disclaimer : i do not own harry potter and thats a fact.

A/N : not something i actually planned on writing but made it up as i went...i hope you like it.

False Revelations

Three boys sat in the Gryffindor dorms, their faces ranging from scared to concerned to extreme worry. The one on the bed with a scrunched up face and furrowed brows was a very worried James potter who decided that sitting here and trying to reason through it as Remus wanted him to was a highly stupid thing to do. Remus lupin was sitting cross legged on the bed opposite to him trying to hide his exasperation with James and explain that reasoning out was never the stupid thing to do and that Sirius was not in immediate mortal danger. Peter sat on the floor between them, his eyes volleying back and forth between the two friends, too lost and totally clueless as to what to do.

"How can you say that moony? He might be doing it now! Or trying something even worse…..we should be on his tail, not sitting here!" James exclaimed wringing his hands. The thought that his friend and brother in arms was going around slitting his wrists was not something James could take lightly.

"James, he is in detention, under McGonagall's nose…he'll be fine and there is nothing we can do unless we know why he does it in the first place" Remus said calmly, as if explaining colors to a toddler.

"Peter! Back me up!" James said turning to the fat boy in between them.

"Well I – I just think it is scary" the boy squealed as he tried to remove mental images of Sirius's scarred hand that they had seen earlier. James rolled his eyes and Remus sighed, typical peter.

"You have seen Remus's scars and you are afraid of Sirius's?" James asked incredulously. "How thick can you get peter?"

Remus wisely chose to ignore that and began his argument again "but why do you think he is doing it? He seems happy right?"

James returning his attention to his sandy haired friend looked thoughtful, before nodding "yeah, he is….maybe it's his family"

"Sure he doesn't like them but they just yell at him and find fault with him and think he is a disgrace but that's not really a reason is it?" Remus reasoned

"Maybe he takes them too seriously, maybe he doesn't like being told all that…I wouldn't like it if my dad said I'm a disgrace" James returned and waited momentarily as Remus considered it. When Remus took too long to reply, James sprang up and ran out. Knowing there was nothing to do, but follow the other two trailed after him.

"Oi Evans!" he called once the three of them had reached the common room. The very annoyed prefect with flaming red hair turned around. "I wanna ask you something" he said moving to stand directly in front of her.

"The answer is no potter, now leave me alone." she said just as Remus and peter trudged forward.

"Hi lily, actually I think James has a different question now and you would be doing me a huge favor if you could just answer him, that way I could drag him back upstairs where he can try to contribute a bit more" Remus said eyeing his friend pointedly towards the end. Lily looked taken aback and her surprise was badly disguised as she looked at James and asked "what is it potter?"

"What would you do if your mother considers you a disgrace?" James asked trying and failing to look solemn. Lily blinked, taken aback and answered without thinking "cry I suppose" she said.

"Nothing else?" he prompted her

"No I don't think so" she replied

"Oh well thanks lily love" he said and walked back to the dorm dejected. Lily was still only recovering from his question that she did not even remember to protest to him calling her that but instead turned to Remus.

"That was about black I guess, but what did James expect one to do?" she asked.

Remus smiled slightly and shrugged; being too loyal to let Sirius's secret out and said "at least he is back in the dorm, thanks lily" he called before heading back to the dorm with peter following him.

Returning to the dorms, they found James sprawled on his bed, thinking deeply. Unusual as it was for James to think so much, Remus could easily see how seriously this was bothering his friend and he sighed.

"James mate-" Remus began soothingly

"If we can't figure out the reason, then we are asking him" James said sitting up determinedly.

"I don't think that it will really help, for one he doesn't want us to know, remember?" Remus contradicted.

"You didn't want us to know either, but we found out anyway and it did help right?" James argued back.

"Yes, but my condition isn't voluntary" Remus replied, taking his seat on the opposite bed again

"What difference does it make?" James asked frowning.

"The fact that if he wanted us to know he would have told us already instead of doing what he is doing" Remus said

"But we can't let him go on doing this!" James wailed.

They had found out only a week back and James had talked or rather whined about little else, every chance he got. Luckily for Remus that wasn't much, because James had also taken up a new hobby of tailing Sirius most of the time barely giving the boy any breathing space, not that Sirius actually noticed or even minded it.

Remus on the other hand was at his wits end. He had no clue what to do, for one thing he still found it hard that Sirius, with his devil-may-care attitude would ever actually resort to self infliction and also he couldn't figure out any signs of depression or abnormality in his best friend who still laughed and joked like any other day. Was Sirius that good an actor? If yes, how long has he been keeping up his charade and even more importantly why? What was it that he couldn't even share with them?

The door flung open and a strikingly good looking boy entered. Pushing his hair out of his eyes, Sirius black walked over to a bed and threw himself on it with careless grace.

"I'm famished" he declared, completely unaware of his their concern. James and Remus both being dragged back from their thoughts looked slightly dazed but James being James recovered easily.

"Not the only one mate, what have you been doing?" he asked, making Remus resist the urge to roll his eyes. It wasn't like Sirius was going to tell them that he was slitting his hand open even if that was what he was doing, which Remus doubted.

"Flirting with Minnie, or at least trying to…but she seemed a hell lot more interested in the lines I was doing than me" he said casually. "Did I miss anything interesting?" he asked as an after thought.

"Nope" James answered, a little too quickly in Remus's opinion but Sirius did not seem to think much of it as he seemed engrossed in flexing his fingers.

"Something wrong mate?" James asked having closely watched Sirius's actions.

"Too many lines" Sirius seemed decidedly grumpy, and then he leapt out of bed and decided to drag the others to dinner early.

They obliged but watched him continuously, more observant than they had ever been before, but were left just as clueless as they had been before because Sirius black was on all accords normal, getting on lily's nerves, teasing James and making fun of peter through dinner and taking it upon himself to not allow Remus to do his work, and finally lounging in the bed with his muggle motor bike magazine.

James looked at his best friend casually flipping pages on his magazine and suddenly it became too much. The images of the red lines they had seen on Sirius's hand when he was sleeping was haunting James too much.

"Sirius we need to talk" James said sitting up resolutely. Peter nearly squealed and Remus merely shrugged and took a place next James.

Sirius's stormy grey eyes flicked from one person to another as he slowly put down his magazine and sat up, frowning slightly as his mind raced ahead, trying to figure out what all this could be about.

A full minute passed in silence before Sirius rested his eyes on James and arched one perfect eyebrow. James suddenly looked nervous as he met Sirius's gaze and began softly

"We are uh well worried about you padfoot"

Sirius titled his head in a very dog like manner and his eyes shone bright with confusion

"Worried?" he asked, once again looking at the three boys before him. This time he noticed the concern in Remus's chocolate brown eyes and saw the same reflected in James's hazel ones.

"Well you see the other day, when uh you were sleeping…" James said and unknown to him, Sirius stiffened ever so slightly. "We were trying to wake you and uh we saw some scars and….." he trailed off unsure. If Sirius wasn't a black he would have frozen then but he couldn't, that luxury was for everyone except his family and defy rules as he may, some of them were too ingrained to let go. He waited silently, trying to figure out just how much they had learned before letting anything on.

Remus watched Sirius closely, looking for tell tale signs of nervousness or defiance or something and was not too surprised when the boy in front of him did not show any at all. Sirius revealed absolutely nothing but seemed to be waiting for one of them to continue and so Remus obliged "well we just wish you wouldn't do it to yourself you know, if something is bothering you, you can just tell us Sirius, hurting yourself wont get you anywhere" for the slightest moment Remus could swear that he saw a flicker of surprise before Sirius reigned it in.

Sirius was confused; they thought he did it himself? But James wasn't giving him the chance to think as he pulled Sirius's wrist and pushed his sleeves back, he looked at it intently before asking "why?" so softly that it tugged at Sirius's heart. Remus too moved to sit next to Sirius as he put an arm over his shoulder.

His expression cleared, so they had only seen his wrist and thought he had resorted to self infliction? Well that was okay, only what reason was he supposed to give?

"I uh I just lost it one day guys, my family was driving me insane and I well I didn't know what else to do, I'm sorry it won't happen again." He said with the perfect amount of apology in his tones. If James wasn't so trusting and Remus so taken aback, he would never have gotten away with it.

"You did it only that once?" James asked relief already coloring his tones, only to receive a nod in reply.

"When did you do it?" Remus asked still slightly surprised.

"After my mother's howler" Sirius said promptly, that much was safe enough to say, his mother sent him howlers regularly and if they had seen the bloody marks when they were fresh he could still get out of it safely. Remus's expression cleared and James hugged him, "to think I worried over this for an entire week!" he said happily and then his face turned comical as his mouth formed an 'O'

Every other marauder in the room watched warily wondering where prongsie's train of thought had taken him but they didn't have long to think.

"Evans actually spoke to me properly today!" he said, starting to bounce in place

"She was just surprised that he had something different to ask her" Remus murmured in Sirius's ear and together they let James talk them into another night time visit to the kitchen, as 'the occasion' deserved a treat. If it was Evans talking to him or Sirius being normal, they didn't know but James was hard to be contained right then and the night became another typical marauders night out that ended in detention the following day.

That night, alone in bed and after the confrontation that nearly had his very black secrets out in the open, Sirius stared unseeingly at the canopy thinking back on what he was forced to endure every vacation. He looked at his wrists, he had been force to cut them open under the imperious curse and his mother had cursed it to automatically open and bleed on a regular basis. He sighed, lucky she had cursed only that one wound and that his friends had only seen it. The others were deeper and definitely scarier than even Remus's cuts and he wouldn't have been able to explain them away even if he wanted to. Not that he had come up with the explanation this time, they had given it to him on the silver plate and he was only going along with them. Sirius tried to convince himself that lying to them was the best he could do, and that it was for their own good. To think just his wrists had given James a sleepless week…..another sigh escaped him and his thoughts drifted instead to the worst of his tortures, he thought of him begging his parents and cousins to intervene as his uncle dragged him away to be raped, of the times when his mother crucio'ed him and his father made him do horrid things under the imperius curse. Tears stung and he turned to bury his face in his pillow as he decided that his friends would never ever find out about it.

A/N: uh well its not my best but i hope you liked it...if you did please take the time to leave a review!

also, i don't think sirius black would ever admit to the others that he has been tortured at home, and hence the story...