“Black, Cassiopeia!”
Cassio cringed at the sound of her full name. She had always hated it – it was too long, too fancy and continuously reminded her of what kind of family she had been born into. She had gone through various short versions of it, none of which felt entirely right and none of which her parents had even considered using. Cassio was the one that came closest to fitting her yet.
With a glare in her eyes and a nervous squirm in her chest, Cassio made her way up to the sorting hat. A short, very weird and non-verbal conversation later, the hat shouted “GRYFFINDOR” and Cassio took it off with a huge grin on her face. She loved being different and being sorted into Gryffindor sure as hell set her apart from the rest of her lot. She was very tempted to flip a V at her shocked looking cousins over at the Slytherin table as she made her way down from the front to sit with the other Gryffindors. All too soon, Cassio was bored out of her mind by the sorting and took a look at the people sitting around her instead, wondering if she could involve any of them in a fun conversation. She knew a lot of house elf jokes!
Luckily it didn’t come to that as James Potter, whom Cassio had met on the train and had immediately got along with incredibly well, was sorted into Gryffindor and took the seat to Cassio’s left. He held up his flat palm towards her.
“We made it, Cassio!”
“Long time, no see, James. Hell yeah!”
She gave him high five.
They easily fell back into their joking chatter from the train ride and it didn’t take long from then for the feast to appear in front of them. They ate and laughed and James made an extra effort to include the shy, chubby boy sitting across from them - Peter Pettigrew - into their conversation. Every now and then, Cassio’s eyes were drawn to the cute, thin guy with a pale face and a tiny overbite, who was deeply involved in a conversation with the redhead James found so interesting. Cassio didn’t get it. She was much more intrigued by the silver-pink-ish shadow of a scar that was running along cute-guy’s soft jawline. In this manner, the feast flew by in a snap and the Gryffindor prefects were leading them to their common room. James and Cassio were both on a sugar high from too much pudding and they might have accidentally almost caused Peter to fall through one of the trick steps. It was alright though, Peter was already laughing about it when they had to part ways to go up to their respective dorms.
“Well, I guess this is goodbye, lads. I wish you all the best. Try not to miss me too much.”
“Oh, Cassio! My heart is aching when I think of the distance that will separate us tonight. Farewell, my dear!”
Cassio smirked at James one final time before turning around and following the other girls up to the dorm. She wished she could just stay in James’ dorm. She hadn’t exactly made the best experiences sharing a room with other girls. Though, admittedly, these experiences had all included her lovely cousins, who were constantly gossiping, wearing way too much lipgloss and were usually doing everything their parents told them to do. Cassio just wished she would never become like any of them. She’d much rather be like her uncle Alphard- “AAARGH!”
Cassio rubbed the back of her head, which had hit the floor of the common room fairly hard. “Ouch! What the hell?” Slowly she sat up and took a look around. The few people who hadn’t went to bed already were all staring at her, James and his roommates included. One of the older girls reacted first, hurrying towards her.
“Oh, Merlin! Are you okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. What happened?” Cassio let the girl help her up.
“The stairs. They- I don’t know, the Prewett twins probably messed with them.”
“Hey! We did nothing of the sort,” two redheaded boys exclaimed from another corner of the room. Cassio glanced over at the stairs to determine how she had ended up on the floor – just to find that there weren’t any stairs left. The steps had transformed into a steep stone slide.
“Is this the same thing like with the trick steps?”
The older girl exchanged a glance with one of her friends. Cassio wasn’t in the mood to be patient right then. “What?”
“This is what usually happens if boys try to enter our dorms.”
An eery silence fell over the room only broken by someone sliding down the stairs-slide. It was the prefect girl. “What is going on here?”
Nobody answered. Probably because no one actually had a clue as to what was going on. But something in Cassio’s mind finally slotted into place. And when he said it out loud, he knew it was the truth.
“Isn’t it obvious? I’m a boy!”
Someone huffed a disbelieving laugh. Another guy shouted something along the lines of “sure you are!” The prefect called everyone back to silence, before giving her thoughts on the matter.
“You’re a girl. Everyone here can see that. It was probably just a prank from the Prew-“
“It wasn’t our prank!”
“I honestly don’t care, alright,” she all but shouted, “I am tired and we have classes tomorrow, so can everyone just go to bed now?”
Students groaned and started to move towards their dorms. Cassio didn’t. Prefect-girl wasn’t impressed. “Please don’t make this complicated. Just go up the stairs.”
“I won’t. I don’t belong there. I‘m a boy!”
“Please don’t give me this bullshit on the first night. You’re not a boy. You’re Cassiopeia Black-“
“If he says he’s a boy, then he’s a bloody boy!”
Cassio spun around with wide eyes to find James stepping up behind him, pushing his glasses that had once again slid down his nose back into place where they magnified the determined glint in his dark eyes. James tore his glare from the prefect in order to lock eyes with Cassio instead and give him an encouraging smile. Cassio smiled back gratefully.
“Well, I’m sorry-“ she didn’t sound sorry at all “-but I can’t let a girl sleep in the boy’s dorms. It’s against the rules.”
“Well, that’s the whole point isn’t it?” Cassio almost snapped his head in his eagerness to see his second knight in shining armour. He considered upgrading him to first knight in shining armour when he discovered it to be the cute guy with the scar and the overbite. “He just said that he’s a boy, not a girl. And that’s the only thing that makes sense, considering the stairs didn’t let him in, isn’t it?”
“Exactly!” Peter’s voice was squeaky and high when he joined the other three boys in the middle of the common room, facing the prefect. “And even if sh- if he wasn’t a boy, he still can’t get into the girl’s dorm. What do you want to do? Make him sleep in the common room?”
“That’s actually not such a bad idea, we could figure out everything else in the mor-“
“No!” James pushed out his chest, trying his best to appear intimidating. “He will stay with us if that’s what he wants! Tell McGonagall about it if you have to, we don’t care!” Cute-guy flinched a little, indicating that he did care, but he didn’t budge either way. Neither did Peter.
Prefect-girl heaved a tired sigh. “Merlin, I will really have to put up with you four the whole year, won’t I? Why was I excited to be prefect again? Fuck, did I say that out loud? I’m sorry, I just- Whatever, do what you will, I’m going to bed now.” And with that she left over the now-stairs-again.
James grinned at Cassio as if he was Christmas in person and clapped him on the back joyously. “Let’s go take a look at our new home, shall we?” Cassio grinned back and the other two joined in as well. Together, the four of them made their way up to the boys dorm. When they entered, they found four beds with red hangings and all their luggage. Including Cassio’s trunk which was placed next to the second bed on the right. His smile grew even wider.
“I knew I was right!”
A few hours later, Cassio was still lying awake. He was excited and confused and somehow also a little ashamed and afraid. He was especially worried about what his parents would say. Not only about him being a boy, but also about him being a Gryffindor. And how much harder would life become for him from now on? His new roommates had stood up for him, but everyone else? They had laughed and ridiculed him. They didn’t believe him. And why would they? Why would anyone ever believe him that he was a boy? He knew it was the truth, but how was that even possible? His body was the one of a girl!
Cassio heard a toilet being flushed and soon after a small sliver of light shone through between the joints of his bed curtains. “James? That you?”
“Cassio? You want me to join you?”
Cassio hesitated for a second. He had never before shared his bed with anyone who wasn’t Regulus. ”Okay.”
One of the curtains was pushed aside before a dark, slim figure in snitch pyjamas settled on the edge of his bed. “Scoot over.” Cassio complied and offered James to crawl under the blanket as well. Silence ensued, only disrupted by Peter’s irregular snores. After a minute of them both lost in their own thoughts, James turns to face Cassio. “Are you alright?”, he whispers, brows furrowed in concern. His eyes seem weirdly small without the glasses magnifying them.
“I’m- I’m fine. I’m awesome! I’m not freaking out or anything, I-“ James clapped a hand across his mouth.
“Shh! Calm down, Cassio-“ Cassio was so sick of that name “-we don’t want to wake the others.” Cassio took a deep breath and nodded. James took his hand away. “So what are you freaking out about?”
“I don’t know, everything? It’s all a mess right now. In my head, you know?”
“Do you feel somehow uncomfortable here? Can I do anything to help?”
“No, it’s- I love it here. With you. And Peter. And Remus-“ that was cute-guy’s name (was it okay for him to find guys cute now that he was a guy himself?) “-and in Gryffindor in general. It’s just all new and… weird. Even though I’ve obviously been a boy all my life, it just feels different now and it freaks me out. And I hate my name.”
“Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Okay, there’s a point to start. Finding you a new name can’t be too hard, right?”
“You mean… I can just change my name? Just like that?”
“Sure! Why not? And even if maybe not everyone will understand, Remus, Pete and I will always be here and we’ll call you by your name. We are all brothers now.”
“We are?”
“Yes, we are.”
“Cool. You know, I’ve always kinda liked the name Sirius. It’s been running in my family for centuries and while I couldn’t care less about our family customs, I always did like Grandpa Sirius the best. Apart from Uncle Alphard maybe. It’s also the name of the brightest star in the Universe, did you know that?”
“Sirius. I like it. It fits you. Are you sure, you’re Sirius about this, though?”
Sirius snorted an inelegant laugh and James had to clap his hand back over his mouth again. “Shhh!” Sirius licked the hand in response. “Yuck, Sirius! That’s disgusting!”
“Shhh, we don’t want to wake the others, do we?” Sirius mocked James with a grin. James grinned back. They started giggling.
“Are y’guys done, yet? I’d like to go back to sleep now. We have classes tomorrow, y’know?”
“Sorry, Remus. We’re done now.”
“Sirius is nice, by the way.”
The next morning, Sirius was nervously twitching around on his chair in the back of the Transfiguration classroom. James was sitting to his right, Peter to James’ right and Remus to Peter’s right. Maybe Sirius would have preferred sitting a little closer to cute-guy, but right now he was too busy chewing off his nails to worry about that.
“Will you stop? It’s going to be fine!”
“How do you know, James? They’re all going to be calling me by that name and if McGonagall finds out about all of this she’s probably going to make me-“
“Black! Potter! The lesson is starting now and I doubt any of you want to lose points during your very first lesson.”
“Yes, Professor!”
“Okay, let’s check if all students actually found the classroom or if I will have to make Sir Nicholas start another search party. Let me see…” Professor McGonagall picked a list from her desk and no one dared to move a single finger while she scanned it with her eyes. Sirius could’ve sworn, he saw her lips twitch a little, as if she had wanted to smile but didn’t want to lose her strict reputation before she even started teaching.
“I’m going to read your names alphabetically by surname and you will raise your hand distinctively above your head if you are called. Understood?”
“Yes, Professor,” the class chorused.
“Good. Black, Sirius?”