Chapter 8
When Sirius’s head arrived back in the common room, he was instantly distracted by the pain where his knees were pushing on stone, so it took him a couple moments to realise his friends were staring at him. James especially, was gawping.
“Occlumency?” he asked, hesitantly.
Sirius wished he had made them leave the room.
“Sirius…does your mum use Legilimency on you and Regulus?” James said, seeming very concerned.
“I know it’s not normal, alright?” Sirius snapped, “I’ve known it wasn’t normal since I brought it up to some kid at a Sacred Twenty-Eight party when I was seven.” the corners of his mouth twitched up slightly, “Sort of funny, actually, you should have seen his face.”
James made a face like he had a bitter taste in his mouth and said,
“Did you think it was? Normal. Before that?”
“I supposed, yeah,” Sirius said, averting his eyes, getting more and more irritated by the conversation, “I- I don’t want to talk about it.”
“But–”
“Just leave me be!” Sirius exclaimed, louder than he should have, and did not storm up to the dormitory (but walked) so as not to awaken the whole tower. He crawled into his bed and violently shoved the curtains closed. Not two minutes later, he heard the others climbing the staircase. As he had left the door open, he could hear them murmuring. Probably talking about him.
As Sirius stared up at a spot on the ceiling, he felt his heartbeat slowing down to a more average pace. What was he doing? He was going to lose his friends, and all because of how careful he was not being. He needed to stop having outbursts like that.
Their voices stopped and the door closed, Peter, Remus, and James moving toward their individual four-posters. But James didn’t go to his own bed, he pulled back the curtains around Sirius’s.
“Sirius,” he said softly and Sirius’s eyes snapped to James’s face. James elbowed him gently and Sirius complied by shifting to the side so James could lay down beside him.
“I didn’t want to push you,” James said, when they were both still.
“No, it’s all right,” Sirius said, the word ‘sorry’ on the tip of his tongue but unable to be released, “I’d just rather talk about..not that.”
“Alright,” said James, “You know you can tell us anything though. We’re mates, the four of us.”
“Best mates,” Sirius agreed. James nodded and repeated,
“Best mates.”
Sirius didn’t know how to tell people things. Or talk about it. He’d never had to before.
“My family is- well I don’t really know anything else- but..the Legilimency is- it’s something that’s always sort of bothered me. Like- Andromeda said once, ‘shouldn’t your own thoughts be your own?’ Of course, she knows Occlumency but was never good enough to teach anyone else. I think Bellatrix taught her and Narcissa a long time ago. Don’t know where Bellatrix would have learnt it. But my aunt and uncle have stopped using it on them since they realised it doesn’t work anymore.”
“And Bellatrix tried to teach you?” James asked.
“Yeah,” Sirius answered, “Gave up though. Apparently I was ‘doing it for the wrong reasons’. Dunno what the right reasons would be but..”
A blanket of silence fell over the two of them until James asked, quietly,
“What does it feel like?”
“Not much,” Sirius said without hesitation, “Well, it depends on how far back they go. It feels odd seeing my own memories or thoughts from a while ago. The worst feeling is knowing she’s seeing it too.”
James's arm twitched slightly but he didn’t say anything. Sirius brought his hands up to his face to rub his eyes that had become itchy with tiredness. And when Sirius was drifting off to sleep, James was getting comfortable beside him.
Sirius was eternally grateful that none of them mentioned anything about the night before’s conversation at breakfast the next day. He could tell Remus was trying a little too hard but then Peter started an argument over the marmalade and everything was back to normal.
Though, over the next few days, Sirius started having nightmares. Nightmares about Regulus being hurt, or himself trapped and not able to do anything. He hadn’t had these since he was small. But Sirius would wake up and James would be getting into bed beside him, then his sleep would be peaceful for the rest of the night. Sometimes Sirius took to sleeping in James’s bed.
“Today’s lesson will not be, unfortunately, a practical one,” Slughorn said, and there was a groan among the class, “I know, I know. But just as exciting. We will be learning about dragon’s blood and its uses, discovered by my talented friend, our Headmaster Professor Dumbledore.” He paused for effect, but there was only the usual chatter here and there, “One of the ingredients in our last potion of the year will be dragon’s blood, so open your textbooks to page 226 titled ‘The Twelve Uses of Dragon’s Blood’. Start reading, an essay will be set this week.”
As the class clamoured to open their textbooks to the right page, James let out a sigh of despair,
“Forgot my books,” he leaned back and ran his hands through his hair aggressively.
“Dramatics,” Remus said, amused, “Share with Sirius, you git.”
“Ey!” James gasped, clutching his chest in mock horror.
“How dare you?” Sirius slid his textbook closer to James and slung an arm protectively over his shoulder, “I thought I was the dramatic one?”
“Oh, believe me you still are the most dramatic person I’ve ever met,” Remus rolled his eyes, gesturing at Sirius’s offended expression. Immediately Sirius grinned,
“Good. I thought you’d betrayed me, mate.”
“Right..” Remus said absent-mindedly, already reading about the twelve uses of dragon’s blood.
Sirius and James got about two paragraphs in, until they predictably got bored and started a game of cards with a self-shuffling pack Sirius had in his book-bag. A game they often played in Potions, since Slughorn rarely bothered them to get back to work. Peter, quite surprisingly, declined to participate in a game.
“My grades need to get higher before exams or mum is gonna go mental,” he explained.
“Well,” Sirius complained, “We need a third for this game, Pete.”
“Sorry,” Peter turned his attention to his textbook, like Remus beside him.
“Remus—“
“No,” Remus cut James off before he could finish. So James turned to take a glance around the dungeons, when his eyes fell on Emmeline Vance, a tall brunette Gryffindor who played chess with Peter occasionally, sitting at the table behind them with Mary MacDonald and Marlene McKinnon.
“Emmeline,” James leaned further back on the legs of his chair, “Fancy a game?”
“Are you daft?” She said immediately, “Exams are in three weeks.”
James then looked at Mary and Marlene. Mary shook her head but Marlene stood up, ignoring Mary’s shove of disapproval. When she sat down at Sirius’s right, she said,
“How do you play?”
Sirius looked delightedly over at James, who grinned back like he knew what he was thinking. It wasn’t that Sirius had actively avoided any of the girls during any part of the year so far, just that they weren’t given as many opportunities to get to know the girls as they did the boys. He now thought it was odd he hadn’t purposefully seeked them out given the fact that three of the four only friends he had had as a child were girls. Or maybe he had been so overly excited to get to know James, Peter, and Remus. Regardless, he became more and more impressed with Marlene as they played (turned out she was a natural - and cocky about it).
“I should probably go back to studying ghosts,” Marlene said when they’d finished, and she’d won the second game, “Lily and I have a competition on for Defence Against the Dark Arts final grades.”
“Fine. So you forfeit the third game?” Sirius smirked.
“Absolutely not, what are you on about?” Marlene crossed her arms and outrightly glared at him.
“It’s out of three,”
“We never said that,”
“Well I’m saying it now,”
“Alright, then.”
Sirius knew it would work, and Marlene spent the next ten minutes showing him why he should have let her get back to studying.
“Yes!” She exclaimed, loudly, jumping to her feet as the cards folded themselves back into the packet. James and Sirius both groaned in defeat. Though, Marlene took her seat again quickly after getting a look from Slughorn across the room. He was standing before Lily and Severus, no doubt praising them continually for Severus’s work. Sirius looked away when Severus shot them a glare.
“Merlin,” Marlene muttered, still eyeing them, “He sure is prat.”
“Severus? Yeah,” James said, nodding emphatically. Marlene tore her eyes away and leaned closer to Sirius and James, saying,
“You know, near the start of term I found Lily crying over something he’d said in the girls loo and told her she should get better friends if he’s treating her that badly. She didn’t speak to me for two weeks after that. Got sort of difficult to avoid me though, seeing as we share a dorm. Mary and I try not to bring him up anymore.”
“What does she see in him?” Sirius wondered.
“All I see is prick,” James added.
“From what I’ve heard and the way she speaks about him, they’ve been best friends for a while. I think he lives in the same Muggle village as her. His dad is a Muggle, you know.”
“We know,” Sirius and James said in unison.
“I’m pretty sure his dad hits her, his mum I mean,” Marlene said, jarringly matter-of-factly, “Lily just says that he has a hard family life. I dunno, seems like it though.”
“That still doesn’t give him a pass to be horrible to everyone,” James said.
“Oh as far as I know he doesn’t always get a pass with her,” Marlene mentioned, “Which is good. Like a month ago she was proper angry at him. All I know is he had gone to McGonagall about someone out after dark and stealing his broom- or something. I dunno. But she thought it was completely unnecessary and he wouldn’t leave it. She just has a lot of empathy, Lily.”
“Wait,” James stopped her, putting his hand on her arm, “A month ago, did you say?”
“Yeah,” She said, confused.
“Sirius,” James took his hand off of Marlene and instead shook Sirius’s shoulder with it, “Severus was the one who told McGonagall about us taking the school brooms out!”
“Are you sure?” Sirius asked.
“Quite sure,” He said, “Weren’t we only just wondering why he hadn’t gotten us back yet? It is so something he would do. It’s so petty.”
Marlene leaned even further toward them squinting suspiciously, intrigued,
“What?”
The rest of the class time was spent telling her about their excursion and the quidditch pitch, leaving out the part about the map, of course, which was only for the four of them.
As everybody shuffled to stuff their books in their bags and wander off to their next classes, Marlene made them promise to take her with them the next time as she slung her bag over her shoulder,
“...and James, we had better play Quidditch this summer. We haven’t in years. I’m becoming jealous of your new friends," she jokingly confessed. Sirius chuckled as they made their way out the door.
“Definitely. Come by mine anytime this summer,” James told her, and Marlene shifted over to elbow him slightly.
“I am so going to win every game. Just like I used to.”
“Ha!” James let out a derisive noise, as if the thought was so ridiculous he wasn’t sure how to react, “As if!”
Sirius was starting to feel as though this wasn’t a joke,
“I’m confused,” he said, as they climbed the stairs, “Are you two actually friends?”
“...Yeah,” Marlene said, as if it was obvious.
Sirius swung his head to stare at James.
“It’s true,” said James, amusedly, “She was my best friend before Hogwarts.”
“Swear it!” Sirius said incredulously, stopping suddenly on the topmost stair, forcing multiple students to swerve to avoid bumping into him, “Swear on Gryffindor’s sword!” he pointed up through the castle, as if to where the sword sat in Dumbledore’s office.
“I swear on Gryffindor’s sword,” James said, looking at Sirius warily like he was losing his mind, “Why are you acting all odd about it?”
“You never told us!” Sirius said, people giving them funny looks.
“Well, there wasn’t much to tell–” James started.
“Ouch!” Marlene said dramatically, though smirking.
“You know what I mean– you both– oh, Merlin,” Sirius had started walking and James whirled around, with Marlene on his tail, to follow him.
“Where did Peter and Remus go?” Sirius muttered, leading the way to Charms, which was their next class. He was completely baffled by how he hadn’t realised that his best friend had been so close with someone who was living in such immediate proximity to them the entire term.
When they entered the Charms classroom, Peter and Remus were sitting at their usual desks near the window. Sirius made a beeline toward them, and plopped down beside Peter, making him jump,
“James hasn’t told either of you about any…I dunno- soulmate who sleeps a single dormitory away from us?”
“Soulmate is a strong word,” James said, standing with Marlene at Sirius’s shoulder.
“Oh, come on Jamesie,” Marlene teased, elbowing him again in the side, “Are we not soulmates?”
James let out an amused scoff and brought his hand up to rub his eyes. Sirius looked over at him and grinned before Flitwick stood up on his pile of books to begin teaching.
By the end of Charms, Flitwick announced it was time for everyone to hand in their essays on the Knockback Jinx they had been working on all class and the one before. The end of term sure seemed to be a lot less practical than earlier, which was quite unfortunate for Sirius. He was in the process of standing up with his essay when he and James both saw Severus stride up to Flitwick’s desk carrying his own essay. They looked at him, then looked at each other, and looked back at him. James lifted his wand, which was covered by the back of some Slytherin in front of him, and pointed it at Severus’s parchment. At once Remus’s hand shot out around Peter, pushing James’s hand down,
“What do you think you're doing?” he hissed. Sirius shrugged as if to say he wasn’t the one doing anything, but Remus frowned at him.
“Look, Remus,” James glanced at Sirius, looking caught in the act, “He lost Gryffindor twenty points. We have detention until the end of term because of him. Don’t you think we deserve a little revenge?”
“I know what you’re going to do and I really don’t think you should,” Remus said, but he let go of James’s arm and sat back in his chair, “But I reckon I can’t stop you so go on.”
James immediately raised his wand again, concentrated closely on the essay, and muttered as quietly as he could while still having to say the incantation aloud,
“Incendio,”
The parchment Severus had only just lay down on the front desk burst into flames, small flames, but flames nonetheless. Causing it to burn to a crisp in front of their eyes. Severus jumped back, startled, and Flitwick, who was most likely used to these kinds of things by then, peered suspiciously across the classroom. But James already had his wand away and Sirius had his head down examining his own half-heartedly written essay.
When Severus, after words with Flitwick who assured him he could hand it in on Monday instead, stormed out of the classroom; Lily stood up with both of their book bags and followed him.