TWELVE REASONS
AN UNLIKELY FRIENDSHIP
I.
He was tall and wiry, his frame thin yet solid-looking; his chin was the perfect picture of willful determination, complemented by the angle of prominent cheekbones and the grace of a classically straight nose. There was a sense of great refinement in his pale skin and smile, only to be startlingly contrasted by the restlessness emanating from his black hair, which fell into his eyes in a very blasé manner. He carried himself with a sort of angular poise; there was something about the dignity in his posture that didn't quite match the Muggle clothing he had chosen to wear.
II.
"Hullo!" James greeted cheerfully.
The boy raised and lowered his left shoulder in a casual but not unfriendly movement. "Hey. First year, too, are you?"
"Yeah," replied James. "I'm James Potter. You are..."
"Sirius," the boy said, offering out his right hand to be shaken.
James grasped the boy's fingers in a firm grip.
"Sirius what?" he asked.
The boy's complacent demeanor seemed to lessen slightly, and he shifted uneasily, his stance no longer as nonchalant as it had been only moments before.
"Just Sirius," he replied coolly with a hint of sharpness behind the collected composure of his voice.
III.
"Black? That's your name? Black?"
The arches of Sirius' eyebrows, which had looked so cool and confident earlier, now only looked surly and uneasy. "Yes..."
The silence and tension were thick and heavy in the air. James blinked, and then scowled.
"Why aren't you hanging around with your Slytherin friends?"
"What would you presume to know about my friends?" Black retorted.
"Enough to know that I wouldn't want to be one of them."
Intense blue-gray eyes flashed angrily. "No one's forcing you to."
"Good," James said simply, and with that, he grabbed his things and swept out of the compartment.
IV.
McGonagall unrolled the scroll of parchment and began calling names.
"Black, Sirius."
James watched through narrowed eyes as Black ambled casually over to the stool in the center of the room, haughtily sweeping his longish black hair out of his face as the Sorting Hat was placed over his head. James wondered at how he had almost befriended this boy. A wonderful way to start his school career, associating with future criminals! On the stool, Black fidgeted slightly, biting his lower lip.
James' eyes widened in surprise as Black drew in a sharp breath, and the Sorting Hat shouted—
"GRYFFINDOR!"
V.
"I always knew you were good for nothing, cousin, and now you've gone and proven it."
Sirius scowled. "If you're saying I should be ashamed to be in Gryffindor, just shut up, because I'm not and never will be. I only wish I could have delivered the news to dear old mum in person—would've given her a heart attack," he added with relish.
Bellatrix fixed him with an icy stare. "Should've known that a blood-traitor like you would actually be proud of being an embarrassment to wizard-kind," she said.
Sirius snorted. "Anything's better than being an hag like you."
VI.
"Just what I needed!" Black gushed sarcastically. "More misery. Come to start the next round of 'Beat Up Black'? Ten points if he falls on his face, twenty points if he falls on his arse, and one hundred if he goes unconscious! Oh boy, sounds like fun!"
A deathly still silence lingered as the three boys stood there, no one saying a word. James' eyes flickered away from the sight of the injured boy; Remus ignored Black's outburst and asked quietly, "What happened to you?"
Black rolled his eyes. "I had a tea party. And a nice little nap afterwards."
VII.
"Er... hi," James said awkwardly, subconsciously running his fingers through his messy mop of hair.
"What do you want?" Black asked disdainfully, his face hard as his chin jutted out defiantly.
"I—I just-"
For a few seconds, he simply stared up at Black, speechless. He felt a slight crick in his neck and realized that he had to raise his head upwards to look Black in the eye – why was that? He glanced down at the other boy's feet, and his eyes widened in shock as he realized what Black was standing on—the edge of an open window.
VIII.
James felt his stomach clench as he blinked up at Black, finding it impossible to force words out of his own mouth. Surely the other boy wasn't trying to take his own life, was he? What would make him feel that hopeless? Had he really been so offended by the careless taunts flung in his direction that he would resort to something so desperate, so final?
"What are you doing? You—you're not—you wouldn't—you..."
James couldn't bring himself to say the words 'commit suicide' to this boy; instead, he trailed off, his sentence incomplete but his meaning clear.
XI.
"I'm sorry for the way I've been acting. I'm sorry about how I've been treating you, and I'm sorry about what I said. I know I haven't been the nicest person, and maybe you really aren't that bad, and..."
He trailed off, feeling extremely stupid. He stood there not moving a muscle as he waited – for what, he did not know. What was he expecting? That he would hop in, leave a quick apology, dart out again, and be on his merry way? Why had he even come looking for Black in the first place? To relieve a guilty conscience?
X.
"You know," the other boy said archly, slumping against the side of the window and turning his head to look James in the eye, "pathetically enough, that was probably the nicest thing anyone has ever said to me."
James had no idea how to respond to that. "Really?" he asked evenly, tossing the other boy a pointed look.
"Really." Sirius gave a crooked smile. "Of course, there wasn't really much competition, was there? Between 'You're a filthy good-for-nothing blood-traitor!' and 'I wish we had drowned you at birth!' I haven't exactly been having praise heaped on me, now have I?"
XI.
Sirius turned all the way around, staring James in the eye, but without any of the usual rancor. Hopping off the window and not missing a beat, he promptly rose, brushed the dust off of his robes, and shook his hair out of his face, moving with a haphazard grace that made his actions seem fluid and natural.
"What were you doing in the window?" James asked, curious as to why Black had been standing on the windowsill, and relieved that he had come down.
"Just a habit of mine. I like standing in windows. It feels nice."
"Oh... right."
XII.
"Tonks?" James blinked. "I haven't heard of a pureblooded family with that name."
Sirius grinned. "Of course not—Ted Tonks is Muggle-born. Her parents threw a fit when they found out!"
"I can imagine."
"It was quite excellent, actually. Lots of entertainment value in that household. My parents weren't too pleased either, mind... Mother keeps saying how my being baby-sat by Andromeda was what resulted in me becoming a 'blood-traitor'... bloody hag tried to 'purify' me from the 'unclean' ways, but by then it was too late..."
"She tried to purify you?"
"That's what she called it."
"You poor thing."
FINIS
*
AUTHOR'S NOTE
This is what happens when I have the idea for a fic but am too lazy to write the whole thing and connect the little plot bunnies in my head. Marvel at the products of my laziness.