He didn't quite know why his stomach was churning with nerves as he approached his brother's bedroom door. It was the first time in years that he had walked into Reggie's bedroom through this particular door – generally, he and his brother had always barged into each others rooms on a regular basis through the door in their conjoining wall. But that, somehow, just didn't seem right now. Siri laid his hand on the door handle, hesitated, then decided to knock instead. His knuckles made an empty, hollow sound against the wood.

Silence was all that came back to him. He shifted back, glancing back down the hallway that he hadn't stood in for nearly a year now. It looked so darkly strange after the world of Hogwarts that burst with colour and life. He stared at the mounted heads of the house elves absently, wondering for the first time why the hell they were there.

There was still no reply from the room within. Siri rapped on the wood again, then, impatient for a response, pushed the door open.

His brother lounged on the bed, reading a book. He didn't look up.

Siri stared at him, momentarily thrown. Eventually, he said, "Why didn't you say anything when I knocked?"

Reggie flicked over a page, and said nothing.

"May I come in?"

Still there was no response. His brother's face was set in a calm neutral, as though he simply hadn't noticed Siri standing in the doorway. His eyes, however, were not moving across the page, and the fingers that gripped the spine were white with tension.

Frowning, Siri leaned against the doorframe. Cold anger was radiating from his brother's pale, unruffled form. It scared him somewhat.

"Reggie?" he said softly.

Reggie's head jerked, but his eyes remained determinedly on his book. "My name," he said, his voice quietly composed, "is Regulas."

Siri flinched. "Since when?" he snapped harshly, automatically switching to aggression in an effort to cover his shock.

There was a moment of silence. Then Reggie hurled the book against the wall, and Siri started in shock. He stood up and for the first time, stared Siri directly in the eye.

"I waited for you," he said, perfectly calmly.

"What?" Siri frowned at him. His brother's face was bloodless, and strangely adult for a nine year old. His eyes were like two black pebbles, staring with enough intensity to fill his brother's head.

"I waited for you," Reggie repeated. "At Christmas time. I sat on your bed and waited."

"I'm back now!" snapped Siri over him. "Alright? I'm back!"

His brother continued in the same calm, indifferent voice. "And when I asked Mother when you were coming home…she said you were never coming back." His face contorted as he desperately fought back tears. "She said you'd forgotten me."

Siri flinched.

His brother looked away. "You broke your promise." His face crumpled. His chest heaved silently up and down as he physically held the sobs back – and Siri could hardly stand it – instinctively he crossed into the room and made to hug him –

Reggie threw his hands off him. "Don't TOUCH me! You filthy blood traitor!"

Siri froze. His arms slumped back to his sides, and he took an abrupt step backwards. Reggie stood sobbing painfully quietly in the middle of his room. For a moment he looked six years old again, and he was crying over a skinned knee and all Siri had to do was make a joke out of it and Reggie would hit him and try to carry on crying but wouldn't be able to stop laughing, and he would throw something at him and Siri would dodge it and after a full scale war had broken out, everything would be alright again.

But all speech had dried up on Siri's tongue and those days were over. They could never go back to them now.

0o0

"Sirius?"

"Mmm."

"Are you awake?"

"Mm."

"Say that again?"

"Mm."

"Is that a yes 'mm' or a no 'mm'?"

"Mm."

A sigh. Footsteps. Unnaturally close footsteps. He could feel them in his head – every vibration – fuck that was hurting now he thought about it, argh, argh, arrrrrrrragh the PAIN…

Sirius opened his eyes.

The first thing that leapt to attention was the fact that he was lying on the floor.

That was interesting.

"…just leave him," came Peter's voice from high, high above.

"Wormtail, he's on the floor in front of the portrait. People will fall over him."

"Well, I'm not carrying him."

"I wasn't going to suggest that."

"You're going to carry him?"

"Do the words Wingardium Leviosa mean anything to you, Peter?"

Sirius' muscles ground into life. "Don't," he muttered through gritted teeth as he hauled himself to his knees, "Even. Think. About. It."

"Oh, so you are awake." Remus' voice was unamused as Sirius crawled blindly across the floor in the hopeful direction of a sofa. "Thought you were dead for a moment."

"Am I not?" mumbled Sirius, as he collapsed into an awkward sitting position against the sofa and cradled his head in his hands. God, he was just hurting an unnecessary amount. Tentatively, he probed the murky regions of his Memories from Last Night, and, to his disquiet, found them almost entirely blank.

"What the hell was I doing last night?" he asked, pronouncing each word gingerly so as to provide minimum increase to his headache.

He could almost feel Remus and Peter exchange looks. "Um…don't you remember?" Peter's voice came apprehensively. Sirius felt his heart plummet. Judging by that tone, it could not have been anything good. He didn't say anything. He only rested his head on his knees, kept his eyes closed, and braced himself for the worst.

Moony started it off. "You got drunk," he said sternly, although not entirely unsympathetically. "Really drunk."

"Hammered," chipped in Peter helpfully.

"Legless."

"Pissed."

"One hundred percent intoxicated."

"Alright!" snapped Sirius, and winced. "What happened?" he added in a softer voice.

"You made friends with some seventh year girls," Remus continued. "Some Hufflepuffs, I think. They were the ones buying you all the drinks, so to be fair, they should have a share of the blame in this as well…"

"You got off with at least three of them!" added Peter.

"Two, actually," corrected Remus. "They weren't very happy with each other when one of them saw the other one kissing you. Apparently, both were convinced you were madly in love with them…"

His voice trailed off. An ominous silence hung in the air. Despite himself, Sirius looked up to stare impatiently at his friend's faces, both of whom were gazing at him with barely concealed grins on their faces.

"And?"

"Well," said Remus, walking over to perch himself on the arm of an armchair. "Then they kind of…had a massive cat fight over you."

"It was appalling behaviour," Peter said through his smirk.

"Both roaring drunk, of course."

"Rolling around yanking at each others hair, scratching each other's eyes out…"

"And it kind of kicked off a chain reaction," Remus concluded, his eyes – there was no denying it – sparkling with amusement as he surveyed Sirius's reaction.

Sirius stared at him in silence. "What d'you mean?" he said hoarsely.

Remus shrugged. "You know how violent those fifth years are. They were all there. One minute we were all just standing there watching these two girls attempt to murder one another, next thing you know everyone's engaged in a good old fashioned bar-brawl."

"The Three Broomsticks has been absolutely trashed," Peter said solemnly. "Five people are in the Hospital Wing."

Sirius jerked his head around to look at him, gaping. "Five people! Oh my fucking Merlin!" He ran his fingers back through his hair, looking from Remus to Peter in horror. "Are they OK?"

"Oh, they're fine," shrugged Remus, who was, much to Sirius's bewilderment, grinning broadly. "None of them are gullible like you."

There was one, long moment of silence in which Sirius stared at Remus.

Eventually, he said, "I swear, Moony, when I am feeling human again I am going jinx you so hard you won't feel like yourself for a month."

Peter cracked up. Remus joined in, and let himself fall backwards into the seat of the armchair. "Come on, Padfoot," he grinned. "You would have done the same thing if one of us had admitted to not remembering anything from the night before."

"I wouldn't have made out you'd been the cause of the destruction of The Three Broomsticks, for fuck's sake," Sirius growled, letting his head sink back to his knees. "So may I have a version of what happened last night that isn't full of Hippogriff shit, please?"

"Ah, you're no fun."

"Remus, I am thinking very hard about that jinx I'm going to place on you."

"Alright, alright." Remus let out a loud sigh. "How quick do you want it?"

Sirius' head gave a painful throb. "Quickly as possible, please."

"Okay." Remus took a deep breath. "You – drunk, James – drunk, you and James – big, drunken row in pub, landlord in The Broomsticks – bans you both for life."

Sirius kept his head on his knees. "Oh."

Now that his head wasn't swimming with images of the entire Hogsmeade pub being smashed to pieces, Remus' words were bringing back foggy memories of having some sort of confrontation with James. He squeezed his eyes closed, and saw a vague picture of his mate yelling at him, followed closely by the an uncomfortably close view of the landlord's veiny red visage as he threw them physically from the pub…he and James stumbling out into the night, swearing at one another and at the building they had exited…and then, bizarrely, the memory of stumbling back to the castle leaning on each other's shoulders and singing tunelessly at the stars.

"Me and James walked home together?" he said suddenly.

"Yeah."

"Where is he now, then?"

"Alright, Padfoot?" James muttered directly behind his head from the sofa, and Sirius screamed aloud.

0o0

Two Hangover Potions, a few badly aimed jinxes and a couple of forced forkfuls of breakfast later, and Sirius, shielding his eyes against the unnaturally bright sunlight in the Great Hall, turned to the downcast faces of his fellow Marauders.

"This," he said frankly, "Is shit."

"Tell me about it," muttered James, who had automatically loaded his plate with sausages and hadn't touched any of them. He had, as Sirius well knew, been far too busy gazing at Lily from the corner of his eye to eat, while she steadily ignored him from the other end of the table.

"Sirius, you should apologise to her," said Remus briskly, as he shook cereal into a bowl.

"Yeah," replied Sirius flippantly. "Maybe I should."

"And are you going to?"

"You want an honest answer?"

Remus sighed. "Probably not."

"Then yes, yes I am. I am, in fact, going to go on bended knee and beg for forgiveness." He picked up his fork, twirled it impressively with his fingers, then made a quick jab for one of James' sausages.

"No, I should be the one doing that," James said miserably, slamming his knife between the prongs of Sirius' fork as it came within inches of the sausage. "Maybe then she wouldn't hate me quite so much."

"It's alright," Sirius said, knocking James' knife out the way with his fork and making an effort to snatch a sausage by hand. "Seeing as Plan A failed, we move onto Plan B."

"Which is what?" James snorted, catching Sirius' wrist effortlessly and twisting it brutally up into the air. "Go get drunk again and hope for the best?"

"You underestimate me, Prongs," Sirius grunted through the pain of his wrist balancing on the verge of dislocation. "My plan is far simpler, and – aragh - impressive, and flawless-ish, and – uhrgh – hey, Lily's looking at you!"

"What?" James snapped his head around so quickly it looked painful and Sirius snatched his wrist back, grabbing a sausage from the plate along the way.

"Made you look," he said smugly, sinking his teeth into it and regretting it slightly when he remembered he hated sausages.

James resentfully turned back to the table. "Alright, hit me with it."

Obligingly, Remus threw a piece of bacon at him.

"My plan," Sirius said, after he had won the resultant miniature food fight, "Is for you to go apologise to her, Jamesie-boy."

"What kind of a crap plan - ?"

"For all of us."

There was a moment of contemplative silence.

"That could work," said Remus thoughtfully.

"'Could'?" Sirius snorted. "Please. She'll be all over you by next week, mate," he added to James. "Mark my words."

He didn't miss the tiny frown that etched momentarily on Remus' forehead at those words.

0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o

And it's another installment of Sirius for your enjoyment!

Love and peace xxx