Note:
This runs concurrently with Midwinter, but stands alone as a story.
finished 02 January 2006
Snowmelt
Sirius clambered out of the fireplace slowly, silent and frowning. Professor McGonagall glanced up from her paperwork at him. "Hello, Mister Black." Then she paused. "Is everything all right?"
The world was ending; Professor Minerva McGonagall was trying to be sympathetic. Sirius blinked in speechless horror for a moment before he recovered, drawing himself up haughtily. He was a Black, he didn't need this. "Yes. Of course."
He walked out of Professor McGonagall's office, still frowning darkly.
Christmas had not been entirely pleasant.
Sirius was used to things turning out the way he wanted them to, and if they didn't he could be certain that it wasn't his fault. He was Sirius Black, eldest son and heir of the Most Ancient and Noble House of Black; that seemed like reason enough.
On Christmas afternoon Regulus had run to their parents, complaining in his high, whining voice that the cousins were talking about how even Severus Snape, the half-blood, had made Slytherin, whereas Sirius had not. He'd been slapped for his pains, and Sirius had felt a surge of reassurance. Sirius was a Black and Snape was half-blood; there was no way he, Sirius, could ever be upstaged by a blood traitor's son. To even imply that they could be compared at all was to dirty the family name.
All the same, Sirius thought, distantly, it had not been quite right. There was no way he could disappoint because he was Sirius Black, but nevertheless he'd got the impression that he had, somehow, failed to meet expectations.
It hurt, as nothing had hurt before. He'd entered Gryffindor in the secure knowledge that it would all work out, and in any case he hadn't wanted to be stuck in the same House as Bellatrix and Narcissa, anyway.
But then he'd returned home for Christmas and listened to his parents discussing the merits of transferring him to Durmstrang – on the one hand it would put a stop to this ridiculous state of affairs, but on the other it would be like admitting failure, having to withdraw and retreat. Ignoble, and undignified.
Sirius did not understand all of it, but it upset him. It meant that things had changed, subtly and disconcertingly.
He trudged past Remus Lupin, sitting on his bed reading, and collapsed face-down on his own bed, wishing James was there. Potter was all right. James Potter was pureblood and had a sense of humour, but Lupin was boring. He was always reading and there was something hopelessly ancient, almost teacherish about him.
Remus Lupin was also the one who had broken Severus Snape's nose in a classroom duel, an inconsistency that seemed now to be deeply important. Sirius felt sudden gratitude; at some point, he didn't know when, he'd fixed upon the decision that it was all Snape's fault.
He lifted his head fractionally from his pillow, turned to Remus and muttered, gruffly, "You're all right."
Remus stared at him, eyebrows raised in bewilderment. Sirius shut his eyes, regretting it already. It was tiresome; Remus had something of Peter Pettigrew about him, a touch of awkward hesitation, when he talked with Sirius or James.
He heard Remus moving, looking for something. Despite himself Sirius opened his eyes, in time to see the other boy holding out an open box of chocolate. "Want some?"
It was Honeydukes chocolate – cheap stuff, Sirius concluded, pre-packaged chocolate – and Remus' expression was carefully blank.
He was a Black, Sirius thought. He could do better than this.
But chocolate was chocolate. Sirius reached out, took one and bit into it, sucking contemplatively. It wasn't as bad as it might have been.
He grinned impulsively at Remus, who returned the smile a little uncertainly, suddenly looking exactly his own age.
--
Remus puzzled him. He was pale and thin and had a habit of disappearing to the hospital wing roughly every month, so that Sirius had begun to think, with some disgust, that he needed protecting. And yet he never demanded it the way Regulus had and never fawned the way Peter sometimes did.
Remus always stood just a little bit apart from them, his expression slightly guarded, as though he was expecting to have to make a getaway.
One day, over homework in the common room, Remus puzzled over Charms with James for fifteen minutes and then declared that he didn't know the answer.
"But you know everything," James said, plaintively.
"Where," Remus replied, truly confused, "did you get that idea?"
"Because," James said with some asperity, "it's a basic law of the universe."
Remus laughed and went back to work.
Sirius played idly with his quill, twirling it between his fingers. He privately agreed with James. Control was the key; Remus exuded control. Even what Sirius had thought was timidity was really control. Remus wasn't afraid. He was cautious.
Remus Lupin behaved like he was twice, or more than twice, their age. It annoyed Sirius slightly.
It would be something, Sirius thought, if he could make Remus drop that control. He remembered the smile Remus had offered over chocolate, bright and eleven-year-old.
There's hope yet.
He smiled vaguely to himself, and returned to his Transfigurations essay.
--
Potions was part of the answer, although not in quite the way Sirius imagined.
Remus was terrible at Potions. He would listen carefully to Professor Absinthe's instructions and double-check the printed procedures in the textbook, and then proceed to do exactly the wrong thing at exactly the wrong time. It made no sense at all to Sirius, who felt that anyone with half a brain in him ought to have no trouble with schoolwork. It wasn't as if it was difficult.
"We can't all be geniuses," Remus muttered, red in the face, when confronted with Sirius' expression of thunderstruck amazement.
Sirius didn't see why not, but it was reassuring, after a fashion, to know that Remus wasn't a basic natural force, after all.
He took issue, however, with Severus Snape and the way he would hand up his own perfect work – what was the big deal about perfect, Sirius wanted to say, he had perfect work too – and sneer across the classroom at Remus' botched-up result.
After the first few lessons Remus had learnt to smile back, like it didn't matter. In the days before Sirius had concluded that Remus was all right, it had been infuriating that anyone in his House, staying in his dormitory, should not only lose to Snape but appear not to mind it.
It was still infuriating, but differently so. "He has no right," Sirius railed, in the privacy of Gryffindor Tower.
Remus looked surprised, as though he didn't understand what Sirius was so angry about. "I suppose only you do?"
"Yes," James replied.
Peter said, mildly, "You don't have to let Snape laugh at you, Remus."
Remus stared at them. Sirius saw control slip for a moment into sheer unguarded amazement, and savoured it like victory.
--
Severus Snape kept his Potions ingredients in tins labelled with parchment tabs. It was obsessively neat and horribly easy to tamper with, and Sirius casually reached across and switched the labels on two tins of grey powder while Snape was collecting materials from the staff cabinet.
Roughly twenty minutes later there was an awful sizzling sound from Snape's worktop, and Sirius turned with the rest of the class to behold a great cloud of foul grey smoke rising from Snape's brazier where – Sirius worked it out quickly – the bottom of his cauldron had simply given way and emptied his work onto the flames.
Snape was gaping in blank-eyed slack-jawed horror, as though he couldn't believe his eyes.
Sirius grinned at Remus, whose mouth twitched into something like an unwilling smile.
"The spare cauldrons," Professor Absinthe said, calmly, "are in the right wall cabinet."
It would have been dishonourable not to admit to fine work and so, as Snape passed his bench, Sirius whispered, "Can't read your own labels, Snivellus?"
Severus Snape picked up Sirius' ladle and, before Sirius realised what was going on, swung it in a vicious, perfect arc.
Professor Absinthe deducted twenty points from Slytherin and sent Sirius to the hospital wing.
--
"Snivellus was pretty impressive, actually," James said mildly, gazing at the bruise on Sirius' forehead.
Sirius glowered.
"Why did you do that?" Remus asked in some exasperation.
"For you," Sirius said, matter-of-factly.
He watched Remus' expression shift from disapproval to confusion to surprise and finally a sort of odd weariness. "You didn't have to," Remus said quietly.
It was going all wrong. Remus was going to yell at him, pronounce him childish. Sirius scrabbled frantically for purchase. "I wanted to," he said. "I thought you deserved to laugh at him for a change."
"It's all right, isn't it?" Peter asked, earnestly. "You're not angry?"
Sirius watched Remus, standing between James and Peter with no chance for escape. Sirius saw his shoulders tense, and then slacken. "No. I'm not."
He said it with some difficulty, like he was giving up.
Sirius decided that he owed Peter Pettigrew his eternal gratitude, and grinned.
And Remus smiled back, all eleven years of him.
End
Note:
I confess that this whole thing is a love song to Remus Lupin. I wanted to write about him again, you see.
I was thinking about the Wizarding Aristocracy Christmas Family Bash, and it occurred to me that Sirius wouldn't be having lots of fun there either, not after his first year at Hogwarts. However, it also occurred to me that Sirius and Severus in coventry wouldn't make much of a fic, because on a good day they'd just sulk and on a bad day they'd hex each other silly.
I sort of like Sirius, although I'm not sure I'd want him as my friend. Sirius is a puppy. Rash, devoted, and when he's sitting next to the stain on the carpet wagging his tail and whimpering softly you want to forgive him everything.
Remus didn't stand a chance, really.
Professor Amelia Absinthe is my own character. I know that Slughorn would have been the Potions professor then, but Absinthe has been the Marauders' and Severus' Potions teacher on my timeline for a couple of years now, so I thought I'd let her stay.
Meanwhile, the circumstances under which Remus breaks Severus' nose in a classroom duel are narrated in In Their Proper Places