By the time the pair reached the right Potions classroom on Monday morning, James was completely out of breath, having talked non-stop at his new friend the entire journey. Sirius - who was used to the quiet, reserved guests his family permitted to visit and his uptight, proper cousins - was completely thrown by the unapologetic constant talking. Every time James drew breath, he searched his mind for some contribution but didn't have time to formulate an answer before his new friend was off again. In fact, he only stopped when they met the line that was the rest of the class, just worming into their potions classroom.
Sirius chose a table near the back and James rushed next to him, pushing his sweaty hair out of his eyes and beaming.
"Professor Slughorn teaches this class. He knows my dad; you know?" James stage whispered to Sirius, completely oblivious to the way his new friend leaned away slightly at the abrupt close proximity. "He's right annoying, but he's alright. He'll absolutely pick favourites, so you might as well show off – are you any good at potions?"
"I'm okay," Sirius replied, not looking at James and watching for the professor to come though the dungeon door.
"Did your parents teach you before you started here? My dad loves potions – he invented Sleekeazy's Hair Potion, did you know? Mum's always going bonkers because he's messing about with all sorts of stuff and testing them out without telling us. He made all my hair fall out when I was five trying to invent a colour-change hair dye, you know?" James prattled on with his head in his book bag, trying to find his Beginners Guide to Potion Making and a quill. He emerged just as their professor entered, his arms full of a cauldron brimming with dry ingredients.
"Welcome to Potions, first years, I am Professor Slughorn. Funny that you should be starting your magical education with a subject which requires very little wand-work, however I hope that the precision and subtlety of Potions - which can be lacking in some other subjects - will give you an appreciation for magic as a multi-faceted art." As he said this, he laid out the ingredients he'd been carrying onto the front desk and began to write out instructions on the blackboard.
"You'll find that small nuances can determine the effectiveness of a potion early on, so I implore you to follow the instructions to the letter to achieve the best results. There's not a lot of damage you can do with these low level ingredients, but it's best to be careful."
Sirius' attention was beginning to wander – this speech was for muggleborns, or students with muggle-loving parents who knew nothing about magic and hadn't been taught anything prior to enrolment. He wasn't looking forward to being coddled for the first year of his magical education and could see his father's complaint of allowing mixed magical and muggleborn classes at Hogwarts – or even allowing muggle-borns at all. He flicked though his Potions textbook, looking to see if any exciting potions were likely to be planned for their upcoming classes. At the very least, if this year was going to be easy he could put in minimal effort and still keep his parents off his back. He didn't want to attract any negative attention. As boisterous as James Potter was, at least he had some background in potions and he wouldn't be forced to help out an idiot for the rest of his school career.
James nudged him out of his thoughts by snapping the textbook he was reading closed. The class was moving around, collecting the ingredients that Slughorn had written out on the blackboard, with Slughorn himself benignly correcting students who were rifling in the wrong cupboards. James started up his chatter under the safety of the noise of the class and the clanking of utensils being dropped on the floor.
"So did you do much prep work before you came, Sirius?" James asked, grabbing a handful of beetle eyes. "My parents didn't want me to do much because they said it would be unfair – but that's so unfair! I could be top of the class at the beginning of the year without even trying!"
"My brother and I had tutors for potions, wandwork and arithmancy," Sirius replied carefully, "but I think it's a family tradition."
James pouted at Sirius, dumped his newly collected ingredients on the desk in front of his cauldron and started pounding his beetle eyes into a fine powder.
"That's so unfair!" Sirius couldn't help but notice a definite whine coming out in his voice. "My parents wouldn't let me get my wand until I got my letter! They said I had to do it 'properly'! I can't believe you actually got to practice with it before-hand!" James dumped his beetle eye powder into his cauldron along with half a pint of goat stomach-bile a little aggressively. "What is the point of being pure blood if you don't get any benefit?"
James continued to grumble, but Sirius ran through what had been said carefully. He knew that his family's views were unpopular, and so he spoke carefully with wizarding strangers, for fear of spouting some elitist propaganda that had been drilled into him. It was only thanks to his 'muggle-loving' cousin, Andromeda, that he'd ever had a chance to talk to someone who thought differently than his parents for more than five minutes. But what James had said aligned with that constant rhetoric of his parents. And so he tested the waters.
"My father thinks that muggle-borns and pure-bloods shouldn't be taught in the same classes, because the muggle-borns would hold us back…"
Sirius stole a glance at James from the corner of his eye, trying to gauge his reaction, but James was too busy attempting to wipe the mist from his glasses with the sleeve of his robes, thanks to the warmth of the small fires lit around the room. Someone from the desk in front answered Sirius instead.
"What about half-bloods, then?"
It was the limp-haired boy from the train who was at the desk in front, paired up with the ginger-haired girl who'd been sorted into Gryffindor. She didn't turn around into the conversation, but from the way her hands stilled, Sirius knew she was listening.
"Butt out, Snivels," said James, not bothering to make eye contact. But the boy – Severus Snape, he remembered – wasn't interested in James, he focussed his glare on Sirius.
"Well, what about them?"
Sirius didn't answer. By his father's reasoning, this wouldn't even be a valid question, because the idea that a wizard would dilute their blood with a muggle's would be laughable, but he wasn't fool enough to think that this belief was repeatable. Luckily, James answered for him.
"Well, I suppose it would depend on how much work they'd done before attending." James answered while conducting the twelve counter-clockwise stirs and adding crushed dandelion heads. "All Sirius is saying, is that lumping students of different abilities together in first year would make things difficult for students with no magical knowledge, compared to students like him."
Snape opened his mouth to argue, but at that point, the girl joined the conversation proper.
"What, and you'll split us depending on our parents then? Don't you think that's a bit unfair? What if I've read all my textbooks, and you haven't? What if I'm better at this subject than you? How can you know? It's only the first day!"
Sirius raised his eyebrows. He supposed she must be muggle-born, and she was scowling hard at James, pointing an aggressive finger at his face.
"I didn't realise," she continued, "that you're not just a rude, fat-headed brat, but that you also don't bother to think for yourself." The girl turned back to her desk with such ferocity that her swinging plaits almost whipped James about the face. Snape smirked at James and threw a disgusted look at Sirius before turning to join his friend.
James looked at Sirius incredulously. "Have I really got a fat head?" he hissed. Sirius gave an uncharacteristic snort of laughter.
"It's a bit big, I won't lie."
James scowled and squashed his face comically with his hands and but on an absurd voice. "What about half-bloods?" he mocked in a stage whisper. "What if I've read all my textbooks already?"
"I should hope you've read all your textbooks already, Mr Potter, given your father's proficiency."
Sirius fought to control a smirk as James snapped to attention at his cauldron and hid his hands behind his back as though he hadn't just been caught distorting his face into that of a particularly wrinkly troll by the potions professor.
"Yes, sir!" He reassured as earnestly as he could manage, looking wide-eyed at Slughorn from behind his fuggy glasses. Slughorn maintained his hard stare for another half minute before cracking a grin.
"Not that it matters – you're work so far…" He bent over James' cauldron, which contained a substance of the dark green colour described by the textbook, but the consistency of snot. "…Would be commendable if you hadn't allowed it to congeal because you were too busy engaging in the conversation of talented, pretty classmates! Better luck next time!"
Slughorn waddled off, still smiling to himself, apparently under the impression that he'd made an astute, fatherly observation. On the contrary, James made a face at Sirius and mouthed; "What pretty classmate? I hope he doesn't mean you."
After Potions, which had concluded with a decent amount of scowling on James' part while Slughorn praised the pair in front, the Gryffindors had Transfiguration with the Hufflepuffs. Snape and Evans were basking in the glory of Slughorn's praise, until they split for their next class, for their 'innovative' addition of lemon rind in an attempt to ward off the acrid smell of their boil solution. Sirius rather thought that students should only be praised for successes, since the pair's potion has turned a lurid orange colour as a result and was useless for any purpose other than painting a Chudley Cannons banner, but Slughorn seemed to value innovation and experimentation.
Professor McGonagall, on the other hand, gave the impression of being a by-the-book individual. Sirius sat through her introduction to the subject, trying to ignore James fidgeting next to him, but approved greatly of her systematic awarding of house points to the few students able to turn their matchstick into a needle (he and a Hufflepuff girl with yellow ribbons in her hair and the surname Rodd). James spent most of the lesson scowling at Evans, trying to see if she'd succeeded in her own transfiguration without her noticing him. As a result, he achieved little other than a disdainful look from Professor McGonagall.
She and Remus, who shared their dormitory, appeared to be helping Peter, who by the end of the lesson was in a fretful state – from what Sirius could tell, he was panicking about his lacklustre performance in both morning lessons and Lily and Remus were attempting to reassure him.
The Gryffindors went to collect their dragon hide gloves in preparation for whatever could be waiting for them in their first Herbology lesson, chattering loudly about their first lessons and steadily getting swallowed up in the crowd of much taller students also changing classrooms. Sirius thought he saw the shoulder-length white-blond hair of Lucius Malfoy who, along with his father, Abraxas, had appeared in his drawing room over the summer. If he remembered correctly, he was a Slytherin prefect. Sirius attempted to identify the students around him – was Andromeda with him? But he had difficulty distinguishing one older student from another over the shoulders of the crowd.
The walk to Herbology was their first real chance to look across the grounds in full light. The grounds of Hogwarts stretched far out around the castle and Sirius couldn't distinguish any clear border. Past the greenhouses was the Forbidden Forrest they had been warned about the night before by the headmaster. Despite the Autumn sun dappling the ground at the fringe of the forest a mix of greens and oranges, it seemed that the darkness solidified only a few feet in.
There were three greenhouses, the one furthest to the forest being locked. A short woman with a round face was waiting outside the closest one. She welcomed them into the greenhouse and introduced them to the various tools and plants around the room. Sirius had never worked with magical plants before, other than those from the apothecary needed to Potions. 12 Grimmauld Place didn't have a garden and his parents never took a particular interest in it, so he felt some excitement to be experiencing something unknown.
Professor Sprout (after having explained the classes of plants in terms of danger, how to recognise species of the same family, and how those similarities reflected the potions they were often used in) had them organise a set of cuttings into families based on the information provided in One Thousand Magical Herbs and Fungi. To James' amusement, Sirius was visibly disgusted by some of the available plants. It was only the barrier of his thick, dragon-hide gloves that allowed him to even touch a small section of mimbulus mimbletonia, a little green tuber covered in greenish boils. He had to stop himself from vomiting when a bumbling Hufflepuff called Benjie Fenwick lost ten points for his house by accidentally dropping a handful of bouncing bulbs on the floor. Apparently, they did more than bounce, as Sirius and James discovered when they exploded over their shoes and small shoots started growing around their ankles – effectively trapping their feet to the ground and causing James to lose his balance and topple over backwards onto the greenhouse floor. Sirius thought he saw Remus Lupin snigger and point for Peter's benefit.
Lunch was an excitable affair and the Gryffindor prefect had some difficulty in controlling the first years and keeping them from running across the Great Hall to hear stories of lessons they hadn't had yet from other houses. Sirius contended himself to scan the crowds for members of his own family. He saw his older cousin Narcissa have the top of her head kissed by Lucuis Malfoy and saw Andromeda standing at the Ravenclaw table talking to a round faced student he didn't know who was roaring with laughter.
James was absentmindedly stuffing his face with ham and mustard sandwiches while watching incredulously as Lily, the ginger haired Gryffindor girl, grabbed a slice of corned beef pie and walked across the hall to the Slytherin table and sat down next to a black-haired boy Sirius assumed to be Severus.
"Can you believe her!?" Asked James indignantly. "Going and sitting at the Slytherin table on the first day. I mean, why sit down on You-Know-Who's table when you're a muggle-born? Hasn't she read up on anything since getting her letter?"
"The other boys, their parents are all starting to side with him too, I think," Sirius noted. "Those boys-" he pointed over "Rodolphus and Evan, their parents are thought to sympathise with He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. Slytherin is going to become a dumping ground for He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named's followers and their children, especially if first years who would otherwise go to Slytherin ask the hat otherwise based on politics."
James narrowed his eyes at Sirius. "Okay, first, how do you know about the Slytherin first years and second, how do you know for sure you can ask the hat what house you want to go to? I thought it was supposed to look at your traits and see where you belong?"
Sirius hesitated – he couldn't be certain which way his new friend would take his answer. He considered James' stances up until now, despite his pure-blood status.
"Well my mother told me to ask for Slytherin," he confessed. "I'm not like the rest of them and she doesn't want me to… stray, I don't think. I reckon she thought that if I got into Slytherin, I'd come around eventually."
He risked a glance at James to gauge his reaction and felt a relief like warm sunlight when he saw James' mischievous grin – a hundred times more reassuring than any familiarity of Grimmauld Place.
"And you asked for Gryffindor?" James seemed delighted at the very idea of Sirius deliberately disobeying his parent's blood purist idealism.
"Oh no," Sirius smirked, "I didn't even have to ask – the hat was quite offended that I'd even suggest it'd place me in Slytherin."
James slapped the table in utter joy and attracted a few curious stares with his uproarious laughter and Sirius found himself joining in, thinking for the first time that he wasn't as strange as he'd been made to believe he was for the past eleven years. In some kind of personal act of final rebellion, when they left the table to make their way to Flying Lessons in the grounds, he filled his pockets with handfuls of mint humbugs.
"Are you excited for flying lessons?" Asked a boy with shockingly ginger hair and an obscene amount of freckles called Edgar Bones, who'd been in their Herbology lesson and had met the pair in the Entrance Hall. "Personally, I don't see why we should have to if we don't want to sign up for the Quidditch team next year – there are more direct and practical methods of magical transportation."
"Like what?"
A group of Gryffindor girls had caught up with them, including Lily. "I hope it's a bit more graceful than flying looks – I'm Dorcas, by the way." She introduced herself to Edgar.
"You can use the floo network," Remus suggested, having joined the group along with Peter as they passed a squat hut near the forest border on their way to the Quidditch Pitch. "It's much faster than brooms. Or you could apparate, but you have to be seventeen to get your license."
"No!" James interjected, "you can go by side-along if you're underage, remember?"
Explanation of magical transport carried the Gryffindor and Hufflepuff first years down to the flying instructor on the pitch, a woman with sharp eyes who looked a bit like a hawk. Next to her lay a pile of broomsticks and while his parents had often scorned Quidditch and brooms as some fanatical idiocy of the lower classes, he still thought that, given the choice between the two, they'd rather the school offered something a little sleeker than these ratty brooms. He amused himself for a few moments, imagining Hogwarts trying to teach his stern, eleven-year-old mother to fly on a broomstick. It was an absolutely absurd image and it was for this reason that he often wondered if his mother had entered the world the same loud, snobbish adult that she was now.
James pouted at the broom selection. "If I have to ride a broom," he whined, "why couldn't I just bring my Cleansweep? Will these things even hold us up?"
The teacher clapped sharply and directed them into a line facing her – there was a fair amount of pushing and shuffling as students attempted to stand next to their friends. Sirius ended up squashed between James and Peter.
"Good afternoon first years," the teacher greeted the, handing out the shabby brooms. "My name is Madame Hooch, and I won't be having any silliness, thank you. As you might know, broomsticks are an important part of wizarding tradition and Hogwarts believes that it evens the playing field between students for everyone to have some command over the art, along with apparition which will be taught in sixth year."
There was a shadow of excited whispering at the promise of apparition lessons. Peter, on the other hand, was looking disdainfully down at his broomstick. Sirius watched as Remus snorted at Peter's expression good-naturedly. Despite James' complaints, Sirius noted him hanging on Madame Hooch's every word. She talked them through commanding and mounting the brooms and Sirius self-consciously followed her instruction. James seemed to be perfectly at home with the idea, Peter, though nervous, looked like he at least was familiar with the process, but Remus and Lily looked to be in a similar dilemma to him. As much as Remus had laughed at Peter's unease, he looked suitably awkward standing squarely on the grass holding what looked like a glorified sweeping brush between his legs.
'Kicking off from the ground hard' turned out to be a lot harder than Madame Hooch made it sound. For students like James and Pater, who were at least familiar with broomsticks, they had no qualms with the notion that an object would hold them up of they did. Remus quickly got over the nervousness that came with the questionable instruction and looked utterly surprised that he'd made it two foot into the air. Sirius only made it off the ground on the thought of what his mother would say about him being so undignified and the disgust of his own cowardice after proving to his new friend that he was a true Gryffindor. Once in the air, flying seemed distinctly less difficult as he hovered obediently at the height Hooch had deemed appropriate and watched her try to convince Dorcas to get in the air.
"Will you try out for the Quidditch team next year?" James asked, indicating the small group of Sirius, Remus, Peter and Edgar.
Peter looked positively repulsed. "I'd probably smash my head open and be sent home first game, I don't think so. I'm so clumsy. I reckon my mum would like it idea, but my dad doesn't see the point in Quidditch, so…"
"Yeah, but would you want to?" James insisted. Peter looked a little taken aback.
"Well, I don't really know. I mean, I asked her and she said she didn't care either way when it came to Quidditch… But my brothers…" Peter trailed off nervously and risked a fall in letting go of the handle to wipe his sweaty hands on his robes. "I don't know..."
James seemed to consider Peter for a few moments, before appearing to giving him the benefit of the doubt.
"Well, you've got all year to decide. I suppose that's why they open trials in second year. We've got this whole year to practice. And I suppose muggle-borns would have to familiarise themselves with the sport… But then you'd think they'd let us bring our own brooms."
"I heard," said Edgar enthusiastically, "that some kid a long time ago, in first year got dared to fly home and smashed into the wards around the castle grounds and got turned into a slug!"
"Yeah, I heard that too," said James. "My dad told me, but he was laughing so I think it was just a story."
Once Hooch had coaxed the whole class into the air, they were instructed to fly in a circle around the pitch, which resulted in Lily Evans crashing into Remus, which distracted Peter and caused him to lose his grip and flip upside down. The class ended in a fair amount of alarmed screaming and James and Edgar complaining about the inferior ability of the rest of the class.
The last lesson of the day was Defence Against the Dark Arts, which got off to a loud start as a result of the muddy, ruffled looking Gryffindors which caused a fair amount of hilarity among the Slytherins. The professor didn't particularly enthuse Sirius, a tame looking blonde woman who dressed in some bizarre amalgamation of wizarding and muggle clothes called Fairley. In contrast to the madness of flying, the class consisted of a long introduction to the history of the Dark Arts and an explanation of how malignant and benign magic is categorised by law.
"You'll find," Fairley lectured, "that despite the classification of spells by severity, it is difficult to take a witch or wizard to court on the basis of the use of a spell alone. This is why wizarding law relies on case law for convictions. For example-"
Sirius heard James quietly thunking his forehead off the desk next to him. He allowed himself to zone out and cast around for something more interesting. September sun was setting and shining through one of the high windows, casting the two rows in front in blinding yellow light. They spent the first lesson copying down the different classifications of spells and making notes of the Latin roots of many spells. Professor Fairley left each student with a long list of spells with instructions to translate them loosely into English and classify them.
Sirius watched Severus and Lily talking as he screwed the top back onto his ink bottle and dropped it into his bag.
"My mum told me that they used to teach Latin at Hogwarts – you know?" Severus told her, scanning the list of spells. "She tried to teach me some, but it was really difficult when it came to spell roots – well you know how my dad is."
"I can't imagine anything more dull," said Lily, stuffing the homework into her Defence textbook. "Be quite useful to know how incantations are created though. Do you think that means that a person could just make up spells? Are all Latin words spells? Or does a wizard just pick one at random? I wonder how it's done…"
Sirius thought he remembered his tutor talking about the nature of spell incantations, but he must have zoned out because he seemed to have retained very little of it. He scowled, thinking that if he had just paid attention, he might have been able to do this homework without spending hours on end in the library looking up Latin root words.
"Do you know any of these?" Sirius asked James, who had a red blotch on his forehead from where it had been pressed against the desk for the hour.
"Yeah, a couple – some of them are a bit obvious though – don't you think 'lumos' sounds like illuminate? I've never heard of some of them though. What's this?"
James pointed to a spell on the list.
"Equus Venaticus."
"I've no idea. I can't even take a guess."
"I thought you had a tutor?" James accused.
"Yeah, but it was boring sometimes," Sirius confessed. "Hurry up, we can dump our bags and go to the library to get started before dinner."
James actually groaned and stamped his feet up the grand staircase. "It's the first day for God's sake," he whined. "I picked the wrong friend. Is it too late to change? I wanted to go exploring."
Sirius paused on the stairs in thought, allowing others to barge past him, before making the decision which would decide what kind of person he was going to be from this point on.
"We'll do it tonight!" He called after James, running to catch up. "We'll go to the library and do the homework, then tonight, we'll go!"
James turned to him, grinning.
"At night?"
"Yes," said Sirius, nodding breathlessly.
"If you're sure -"
"I promise! Let's do it!"
James actually clapped his hands in excitement, his eyes shining. "Then I've got such a great secret to show you!"
James and Sirius had decided over dinner to go to bed on time with the other first year boys to avoid suspicion. Sirius was utterly unable to fall asleep, as time wore on he grew steadily more and more excited – for whatever secret James had managed to keep tight lipped about, for being up at night in a huge castle, for defying his parents, for exploring… He lay looking at the red canopy, waiting for Remus' quill to stop scratching in the darkness, thinking that he was quite excited about being in Gryffindor and having a real friend.
A few moments after the silence had reached a deafening point in the first year boys dormitory, Sirius slipped out of his four-poster and padded across to James. He pulled back the curtains with minimal noise and peered around to see if he was awake.
Apparently excitement had exhausted James – he'd clearly tried to stay awake as he was slumped sideways and was wearing his dressing gown, his glasses still on but digging into the side of his head.
"Hey," whispered Sirius, poking James. "Hey, let's go!"
James sleepily complained until he came to his senses and seemed to remember their plans a few hours ago and suddenly came to life. He grinned at Sirius and pushed him out of the way to get to his trunk.
"What's the secret?" Sirius reminded him, kneeling down and trying his best to maintain his manners and not snoop over his friend's shoulder into his trunk.
"I'm getting it, hold on…"
James's smirked, having caught something at the bottom of the piles of clothes and books. He tugged at whatever it was rather than just unpacking his things and so it took some effort, but the reveal was worth it.
"Wow!" Sirius breathed, reaching out to feel the lighter-than-silk material James had presented to him. "Is that an invisibility cloak?"
"Yeah – like in 'The Tale of the Three Brothers.' It was my dad's, but I think it's a family tradition to give it to your son on their first year of Hogwarts – I don't reckon I'd be able to give it up to my kid if I had a son." He confessed.
"I don't blame you," Sirius said, his eyes travelling hungrily over the cloak, his fingers drifting over the surface in something akin to an act of worship.
"It's cool, isn't it? Come on." James stood up and threw it over his head, vanishing from sight. Sirius clambered to his feet, reaching out to feel for James before his new friend threw the watery material over his head so they were face – to – face under the cloak.
"Let's go then."
Sirius smiled to himself as he crept down the dormitory stairs and out of the portrait hole, keeping as close to James as possible to avoid their feet appearing. He felt a distinctive thrill at the thought of how furious his mother would be if she ever found out about his short, smiley friend with a taste for rule breaking and the adventures that they had planned to go on together.
AN: Hi everyone – sorry for the very long wait for chapter two, I'm still waiting for this to be beta-read but it's been sitting for over a month now, so I'm just going to go ahead and publish it because it's been nearly 6 months since chapter one went up.
If you're reading this after following chapter one, thanks so much for waiting. If you're new, welcome to what I imagine will be a long ride.
If you want to see some of the illustrations I've drawn up from the plans for this fic, they can be found along with promps, great cosplays and other content related to this fic under the name marauders1971-1978 on tumblr. Feel free to drop in any headcanons etc because although it's been extensively planned, there's a lot of room for escapades to fill out chapters and I often use little tumblr posts for ideas.
Anyway, thanks for reading, I hope you enjoyed it! See you in chapter three!
