Chapter One: The Kind of Person Who Stands Up

Mum is having one of her fits again—eyes popping, spit spewing out of her mouth, shrieks reverberating off the walls of Grimmauld Place and crowding Sirius into the corner of the drawing room as surely as do her hands. So when Dad casts a disdainful look at the sight of them—before he takes off, muttering, for the kitchen, where Regulus is surely slouched with his head on the table because he knows he's next, because Mum's wrath is just about to spill over to him by association—Dad says in a voice so conversational that Sirius can barely make it out, "Sirius, I'll stay here and talk Mum down after Cygnus and Druella get here. Be ready to leave in twenty minutes."

There are two things wrong with this statement. Actually, there are numerous things wrong with this statement, but two especially jump out at Sirius. For one thing, there's no way he can be ready to leave in twenty minutes, not without Dad pulling Mum off of him, and Dad never bothers to pull Mum off of him when she gets like this. For another, Dad has a very loose definition of "staying here and talking Mum down" that doesn't actually involve doing any talking. Mostly, it just involves waiting for her to finish beating the boys silly, setting her down in the dining room with a bottle of Firewhiskey, and allowing her to shout herself hoarse about Mudbloods, blood traitors, and half-breeds.

But Sirius doesn't complain, partly because doing so would just make Mum madder but partly also because he'd much rather go to King's Cross without his mum and dad in tow. His aunt and uncle aren't his favorite people in the world, and his cousin Bellatrix is as stark raving mad as Mum is, but Bella graduated from Hogwarts and got married two years ago—she won't be going to the station with them at all. When Aunt Druella and Uncle Cygnus come by the house, they'll only be bringing Narcissa and Andromeda. Cissy, who's going to be a sixth year, is all right—she isn't particularly friendly, but she's never really mean to Sirius or anything. However, seventh year Andy is hands down Sirius's favorite cousin and, after Regulus, one of Sirius's favorite people.

Every year, on September first, Uncle Cygnus and Aunt Druella always Side-Along-Apparate Sirius's cousins here before they go to King's Cross. Flying broomsticks over London during the day would be too conspicuous; the station is too crowded to Apparate or land a Portkey without drawing Muggle attention; there aren't any fireplaces there to hook up to the Floo Network—but Grimmauld Place is only a half-hour walk from King's Cross. According to Andy, it's even faster, only ten minutes, if you take the Tube, though of course none of the Blacks would be caught dead mixing with all the Muggles on the London Underground—so they walk. And this year—Sirius's first year walking with them—his parents won't even be tagging along to see him off.

He's so excited to see Andy for a whole half of an hour—so eager to get out of this house for the next four entire months—that the minutes in which Mum screams at him and uses her backhand seem to drag by even slower than usual. Sirius has been waiting to go to Hogwarts for what feels like his entire life. Hogwarts means freedom from his parents—Mum, who gets off on beating and ridiculing him, and Dad, who can't be fussed to stop her—and Sirius can't think of anything better than getting away from his parents.

Finally, finally, Sirius hears a crack coming from the foyer. Just like that, the sound that signals the arrival of company seems to snap Mum out of her rage, at least for the moment; she cuts herself off mid-sentence, straightens up, and looks sort of dazedly around the room, as if she's been someplace else all this time and has only just become lucid—and that's pretty much exactly what's happening, isn't it? Mum isn't always angry—usually, but not always—and it's as if there's two of her, the Mum who has no love for Sirius and the Mum who combs his hair and cautions him about the dangers of associating with all the Mudbloods he's going to meet when he goes away to Hogwarts. When the first Mum comes out, it's like the second Mum goes—away, somewhere; Sirius has never been able to figure out where. He always wonders what it's like inside her head when that's happening. Is each of her personalities aware of the other? When the Mum who gives a damn about him comes back to him, does she remember all the screams and slaps, or does she look at Sirius's red cheeks and try but fail to recall just when and why and how she delivered those blows?

"I'll just go upstairs and get my trunk," Sirius says to no one in particular, and he dashes up the stairs, listening to Mum meander into the foyer and kiss Aunt Druella hello.

He hasn't packed everything yet, but the schoolbooks and things he bought in Diagon Alley are already in his trunk, and he doesn't have a lot of other possessions. It doesn't take him long to round up the last of his socks and reach under the loose floorboard for the copies of The Adventures of Martin Miggs, the Mad Muggle, Andy gave him that Mum and Dad don't know about. When he's got everything stashed in there, and he's stowed the wand he got last month carefully in his robe pocket, he grabs the trunk by the handle and starts to lug it down the steps.

"Hullo, Sirius," Andy says brightly when Sirius makes it down there. "Ready to go?"

Mum is somehow still standing there in her right mind, and Sirius thinks for a second that Dad is going to change his mind, that he and Mum are going to come along after all—but then he realizes that Mum's still sort of staring off into thin air with a vacant expression, not quite laughing at any of Aunt Druella's quips. He glances from Mum to Dad and back again. "Well, bye, Mum. Bye, Dad."

"Regulus, come and say goodbye to your brother," Dad calls without taking his eyes off of Sirius.

Regulus appears a moment later. He's blushing, probably because he'd rather keep away from Mum knowing that she's only just come off of on one of her rampages. Suddenly, Sirius hasn't got a clue what to say. He wants to apologize that Regulus is going to be stuck here another year with Mum before he can come away to Hogwarts, too, but Sirius doesn't dare say so in front of anybody but Andy.

"Will you write to me tonight after you get Sorted into Slytherin?" Regulus asks timidly.

Sirius breaks out into a grin. "You bet I will. I'll tell you all about the castle and the classes and everything."

"You better."

He steps forward and pulls Regulus into a brief, rough hug. "I'll see you soon, okay? Four months isn't that far from now."

He's telling the truth, sort of—four months isn't that far from now. The lie is framing it like Sirius is actually looking forward to coming home.

xx

Sirius is sort of expecting Andy to sit with him on the train, or at least to stay with him until he finds somebody he can sit with, but when they cross through the platform and he looks at her expectantly, she just says, "Well, I'd best be off. I told Ted I'd come and find him as soon as I got on."

"Is that your Mudblood boyfriend?" Sirius asks with interest.

Andy rolls her eyes. "I keep telling you not to call him a Mudblood. I know our parents always call Muggle-born wizards that, as if that's just what they're called, but that's actually a really offensive word for it. The better word is Muggle-born."

"Fine. Is that your Muggle-born boyfriend?" he amends.

"Yes, but don't go saying that within earshot of Cissy. She'll turn right around and tell my mum and dad, and we can't have that," says Andy, glancing behind her. Fortunately, Cissy doesn't seem to have noticed their exchange; she's busy exchanging greetings with a tall boy who's just as blonde and pale as she is. "I'll save you a seat at the Slytherin table during the Sorting, okay? I'll wave so you can find me."

There it is again—the assumption that Sirius will be Sorted into Slytherin. It's not like he has a problem with the idea of Slytherin; it's just… it's where his parents went, an integral part of both their identities, and Sirius sort of just wants to have a fresh start away from them here—figure out who he is when he's not scared of setting Mum off all the time. Besides, Slytherin isn't very Mudblood-friendly—er, Muggle-born-friendly—and if Andy is dating one of them, they can't be that bad, can they?

He doesn't know where he'd necessarily end up, though, if not in Slytherin. Slytherin's core traits have never really resonated with him, but neither have Ravenclaw's: it's not like Sirius is some big academic buff or anything. He's not particularly hardworking, like Hufflepuffs are supposed to be, and anyway, he'll never be able to face Mum or Dad again if he winds up in Hufflepuff.

That just leaves Gryffindor. It's not like he's ever seriously considered the possibility that he might become a Gryffindor—Mum and Dad would have his head over that, too—and he's always thought of Gryffindor as being the house for stuck-up assholes who think they're principled, that they've got more integrity than everybody else. So it surprises him when, twenty minutes later, one of the first friends he makes on the train—who just happens to be a pureblood from the House of Potter, whom Sirius would have expected to want to end up in Slytherin—vehemently denounces Slytherin and claims to want to be a Gryffindor, like his dad.

"Why Gryffindor?" he asks when that oddball Snivellus boy and his redheaded friend leave their compartment in disgust. "I mean, what's so great about it? Aren't Gryffindors all supposed to be sort of full of themselves?"

"You really did come from a family of snakes," James Potter marvels. "Everybody knows that Gryffindors are brave and noble and do the right thing, even when it's hard. I mean, there's nothing wrong with being loyal or smart or ambitious, I guess, but wouldn't you want to be the kind of person who stands up for people who can't do it for themselves?"

Sirius thinks about Andy, who always stands up to Bella and Cissy when they start spouting off about how Mudbloods—Muggle-borns—are filth. But Andy doesn't stand up to her parents or Sirius's parents, and maybe that's why she isn't in Gryffindor.

Is that the kind of person Sirius is? Somebody who would stand up for Muggle-borns—for Andy's boyfriend, Ted—even though his whole family thinks they've got to be kept down? Should Muggle-borns be kept down? After all, one of the boys sharing their compartment—Benjy something—says ten minutes later that he's Muggle-born, and he seems perfectly… well… normal.

It's not like Sirius was expecting horns or anything, but—his parents have been drilling into him his whole life how Muggles and Mudbloods would just as soon rule as a mob over wizards like the Blacks if the purebloods hadn't worked so hard to get their power back and keep their inferiors in check. After almost twelve years of hearing about how Mudbloods (Muggle-borns, Sirius reminds himself) are lazy and stupid and ruin everything they touch, he would have expected the first one he'd ever meet to immediately stand out as pigheaded and pushy, but Benjy doesn't seem to be that kind of a bloke. He's way less pushy than Mum or Bella is, anyway.

Sirius sticks with James, Benjy, and the other boy in their compartment (another first year named Frank Longbottom) for the rest of the train ride, all through the boat ride up to the castle and the very long walk to the front of the Great Hall. He looks around at the forty or so first years, and they all look the same to him—equally nervous for the Sorting, irrespective of what houses they'll all end up in and what their parentages are. Is it really that simple? Are they really all just—kids?

"Black, Sirius," calls the stern Deputy Headmistress who calls herself Professor McGonagall.

Sirius is the third eleven-year-old to walk past the crowd of anxious first years, sit on the stool, and wait for the Sorting Hat to make its verdict. He thinks he might have overdone it on the Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans on the train because he feels like he's going to be sick all over lap with the Hat's brim falling down over his eyes and casting everything into darkness. This is it, he tells himself. He's going to be put in Slytherin, just like every Black in recent history has been, and the tentative friendships he made with James Potter and Benjy Fenwick and Frank Longbottom on the train are going to be history.

But the Hat doesn't scream Slytherin! the instant it touches his head. It doesn't even say Slytherin in the first ten seconds. Instead, there's a long silence, and then he hears a little voice that says, Interesting… quite interesting.

He's barely had a chance to wonder to himself what's so interesting before the Hat seems to hear him and replies to him, You're not too proud of your lineage, are you, boy?

Sirius's mind flicks to the rows of dismembered house-elf heads that line the walls of the Black manor, to his mother beating him for—well—seemingly everything Sirius does. He knows Slytherin has a reputation for housing the worst evil in the Wizarding World, and Sirius doesn't know about politics, but he knows that there's evil in the way his mother and father treat Sirius, let alone how they talk to the people they encounter whom they view as inferior.

And Sirius isn't even saying that Muggles and blood traitors and half-breeds aren't inferior, but—well, it's not their faults that they're born who they are, is it? It never killed anybody to treat others with a little common courtesy and respect. Maybe not someone like Kreacher, who treats Sirius like he's a piece of garbage for not constantly sucking up to his parents the way Kreacher does, but after meeting Benjy, Sirius can't imagine that every Muggle-born out there is as mean to purebloods as Mum and Dad are to Muggle-borns—surely they can't be nasty enough to deserve that kind of vitriol.

Conflicted about your family, eh? says the Hat now. You certainly have a thirst to prove yourself as being different from where you came from, and that's a Slytherin trait if I've ever seen one. Sirius's hopes, which had been getting up a little bit, fall again, but then the Hat laughs, Don't worry, boy, there's more going on in your mind than just rebellion. You've got a healthy dose of wanting to teach yourself the right thing to do, wanting to discover for yourself what's right and then uphold that to others. So unless you're keen on Slytherin… The Hat laughs again, probably at the way Sirius is thinking no so adamantly that he has to consciously remind himself not to start shaking his head. Better be—

"GRYFFINDOR!"

Sirius's legs are still shaking as he dismounts from the stool and walks over toward the table on the end that's erupted into cheers. He goes slowly—the table is crammed full of people, none of whom he knows or feels comfortable sitting next to—until a round-faced blonde girl near the back end of the table waves her arms in the air and nods toward the empty space across from her. Distantly, he recognizes her as the first person to be Sorted and the first to end up in Gryffindor. Abbott, he thinks her name was—he recognizes it as one of the old pureblood families, just like his.

"Thanks," he says. "I'm Sirius."

"Alice," she answers, sticking out a hand that he shakes above the width of the table.

The next person to be Sorted into Gryffindor is the redheaded girl from the train who was friends with that awful Snivellus boy who'd wanted to end up in Slytherin—Lily, her name turns out to be. Sirius scoots up the table to make room for her, but she shoots him a cold glare and takes a seat at the other far end, up front by the High Table.

So the seat that would have been Lily's ultimately gets taken by the next Gryffindor to be Sorted, a slight boy named Remus Lupin who looks shaky and pale—Sirius can't tell if it's just from anxiety or if he's actually falling ill, but he doesn't question it, clapping him on the back as the cheers for him die down. There's not really any more room that they can make for others to join them, but Sirius tallies up the remaining Gryffindor Sorts: two girls, then two boys (including James), and finally, another girl.

He's only half paying attention to the Sorting by the time it wraps up—he's sure he won't remember very many names from the Sorting alone, but there are only, what, about forty first years in his incoming class? He'll figure it out pretty quickly. Either way, every time the Hat yells Slytherin! Sirius's eyes track the new Slytherin across the room to their table, wondering what it would feel like to be over there waiting for them, resigned to be their housemate for the next seven years. Some of them, Damocles Belby and the Carrow twins, he recognizes as the children of friends of his parents, and Sirius finds himself wondering whether they're all going to start sneering at him when they pass in the corridors, treating their old polite acquaintanceships like they never happened.

And oh, god, what are his parents going to say? He can't just completely avoid them until it's time to go home for Christmas break and it comes time to tell them that he's in Gryffindor, and even if he did—what if Belby or the Carrows or one of the older Slytherins tells their parents, and they tell Sirius's parents, and he gets in trouble not just for where he was Sorted but for hiding it and letting them find out from someone else? Sirius isn't a wimp—he can deal with getting yelled at—but when his mum really loses her temper…

Besides, he promised Regulus he'd write to him tonight—after he got Sorted into Slytherin, they'd agreed. His brother is Sirius's best friend in the world—he didn't just destroy that relationship for good, did he? He can't have. Regulus knows him—he wouldn't abandon Sirius over something as trivial as what dormitory Sirius sleeps in at night.

Only it's about more than that, and Sirius knows it. If he thought it didn't matter, he would have gone along with ending up in Slytherin, no problem, and he didn't, did he? He wanted to try something different. He wanted to find himself, whatever that means.

He tries to put it out of his mind when the Sorting ends and the feast begins. He stuffs his face full of turkey while Alice and Remus make small talk about their families and which classes they're most excited for. "Charms and Transfiguration should be quite useful," Alice is saying, "but Defense Against the Dark Arts will be the most important, of course. Honestly, it will probably be the most important course we take in all seven years."

"I sort of feel sorry for all the Muggle-born first years," Remus says, casting a look around as if expecting them all to peel their ears toward this conversation. "They probably don't know anything about this Voldemort bloke yet, do they? I dunno how the Hogwarts staff tell them that magic is real and they're coming to a school of wizardry, but they probably don't mention that there's a Dark wizard on the rise in the primer, if they want Muggle parents to allow their kids to come here."

"So you're not Muggle-born yourself, then?" Sirius asks hastily, thinking it tactful not to mention that Mum and Dad think Voldemort have the right idea about things. His parents may not be wrong about everything, but he's got to agree with Andy when she says that Muggles and Muggle-borns, for all their faults, don't deserve to be tortured and murdered.

Andy! She was going to save him a seat! Sirius barely hears Remus's response (that he's half-blood) as he cranes his head around, trying and failing to find her at the Slytherin table. He'll have to find her after the meal—she'll know what to do about Mum and Dad and Regulus.

So when the empty plates disappear from the table, Dumbledore finishes his start-of-term speech, and the prefects start calling for first years to follow them to their common rooms, Sirius tells Alice and Remus he'll find them later and hurries up to the Slytherin table. Mercifully, Andy is easy to find—she's a prefect, and she's up at the head of the table calling to first years with Cissy and Cissy's blonde boyfriend. "I need to talk to you," Sirius tells Andy urgently, resisting the impulse to tug on her sleeve.

Her words die in her throat. She looks at him, nods, swallows, and says, "Come with me. Uh—first years, please follow Narcissa and Lucius, your sixth year prefects."

Andy doesn't say anything more until Sirius has followed her out of the Great Hall and down the corridor along which the Ravenclaws are walking. "Where are we going?" he asks.

"To the Owlery. You wanted to write to Regulus tonight, right?"

"Yeah, but—what do I say to him? If I tell him I'm in Gryffindor, he's going to tell my mum and dad, and they're going to hate me, and—"

"Sirius, you have to tell him. You have to tell all of them."

"But they'll hate me."

Andy sighs. "Look, the Hat always gives you a choice, if it's not sure, and it's not like it Sorted you immediately. You could have asked to be put in Slytherin, and you didn't. Now you've got to own up to that."

"You say that like you hate me," Sirius sulks.

"Hey." Andy stops walking, grabs him by the shoulders, and looks him right in the eye. "I don't hate you. I will never hate you. You're like a brother to me, Sirius, and I don't care what house you're in. But if you want to be a Gryffindor, go be a Gryffindor. You can't have it both ways—you knew that before you ever sat down on that stool."

When they get to the Owlery, Sirius spends a full ten minutes staring at a blank sheaf of parchment before he finally starts writing:

Regulus,

You're going to find out anyway, but I wanted you to hear it from me: I've been put in Gryffindor. The Sorting Ceremony isn't what Bella always made it out to be—there's just this hat, the Sorting Hat, that you have to wear that reads your mind and figures out the best place for you. I don't want to be like Mum and Dad, so when it gave me a choice, I picked Gryffindor.

I don't want you to hate me, and I don't want to lose you. You're still my little brother, and I want things to be like they always have been.

Don't worry about having to tell Mum and Dad—I'll tell them myself in a separate letter.

Hang tight, and write me back when you get this.

Sirius

The letter he sends to Mum and Dad is much shorter—in fact, it's only two sentences long. I've been Sorted into Gryffindor. I'm sorry. If he's sorry for anything, it's that he feels like he needs to mitigate his Sorting with an apology—that he knows apologizing is going to do jack shit to fix what's about to become broken between himself and his parents. But he apologizes anyway, hating himself for it probably more than his parents are about to hate him.

Then again, who is he kidding? He's seen Mum and Dad cut people off just like that the second they disappoint them. Look at how many names Mum has burned off the family tree tapestry. Sirius doesn't even have the capacity to hate anybody, including himself, anywhere near more than his mum does.

"I can walk you to the Gryffindor common room," Andy says—"at least, I think I can. But I don't know the password to get you in. We probably should have thought this through a little better."

"It's okay. After tonight, I needed some face time with my favorite cousin."

As it turns out, he only has to sit outside the portrait of the Fat Lady for about a quarter of an hour before somebody comes to rescue him—three somebodies, in fact: James Potter, Remus Lupin, and a third boy that Sirius vaguely recognizes from the Sorting. "Have you lot met Sirius Black?" says Remus. "Sirius, this is James Potter and Peter Pettigrew. All of us are going to share a dormitory."

"Yeah, we've met," says James.

Looking flustered, Peter sticks out a hand; Sirius doesn't shake it, instead opting to clap him on the back and laugh. "Nice to meet you, Peter."

"We were just going to try and find the kitchens and see if the house-elves will make us something to snack on," James says. "The Prewett twins—they're second years, also in Gryffindor—reckon that if you find this still life painting of a bowl of fruit underneath the Great Hall and tickle the pear, you can get inside. Want to come?"

As far as he can tell, Sirius has got two options. He can beg forgiveness from his family and spend the next seven years rejecting his house and toeing the pureblood line—or he can do what the Sorting Hat said he wants to do, take the space he's going to get from being a Gryffindor to figure out what he thinks is right and wrong.

"Count me in," says Sirius, and the four of them set off together for the kitchens.

xx

A/N: This is a Sirius-centric prequel to my longfic Through A Glass Darkly. You don't need any knowledge whatsoever of Darkly to follow Legacy, but if you like this, please consider checking Darkly out!