House; Hufflepuff
Class; Herbology
Category; Standard
Prompt(s) chosen.; Marauders Era, Brothers
Word Count; 2,631
It was the first Quidditch game of the season. James really should have warned Sirius about the little Black brother in play, but he'd not mentioned Padfoot's last name this year more than Sirius himself.
Something had happened over the summer, something Remus and Peter hadn't been privy to. Whether it was that instance, Sirius had instigated some other unknown strife with the Slytherin Beater, or just bad luck, the Bludger blow to their friends head sent the roaring crowd into shrieks of fright; the screaming had echoed all the way up to the Hospital Wing where it was now deathly silent, and had been for far to long.
"I think he's doing it on purpose," Peter whispered two days later as they sat in the nurse's domain. "Maybe he thinks if he stays out for all of his homework, they'll just pass him out of pity."
Nobody responded.
Madam Pomfrey came over with a very ill-tempered look. "I told you all to get to class!"
"You said he was supposed to wake up yesterday!" James tried his very best not to snap at her even as he ignored her demand. She could give detentions all she liked.
"Head injuries are tricky," she agreed, brushing her hand through Sirius' long hair in a motherly way. She'd taken the bandages off late last evening, but his head still looked smaller on the pillow than they were used to. Remus finally understood the pitiful looks he so often got from them. "He'll wake when he's ready, I've done all I can, and you three sitting around will only disturb his rest when he wakes."
None of them moved. She tutted in disapproval and began tapping Peter forcefully on the shoulder. "Get along you lot! I know you'll be back this evening anyways! I'll send an owl to his parents if he doesn't wake by then, but—"
"You what?" James finally leapt free of his chair, but he didn't care his arse was numb or the loud clatter of the wood. "No, you can't do that!"
He'd finally failed at the whole not snapping thing; he was the same height as her and she stared him down.
"That is not your call Mister Potter, it is protocol! Now get to class, or I will call your Head of House and Dumbledore himself if I must. Remus, come now, I normally have to chain you to be in here!"
Remus still didn't move, but James was now edging towards the door, Peter following him in confusion. She threw her hands in the air but muttered two out of three as she went off to help with Grace Wilkes, who was vomiting for some potions mishap.
"What are we doing?" Peter asked as they didn't make for Arithmancy.
"Owling my mum and dad," he said at once. "Like hell I'm letting Sirius see those creepy-arse parents of his before us!"
Peter didn't really see how James' parents could fix that, nor why he was in such a state over it, but he followed him up there and offered his own notes for scratch paper as he wrote a hasty letter to them, and then they snuck back into the Hospital Wing anyways under the invisibility cloak.
Remus tipped his head in their direction from his chair but still didn't move.
James brazenly took it back off the moment the final bell rang at the end of the day, sicker to his stomach than he'd ever been in his life. Madam Pomfrey merely sighed when she came out to see them in there impossibly fast and shooed them aside to check on Sirius again; the only thing they moved willingly for.
She walked off muttering to herself about upping a numbing potion, and James' stomach flipped farther. Was he not waking up because he was in so much pain? Blood loss? Was he going to lay there forever?
The door opened behind them, but none of them looked up until someone stopped at the foot of this bed. Then they blinked in confusion and thought they were seeing double for a moment.
Regulus Black's eyes were solid black, though, and he was much shorter than Sirius was at fourteen. There was something cold in his features they often associated with Padfoot when he first came back from holiday, the arrogant expression James now hated so much masking something in this kid.
Did he know? Sirius had said he must have and just never gotten involved. Having him before them once more nearly broke his new resolution; if this Black knew what had been happening to his brother, he was going to need this hospital more than Sirius. He wouldn't even need a wand, he wouldn't stoop to their level.
Regulus' tone was practiced and even, he looked at none of them and all of them as he spoke softly but in a carrying sort of voice that demanded attention. "Didn't see him out today."
James gave a slow, sarcastic clap and turned dismissively away to stop himself lunging to his feet, he refused to be thrown out until Sirius woke up, then he'd deal with this kid. Remus had already lost interest, but Peter watched him oddly.
"Matron say when he'll wake up?" Regulus still spoke like he had everyone's attention.
"Was supposed to already," Peter answered briskly. Regulus didn't even look at him, eyes switching from Sirius to James like the other two were invisible.
"Mum and Dad should be notified." He shrugged this off and cast his eyes around, for Madam Pomfrey presumably, turning away from them.
James snapped. His chair made a banging noise that had Regulus ducking for his wand on instinct, but James was faster; his was already aimed at the little whelp's face before he'd turned around.
"James, don't—" Remus tried, but too late; the only person James would have stopped for wasn't waking up.
Regulus flew into a bedpan full of chunky orange vomit that splashed across every available surface, including them as James stalked forward, wand still raised. "You stay away from him! You and your freaking parents, you stay the hell away from him!"
The coldest, meanest look even Sirius couldn't manage passed across the little Black's face as he began to shout, "Sectum—"
"Enough, both of you!" Madam Pomfrey was between the pair, wand held threateningly on both of them. "Out, now, yes Mister Potter, I mean you! If I repeat myself I will summon your Heads of Houses!"
Regulus stood and brushed his wand over himself as if nothing had happened, the puddle of sick vanishing and he marched off. James took the few precious steps it was worth to have the door on the wrong side of him, counted impatiently to ten when it closed, and eased it back open with the cloak on moments later.
Sirius was looking at the vomit on his bed with a very confused expression. "Did Prongs make Reg puke?" He slurred.
"Sirius!" James and Peter thankfully shouted at once in relief.
"Padfoot," Remus yelped, but he didn't even get out of his chair before Madam Pomfrey was telling both of them in no uncertain terms to be out of her way, now.
James took her distraction to take the cloak back off and bounce uneasily on his heels, trying to talk over her shoulder. "You always know how to make a grand entrance, don't you?"
Sirius' eyes were still a little foggy as the woman tipped his head this way and that. He smiled then, a real one they'd all so sorely been missing; one that Regulus would probably hurt himself attempting. "Course mate, is there any other kind?"
"Enough you three, he still needs his rest," she spoke over her shoulder, and then whirled around with a genuinely freighting look at James. He raised his hands and took several steps back towards the door, but she turned back to her patient before he made it out, so he risked it and just stayed well out of the way over here until she turned back to give them all the sternest of looks. "He is not to be out of this bed, no strenuous activity! If I see him so much as yawn too hard—"
"We'll be perfect angels ma'am," James said with all the politeness in the world.
"Not a peep, won't even know we're here," Peter agreed.
Remus was usually the best at being in her good graces from an abundance of practice, but he seemed a tad distracted by finally looking with a weary expression from the door, to Prongs, and back to Sirius. The two were now having a staring match.
Eager for her not to notice this, lest she considered that strenuous at all, James made a show of picking his chair up and getting comfortably relaxed in it, even reaching over and fluffing up Sirius' pillow as he rested back until she stopped glaring at him while going off once more.
"Padfoot," Remus still pretended he hated using their nicknames, but he couldn't do that anymore after whispering that. "I—I know—" Remus stopped, a very strange expression on his face. James was starting to wonder if it was more than just the entirety of the Quidditch fiasco that had him looking so off, but he wasn't going to be the one to bring up what Sirius had explicitly asked him not to. Why he'd left that night, how he'd shown up at Potter's Manor...no, that was for his adopted brother to share, if he chose to.
Sirius had always loathed how much he was like his mother. The impatient, impulsive ones in the house who struck first with both words and wands. Her haughty features, her temper. He'd feared and hated her in equal measure, he'd vowed that summer at the Potters' to never become her in any way that mattered. No kids of his own, even, if he could help it.
He was terrified of his father, though. He might have a lot of the same face and those cold gray eyes, but Orion was ruthless, calculating. He was always in his study doing the family business; he was the one who punished Sirius for the big things. Nobody disrespected the Blacks.
He should have known his little brother had taken after him the first time.
The day after the full moon, Remus had woken up in the hospital wing with company as usual, but James was in a bed beside him. Before he'd so much as sat up with a startled yelp Prongs was putting down his comic and glancing over with a smile.
"Relax Moony, had nothing to do with you," he whispered cheerfully, the matron at the other end of the ward busy with a whole classroom of students in some potions accident while he waved at some organ floating in a green patterned jar on his bedside. "Thought I ate something I shouldn't have, one of Sirius's dares, but Flitwick sent me up here anyways. Turns out my appendix was rupturing," he even stopped to snort with a laugh. "Says she'll put it back in an hour, good as new."
"Right, yeah," Remus sighed in relief, and they spent the rest of evening classes swapping the magazine back and forth and laughing cheerfully until their friends came to collect them at the end of the day.
The next time was slightly more strange and concerning, James started coughing, and before he could just wave it off as dust in the air on the pitch, little red droplets were all over his hand. Their Keeper shrieked like a banshee while a fellow Chaser raced off for help the moment Sirius started to support him to the ground. It was terrifying and disgusting in equal measure how quickly he was turning pale, and by the time Madam Hooch arrived there was a horrible moment where something wet and chunky was flying out of his mouth before she waved her wand and it slowed enough they got him up to the hospital wing.
Cursed to literally hack up his lungs, the matron deduced. A quick wave of her wand and a potion to be sure and he was cleared again by breakfast. Sirius should have at least guessed by then.
Seven may have been the most powerfully magical number, but curses come in threes. An old tradition based on the foundation of magic. That was the first hint; Peter found the last one by accident, the hexed item with its runes was in James's shoe. He hadn't a chance to put them on, because Wormtail had been trying to tie his laces together for some revenge of James's cursing his tongue to the roof of his mouth last week.
How it had gotten there, or what that one would have done to him none could guess. The others brushed it off as someone getting one last score to settle with the Marauders; they'd had a notorious reputation in years prior but nobody had missed the detail James and Sirius had been, to use the popular phrase, deflating their heads a bit this year. Clearly, somebody had struck long after the fact feeling safe of no retaliation, and they'd been right because Sirius had never hinted that was his brother's handwriting in the ink. He could have been wrong, of course, it was just a few lines of ancient script, but the two had learned all sacred-twenty eight families before their fifth birthday by heart, they'd both spent countless hours studying the very basics Hogwarts had to offer while others were still learning their alphabets.
Sirius waited, watching the kid more in the next few weeks than he ever had in this life at school, and he loathed what he saw. Regulus hanging around the worst of the worst, the very teenagers whom he and James had targeted most for their awful use of hexes and downright terrifying stunts. His little brother had avoided his fights with Mum like the plague, more often than not hiding out in the attic until they all blew over and Sirius or his parents put the worst of his injuries back together.
He was smart, and strategic in a way Sirius never was, avoiding and learning where Sirius was in the way and curious. To ask the wrong questions and Regulus to know the answer by seeing him get chewed out. His little brother never had to ask anything, he was too busy watching. There was a reason his parents had never done the deed of kicking him out themselves long before his last stunt; Regulus was not meant to be the leader of the House of Black, he was a follower.
A Death Eater, just like the rest of them.
School had always been a stepping stone to the two brothers. Sirius had never quite gotten the hang of figuring out just what twisted and evil meant until he found James, the opposite of all they'd really been wanting him to learn. The hurt of never understanding why he was so loathed by his parents for a natural curiosity that was praised in Hogwarts slowly but surely had curdled into bitterness that very night as he played with the now broken runes on his bed.
Being Captain of the Quidditch team and particularly after the concerning news Moony delivered about what had happened to Mary during their drama last year, had them suddenly leaning into the school gossip instead of being it. The whispers, the fears, the soft uttering screams over the morning post.
They would not say his name, but finally, they found it by overhearing McGonagall's hushed conversation with Dumbledore one evening after James and Sirius's detention.
Voldemort was on the rise.