A/N: This is the beginning of a new Marauder's Era story that I'm writing. I've never really written HP fic before, at least not more than a one-shot, and neither on this account nor in years, but there's a first try for everything. Please review and give me feedback-constructive criticism is always appreciated!

Shout-out to Rosestream, my fabulous beta reader!

Rating: T

Disclaimer: I don't own any part of Harry Potter (though it'd be nice if I did), and I don't own the image, either. Don't take me off the site, please.

Chapter 1

A Shove in the Wrong Direction

Birdie

I HADN'T INTENDED on coming back. At least, not really.

It wasn't something that I'd agonized over, or something that had kept me up late at night, eyes wide open in a lucid nightmare. I hadn't announced my plans with great fanfare, or made my friends throw me the going-away party of a lifetime.

I hadn't even made the decision until I came home for the summer. There was always something about arriving back in the states after so many months away. When I was little, I used to dream of wandering out into the great unknown—walking through the wardrobe hand-in-hand with the Pevensies, so to speak—but it was different in reality. Being in a foreign country, a foreign world, of wizards and witches and a war I couldn't possibly hope to understand, wore on me in ways I couldn't anticipate.

I missed things about home, back in America. Home was a miserable experience, but there were things that I forgot to hate when I was at Hogwarts. Like, for instance, how my mother always put out her cigarettes in her coffee cups, and every time I did the dishes, I got ashes all over my hands. I hated the smell of tobacco, always had, ever since my uncle was smoking a cigar in the sitting room and dropped it, lighting the carpet on fire. Something about the bitter scent triggered dormant fears.

And yet when I was at Hogwarts I'd long for my palms to smell of nicotine, not snakeweed and armadillo bile, parchment and ink. Wizarding-world smells, even though anybody that came out of the Divination classroom always reeked of patchouli. I supposed that was American enough.

But when I arrived home after the end of fifth year, pushed open the creaky door to my battered blue farmhouse, stepped inside with my heavy suitcase and my used books with the dog-eared pages, the whole house filled with the aroma of sadness and wilted hydrangeas, I knew that I didn't want to go back to Hogwarts.

There were so many reasons. There was a war on, for one; Voldemort was at large and growing more powerful every day. He-Who-Shall-Not-Be-Named was becoming less and less a secret lurking fear of the dark and more and more a very real terror of broad daylight. I was getting so tired of people like Avery and Mulciber hissing filthy Mudblood at me in the hallways or hexing me just because I hadn't been born inbred and crazy.

For another, there was always a part of me that hadn't quite clicked in the wizarding world. I didn't know why, but it had always been true, ever since I was a bright-eyed, bushy-tailed eleven-year-old. Oh, I played a half-decent game of Quidditch and managed to earn the title of Prefect fifth year because I, unlike most of my peers, was not obsessed with causing havoc in the hallways, and my grades were above average, holding true to my Ravenclaw name.

But it was like a jigsaw piece you were trying to fit into the wrong spot on the puzzle. By all appearances, it looked as if it should snap into place there; the colors were right, the pegs lined up. Must be a manufacturing error, you thought, until you found the right piece and saw what a true fit really looked like.

And then there was Alex, left at home to fend for himself with our mother. He didn't complain—that was his nature. But it couldn't have been a pleasant existence, budgeting what money our father had left us when he died, playing nursemaid to our mother with her empty pill bottles, struggling to find his own niche in the world.

I'd just stood there in the front hallway, in the little blue house that had been in our family for generations, and stared at the vase of droopy hydrangeas on top of the ancient, out-of-tune upright piano, a relic from past generations, ivory keys worn and unplayed. And suddenly, I felt as if my spell books and pewter cauldron were weighing me down like sandbags strapped to my ankles.

For a moment, I'd fantasized about going into town, buying a big wooden chest at the thrift store, one with a really nifty lock. In would go my books, my wand, the essays and exams that I'd saved, my Quidditch supplies, everything that stank of magic.

Without ceremony, I'd shove the chest under my bed, wear the key around a string on my neck, and put away that period of my life, compartmentalize it. I'd gotten my O.W.L.s, should I ever want to return to that world. But I had a feeling I wouldn't be needing that key ever again.

So when my Hogwarts letter arrived in August, Dumbledore writing to inform me cheerfully that I was in fact invited back to Hogwarts for sixth year, and that my slot as a Ravenclaw Prefect was still mine if I so chose, I regarded it with a tinge of sadness and nostalgia, but no regret. This was what I wanted to do. I was sure. If anything, the letter had cemented my plan of action.

Sitting at the kitchen table that Sunday morning, sipping absentmindedly at a cup of coffee, Alex regarded the envelope with a downward tug to his mouth. "That's it?" He didn't have to specify: we both knew.

"Yeah." I pushed it to the side, folding it up so I couldn't see the emerald ink glinting accusingly at me in the sunlight. "That's it."

His shoulders slumped a bit. Alex wasn't usually one to get discouraged; it was an odd expression on him. In our depression-ridden family, he was an odd egg; a cheerful black sheep if ever there was one.

We were twins, and though we had the same appearance—dark eyes, dark hair, dark brows, olive skin—our personalities were different as could be, night and day. I might have been moody, type-A, overly compulsive about everything from my eating habits to how I organized my desk, but Alex was easygoing. He even looked the part of a hippie: tie-dyed t-shirt, long hair, hoop earring dangling from his right ear, a Grateful Dead tattoo that he'd gotten illegally on a vacation to Boston visible on his bicep. (Despite his best efforts, he'd never quite convinced me to like, or even tolerate, that band.)

"When should we send you off, then?" he said. "Do you want a few days in London before you're set to leave, or—"

I cleared my throat, cutting him off mid-sentence. "Actually," I said, "I don't… I don't think that I'll be going back to Hogwarts this year."

Alex blinked. "You have to."

My eyebrows rose nearly to the fringe of my hair. "What?"

"I just mean…" He waved his hands, words coming slowly to him. "You have to, alright? That's your thing. You're Birdie, you're a witch, you go to a magical school full of other magical people."

I traced the rim of my coffee cup, hesitating. "I know. I was just thinking that… maybe I don't want to be."

"Isn't being a witch kind of a genetic thing? It's not like there's an on-off switch." His forehead creased. "There's not an on-off switch, right?"

"No, of course not, but there doesn't have to be," I said, exasperated. "You can live a perfectly normal life and still be a witch, Al."

He shook his head, as if he were seeing me for the first time. "Yeah, but why would you want to? Look, I know I can't hope to understand all of this, but isn't being magic kind of a good thing? Amazing, even?"

"It's not that simple."

"How? Please, explain it to me. I'm trying my best here."

I pinched the bridge of my nose. "I don't know that I can."

Alex nodded, his jaw set. "Fine." A beat, before he resumed talking, as I somehow knew he would. "But Birdie, for Christ's sake, I know that I can't walk a mile in your shoes—I don't even know your sizing system, let alone your size—but you can't just stroll away from this whole incredible life just because you feel… misplaced, or something."

"Alex-"

"No, listen to me. I know that you think that I'm miserable here, all alone, but I'm not. And d'you know why?" When I didn't answer, he plowed ahead. "The fact that I know you're at school, living this incredible life, keeps me going. Don't come back to Washington, Birdie, if only for my sake. We've gotten you through this far. Don't turn tail and run now, because you'll live to regret it."

"You don't know that," I said stubbornly.

"But I do," he argued. "If you want to quit after you've graduated from Hogwarts, fine, that's one thing. But at least stick it out until then."

"Two more years?" I shook my head. "No. No way."

"Please, Birdie. I know you. Please don't do this."

Something inside of me crumbled at the pitiful look on his face, at the pleading in his eyes. He'd gotten the short end of the stick, after all. I'd gotten the magic powers and the smarts while he was stuck with a Suzy-Sunshine disposition and our disaster of a mother.

I picked up the letter, skimming it, the scent of potent ink wafting up from the parchment. Standard Book of Spells, Grade 6. Advanced Potion-Making. Without even looking up, I said, "One more year. If I still want to come back home after that, I can. Agreed?"

Alex chewed on that for a minute before reluctantly nodding. "Agreed."

Not that I'd ever really had a choice in the first place. My brother might be cheerful, a tie-dyed hippie spirit at his core, but he knew how to shove. He shoved our mother out of her bed, he shoved her cigarettes and pocket-sized bottles of booze into the dumpster. He shoved me back into Hogwarts, back into the supposedly whimsical realm of wands and muttered incantations.

For better or for worse, I couldn't say. But he did it anyway, because above all else, despite his tree-lover motto, he was not a pacifist. He thought he knew what was better for people and he went with that, and most of the time, he was right.

Yet, as the end of August approached and I hauled my dusty suitcase out from underneath my bed, I couldn't help feeling that this time, he might just be wrong.

I did all the normal things. I owl-ordered my school supplies from Diagon Alley, with a promise I'd be there to pick it up on August thirty-first. I packed my bags, stuffing in my clothes and my books, poor annotated, worn and over-loved things.

I did it all with a sense of foreboding. Usually when I started to pack I felt excited. I'd be going off to Hogwarts again, away from the sticks of rural America. I was getting ready to embark on the journey of a lifetime, all the way across the Atlantic. I'd be attending a magical school in the moors of Scotland, for Pete's sake, instead of attending the shitty public school with Alex and consuming copious amounts of marijuana just to make life bearable.

But this time, all I could do was wistfully imagine being one of those teenagers, living a normal life for once. Because Hogwarts? It wasn't normal. I'd been bewitched by the glitz and glamor and sparks at first, but the initial wonder was wearing off at a precipitous rate. Living in a constantly exciting, enchanting world had its drawbacks.

Sometimes I longed for mud and dirt.

On the morning that I was set to leave, my mother dragged herself out of bed. She stood in the kitchen as I double-checked the straps on my trunk, hands fidgeting and trembling beneath her watchful supervision. She made quite a picture, my mother, in her nubby terrycloth bathrobe, a cigarette dangling from her knobby fingers at six-thirty in the morning. She watched me wordlessly, inhaling and exhaling gray smoke.

"I know you don't want to go back this year," she said.

I was so surprised to hear her speak that for a second I thought I must've misheard her, but one look at her face told me otherwise. "What?"

"I know you don't want to go back," she said, taking a drag. Inhale. "It's a decent thing you're doing for your brother." Exhale. "Sometimes…" She trailed off. "Sometimes in life we're forced to play a part we're not suited for. It should be your brother, but it's not."

She looked at me for a long time, gaze opaque. She was once a beautiful woman, my mother, or so I imagined. She held the morose beauty of a dried flower petal—an empty echo of former full bloom. Now she was sallow, her gray eyes haunted, her hair straggly and soot-colored. But I saw the outlines of a pretty girl in her cheekbones, the curve of her neck.

"We're cast whether we like it or not," she said. Exhale. "The only thing you can do is play your part. And that means going back to Hogwarts."

I reared back, stung. "How do you know Alex is supposed to be the one?"

"I know because your brother is always going to be a martyr," she replied, without missing a beat. "It's a role I've forced him into." Inhale.

"Doesn't seem particularly fair."

"Life isn't fair, Birdie," my mother said, putting out her cigarette in her lukewarm cup of coffee. "Don't tell me it's taken you this long to figure that out."

Without another word, she trekked upstairs, her bony feet padding on the floorboards. The sound of her inhales and exhales ricocheted down the narrow stairwell, smoke soaking into the drywall like bread sponging up honey.

In a beat, Alex appeared, keys jingling in his hand. "Ready?"

I swallowed, turning away from my mother. "Ready."

The plane ride was uneventful, save for the odd stares I got from people for bringing a seemingly odd broom across the ocean along with me. "Not all right in the head," I heard an old woman whisper to her husband, eying me.

When we touched down in London, I hailed a cab to the Leaky Cauldron, where I'd reserved a room for a couple of nights. After downing a somewhat subpar bowl of stew, I decided to walk around Diagon Alley for a bit. I was craving ice cream.

Diagon Alley was subdued in the evening, to say the least. It was August, but most of the brutal heat of the day had burnt off, leaving a violet sky and a warm breeze. I got a few odd looks in my Muggle clothing, but I couldn't find the energy to care. At least I'd saved up some coins from the previous year, though I guessed I'd have to go to Gringotts tomorrow and convert my dollars into Sickles.

I strolled along the narrow alleys, twiddling my favorite blue pen between my fingers. I hated being without something to write with, not that I was any writer. I just didn't like my thoughts to be fleeting. Sometimes I liked to remember them.

Florean Fortescue's Ice Cream Parlor was still packed and brimming with witches and wizards despite the late hour,. The line was out the door, but eying a boy's chocolate sundae and taking a whiff of the sugary-sweet aroma filtering out into the night air along with the cheery, rosy light, I figured it was worth it. After all, it wasn't as if I had anywhere better to be.

And that was when I heard the voices.

"I'm telling you, Moony, I really think it's going to be different this year."

I heard a derisive snort. "Well, after that promising end after the Defense O.W.L.s last year, who wouldn't be as idiotically optimistic as you are?"

"Exactly! Wait. Was that sarcasm?"

"Of course not, Prongs. I would never."

With something of a resigned sigh, I pushed through the thicket of impatient customers, muttering "Sorry" and "Pardon" at every interval, leaving a grumbling wake of pissed-off bystanders behind me. Finally, I spotted two familiar heads of hair, one messy and jet-black, the other somewhat sandy and unkempt, though better maintained than the first.

"Look who we have here," I drawled, folding my arms and raising an eyebrow.

They both heard me and turned. Remus Lupin—the sandy-haired one—grinned. "Birdie! Nice to see you." Beside him, James Potter raised a hand in a half-wave.

"Nice to see you, too." I eyed the line—they were nearer the front than I was. "Jesus, how long have the two of you been standing here?"

"'Bout an hour, I reckon," said James. "Maybe longer. Florean's off tonight, and his daft daughter's taken over for the moment."

"Perfect." I sighed, dragging a hand through my hair.

"You look tired," James said, though Remus elbowed him rather savagely and muttered something that rhymed with big.

I laughed. "It's alright. I just got off the plane from America a few hours ago, and I'm still jet-lagged."

Remus cocked his head, eyes brightening curiously. "That's right. I always forget you live in the states, for some reason."

"Don't know how you could miss it, with my twangy accent," I said, drawing out the last few words in order to give a pretty fair imitation of a southern hillbilly.

He chuckled. "S'ppose that's true."

"Are you two here alone, or are Thing Three and Thing Four going to appear on the sidelines any second now?" I asked.

James shrugged. "We were with Padfoot at some point, but he started talking to a girl, so we let them be. I'm sure he'll join up with us again at some point."

I rolled my eyes. "Predictable."

"Did I hear my name?"

All three of our heads swiveled to see Sirius Black strutting through the doors, hands in his pocket, mouth quirked up in a grin. He really did have a strut, I thought: there was no other word for it, except for perhaps swagger. Arrogant and more trouble than he was worth, in my opinion, though my best friend, Lyddie, begged to differ.

I set my jaw. I'd never really gotten along with Black. Remus I liked well enough; we sometimes had Prefect rounds together, and while I got the feeling that there was something off about him, he was awfully funny, and kind. James I tolerated, though he was a bit too much of an arrogant attention whore for my liking, and Peter Pettigrew I pitied. But Sirius Black…

Well. I'd never really seen much of anything likeable about him, to tell the truth. I didn't hate him just because he liked to set off fireworks in the corridors—I'd leave a blanket disgust for the slightest rule-breaking to Lily Evans—but I didn't like him just because of his pretty face, either. He put James Potter's egotism to shame with his own, and God knew he treated girls like dirt. The only girl he'd ever dated for longer than a month was Marlene McKinnon, and I'd yet to see a more dysfunctional relationship. They had a sort of on-and-off thing going on, and while it might have Lyddie on the edge of her seat, I couldn't care less.

It wasn't that I disliked him, I decided, it was more than I didn't particularly care for him. It was complicated.

"And he returns," Remus remarked dryly. I sighed.

Sirius grinned, a dimple appearing in his cheek. He looked rumpled, I noticed; his shirt appeared as if he'd just shucked it on, and there was a definitive lipstick mark on his cheek. I refrained from rolling my eyes again with some difficulty.

"Has your life been desolate and lonely without me?" he said.

"Oh, yes, Padfoot," James said. "I've just been weeping endlessly since you rudely deserted us. I'm positively broken-hearted."

"Oh my God," I said. "No wonder you all keep to yourselves. It'd drive any sane person crazy."

Sirius's eyes lit up when he saw me. "Birdie!" he cried. "Pleasant to see you, too."

I shook my head. "Look, I'd better be going," I told them. "If I don't get some good sleep now, I'll live to regret it in the morning. See you all later." I lifted my hand in a wave, and they responded in kind.

Rushed? Quite possibly, but I wasn't in any hurry to stay and listen to Sirius Black's detailed description of mauling that girl. There were some things that a person just couldn't unhear, and that was definitely one of them, ice cream be damned.

I walked back outside, having given up on the fruitless pursuit, and wrapped my arms around my shoulders. A quick breeze swept across the cobblestoned lanes, rustling streets signs and kicking up a stray piece of parchment. The ink glittered in the clementine light emanating from the neat shops lining the row.

"Birdie! Wait!"

I half-turned. I saw Sirius Black jogging after me, hands still tucked in his pockets. I made a face, and though I stopped, it was more out of common courtesy than any positive feelings.

"What is it, Black?"

He held out his hand. He was holding my pen, the one I'd been twiddling between my fingers in a pretty typical Birdie Elian gesture. "Here," he said. "You must've dropped in in the parlor. Remus and James said they saw you holding it."

I furrowed my brow ever-so-slightly, confused. "Thanks," I said, if hesitantly. I scooped up the pen and deposited it into my pocket. "You didn't have to do that. I… well, thanks."

"No need to look so surprised," he said, smiling a little. "I'm not a complete tosser, you know."

"I know," I said, a little too quickly.

He chuckled. "See you 'round."

And then, before I could say anything else, he was gone, strolling away, palms jammed back in his pockets, with the walk I couldn't call anything but a strut.

I stared at the pen, and then after Black again, wondering if there might be something to like about him after all.

A/N: I hope you all enjoyed it! Please review and let me know what you think!