Author: shyangell & MorningDawn

DISCLAIMER: All the fictional characters appearing in this fanfiction story are not mine, they're J.K. Rowling's; and they are being used with the only purpose of personal entertainment.

This story has been FINALLY revised. THIS CHAPTER IS NEWLY BETAED.

CHAPTER 2

Sirius Black trough James Potter's eyes: of arrogance and other things.

Early in life I had to choose between honest arrogance and hypocritical humility. I chose the former and have seen no reason to change. (Frank Lloyd Wright)

He stood out like a sore thumb those firsts months. Sirius Black was like every other pure-blood snob James had come across. He acted like he was so very above all of them, so withdrawn and self-aware. And they were only children at school, not in an audience in front of the Wizengamot. He was too self-possessed, too arrogant and cold-ish… too different.

The poor sod should have been put in Slytherin so everyone would have been saved the trouble. It was nothing but an inconvenience, really. Many already murmured that the old Hat deserved a well earned retirement. A Black. In Gryffindor. No Way!

When James met Sirius for the first time he thought he was a stiff git. Well, that was after they met on the train and he'd sent a few sharp barbs to that greasy kid, what's-his-name-Snape. Those were good, it was very good, only he was a Black and he was meant to be in Slytherin. He'd said so himself.

Even the teachers eyed him carefully, mistrust apparent in their eyes, for a few weeks. They didn't know what to make of him. Probably it was that they knew how to deal with insolent Slytherins and with Gryffindor troublemakers… but he didn't appear to be neither.

What he was certain of, was that Black didn't walk in what could possibly be a natural position. And blast it, he didn't even bend to tie his shoelaces. He was certain that, if the spell for doing so wasn't far more complicated that doing it yourself, he would have been using it. He could swear he saw him stare straight ahead in a few classes and take notes like an automaton.

For normal guys like him, watching Black get dressed could make you get a complex. Ok, so he could get his shirt and his robes on in five minutes and nary a wrinkle. No problem. What he really would have killed him for was the damn tie. He'd had to ask help from Remus with his tie the first day of school. And then there was Black, who didn't even use a mirror.

James used to complain that Black always looked down his nose on people. As if they were inferior somehow. He glanced at you through half lidded eyebrows. He later admitted, snickering at his younger self that Sirius was ever so tall that he wouldn't be looking directly at you unless he bent down in half. James had been particularly scrawny back then. Sirius was forced by nature to look down to him. Back then in first year, he hadn't cared. It had been an excuse to dislike him.

Nobody ever heard him call anyone 'mudblood' ever, or make any deprecating comment to his housemates. At least without provocation. But he was still rigid and overly formal. And James, who had never learnt that speaking with your mouth full was something you weren't supposed to do, was in the opinion that it was unacceptable.

James made him into his first prank victim to try and "get him to pull that broom handle out of his ass". He failed miserably, of course. Every single time he tried to get at Sirius, he would get out of the hook. James was outraged because Black seemed to smell him coming. And he invariably ended up hitting one girl or another instead of his intended target. It was not helping him win over Lily Evans, who gave him the cold shoulder since meeting on the train the first time. Once or twice he hit her, and regretted it dearly because those scratches took their time in fading away.

That kept going in the same fashion until Sirius Black got fed up with James' taunting and pranks and punched him. He honest-to-god punched him. Right then and in a flash of realization, and damn that flash hurt, James discovered Sirius had a mighty right hook. Then he would learn that it was the first time Sirius lost it so much he forgot he had a wand. It was the first time ever he hit someone with something other than a hex.

Of course they became friends. James had a penchant for adopting dangerous friends, talk about Hagrid and his mental pets. Many would think James was mad because he was friends with a werewolf. James knew better. He was insane because his best friend had anger-management issues and liked to find out what made people tick. But Sirius as a friend was worth his weight in gold.

Sirius could sell sand in the middle of the desert. He used grand words, and implied most people were idiots. He had a skewed moral compass and a willingness to break the rules for you. He could spin a lie like he did it every day and people did exactly what he wanted. Not because everybody found him nice, but because he knew the exact way in which to say things so you would either see things his way or would react doing exactly what he was hoping. Annoyance worked as well as persuasion.

It was one of the reasons why they went from mild tolerance to actually getting on rather famously. James had really needed a partner in crime who actually could get him out of trouble, instead of getting him into it, from time to time. Life in Hogwarts was suddenly less boring.

James of course stopped believing Sirius' every word, and so did McGonagall shortly enough. She was a smart witch for all that she was a teacher, and eyed him cautiously when he tried to feed her one of his incredible stories. James rather thinks it became some kind of sport experimenting on how many harebrained stories he could get away with.

James learnt to take anything Sirius said with a pinch of salt. Mostly, because it was difficult to tell when Sirius was yanking your chain from when he was... well, deadly serious. To be quite honest he had to admit that he could pull even the Great James Potter's leg. He was not a liar, but you had to reach around all his bullshit to get to the point in any conversation that went remotely close to personal. It didn't bother James that much, he wasn't a bloody girl.

Once Remus complained that he'd never understand how he could walk all day like that without pulling something. His tone was a bit offensive but it was Remus' time of the month and was consequently a bit cranky, and Sirius was more understanding. Sirius was always understanding of Remus. He also was in the bad habit of giving straight answers when you least expected them.

Apparently he'd been a child, really small, and his mother had made him walk up and down the corridor, up and down the stairs balancing books on his head. Was that even a proper use for books? Apparently if he dropped them he was punished. Sirius did never say how. Whatever, he doesn't think Sirius was lying.

He saw what Sirius meant one day Sirius heard Matthias Mulciber, a Slytherin of the same year, criticize him. It was nothing out of the ordinary, but hearing the in the same sentence 'family', 'shame' and 'Black' was the fastest road to Sirius' bad side. Not that he had a good one for any Slytherin.

And there was only one thing worse you can around Sirius than whisper behind his back, and that was whisper behind his back and get caught.

The barb was really reminiscent of James' early taunting of Sirius, in their early days. About how Sirius walked with something up his ass and how he believed himself to be better than everyone else, but adding of course that it was intolerable because he was only a blood-traitor.

Mulciber didn't know what hit him. And James didn't either before Mucliber was paralyzed ramrod straight by a hex that looked damn uncomfortable, and had a sneering Sirius right in his face saying that maybe that helped make Sirius not look like a monkey, and that he was clearly growing up to be an horribly unappealing hunchback.

James rather thought Sirius was exaggerating, as amusing as the image is, but it was an opinion he wasn't sharing anytime soon. He was pretty sure Mulciber never quite forgot the humiliation, much less forgave his tempestuous friend for it. In any case he knew that it had taken Madam Pomfrey the whole day to get him out of his magical bindings.

James couldn't deny that Muldiber was partly right. Then, that is. Now, in seventh year, time had passed and Sirius still walked as straight as a wire. But now it had evolved to a lazy languorous gait that allowed his friends to keep up with his long legs and was quite ironically… cat-like. It was amusing to imagine the indignant yelp Sirius' animagus form would make if he ever heard that thought. Sirius was capable of a slouch and it was a pose he assumed when he wanted to convey he was damn tired of you. But he never carried it around like so many other trendy teenagers. When angry though, he would turn back to his to a brisk and aggressive strides able to make most people shrink. It was extremely difficult to keep up with him then, unless you broke into a run.

But by then the students, the teacher, Hagrid and even possibly the ghosts had gotten used to Sirius. Sirius was Sirius, and there was nothing to feel surprised about anymore, it was no different from when a stair changed destinations when you were right in the middle. Annoying but you were used to it, this was Hogwarts after all. He was incongruous and clashed with the establishment of every class group he came in contact with. He was surprising and irreverent, and made a show of not caring.

In Hogwarts he was in his element though, he was admired, if not extremely popular and damn good at almost everything he tried. But he didn't so much fit anywhere on a regular basis as make everyone else shift to accommodate him. A square peg and a round hole came to mind.

Of course the one thing Sirius never quite managed to get rid of it was his high-class Londoner accent. His posh British accent spoke of money and private tutors. Through he was able of imitating James' figures of speech and vocabulary (which plainly said means colloquial terms, swearwords and insults); he never could make them sound equally irreverent. They sounded rebellious because of the sharp contrast between words and Sirius' prefect Queen English. James could afford to cram up seven swear-words in the same sentence and appear casual about it. It didn't sound careless when it was Sirius using them. He did always seem more biting, more offensive.

This was, in all honesty, the one thing in Sirius' Sirius-ness that even bothered James at all. Often, he would use strange words, archaic and complicated. Sirius could come up with words you didn't even know existed. They were slips of the tongue, and he very much didn't mean to say them. Which would be fine if he weren't so very mortified by it. He sounded like a toff, which he was. But it honestly wasn't necessary to outright insult anyone (Peter mostly) that didn't understand instantly his aristocratic slang. Bless Morgana for having Remus around, he never seemed to think Sirius spoke an alien language. Otherwise Sirius would have made more serious efforts in not being Sirius-like, and that would have been even more horrible.

And the worst... the worst was that Sirius had the gall to look ashamed of being so damn flowery when speaking. Hah! But it wouldn't keep him from Shakespearian insults and his tooth and nail.

"How can you be such an idiot, James?" and then there is that. "How very interesting. Lily Evans cut her hair an inch shorter. Fascinating, really."

Of course, roughly the totality of humanity was a bloody idiot to Sirius on a bad day. It was slightly better on a good day. But it was the sarcasm, and the condescension and urgh... James very much would have liked to be an idiot in peace for a while. At least as long as Lily was in the room, thank you.