Chapter 12
Sirius woke up, having actually slept the night before. That was something about Hogwarts; it was more often he’d get a full night’s sleep as opposed to the short chunks he usually got at Grimmauld Place, in case something would happen to him whilst vulnerable.
As he pulled on his school robes and gathered his books, Sirius could feel the presence of the record player in the corner of their dorm. The music the night before had been an unexpected forty minutes of exhilaration. Now his head was filled with Regulus; how Regulus was, where he was at that moment, why he was put in Slytherin. On their way down to the Great Hall, Sirius had his eyes ready and ears pricked for when Regulus inevitably entered his vicinity. He made himself a bowl of porridge, but barely ate any of it. It was only when James shoved his timetable into his hands that he finally came to his senses and quit staring across the Great Hall. Truthfully, he knew Regulus would come to him when he was ready, but Sirius was ready now.
“Charms now…then– great, double Potions with the Slug,” Peter was prattling off on their way back across the Entrance Hall.
That was when Sirius spotted him. Standing near the stairs to the dungeons in his Hogwarts robes, a size too big. Because practically everything was a size too big for him. Regulus was talking with two other first year Slytherins, the rough looking boy who had been sorted after Regulus and a bleach blond haired boy. Sirius noticed that his brother looked genuinely comfortable around them from what he could tell. Before he could think about what to do, his legs had carried him across the Hall, and if the sounds of realisation and quick footsteps behind him said anything, the others had followed.
Regulus took one look at Sirius and turned away, pretending he couldn’t see him.
“Regulus,” Sirius said, stopping at his side, “Are you actually ignoring me right now? You have to be taking the piss. I can’t believe you’re this upset over something so minute, you’re here now, what does it even matter?”
The boys he was with shut up and glanced continually from Regulus to Sirius. Regulus shook his head angrily and said quietly,
“Piss off.”
“I won’t piss off until you forgive me,” Sirius dropped the sarcasm in his voice, practically pleading.
“Right, well, that’s not happening,” Regulus scoffed, motioning for the two other first-years and they began descending the stairs to the dungeons. Sirius followed immediately, ignoring his friends’ nervous looks up the marble staircase. Regulus put one foot in front of the other stubbornly, Sirius trailing him with the marauders in tow. People passing the small group of Slytherins and Gryffindors made room for them in the corridors, shooting the Black brothers interested looks. Sirius shoved his hands in his pockets and pretended he couldn’t see them. Stopping suddenly in front of the Potions classroom, Regulus turned around, almost making Sirius bump into him.
“Reg, I’m serious…and also Sirius. I’m serious Sirius,” Sirius rambled, then catching Regulus’s sharp eyes, “Sorry.”
Regulus let out a half sigh, leading Sirius to think he might be getting what he wanted, but–
“Don’t you have class?” Regulus asked. Sirius squinted.
“This is Mother’s doing, isn’t it? She’s telling you not to speak to me, isn’t she?” he said, leaning forward and keeping his voice somewhat low, “They don’t have any power over you here.” he lied.
“That’s a lie,” Regulus matched Sirius’s tone, “Just leave me be, Sirius.”
Sirius clenched his jaw but stood his ground, planning to wait until he was forced to leave.
“Sirius, maybe we should leave,” James said, from behind him, tugging lightly on the sleeve of his robes, “Come back later, yeah?” Sirius ignored him. One of the Slytherin boys with Regulus stepped forward at this.
“He said to leave him alone. Go on.” the boy said.
“Who are these tossers?” Sirius directed the question to his brother.
“Sirius, Barty Crouch and Evan Rosier. Barty and Evan, Sirius,” Regulus introduced, eyes glued to his shoes. Sirius stood rooted in place, staring from Regulus to Barty and Evan, until more and more students started milling in the corridor and the Potions class door was wrenched open.
Slughorn stood in the doorway, looking jovially around at the gathered first years. Then his eyes landed on Regulus and Sirius. A very obvious change in his facial features showed how intrigued he was.
“Both of the Black brothers outside my classroom,” he said, grinning, “I am honoured.”
“Sirius was just leaving,” Regulus said quickly, glaring daggers at Sirius like he was embarrassing him. Sirius sighed and made the decision to work on it later. Regulus would cave eventually. So he turned on his heel and walked the length of the corridor and up the dungeon stairs. Nobody spoke until he turned left instead of right at the turn to the Transfiguration corridor. The footsteps behind him stopped.
“Sirius,” James called, when he was already halfway down the next corridor, “Where are you going? We have Transfiguration.”
“Yeah, I’m not going,” Sirius answered, not looking back.
“What do we tell McGonagall?” Peter asked.
“Anything,”
Sirius stayed in the dormitory for the whole first day of classes. He just couldn’t drag himself into the main areas of the school where people were sure to be looking at him funny. He started out bundling himself in his four-poster duvet, but Remus’s record player was really calling to him from the window seat. He hoped Remus wouldn’t mind as he pulled the David Bowie record out of its sleeve as carefully as he could, trying to remember everything Remus had done the night before to get it started. When the music started playing, Sirius picked up the record player and sunk into the closest bed. He didn’t know how many hours he sat on Remus’s four-poster, listening to the same record over and over. Every time he restarted the album, there were certain parts his mind got stuck on. Like on Lady Stardust Bowie sang about a boy who was a rockstar and wore makeup. There were no wizarding male rockstars he knew of who wore makeup, only girls. Did Muggle boys wear makeup too? Sirius thought that must look a little odd but he had to admit he was intrigued.
“Not that I’m complaining, but I have other records you can listen to,” Remus said, the second time he entered the dorm that day, finding Sirius still curled up in his four-poster with the same record on.
“I know. I like this one,” Sirius said, gratefully taking a plate of food Remus had brought up for him from dinner. He hadn’t even realised he was hungry until he dug into the offering of shepard’s pie.
“Hey, Remus?” Sirius called to Remus, who was sitting with his back against the four-poster eating his own plate of food. James and Peter had retreated to the common room, eventually getting tired of all the Bowie, though Sirius could not imagine ever getting tired of it.
“Yeah?” Remus replied, turning to look up at Sirius who was still sprawled out with the record player.
“What’s a cop?” Sirius asked. He assumed it was a Muggle thing, since he hadn’t heard of it before. Remus chuckled, then thought for a moment,
“They’re like Aurors, I suppose,”
“All right,”
“What’s a– a ‘lectric eye?” Sirius asked, minutes later, his head almost over the side of the mattress and his fingers interlocked on his stomach.
“Erm… I think, there, he’s talking about someone with bright blue eyes,” Remus answered, laying on the floor, his head on a stray pillow, “And I don’t know how to explain electricity. I guess it’s kind of like magic. Have you really never heard of it before?” Sirius shook his head, feeling like there was a whole other world that he’d never been able to explore. How was it that Remus had a foot in both worlds?
“It’s how record players go when they’re not enchanted, it’s how televisions work, telephones…” Remus tried to explain.#
“...And…guns? Them I think I’ve heard of,” Sirius said, as Moonage Daydream carried on.
“Yeah, but wands are much cooler,” Remus said.
Sirius went to his classes for the second day of school. Surprisingly, he didn’t earn detention from McGonagall or any other professor for not showing up for the first day of classes. It could have been because they had all collectively decided to let him do whatever he wanted that year, but Sirius had a sneaking suspicion that it was all done out of pity. They all knew how the Black family reacted to outcasts and with Regulus being sorted into Slytherin, Sirius was alone in it. He liked to think it was the former.
A couple hours into a night that week, James crawled into Sirius’s four-poster. Sirius grinned to himself. He couldn’t sleep and knowing James remembered their tradition of sleeping in each other's beds sometimes, made him happy. He grunted when James prodded him in the back.
“Get up,” James said through the dark, “We’re going out to the pitch with Marlene.”
Sirius was instantly ready. Sleep was for the weak. He grabbed his wand, his broom, and pulled on his shoes, not bothering to change out of his pyjamas. His aunt Druella had always told him to never let a girl see you in anything but day-wear, but Marlene was hardly a girl anyway.
“Isn’t Pete coming?” Sirius whispered on the way down the boys’ staircase.#
“I tried,” James whispered back, “He told me to bugger off. Nearly gouged my eyes out. Figured I’d let him be.”
Marlene was giddily waiting at the bottom of the staircases, dressed in her (blue chequered) pyjamas too and clutching her broom.
With barely a word spoken, the three of them crept their way through the castle, as quietly as they could. Sirius was glad James hadn’t brought the invisibility cloak, as much as Marlene seemed like a good friend to make, she wasn’t close enough to be in on their secret yet… If she wasn’t already in on it and he didn’t know. Were she and James still that close? Sirius made a point to ask James about that later.
The three of them flew around the quidditch pitch for hours, playing stupid little games like racing and making obstacle courses of the stands and goalposts. There wasn’t much else they could do because they didn’t have a Quaffle and best not to get in trouble so early on in the year for stealing one. It was nice to be in the air with other people who loved flying as much, if not more, than him. James and Regulus separately, did not count. Weaving mindlessly by each other in the dark, looking like large laughing figures whizzing around, it was pure bliss as far as Sirius could tell. He was so glad James had invited him. The clean cool air blowing through his hair felt like clean cool air numbing his worries for a while.
In the subsequent weeks, whenever Sirius would pass Regulus in corridors on the way to their separate classes or in the Great Hall for dinner, Regulus would ignore him. Pretending he didn’t exist, but the moment Sirius’s back was turned, he disappeared. If Sirius was completely honest with himself, he was making an effort to run into his brother. Even if Regulus wasn’t in the same year, or the same house; he felt a sort of protectiveness over him. Sirius’s entire life he’d been told to watch over Regulus. So had that just stopped when he’d been sorted into Gryffindor?
“Sirius!” Regulus snapped, whipping around, one particular time where Sirius had ‘discreetly’ followed him almost all the way to his History of Magic class, “Stop it! I’m sick of you creeping around everywhere I go! It’s unusual and people are starting to realise how odd it is.” he hissed the last part, due to multiple people who had paused in the corridor.
After that outburst Sirius had refrained, for the most part, from lurking around his brother. But that didn’t stop him from gazing at Regulus from across the Great Hall, wishing he would just forgive him. How hard could it be? Sirius’s crime had not nearly been equivalent to the punishment, had it?
Sirius explained all it to James one night. They were both lying on their backs, staring up at the canopy of James’s four-poster hangings. Sirius hadn’t been having as many nightmares as he had had at the beginning of his first year but was still comforted by being in the same space as James.
“I don’t know how it happened,” Sirius said, “I truly didn’t mean to. I was spending so much time on pranks and school–”
“Mostly pranks…” James cut in.
“Mostly pranks,” Sirius agreed, letting a smile ghost his lips, “That I genuinely forgot. Am I a horrible brother?” He lay his head to the side lazily, focusing on James’s profile while he waited for an answer.
“No,” James said, directly, “He isn’t giving you time to explain. And if he can’t value you then he doesn’t deserve you.” This made Sirius’s insides feel all warm and fuzzy.
“Thanks,” Sirius said, so quietly, blinking to stop his eyes from stinging.
It wasn’t very late. They could still hear the pads of Peter’s feet shuffling back from the loo and the low hum of something Remus was playing lowly on the record player.
“It must be strange,” James said, “To be as close with one person as you were with him, your whole life, just to lose him… Not that you’ve lost him, of course,” he said quickly, alarmed that he had said the wrong thing, “I’m sure you haven’t.”
“Close to,” Sirius muttered. James took a breath, turning to head to the side to mirror Sirius’s own,
“But you have us. You’ll always have us.”
Sirius scrunched up his face at this. Why did James have to keep saying things like that? It made him feel slightly uneasy and his face grew hot. He hoped it wasn’t noticeable.
Soon after Remus’s music died down and Peter called a quick ‘goodnight’, James’s soft snores filled the dorm. Sirius lay on his side for a while, watching his friend’s breathing shift. How could someone be so full of warmth and generosity? How hard did James have to work to stay kind? These facets of human felt so alien to Sirius, not because he wasn’t used to them but because he had difficulty feeling it in himself. Sirius thought about it until his eyes felt too heavy to stay awake.