Disclaimer: J.K. Rowling owns all of Harry Potter's world and its wonderful characters. I own nothing but the plot I made up and a few OCs.
"Captivate"
Dictionary definition: verb - to attract and hold the interest and attention of; charm.
SIRIUS:
Sirius didn't see Lupin again for two days after the awkward conversation in the dorm. He, along with James and Peter, didn't really notice his absence much in the days that followed. They were overtaken by a blur of new subjects, a castle to explore, mischief to create and spells to learn.
On the second Monday of their new school term, Sirius had announced to his friends in a manner reminiscent of Nicholas Flammel's when he had finally solved the problem of creating the Philosopher's Stone, that DADA was his favourite subject. This was mainly because the teacher – a very young Auror who had been put out of commission for a year due to a leg injury – was the most awesome person in the school.
Professor Anders had pale brown hair surrounding one of those faces that never loses its boyishness, no matter how old the person is. He kept up a witty repartee with his students but, as James and Sirius discovered on a day they tried to sneak some itching powder into Snape's robes while he was occupied practicing the disarming spell, he could blow up at a moment's notice, causing them to feel almost sorry for any dark wizard that crossed his path.
Sirius also enjoyed DADA because he knew his parents disapproved of it.
The subject he liked least was Potions, which was taught by the enormous Professor Slughorn. Slughorn had a stomach so large that Sirius thought he should have had his own gravitational force and maybe a few moons. He was the Slytherin Head of House, but presented a surprisingly jovial manner towards most students, particularly those who had influential families or demonstrated a flair for Potions. Unfortunately, this immediately put Sirius and Snape into the same category for both reasons respectively.
It was in one such distressing Potions lesson that Sirius, in a desperate bid to earn the teacher's disapproval and so get himself expelled from any group that contained Severus Snape, had pretended to accidentally drop a Tottenblow Togarts' Hair-Changing Toffee on the floor by Snape's cauldron. Much to his, Peter's and James's delight, Snape had picked it up and eaten it, earning himself long greasy tangle of disturbingly fluorescent lime-green hair.
"Why did we get detention?" Peter complained as the three of them wandered to the great hall that evening, after a miserable two hours cleaning the trophy room by hand. "It's not like we forced him to eat it. And besides, it was in Slytherin colours."
"Exactly!" Sirius said, as they thumped down on the bench of the Gryffindor table and began piling their plates. "In fact, I thought the colour went rather well with his eyes."
"Slughorn didn't agree when you pointed that out to him," James said, his mouth full of chicken stew.
"I can't think why not. Anything's an improvement to Snivellus' hair. A bottle of shampoo would be a great start to ridding him of his general air of repulsiveness."
"Still, it's not like we expected to get away with it," Peter said, having already inhaled half his dinner.
"I don't know how he figured out it was us." Sirius poked disconsolately at his food.
"I reckon it might've had something to do with you burping 'sucker!' then falling off your bench laughing when his hair turned green," James volunteered.
"I think there's a fig in my stew," Sirius said, unable to refute James's comment and tackling this issue with the time honoured practice of rapid subject-changing. He speared the offending object with his fork and waved it in James's direction. "I hate figs! Why would anyone put figs in stew?"
"It's not a fig, it's a mushroom," Peter said, already dishing himself up seconds.
"It's a fig. I can see it's a fig. D'you think I don't know what a fig looks like?"
"I wouldn't argue with Pete about anything to do with food, mate," James said, indicating the smaller boy's girth which was already threatening to turn him into a mini Slughorn.
Sirius looked more closely at the shrivelled black thing on the end of his fork before taking a small bite.
"Oh. It is a mushroom."
Peter smirked, his mouth so full of dumpling he could not make a sound.
"Don't look at me like that. It was a suspicious and possibly of Slytherin origin. It fooled me with its fig-like appearance!"
"Are you lot ever serious?" Lily Evans demanded, as Sirius' wild gesticulating caused the piece of mushroom-masquerading-as-a-fig to fly off his fork and onto her plate.
"Nope, only me," Sirius said proudly, "Sirius Black!"
Many Gryffindors around the table groaned at this declaration, and Lily flicked the piece of mushroom off her plate in disgust.
By the time dinner was finished, the boys were in very high spirits and headed back to the Common Room in what Professor McGonagall referred to as a disorderly manner.
"Let's play exploding snap," James suggested. "Has anyone got a set?"
"I do," Sirius said, leaping up to run to the dormitory. "I'll go get it."
He burst into the room and skidded over to his trunk on his knees. It was only once he had fished out the pack of cards and slammed it shut that he noticed the other occupant of the room. Remus Lupin lay curled on his bed, a book in his hand as he eyed Sirius warily. He looked dreadful - drawn and white with rings under his eyes so dark that it looked like he'd been punched.
"You look dreadful, Loopy," Sirius told him.
"Blame my parents. Their genes." Lupin's voice and expression was calm, but Sirius didn't miss the strain in his eyes, or the way he curled up a little more as if attempting to protect himself.
"No, I mean you look ill."
"I've been to Madame Pomfrey. I'll be fine."
Sirius looked at him doubtfully, a picture of a thin, scarred little wrist rising to his mind. He felt something oddly like a flush of anger run through him and couldn't quite understand why. Before he considered what he was doing he leapt forward and grabbed Lupin's book from his surprised hands.
"Hey! Give it back!"
Lupin made an angry grab for the book, but Sirius stepped back at the last minute and the smaller boy tumbled out of bed and landed hard on his side. He let out an odd little whining whimper of pain, reminding Sirius of a kicked puppy. Sirius waited for him to get up and tackle him again, but instead Lupin just lay there for a long moment before rising to his knees with the help of his bed and crawling back onto it.
"All right," he said, his voice tinged with weariness, "you may keep it if it makes you happy."
Sirius found he couldn't answer. He was staring at the floor where a smudge of dark red stained the area where Lupin had fallen. The boy lay curled on the bed again, his back to Sirius, and now that Sirius was looking for it, he could see the darker stain of blood on Remus' black school robes.
"Who hurt you?"
"Get out. Keep the bloody book if you want and get out."
"Was it your – "
"Get out! Get out! GETOUTGETOUTGETOUT!" Lupin turned his head and Sirius was confronted with a pair of manic gold-amber eyes. They looked massive in his small face and not quite sane, like an animal locked too long in a tiny cage.
Sirius took a step back, suddenly irrationally afraid. It was something from deep inside him – a primal instinct that seemed to scream run, run!
But then Lupin turned his head away again and started muttering, "Stay away, stay back, stay away, pleaseplease not now…" And all Sirius could see was that too-thin back trembling and bleeding through his robes - a sight that seemed to be superimposed over the image of that little scarred wrist in his mind.
Hesitantly, he stepped forward and laid the book on the bed by Lupin's ankles. Even the boy's feet, he noticed, seemed to be curling in on themselves inside his socks. He backed away and crept out of the door.
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Sirius didn't mention the incident to Peter and James, just as they didn't comment on the fact that Lupin was back at all. Sirius kept the secret of that incident locked away in his mind where he could replay it in calm moments – such as History of Magic (which was taught by the ghost, Professor Binns, who James reckoned had bored himself to death with his own lessons. Binns didn't even notice when, due to James having spent a happy half hour practising a nifty charm they had discovered in the library that tied people's shoelaces together, every one of his students fell flat on their noses as they leapt gratefully to their feet at the end of the lesson.).
Sirius didn't know what to do about what he had seen. He sort of thought he should tell someone, but that felt strangely like a betrayal of trust – even though he had never promised Lupin anything, and didn't like him anyway.
Sometimes he would find himself staring at the back of Lupin's head where he sat at the front of the class looking small and studious and vulnerable, and tried to picture a grown-up grabbing the boy and beating him so badly he bled through his robes and caused scars on his skin so he had to wear long jumpers even in the hottest weather. At these times, that funny burning anger twisted in his stomach again and he had to restrain himself from leaping up, shaking Lupin's thin shoulders and screaming at him. He didn't know what he would scream, though. Maybe, "Why are you trying to hide it? I know what they're doing to you!" or, "Tell someone, you stupid, crazy idiot! Tell somebody grown up so I don't have to think about it anymore!"
Or maybe just, "Why did you let me see? Why did you let me know?"
He could not stop himself from watching as Lupin walked calmly around the school from class to class. He watched as Lupin helped little Alice Richards up after she hit her head when a stair disappeared under her right foot, picking up her books and offering to take her to the Hospital Wing. He hid behind a shelf in the library one day and stared as Lupin sat quietly cross-legged on the floor in the Charms section, reading a book with a look of serene tranquillity on his face that Sirius couldn't understand. It made him almost as angry as the thought of his scars did, though this time he wanted to scream "Don't be calm! Don't be happy! You can't be when you're beaten and little and have no friends. Why aren't you sad? Why aren't you fighting?"
James and Peter, caught up in their eleven-year-old, self-centred little worlds, didn't seem to notice Sirius' new habit of 'Lupin Watching'. Sometimes Sirius forgot it as well, joining in new Slytherin pranks and Snape-baiting with the abandon of a true Gryffindor, until the flash of a tawny-coloured head caught his attention again.
Sirius didn't know how many weeks had passed before he looked up from his game of chess with Peter to spot Lupin heading towards the portrait hole one evening dressed in his outdoor cloak.
"Where are you going, Loopy!" he yelled, causing the boy to jump violently and swing around to look at him. It was the first time either of them had exchanged a word since that night in the dorm.
"Home. To see my mother." Lupin turned and hurried out the portrait hole before Sirius could question him any further.
"Why do you care?" Peter asked.
"I don't." Sirius distracted his chubby friend from further questions by calmly moving his queen so that Peter was checkmated.