Sirius couldn't sleep. It didn't help that he'd had a huge glass of water just before bed, because now he had to get up to pee. After a minute of trying really hard to ignore it and fall asleep he sat up, flipped his legs over the side of the bed, and felt around in the dormitory dark for his slippers. To his right he could hear Peter snoring softly, while to his left, towards the window, he could see the curtained box of Remus's four-poster. Somewhere behind those scarlet curtains was the cause of all his troubles.
The fifth-year boys' bathroom tended to be weirdly echo-y, and always sounded especially loud at night, so after a moment Sirius walked the other way, slipping out of the dormitory door and down the stone staircase to the common room. It wasn't until he got there that he remembered that the boys' cloakroom was temporarily out of use, being completely covered in pink goo following an accident after dinner involving half a dozen puffskeins and an over-enthusiastic engorgement charm. He'd have to go down to the boys' toilets next to the entrance hall. The grandfather clock in the common room had its big hand stuck at "Middle of the Night", while the little hand pointed to "Nothing Happening", so he slipped quietly out through the portrait hole, the Fat Lady asleep in one corner of her picture, and padded downstairs.
It was a relatively warm night for April, so even though he was just in pyjama bottoms and a tee shirt Sirius wasn't cold. He was quickly down the three flights of stairs and round the statue of Norris the Nearly Normal, and into the tiled white silence of the boys' toilets.
A minute later he was washing his hands and staring at his reflection. He was still worried, but at least now his bladder wasn't giving him any concern. He looked at his reflection more carefully. He didn't look like a pervert, he thought, but perhaps other people could see it even if he couldn't. Perhaps it was true what people said, and they could spot him by the way he walked, or the way he talked, or the way he rode a broomstick. Perhaps that was why Remus had been looking at him strangely for the last couple of months.
In a way, this was all Remus' fault anyway. Sirius supposed that if he were any ordinary pervert - any ordinary (let's be honest) queer - he'd have fancied James. James, his best friend, tall and muscular, with a ready smile and the kind of regular good looks that had almost all the girls in the fifth year swooning, and quite a few in other years too. But, no, Sirius couldn't even do this right. He found himself thinking not of James in his most private fantasies, but Remus - tall, skinny Remus, with his sharp features and intent brown eyes, and a smile that seemed all the brighter and gladder for its rarity. Sirius couldn't deny it: he was more than half in love with Remus, and for all that he hated being a queer, he couldn't blame himself for this. But it had to be someone's fault, so perhaps Remus himself was to blame. He shouldn't be so attractive, with his clever hands, his rangy body, and his air of secret strength. The four of them - Sirius, Remus, James and Peter - made a tight group, but if the rest of them ever found out that Sirius fancied boys, that he was a queer, he'd lose all his friends. Even worse, if they found out how he felt about Remus, they'd never trust him again. Sirius wished there was someone else he could talk to, but of course there was no-one. It wasn't as if there were any other queers, any gay-boys, at Hogwarts. Of course there were always joking rumours about so-and-so being caught in the showers with this or that close friend, or little hints that this or that prefect from one house was secretly kissing his opposite number from another house, but as far as Sirius could tell these were all just rumours.
He was about to turn and leave when he heard a curious gurgling coming from the basin in front of him. It was coming from the cold tap, and for a moment he thought he hadn't turned it off properly, but when he tested it it wouldn't turn any further clockwise. Experimentally, he tried turning it on, twisting it a little anticlockwise. Nothing came out, so he tried twisting it a bit further. There was nothing - just an odd gurgle, a curious chemical smell, and a faint knocking sound from the plumbing. Opening the valve all the way produced nothing: the tap was completely dry. He bent down to look at it more closely, and just as he did so the tap burped loudly and suddenly started spraying out water at full spate. It splashed hard in the basin, and inevitably some splashed out in his direction, hitting him on the face and chest.
Sirius cursed and jumped back, then carefully leaned back in and turned the tap off. Some first year's idea of a joke, he supposed, or perhaps it was just a faulty tap. He listened again, though, and he could hear a faint rumbling coming from the pipes in the ceiling. He squeezed as much water as he could out of his tee shirt as he wondered what to do, but by the time he'd dried his hands and face he'd just about decided that noisy plumbing was not a sufficiently dangerous adventure to merit the attention of Gryffindor bravery. It was then that he heard faint footsteps outside in the entrance hall, and a sloshing sound.
Very quietly, Sirius opened the door to the entrance hall a crack, and peeped out. Clearly outlined by the light of the few night-time candles around the hall was the headmaster, carrying a large pewter cauldron. He was walking diagonally across the hall, his back to Sirius, heading towards the little spiral staircase by the main entrance. Sirius wondered what he was doing: the spiral staircase led up to a small tower with only a single door at the top. He and James had been up there a few times, but there was nothing interesting behind the door: it was usually locked, but this had been no barrier to a determined Marauder, and he and James had easily discovered that behind the door there was nothing but some pipework and a large cold water tank, just as there was at the top of each tower in the castle.
A cauldron in the middle of the night, of course, was a mystery worth exploring, so as soon as the headmaster had vanished up the spiral Sirius was out of the boys' toilets and across the hall, listening at the foot of the staircase. He heard the headmaster's feet, then a quiet spell opening the door to the room at the top. A moment later Sirius heard the sound of pouring. It only took a few seconds, then Sirius heard the clank of the cauldron handle, the closing of the door, and Professor Dumbledore's descending feet. Sirius quickly slipped behind the nearest tapestry, stilled its motion with a hand, and watched as the headmaster emerged from the staircase into the entrance hall.
The headmaster seemed intent on his errand - whatever it was - and without looking around walked back in the direction of the statue of Norris the Nearly Normal. The cauldron, Sirius noted, was now empty. Again, though, Sirius sniffed something chemical in the air.
The headmaster was half way across the hall before he stopped for a second and, still with his back to Sirius, said softly but clearly,
"Since you're awake, Mr Black, perhaps you would give me a hand with the next cauldron."
He turned round to look directly at the wall-hanging, a mildly amused expression on his face.
Sirius emerged from behind the tapestry ("Ursula the Ungulate on a Unicorn Hunt") and gave the headmaster an embarrassed smile.
"I was just admiring the stitching on the back of the hanging, sir," he explained, and tried a cheeky grin.
"Quite, quite, my boy," nodded Professor Dumbledore with a twinkle. "But I think" - and here he looked directly into Sirius' eyes, his own blue meeting Sirius' brown, and Sirius felt a brief tickling somewhere inside his head - "that perhaps there was something else that got you out of bed."
"I couldn't sleep, sir."
"Well perhaps a little exercise will help with that. Let's do Gryffindor Tower next," said the professor. He led the way past the statue, and indicated a dark corner, where there were several more large cauldrons.
"I think this one will take two of us," he told Sirius, pointing at one of the biggest cauldrons.
They each took one side of the cauldron, and lifted. It was heavier than Sirius had expected. The contents of the cauldron were almost alive - blue and reds and liquid gold and quicksilver, with a curious aroma of locker room that hit him in a rush. He briefly wondered if the headmaster had been brewing moonshine, before he realised that a pure English man like the headmaster would consider that stuff to be jungle juice. But what was this strange potion? As he inhaled its fumes, Sirius realised what it reminded him of: the quiddich changing room after a game. There was the smell of pear drops, old socks, and sweat, jock straps, and young muscular men, naked at their lockers. It was intoxicating, and Sirius was suddenly aware that he was uncomfortably aroused and breathing heavily as he and Dumbledore hauled the heavy cauldron up the three long flights of stairs to Gryffindor.
As they reached the portrait entrance to the house, the headmaster muttered a brief charm, and Sirius heard snores coming from the picture as it swung noiselessly open. Soon they were struggling to get the cauldron up the narrow staircase behind the second fireplace, past the laundry room, and up to the cistern at the top of the tower. It was dark up there, but the headmaster said a quick word and the room was full of twinkling lights from a spinning silver globe. In the enclosed space the aroma was stronger, making Sirius' head spin and the blood rush in his veins.
"What is this stuff, sir?" he asked.
The headmaster didn't reply immediately, but motioned to Sirius to help him lift the cauldron and pour it into the cold water tank. As they tipped the potion into the water it seemed to vanish, as if it had never been there. Anyone drinking from the tank would think they were just drinking pure water. As the potion mixed with the water, Professor Dumbledore stared at him carefully, but he didn't directly answer Sirius' question. Instead, he asked one of his own.
"What was on your mind that meant you couldn't sleep, Mr Black?"
Sirius didn't really want to answer, but as the headmaster looked him in the eye he felt compelled to tell the truth.
"I think I might be queer, sir."
"I thought it might be that," the headmaster nodded. "And the word is 'gay', not 'queer'."
"Well, yes, sir. Anyway that's what I thought."
"And this worried you?"
"Yes, sir. My friends don't know about this, and they'd be shocked and might not want to be friends with me any more. And I'd be the only queer - the only gay - at Hogwarts. I couldn't bear that."
"Ah," said the headmaster, "I understand." He smiled at Sirius and went on,
"I remember when I was your age I thought it terrible that I might be the only queer at Hogwarts" - he gave Sirius a conspiratorial smile - "though of course I wasn't, and it turned out that there were a few of us around. But I did decide that if I ever got a chance, I would make sure that a few more students - well, actually, quite large number - would get the chance to enjoy the same experiences that I did." And he lowered the now empty cauldron to the floor.
"You mean that I might not be the only gay boy in the school?" asked Sirius.
"Indeed I do, Mr Black. I think you will find that the odds are very much in your favour..."
The headmaster twinkled at him, then gave a swift flick of his wand and softly said "Obliviate."
Sirius overslept badly the next day, had to rush to class without breakfast, and didn't catch up with his friends till lunchtime. He was in a good mood, though he couldn't work out why. His cares of the previous night had vanished, to be replaced by a sense of optimism. For some reason, he wasn't nearly as worried about being queer - perhaps he should say "gay" - today as he had been last night.
"You look like you've cheered up a bit," said Remus, serving him some potatoes.
"What do you mean?"
"Well, for the last few weeks you've been looking like a man with the weight of the world on his shoulders," explained his friend, "but today it looks like you've sorted out whatever was worrying you."
"Oh," said Sirius, "I didn't realise that it was so obvious. But, yes, I'm feeling a lot better today."
"Do you want to tell me what it was?"
"Um... Not yet, but maybe sometime soon." Sirius smiled at Remus, feeling absurdly glad. "Can I pour you a glass of water?"