For the Hogwarts Online prompt of the day, Oh how the mighty have fallen.

So in retrospect it was possibly the most stupid thing he's ever done.

And that's saying something.

He spends the night in the common room (it's made painfully clear he is not wanted in his dorm) just watching the fire, and picking at the threads on his sleeve until his cuff is unravelling itself.

He hates how, if that night had been different,

if he wasn't quite so Black,

if somehow he could just go back and erase the stupid note,

he'd be sneaking into the Hospital wing with James to give Moony the Chocolate Frogs pilfered from the kitchens,

or sprawled in middle of the dorm planning their next prank

or laughing until his face hurts

anything but this, really.

So he hates what he did, and he's never regretted something more and he's always been the one being egged on to newer, better, more daring heights.

But it went too far that time.

and once he realised the full extent of what he'd done, the pain and the guilt wracked him

because his best mate could have become a murderer

and the blame wouldn't have rested on his Black head, but on that of his friend

he wouldn't have had to live with the guilt, it wasn't about him. It went further than that. Deeper than that.

He skulks around in the common room until his friends (no, not any more. He's ruined that) come downstairs, but they walk past his silhouette without a glance.

So he wanders down to breakfast on his own, and it's not with a swagger that he walks

and at the table, he sits at the end, his dark hair flopping over his face as he picks at his cereal

and James doesn't hex Snape as he walks in, nor ask Evans out, nor even crack a single joke throughout the meal.

And breakfast at Gryffindor table is just not the same without the laughing quartet.

It's Snape who phrases what is running through most minds, smirking at James (whose face is torn between fury and pain), Remus (who is tight-lipped with anger) and Peter (who just looks scared) before flicking his coal black eyes down the table to the lonely figure at the end.

The mocking whisper is just loud enough to carry throughout the Hall (no one making a sound as they wait for it).

"Oh, how the mighty have fallen."