Disclaimer: I do not own anything below mentioned, except for the emotions felt by Sirius.
A/N: Dedicated to everybody I know, in short.
Sirius had a secret.
Well, he amended; he had many secrets, like being terrified of twisters, and death, and suffering, and loss. He had never celebrated a birthday in proper form. He didn't like his friends being pushed around. He never wanted to drop out of school, as much as it seemed he was asking for it. He sometimes didn't like pulling pranks. At times, he didn't like his friends even. He hated that his best mate was dedicating all of his time to some nancing girl. He abhorred being alone. There were many other things, less important, or just not surfacing to his mind, even though he knew they were there, that also were secretive to him.
Yet only two things out of his entire list were bothering him that day. It was Monsieur Sirius Black's eighteenth birthday, and once again, he was spending it alone. When he did live with his family, he never stayed at Grimmauld Place, not if he could help it. And after he had left….
Perhaps, he modified in his mind, last year was kind of spent with friends. When he had left for the Potter household the previous summer, he had been with James's parents. The only reason James was not there was he was off visiting a sick relative, but they had celebrated the day he returned. And while it was the best birthday gift he had been given to that day, it still wasn't on his birthday.
As Sirius kicked a small rock down the sidewalk, his thought drifted to his second dilemma. It would be quite a pain to help his friends over summer with their difficulties. Sirius was known among his friends as one that would do whatever it took to solve a problem among them, personally or socially, going to whatever extents necessary.
Peter Pettigrew would be partaking in some form of a job for most of the summer, so Sirius would be hard put to finding time to help him review their sixth year of education. Remus Lupin and his family were going on some form of vacation, to France, if his memory served him well enough, so keeping him company during the full moon was out of question. James Potter would be off snogging Lily Evans-Soon-to-be-Potter, so there would be little chance of pulling pranks on unsuspecting Muggles.
Sirius sighed as he sat down on the curb of the road, abandoning the rock once it fell down a drainage pipe. What if someone found out that his weakness was in his friends and their weaknesses?
There was no chance that he would let anyone know of what he did. If he could do anything about it, he would. Never, not in the entire span of Earth's history and future, did he want people to know that he was helping others out. If it were to slip, if it were to get out to the public that Mr. Calloused-Never-Help-Anyone-With-Anything was doing others a favor, it would completely trash his reputation, the one that he had worked for seven years to build up.
But the truth was, he admitted to himself, that Sirius couldn't stand to see his friends in any sort of a problem. That was his weakness: beneath the seventeen years of torment from the Black family, a softness had developed for those he considered his true family: the Marauders.
When Peter was suffering from bad grades in half of his classes, Sirius was there, spending insurmountable hours in the dark of the night helping him out, whispering answers to him when he was called on in class. Whenever Peter got something simple wrong, rather than following his instincts and yelling, "Peter, you git, we went over that one a thousand times!" at him, he instead heaved a great sigh, opening a text book to point out that "The answer is right here, Wormtail, see?"
When Snape was taunting Remus after his werewolf secret had slipped, Sirius didn't take it standing down. Remus would protest against it, stating resolutely that it was all right, and with time it would blow over, but the dark haired boy saw beneath the fallacious smiles, reading his as though he were a book. The pages clearly testified that it was hurting him, that once a scar was starting to disappear from a previous remark, a few well-chosen words reopened the wound. Naturally, Sirius hexed Snape into oblivion, and then some. When the unfortunate Slytherin was found in a bloody heap in the halls by the professors of Hogwarts, Sirius laughing at him from above, he simply told everyone, "He had it coming to him."
After James had gotten Lily to go out with him to Hogsmeade one weekend, and he thought that things were finally going to work out, Lily dumped him. Sirius knew what a hard blow it was to him, and instantly set about telling jokes of such a stupid magnitude that James had no choice but to laugh. Shortly after, the bespectacled boy fell silent again, so, much to the protest of the others, Sirius ordered the Marauders to dress up as multiple replacements of a redheaded, green-eyed schoolgirl. Once James pointed out that they looked like a bunch of gits, Sirius replied casually, "But it did make you laugh."
During the third reign of Lily-James dating, when the lovebirds got in an argument and Lily spent days crying over it, Sirius decided that it was time to take matters into his own hands. He spent at least ten minutes trying to figure out a successful way to get up in the girls' dormitory. Once he was triumphant, he marched into the dormitory, brushing his hands off. "Well, that was a doozy," he mutter, and abruptly got into a tickling match with the girl, proving quite impervious to her feeble attempts to attack back. When she asked why he came, he modestly answered, "I had nothing better to do. And besides, if you keep the moping up, I'll become depressed."
It was times like those that made Sirius smile. If he couldn't be a good Black and uphold the family name (not that he really wanted to), it pleased him to know that at least he could bring smiles to the faces of those he truly cared about. That has to be something of a skill, he thought sullenly as he picked a handful of stray grass growing between the sidewalk's cemented bricks. "Maybe I should become a clown," he said to the wind.
"I don't think so," a voice said from behind him. "I doubt red poofy hair is quite your style, and you would look a right berk with a red nose."
Sirius turned around. There stood James, Remus, and Peter, arms laden with gifts. "Happy birthday, mate," they chorused.
"You didn't think that we'd miss out on it, did you?" James asked warily from behind. "It's not everyday that one turns eighteen."
Sirius grinned mischievously as he stood up. "You guys came? From… from where? Moony, didn't you have a family vacation this year? And… and Wormtail, you have work don't you?"
"Nothing we wouldn't be willing to miss out on to be with a fellow Marauder on his dear day of birth," Remus replied, waving it away. "Now cheer up mate, whatever had you down is nothing to be concerned with."
"That's right, Pads," Peter chipped in. "Come on, we have a celebration to… you know, celebrate."
Sirius smiled, slinging an arm around Peter's shoulders. "That we do mate," he said, adding mentally, with those I care for most.
A/N: Do not be deceived. I am not quite done, as, in the words of Peter, there is yet a celebration to celebrate, and since the Marauders are together, what kind of a story would it be without mayhem?
Until then, review!