Chapter 6
“I still don’t understand why you’re going,” Peter complained, sprawled out on his bed.
“You can survive a night without us, mate,” James joked. He stood in front of the bathroom mirror, the door open, struggling to do up the small buttons on the dress robes his mother had sent him. Peter made a scoffing noise and Sirius said, from where he was combing his hands through his hair,
“I don’t understand why we’re going either.”
“It’s like Remus said,” James explained for the umpteenth time, “We’re making connections.”
“You’re having a laugh,” Peter exclaimed, incredulously.
“You’re jealous,” James grinned.
“Right,” Peter sighed, rolling his eyes, “Because I want to go to some professor’s party. Where is Remus, anyway?” He sat up.
“Library, I reckon,” Sirius said, striding toward the door. James stowed his wand in his robes and joined him,
“‘Night, Pete.”
Sirius had not been in Slughorn’s office before but he doubted it usually had cream satin drapes hanging from the ceiling or a long table in the centre of the room, though Slughorn did seem like one who might. When Sirius and James arrived they noticed it was mostly Slytherins there, those they’d seen in passing anyway, and a large chunk of them were older students who seemed truly comfortable, in small clusters throughout the room.
“Mr Black! Mr Potter!” Slughorn strode across the room jovially, “You made it! Peppermint?” He held out a glass bowl full of colourful candies. Sirius and James both took one, and nodded in thanks.
“Ah ha!” Slughorn exclaimed distractedly, swerving to greet someone else. Lily and Severus had entered behind them and were then talking to Slughorn. Severus’s dark eyes found Sirius and James, and he sneered at them over Lily’s shoulder.
“Git,” Sirius said under his breath, biting down on the peppermint in his mouth.
“Hey,” James nudged Sirius’s side, “We don’t want to be here, do we?”
“No,” Sirius looked at James, incredulously, “No, we don’t want to be here. Have you already forgotten all my whinging about having to come?”
“No, no,” James said, “Snape’s here.”
“Yeah,” Sirius was failing to understand what James was on about.
“Well, we have a reputation to uphold,” A grin spread across James’s face once he knew Sirius understood.
“What do you have in mind, then?” Sirius shifted slightly closer to James, prepared to scheme.
They really did not have much of a reputation yet, but it was at least known throughout the first-years that James Potter and Sirius Black were in some sort of private war with Severus Snape.
It took barely five minutes to come up with an, in their minds, absolutely brilliant idea.
It felt odd to be so dressed up in a room full of other young people, but felt uncomfortably reminiscent of family gatherings to Sirius. Especially when his cousins came in the door as everyone was taking their seats around the table.
“The Black sisters!” Slughorn boomed, “I was wondering if you would show up!”
“Of course!” Bellatrix said, with a false warmth, “Our parents would like us to pass on a ‘hello’ from them.”
“Oh, how kind!” Slughorn beamed, then gestured to the empty seats beside Sirius, “Why don’t you sit with your cousin? No doubt you have some catching up to do, seeing as you’ve been unfortunately separated by houses.”
As Bellatrix turned to Sirius’s end of the table, something like irritation passed over her face. Sirius knew this irritation was directed at Slughorn, probably for bringing up the Gryffindor ordeal. After years of being around Bellatrix, Sirius knew that her face when she was irritated with him was different. It was the same face she made when he won hide and seek against her when he was four, when he lost a Quidditch match for them when he was seven, when he tried her Hogwarts robes on without asking when he was ten, and of course when he was sorted into Gryffindor just five months before.
Fortunately for Sirius, Andromeda hurriedly took the seat next to him, Bellatrix shooting her a questioning look. Sirius had been meeting with Andromeda, really the only time he used the library, to talk and sometimes just sit in silence doing homework. He missed her. He knew she had had her sisters and friends, once she got to Hogwarts; but other than Regulus, she had been Sirius’s best friend for as long as he could remember.
Mostly Sirius tried to eat without acknowledging them, until Bellatrix made a remark about Narcissa staring over at someone across the room,
“Cissy is making eyes at the Malfoy boy again.”
“I am not,” Narcissa said, her cheeks flushing.
“Oh, don’t bother her about it, Bella,” Andromeda told her sister. Bellatrix looked affronted, as if Andromeda had personally offended her. She opened her mouth, closed it, huffed audibly, and said,
“How about we talk about what’s gotten into you lately… You’re acting differently, and I don’t like it. You are overly sensitive and, frankly, irritating. Not to mention how much time you spend out of the common room doing god knows what. And I know for a fact you haven’t been with Augustus Rookwood because I asked him.”
“You talked to Augustus about this?” Andromeda had seemed bothered until Bellatrix said that.
“Wouldn’t you–”
“This is between us!” Andromeda interrupted, “Don’t bring him into this!”
“I’m worried about my sister!” Bellatrix said, not bothering to keep her voice low. But nobody else seemed to notice, too focused on their own conversations.
“Oh please! You’re not worried about anyone but yourself!” Andromeda blurted out. Bellatrix became very still and cocked her head, gazing intently at Andromeda’s face. She looked genuinely offended then, though Sirius really couldn’t tell.
“That’s what you think?” She asked, quietly.
“I– no,” Andromeda started, “Not really.”
“You know I can tell when you’re lying, right?” Bellatrix snapped. Narcissa apparently thought it was time to intervene because she laid her fork down and said,
“His name is Lucius, by the way.”
Andromeda seemed to cling to this, turning her attention to her younger sister. Bellatrix dropped the subject but still looked somewhat tense.
“Do you think you’ll marry him?” she asked. This made Sirius say,
“I thought you were supposed to marry one of the Rosier boys.”
“The Malfoys are pure-blood, I’m sure nobody would have a problem with it.” Andromeda mentioned.
“Why are you even talking about marriage anyway?” James jumped in, “She’s thirteen.”
A slightly scathing chuckle left Bellatrix’s lips, and she said,
“Oh, us Blacks have future husbands picked years in advance. Narcissa is late, as far as our grandparents are concerned.” Narcissa rolled her eyes and picked her fork back up.
It wasn’t until everyone had finished eating, and only a low rumble of chatter continued, that cherry pie appeared. That’s when James sprang to action. He pointed his wand carefully under the table at Severus and muttered a new incantation he had just learned, low enough so the person on his other side couldn’t hear.
Immediately insects crawled out of the piece of pie, but Severus only noticed when it was mere inches away from his mouth. He let out a startled shout and dropped the fork, springing out of his chair. Everyone at the table turned to him, Lily looking up worriedly. Sirius and James clutched at each other’s arms under the table, stifling their laughter. Nobody seemed to notice, but Andromeda who glanced at Sirius, her lips turned slightly upward.
Severus however, stared straight across the table at them until Lily whipped out her wand and vanished the insect-pie.
The next few days passed and nobody said anything, to Sirius at least, about Severus’s pie being insect ridden. So he and James suspected they were off the hook. Improving matters, Severus sneered across the dungeon corridor on the way back from Potions the next Monday,
“I suspect I won’t see you at any more Slug Club meetings, as Professor Slughorn knows it was you.” But Slughorn didn’t say anything for the next week so it seemed they were safe. Until, of course, Severus’s eventual retaliation, whenever that may be.
By the time mid-April had eventually rolled around and the snow around Hogwarts was all melted, Sirius felt it was time for another midnight expedition. He brought the idea up at breakfast one morning and James practically launched himself out of his seat.
“Yes!” he exclaimed, “Next week!”
“I can’t do next week,” Remus said, behind his glass of orange juice.
“Why?” Sirius demanded. He was becoming more and more suspicious of Remus’s whereabouts, still not believing his claims about being ill, though he did look it.
“My mum is ill. I’m going home to visit her,” he answered breezily, “Only for a few days.”
Sirius instantly felt guilty.
“Oh…sorry,” he muttered.
“No, it’s alright,” Remus assured him, “She’s ill often, so it’s nothing new. I’m used to it by now.”
Sirius felt a pang of sadness for Remus, but they all agreed to wait until he was back and the conversation was done.
Two weeks later, James was whirling the invisibility cloak over them. It was always a challenge travelling under the cloak, not only because the four of them almost didn’t fit, but also because they all had different ideas on directions.
“Where are we going?” Peter asked, as they shuffled down a staircase.
“I’ve barely even been on the third floor opposite the Charms corridor.” James led the way.
“No, but next on the list is the first floor,” Peter said, then audibly clamped his mouth shut. Sirius swivelled his head in Peter’s direction.
“List?” he asked wearily, “Are you still mapping where we’re going?”
“No,” Peter said a little too quickly. Sirius lunged for Peter’s pocket, where a piece of parchment was sticking out.
“Get off me!” Peter said loudly. They all tripped down the last few steps of the staircase but managed to stay upright. Sirius finally looped his arm around Peter to yank the parchment out, holding it out of his reach, on the other side of the cloak.
“Why are you even doing this, it’s stupid,” Sirius said, “The whole point is to memorise our way around the castle. If we map it, it’s not memorization.”
“It’s not stupid!” Peter argued, “And why are you so determined to memorise the whole school? What do you earn from that?”
“Pride, actually. No first-years know their way around the school,” Sirius answered.
Peter rolled his eyes and lunged to push the arm holding the parchment out of the way. Sirius jumped back, his arm still outstretched, in doing so uncovered himself from the cloak. He saw James look around, then notice the corridor was clear. Peter came forward again and they both tumbled to the ground, fumbling for the pitifully small piece of parchment. Before Sirius knew it, Remus had picked it up.
“Wait, Peter, you've been making a map?” Remus asked, peering down at tiny messy scrawls of corridors and staircases, “I could use this.”
“You’re taking his side?” Sirius jumped up, dramatically. Remus just pushed past and started walking down the corridor, staring down at Peter’s map.
“Don’t you want to get back under the cloak?” James called down the corridor, as Sirius and Peter covered themselves with the cloak again.
“There’s not much room under there anyway,” Remus said, dismissively.
Somehow, Sirius found himself following with James and Peter under the invisibility cloak, Remus striding ahead, now and then jotting things down on the map.
“He stole my map,” Peter muttered indignantly to Sirius’s right.
They kept walking for only five minutes longer. Sirius was starting to get restless, honestly.
“This is brilliant,” Remus said, up ahead, stopping to write something down.
“My idea if anyone remembers,” Peter said, under his breath.
“Your brilliant idea, Peter,” Remus turned his head slightly, like he’d heard what Peter said. Peter turned a little pink.
Remus continued. Sirius groaned as if it was the most useless night of his life. James exclaimed,
“Wait! I’ve got an idea!” Making Sirius and Peter jump, Remus freeze halfway through opening a door, revealing a small broom cupboard. James energetically gestured toward one of the school brooms in the cupboard. Sirius realised what he meant and just about launched himself into James’s side.
“What?” Remus asked, looking blankly a little to the left of where the three boys under the cloak were.
“Right,” James ripped of the cloak, bunching it up in his arms, “I haven’t flown a broom in ages and–”
“Since last week in flying class,” Peter reminded him. James waved that off.
“I mean, really flown a broom without supervision,” he said the word with disgust, “And I know Sirius wants to fly.”
Remus’s shoulders fell slightly and he said,
“But I don’t–”
“Look, this is perfect,” James interrupted, “Everyone’s asleep and there’s a whole cupboard of brooms at our disposal.”
“James–”
“Look, I know flying isn’t your strong suit, but it’ll be fun. Even Peter wants to,” James looked over at Peter.
“Uh…yeah, okay,” Peter said, seeing James’s expression.
They all waited, until Remus finally sighed,
“Fine.”
James shouted happily, and he and Sirius threw themselves into the broom cupboard behind Remus.
“Shut up, though,” Remus said, glancing furtively down the corridor.
Half an hour later, the boys walked across the grounds to the quidditch pitch carrying the best quality school brooms they could find in that cupboard, which turned out to be twenty year old Shooting Stars. James was practically writhing with joy. Sirius was trying to be that excited but couldn’t shake off a voice in the back of his head. That voice that said, ‘what about Regulus’. Sirius had never flown without his brother before.
The second they reached the outskirts of the quidditch pitch, James was up in the air whooping like it was the best day of his life. As James did a lap, Sirius saw Remus try to catch his eye but he swung his leg over the broom and kicked off, watching Remus and Peter grow smaller as he gained height. As soon as he was level with the topmost goalposts on either end, about thirty feet above the ground, James shot past him. Sirius laughed and followed close behind. He gained speed and soon enough they were side by side, zig-zagging back and forth and up and down. It felt like they were perfectly in tune with each other.
After the third lap Sirius saw James disappear out of the corner of his eye, dropping down to where their friends were still watching. Though first he, of course, had to show off with a spiralling dive missing the grass by mere inches.
“Come on, you’ve done it in flying lessons,” James was saying to Remus, when Sirius landed beside them. Peter was already hovering two feet in the air. Remus looked sceptical,
“I don’t trust you,” he said.
“Liar,” James grinned, “You know how to do it. Then once you’re up there it’s easy.”
Eventually they got Remus, clutching the broom, up in the air. Most of the time Sirius and James played flying games James had heard of, but they would go back to keep Remus company. Peter seemed slightly unsure on a broomstick, but definitely not as shaky as Remus as he joined them.
When they could faintly hear the clock up at the castle chime midnight, James decided they should probably go back to Gryffindor Tower. Sirius felt a strong pull to keep flying as he dismounted, but he wasn’t given any more time to think about it. James and Peter were already planning the next one, while Remus looked extremely uncertain,
“Next time, we have to find a Quaffle or something,” James was saying as they approached the castle steps, “We could try breaking into the broom shed. Bit stupid they teach us Alohomora, don’t you think–”
He cut himself off and stopped walking abruptly, making Sirius and Peter almost run into his back. Sirius looked up irritatedly, but felt his body slacken instantly.
“Potter! Black! Pettigrew!” McGonagall was marching toward them across the Great Hall, a stormy look on her face.
“That’s not good,” Peter stated under his breath, as she stopped in front of them.
“Oh, Mr Lupin, you’re here too,” she said, letting a bit of surprise flash over her face, “Why don’t we take a trip to my office?” It was obviously not a question.
They all trekked up to the third floor behind McGonagall. Sirius exchanged a look with James as they were led into her office,
“How did she know?” he mouthed. James shrugged back.