You can tell a lot about a person by the way they tie their shoes. It's a small skill, something learned young and tailored over time. It is done often; without conscious thought or effort. A quick, automatic motion; something done a thousand times before.
It is a personal signature worn for the world to see; if one is only observant enough to see it.
oooo
Sirius Black was taught to tie his shoes at age five by a particularly stressed nursemaid named Ida. Ida had been instructed to teach the young heir to dress and present himself as was expected; how to tie a bowtie so it sat perfectly in the nape of the neck, the correct order in which to don a 4 piece suit, and of course, how to tie shoelaces into delicately twisted bows that balanced perfectly on the crown of a polished brogue.
She sat in front of him, her hands over his, delicately guiding his fingers across the laces. Sirius watched with intense concentration, his tongue clenched between his teeth as he memorized the patterns and steps with unblinking eyes.
He messed up the first time. Sirius sank in disappointment, his hands balling into tight fists. But Ida was gentle. She chuckled quietly and took his clenched hands in hers, loosening the knots in his muscles before loosening the knots on the laces.
"There's no need to fuss," she said in her firm but gentle voice. "Try again."
Sirius did, a second and a third time. Each time, his hands knotted into the laces, getting tangled in the bows.
And each time, Ida sighed and took Sirius' hands in hers, calming him before undoing the laces.
By the fifth time, Sirius was close to tears. Frustrated and angry at something which seemed so simple. He would have thrown the shoes across the room had they not been tightly bound to his feet.
"Maybe we should try a different way," Ida said, gently releasing Sirius' foot from the laces' tight grasp.
"But Mother said I had to tie them this way," Sirius replies stubbornly, pressing his sleeve into his red-rimmed eyes.
"And since when have you ever done a thing your mother said?" Ida smirked at him. "Sometimes we need to find our own way of doing things."
Sirius scowled but nodded and let Ida take his hands again. She tied the laces slower this time, using a different pattern with both strings.
When Sirius tried on his own, he got it the first time and shrieked in triumph.
(After that, he proceeded to tie every shoe in the house, often with increasingly undoable knots.)
Even after Sirius ran away from home, his shoelaces were always perfectly tied. Anyone who cared to look would see a delicate bow balanced on the tip of a polished shoe, though knotted in a way that was completely his own.
oooo
James Potter rarely tied his shoes at all.
As a child, he would shove his feet into them with careless abandon, trampling the heels as he chased gnomes around the garden.
Sometimes, he would remove the laces from the shoes entirely. String them together into ropes to trip up his father as he walked blindly through the house, his face buried in books.
When his mother hounded him to dress properly, James would shove the laces down the sides of the shoe and smile as he raced out the door.
She caught him, of course, time and time again. Euphemia Potter would grab her only son by the scruff of the neck and drag him back to the living room.
"Mum, it's fine!" James moaned as his mother knelt in front of him. "I like them like this."
"It is not fine. You could trip and hurt yourself."
"I'm not going to trip over my own laces."
Euphemia raised an eyebrow at him, and James huffed.
"Fine, I'm not going to trip over them again! Can I please go now? Ms Bagshot said she'd show me the really gruesome troll murders in her old history books."
Euphemia sighed. "I'm only taking care of you, love," she said softly and rose to kiss her son on the forehead. James batted her away playfully before racing out the door.
James never fell over when his mother tied his shoes. Even as he grew up, he still rarely tied his own.
He did tie others' though.
He tied Remus' shoes often after the full moons when Remus was too stiff to bend down himself. Remus never asked James to do it. James never asked for permission either. But he always double-knotted them, as he knew Remus liked them.
He tied Sirius's shoes before Elvendork's first test drive. Sirius had been so excited by his new motorbike's whirring engine and shiny wheels that he hadn't even noticed his shoes were untied. James caught him before the laces could get caught in the spokes.
He tied Peter's laces the first time they met on the train. Not to his feet, but to the rack above their heads so they could lie back and relax like a hammock. Both content and happy to have found a friend.
He first tied Lily's shoes when they were in their third year. She was late for a class and hurrying down a corridor, her arms full of books. James tugged her aside and knotted them in seconds before letting her run off again. He didn't think anything of it at the time, though he thought about it a lot later.
For all the time Harry Potter lived at Godric's Hollow, his laces were never untied. James would never allow it.
"He could trip and hurt himself," James informed a smirking Lily as he very carefully knotted the tiny laces on Harry's tiny boots.
"He can't even walk yet, James."
"That doesn't mean we shouldn't be careful."
Lily sighed and kissed her husband before pushing the pram out of the house, James' untied laces trailing behind him.
oooo
Remus Lupin double-knotted his shoes. Sometimes he triple-knotted them, just to be safe.
His dad had taught him how to do it back when he was five years old, though Remus barely remembered that. It was hidden somewhere deep in his mind, a consequence of burying a hundred painful memories of that age.
He tied them differently too, in a way that no one else seemed to do it. It had baffled his friends one entertaining evening in the dormitory back in their first year.
"Show me again," Sirius demanded, his tongue clenched between his teeth as he followed Remus' slender fingers.
Remus sighed and undid the bow only to do it up again. He took both laces in his hands, looping them across his fingers and pulling in one smooth motion so they tied themselves together with Remus barely having to twist or let go at all.
"That's magic, that is," James said in awe, attempting to copy on his own shoe.
Sirius and Peter were failing just as spectacularly, their laces falling hopelessly to the ground like limp snakes.
"We're literally wizards, James. This is definitely not magic," Remus said dryly, smirking at his friends' attempts.
"But how do you do it?" Sirius asked for the hundredth time, thinly veiled frustration in his voice.
"I don't know. I just do it," Remus replied with a shrug as he absentmindedly put another knot into the shoelaces.
He didn't think about how he did it; he just did. It was an unconscious habit at this point, one he couldn't think about or teach. One he couldn't even tie on someone else's shoes, only his own.
Though his own shoes were barely being held together as it was; they were scruffy, torn up and worn through. There were scratches in the leather, holes in the sole, and the whole thing was covered in so many Reparo charms it was a miracle they still classed as 'shoes'.
Sometimes, Remus double-knotted them in the hope it would hold them together for just a little longer. He couldn't imagine wearing any other pair.
"We'll figure it out," James said mischievously. "We'll work out your little magic secret."
Remus swallowed nervously but hid it behind a polite smile. In his hands, his fingers tied another knot into the laces.
oooo
Peter learned to tie his shoes at age four, long before the other Marauders. He watched his parents do it, his cousins and his sisters. He watched as they delicately looped the strings, twisted and turned them until they sat into something so simply beautiful and secure.
He stole his father's shoes late one night and practised over and over and over again until he could tie them flawlessly.
He was so proud of himself that he immediately woke his older sister to show her.
She was less than pleased.
When he was ten, he found a boy scouts' book shoved into the bottom of a second-hand bin in a muggle charity shop. The book was full of knots, each one intricate and delicate and extremely useful. And all of them, no matter how tight, could be unravelled by the tug of a single string. Peter was so fascinated by the book that he couldn't put it down.
When his mother called for him to leave, he shoved the book up his jumper and stole it, walking out of the shop as though nothing was wrong. He hid the book beneath his mattress. No one ever discovered it.
Those knots helped the Marauders out immensely, especially in the beginning of their friendship when sticking charms weren't an option. Peter's hidden talent was the crux of many of the pranks: traps that could be sprung at the pull of a rope, knots that got tighter the more you tried to release them. They rarely thanked Peter for it, and Peter mostly didn't mind.
He was just proud that he could be useful.
They used the knots less and less as they grew up though, preferring complex charms and tricky transfiguration to pull off the pranks. Peter's help was asked for less and less as he was shuffled further and further to the edge of the crowd.
No one seemed to notice Peter drift away. No one ever seemed to notice Peter much at all.
Maybe, if they had taken a moment to walk in his shoes they wouldn't have been tripped up by so many small mistakes.
There were a lot of things that caused Peter to end up in a dark cloak and silver mask. Just, a lot of little choices, each woven and sewn together into a path that ended at the Dark Lord's feet.
You can tell a lot about a person by the way they tie their shoes. It was the very first thing Peter noticed about the Dark Lord.
He wore no shoes at all.
For THC
House: Gryffindor
Position: Astronomy
Standard
Prompt: [Object] Shoelaces
Word Count 1814
This story was beta'd by the marvellous Gryffindor team who all had some excellent, meaningful and insightful thoughts as to what the last line of the story meant. I would be remissed if I didn't share a few of my favourites:
-He wants to be one with the earth because of his love for immortality. - Ash Juliet
-The Dark Lord definitely hasn't showered in a backpacker's hostel before and it shows - gingerdream
-He doesn't have ties with anyone, that's why he doesn't wear shoes - bea writes
-He never had anyone to teach him at the orphanage because he scared everyone away and by that point it was too late and he couldn't be seen showing weakness by asking how to do it so he just had to run with the whole no shoes business as velcro is too Muggle for him - Charlotteredmond99
(Feel free to add your own interpretations in the comments!)