting. Do you think that they really howl due to agony and contempt towards the moon, rather than just looking for a pack?”
Suddenly the brunette grew very quiet, letting out a very hasty, “I dunno, maybe.” before clamming up.
Sirius was alright with however long it took to draw Remus back from his shell, but he didn’t get much of a chance to. Only minutes afterward, the train slowed to a stop. It was time to depart.
Both of the preteens took their trunks from where they had stowed them in near silence, and Sirius tried not to focus too much on the quickly-fading warmth where Remus had not long ago been laying.
He tried even harder not to focus too much on how unlike a slytherin the brunette seemed like.
Most likely, the two would not see each other again.
And for some reason, upon recognizing that, Sirius felt like crying. He had never felt even a fraction of the upset he did now for an almost-stranger. Not even at the prospect of never seeing his parents again.
Funny.