SOMETHING FOR NOTHING: A MARAUDERS FANFICTION


DISCLAIMER: This is a fanfiction based on the characters and works belonging to J.K. Rowling. This was created entirely for my enjoyment as a writer and your entertainment as a reader, and there will be no profit accrued from this story. Also, this Marauders universe is loosely based on ATYD by MsKingBean89: as a massive fan of their work, I would be remiss if I didn't credit them.

I would highly recommend reading ATYD before reading this, as this is honestly more based on ATYD than the events of the original Harry Potter series. Not necessary, but recommended

Main Character is an OC

Reviews are welcome, but don't be an asshole please :)


CHAPTER ONE: CHANGES

King's Cross Station
Sept. 7, 1975

Castor Lycoris Black walked beside her two brothers through King's Cross Station, trying desperately to calm the uneven pounding in her chest. The three of them walked side by side through the unending platforms, until they came to a stop in front of a brick column positioned between platforms 9 and 10. Castor had known, of course, how Platform 9 3/4 had been hidden from the Muggles, but she had never seen it in person, so she was a bit alarmed as rows upon rows of young wizards and witches walked into it, and not a single Muggle noticed.

As the three approached, Sirius Black turned to look at Castor and Regulus with an almost pained expression, before hurtling through the wall himself.

She turned towards Regulus and reached for his sleeve, but he turned away and followed Sirius onto the platform without acknowledgment. With a sigh, she approached the wall and braced herself against what she would find on the other side. Castor brought her hand up to the surface, and when it met no resistance, she startledly pulled her hand away. She had meant to take her time working up the nerve to pass through, but someone shouted behind her, "Oy! Hurry up now, would 'ya?"

Castor turned back to look, and two identical, fiery-haired boys, possibly seventh-years, waved impatiently towards the wall. Since it seemed as though everyone else was in such a hurry, she closed her eyes and forced herself to walk through.

When she emerged on the other side, it was as though King's Cross Station had been emptied of any Muggles and filled to absolute capacity by hundreds of colorfully-dressed witches and wizards, their children, house-elves, and all kinds of strange familiars and pets. Not to mention the vendor-carts set up around the length of the platform, taking the opportunity to sell their wares at one of the most important wizarding events of the year: the departure of the Hogwarts Express.

The air was positively buzzing as everyone bustled back and forth with an urgency that was completely unwarranted considering the train was still a good bit aways from leaving. She looked around for her brothers, and spotted them standing by the luggage cart close by. They took her entrance as a cue to split off and join their respective groups of friends without so much as a goodbye, each with their trunks in hand and suddenly infected with the same eagerness as everyone else. She pulled her own trunks off the cart, and walked briskly towards the train, intent to find an empty compartment which she could lock against any possible intruders, and try to calm her fried nerves on the long ride.

Since everyone else was so preoccupied on the platform, her mission proved rather easy. Castor turned into the first vacant compartment she found, and raised her wand to the door, "Colloportus Fortium." Three spectral chains poured out of the tip of her wand and settled across the door, before disappearing completely. It was a locking charm taught at Durmstrang that even a well-trained team of aurors would have difficulty dismantling, much less an arbitrary student. She had to acknowledge that such a strong spell was a bit unnecessary but she couldn't bring herself to engage in human interaction at the moment, so it was the best course of action.

Castor sat next to the window and folded her knees into her chest, contemplating the events that led her to this position. Castor Lycoris Black was, technically, the twin sister of Regulus Arcturus Black, and the younger sister of Sirius. However, though there was no real proof to the contrary, she was not truly considered to be their sister. She knew she shared blood with the Blacks, but Walburga and Orion had denied her status as their daughter for as long as she could remember. She had spent her childhood completely separated from her brothers, with different tutors until she was of schooling age, and minimal interaction with her parents. All her life she stayed holed up in her room with nothing but books to keep her company through years of meals eaten alone, birthdays gone uncelebrated (save for the distant sounds of Reggie's parties), and no interactions with any sentient beings besides their crochety old house elf, Kreacher. While Sirius and Regulus were busy being paraded in front of the most powerful wizards of their era, her existence was hidden entirely.

Once, when she was eight, her parents had had a dinner party, of which Sirius and Reggie were the stars. It was one of the many steps they took in raising their sons to take over their places in the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black. Castor had spent the night in her room with a book, wishing desperately that she was with them. Not only had there been multiple wizarding families of incredibly high standing in attendance, but so were their children, and she found her loneliness had driven her to the top of the stairwell. She had only watched, hidden within a shadow at the corner of the landing for hours, wishing the whole time that her parents had bothered to care about her in the way they seemed to care about her brothers. Eventually, she had grown tired and tried to sneak back to her room, but one misstep on a creaky floorboard had Kreacher apparating in front of her with a crack, and dragging her by the ear with hissed chastisements. She still bore the scars from what had followed.

When it was finally time for her and Reggie to go to Hogwarts, Walburga and Orion had sent her to Durmstrang instead, intent on making sure no one in the wizarding world scrutinized her sudden appearance. When Castor had found out, she was inconsolable. Her and her brothers had never been close, or even on speaking terms, but they were still the only people she had, and being shipped off to a completely different school without any preparation or company had been terrifying. When Castor had stepped foot on the Durmstrang ship, her fear had only grown, but she had found there to be something fascinating about the military nature of the students, and the sheer power that had rippled along every surface in sight.

At first, the other students had dismissed Castor, and why wouldn't they? She was small, and a childhood spent hiding away had left her with no confidence. But when she arrived at school, she began to find her place. Before Durmstang, she had no peers to compare herself to, not even her brothers. But she had taken quickly to the subjects her professors introduced to them, and she slowly realized that she was good. Even powerful. The longer she was there, the harder she worked, and the more her professors challenged her, pushing her to the limits of her rudimentary understanding of magic.

After her first year, she had returned home to find that she had excelled far beyond her brothers' level of magical accomplishment. It was much less a testament to her own ability than to Durmstrang's educational capabilities, but to her surprise, her parents began to treat her as though she were their daughter. They allowed her greater freedoms, though they still kept her hidden away, she was now allowed to give commands to Kreacher, and was allowed to leave the house with his company. If anyone asked about her, Kreacher would simply say she was some distant cousin (of which the Blacks had many) that his Lord and Lady had taken on as a charge.

She noticed, however, how her brothers had seemed to grow even farther away. Sirius was always angry and ran away for days at a time. Mother would always go looking for him eventually, and Castor would have to press her head between her pillows to drown out the sound of her yelling, and his screams. Regulus, however, grew cold. Their relationship before had always been one of indifference, but where he had always been polite, if even kind before, now he was hateful. The very first time she had been invited to eat with them at the table, instead of in her room, the looks he shot her were fatal.

Castor had returned to Durmstrang the next year, and she not only did well, but she began to enjoy it. She fell in love with her classes, and made top marks in all of them, especially Dueling. A professor recommended to her that she start participating in dueling tournaments, and while she never won, she always came close. Part way through her second term, the other students finally started noticing her. It had nothing to do with her personality, since she was incredibly awkward, and everything to do with her academic performance, but she didn't mind. She started tutoring others, helping out with their spellcasting, and even wrote a few feet of their assignments in exchange for some small favors. They offered her money, of course, but that was the one thing that being a legal relation of the House of Black afforded her, so she didn't much need it. Instead, she racked up a whole group of powerful young wizards and witches who owed her, and to her, that was far more valuable.

She returned once more the following year, and a select few of what she had considered acquaintances became her friends. Castor learned, over time, which behaviors attracted others, and which repelled them, and while it wasn't very easy to open up to anyone, she had to admit it was nice to spend time with others. To spend time with people who wanted to spend time with her.

At some point, someone convinced her to start training for Quidditch. Of course, she didn't make the team the first time she tried out, but in her second term, she made Chaser. She picked up dragon-taming and fire-breathing, and found that she quite enjoyed it. It was absolutely absurd, she thought, that her time at Durmstrang was so successful. That she was suddenly taking part in so many activities and doing so well at them, considering she was basically a hermit until the age of eleven.

Of course, that's when everything had gone to shit. An incident which she didn't care to re-live involving a dead student left her at the mercy of Headmaster Karkaroff. The Blacks paid to cover up all the details, but Durmstrang wouldn't allow her back at the school, and though the Ministry never got involved - Thank Merlin - Karkaroff tipped off pretty much every wizarding school in existence. She was flat-out rejected by Ilvermorny and Beauxbatons, and by the end of it, Headmaster Dumbledore was the only one who would allow her within a hundred feet of his school. He was infamously forgiving of his students, but she was surprised that he would be so lenient towards someone with her last name, much less someone who had studied the Dark Arts at Durmstrang for three years, and she wondered how much button-pressing her parents had done to get it to happen.

And so, much to her brothers' and parents' chagrin, here she was, on the Hogwarts Express. Though the Blacks had covered her incident up as thoroughly as their resources would allow, rumors had still inevitably travelled from Eastern Europe to Britain's shores. One singular newspaper, written by a second-rate gossip columnist no had ever heard of - a Skeeter something - mentioning a fatal accident involving an "unstable young woman" at Durmstrang, had arrived by owl the day after Castor had been accepted to the school. Walburga had set it aflame the second she read the headline, but Castor knew what it meant. The British wizarding community was infamously vindictive, and her sudden arrival at Hogwarts, combined with her family's penchant for unpleasant activity, had Castor looking at the next four years spent as Hogwarts' public enemy number one. In a word, she was fucked.


Castor woke up an hour later. She had fallen asleep against the window, and her bones creaked with objection when she stood up. She decided to take a walk, and with a quick dismantling of her locking charm and a peek down the hall, she was strolling between the compartments. She didn't know what to do with herself, and she tried her best not to meet anyone's eyes when they passed by, but she could tell that she piqued their curiosity nonetheless. Hogwarts didn't get many new students who weren't firsties, and the student population wasn't very large to begin with. Not to mention she was dressed as though she were headed to Durmstrang, in a leather aviator jacket, black trousers, and heavy combat boots that were far more common in Eastern Europe than Scotland, or London for that matter.

She barely made it halfway down the length of the train before she decided to turn back, having drawn far too many eyes for her own comfort. Just as she was turning, something stopped her. She smelled- what did she smell? Was that… Castor's eyes lit up as she realized it was cigarette smoke. She turned to look down the hall, and just a way's down she spotted a bit of smoke curling under the door of a nearby compartment. She stood there, wondering whether it might be appropriate to ask for a cig. She knew she'd been told to lie low, but she hadn't had a cigarette in oh so many months, and tobacco was not a readily available substance in the Black family household. So, despite her better judgement, Castor approached the door and knocked.

She heard shuffling, and a bit of swearing, and the sound of a window slamming open before a young, gruff voice asked from the other side of the door, "Who is it?"

Castor didn't know how to answer, and before she could decide how to introduce herself, the door to the compartment slid open, "I said, who- Oh."

On the other side stood a boy that was almost out of place as she was, though he was definitely British, whereas she currently appeared to be some kind of Slavic exchange student. His hair was buzzed down to his scalp, and his clothes were threadbare and just slightly too large on him. The holes in his jeans, while in fashion among Muggles, were completely out of place among wizards, and they were cuffed to reveal a pair of shiny, black Doc Martens. He was a skinhead if she ever saw one, and she was completely at a loss for how this boy ever ended up on this train.

The boy cut off his sentence when he saw her, having been clearly expecting someone else entirely. His eyes glanced over her appearance, scrutinizing her in the same way she had him, but she held his gaze. He looked at her expectantly, confused by her presence and waiting for her explanation, and all she could say was, "I noticed the smoke."

He narrowed his eyes angrily and tugged her into the compartment, glancing to both sides down the hall before slamming the door behind him. He turned towards her angrily and fired back a retort, "And? It's none of your business," he said. "What are you gonna do, report me to a prefect?"

"Whoa, mate!" She broughts her hands up in mock surrender, "I was just gonna ask if you could spare a fag. If not, I'll bugger off, but I could really use a smoke."

He considered her, "Where you from? You don't look like the usual sort to be on this train."

"I could ask you the same thing," she responded with a raised eyebrow and a nod to, well, him.

She watched him size her up, and when he opened his mouth to object, she interrupted, "I feel the need to point out that smoking alone is pretty sad, and I think the trade of my company for your cigs is a pretty fair deal."

The boy smirked in response. "You think so highly of yourself?" he asked with a raised eyebrow and a mockingly posh accent. She simply nodded in response, and he gestured to the bench. They sat across from each other, and he pulled two matchboxes out of his pocket. One was filled with normal matches, but the other, when he opened it, contained five or so hand-rolled cigarettes. He handed one to Castor and used a match to light them both up. She took a long drag, savoring the feel of smoke in her lungs, before exhaling softly.

A glance towards the door revealed the shadows of several students lingering outside, possibly noticing the same smell Castor had out in the hall. She raised her wand, and repeated the same locking charm she had used in her compartment.

The boy drew his eyebrows together, "What was that? We learned Colloportus in first year, but I've never heard of that version."

"That," she said gesturing to the door with her cigarette, "was a locking-based ward. When cast on a door, nothing gets through, not even air flow." Understanding passed across his face as he realized that any smoke coming from their cigs was curling away from the door and towards the open window.

"Oh. That's a neat trick. Think you could teach me?"

"Hey now, I don't even know your name," she responded with a smirk.

He nodded. "That's fair," he said, extending his hand. "I'm Remus"

She smiled and took it, "I'm Castor."


Remus John Lupin didn't quite know what to make of the girl currently sitting across from him. She was a far cry from the sort he had spent the last three years learning how to fit in with, but he found her innate otherness to be strangely comforting. In some ways, she reminded him a bit of his close friend, Marlene, with her confident stance, clunky boots, and oversized leather jacket, but there was something a bit sharper about her, something lurking beneath the surface of her mocking smile that he couldn't quite put his finger on. It fascinated him, and he found himself slipping into his South London turn of phrase and mannerisms, forgetting to polish the edges of his rough personality.

The two had spent the last thirty minutes finishing off the last of the cigs he had on him. Of course, the only reason he had any on him in the first place was because he was going to try to sell them, and giving them away for free wasn't exactly good for business. However, Remus found himself enjoying her company, and he told himself it was in the interest of bringing in a new customer; free samples and all that.

By the time they were finished, the air was thick with smoke, and he had learned a thing or two about her in the process. She was stingy with details, but then so was he, so the two traded small secrets, sans the details, and took the first step in what was going to be the very long, excruciating road of getting to know each other.

Remus learned that Castor grew up separated from her family, though she wouldn't tell him how or from what family, so he told her about his life in the orphanage, and left out the part about what brought him there and, well, how much it sucked. When she asked where he'd gotten the cigarettes, he told her the truth, that he'd knocked over a couple stores over the summer. She'd somehow already known enough about Muggle culture to assume that he was a skinhead, so it was easy enough for her to guess without him providing too much extra information. In exchange, she told him that she had spent her first three years at Durmstrang, and the accompanying story of her first time smoking a cigarette, shared with the son of a wizard who exclusively traded Muggle commodities such as some finer alcohols, tobacco, and marijuana within wizarding communities. His business had turned out to be quite frugal, and he barely noticed when his son nicked some stock off the top to hand out among certain students at Durmstrang, of which she was one.

It was both spoken and unspoken that any information they shared wouldn't leave the compartment, since both were so clearly out of place among the Hogwarts student body and both were desperate to blend in. Or at the very least, not stand out. Remus was the first to request her silence, but he was surprised when a solemn look passed over Castor's face in response, the first time that sly smirk hadn't reached her eyes since she'd shook his hand. She'd suggested an Unbreakable Vow, but he'd been able to talk her down from such an extreme solution, assuring her that he understood the importance of privacy. So the two had continued their conversation, moving on to lighter subjects, like music and Muggle movies. He still didn't know where she'd come from that would warrant her attendance at Durmstrang rather than Hogwarts, or how, despite apparently being from a wizarding family, she knew so much about Muggle culture. He resolved to ask another time.


They continued to talk as long as it took for the remaining smoke to leak out of the compartment, and a glance at her watch had Castor informing her new friend that they'd be arriving at Hogwarts soon. She got up to leave, muttering something about having to change into her robes, and she heard him mention something about how his friends were probably wondering where he was. Her heart fell slightly at this as she realized that perhaps Remus wasn't so out of place here as she'd thought.

Apparently, their respective compartments were in the same direction, so they left together and continued to talk as they walked down the hall, slightly reluctant to say goodbye to each other and the catharsis of their conversation. They reached her compartment first, and when she opened the door to go in, he stopped her with a hand on her wrist.

"What is it?" she asked.

She felt him slip something from his palm into her sleeve from where his hand still rested on hers. She looked back and forth down the hall and stole a glance at the pack of Marlboros, still wrapped in its cellophane, now in her hand. Remus smirked at her, "there's twenty fags in there, and someone told me once that it's sad to smoke alone."

Castor laughed as he left, and though her fear of someone finding out her history and exactly who she was made her want to spend her next four years hidden in a broom closet somewhere, sans friendship, she wondered if she could get away with having just one friend to hide with.


AUTHOR'S NOTES:

1: I would just like to say this is a new project and though I would be flattered if anyone read this at all, if you do, please be forgiving. I've always fancied myself a good writer but I've never put it into practice so I'm afraid I'm still finding my way. Basically, forgive me if this starts out a bit choppy.

2: This story follows the MC in her fourth year of school until an amount of time after Hogwarts that has yet to be determined. I had to skip ahead to fourth year because I don't have nearly enough patience to write the beginning years. Castor is 14 and the OG Marauders are 15 (in their fifth year) in the main timeline. Timelines might jump around a bit, so pay attention to the locations / dates listed within the chapters as I flash back to Castor's time at Durmstrang to find out what fatal incident she was involved in and why her parents hate her so much.

3: There is no Voldemort in this. There's still some juicy conflict involving pureblooded assholes, but in this, they don't have a Voldy, so that opens up some new avenues in which they can express their suckiness that doesn't involve James Potter dying and Remus and Sirius being separated. Also, no evil Peter. Basically I'm subverting the original timeline and creating an AU where, even though there will still be a Wizarding War (Spoiler Alert), there are more opportunities for a slightly less tragic ending.

4: Main Character is female, because I need a female protagonist in the Harry Potter universe. (The description of this work mentions that it passes the Bechdel test, and it absolutely does by Chapter 3, because I believe that is the very minimum requirement for a story to be at all interesting. If you don't know what the Bechdel test is, look it up.) The reason I came up with an OC is because I love the Marauders universe so much, but I am not at all confident enough in my knowledge of the few female Marauders to write about them in any context other than side characters. Basically, I needed a blank canvas to superimpose my ideal character onto. Someone I know I would want to read about. She's a bit morally grey, but is not evil. There will be evil moments, but at the end of the day she is a classic Chosen One type character who experiences some confusion. A bit cliché at times, but I will try my very best to make this character as interesting as possible.

5: There will be some romance, but I refuse to allow romantic relationships to take precedence over the main storyline, at least in this particular project. Romances that do appear include WolfStar, Darlene, Jegulus, Jily, Bartylus, and others. Basically, we're throwing in some high school drama, and exploring all the legendary ships. A LOT of LGBTQ+ representation, and some heavy soul-searching.

6: There will be new OC's thrown in eventually, but those are easily recognizable, and they will all be developed appropriately according to their roles in the story.

7: This first chapter makes it seem like I'm demonizing Sirius and Reggie to a certain extent, but I promise there will be more insight later on in how sucky their childhoods were. Turns out, Walburga and Orion are total dicks, and all the Black children are royally fucked up. I promise they aren't the bad guys, just complicated people, and oh, aren't complex characters so much more interesting to read.

8: Heavy Dumbledore bashing. He's an asshole. In every version of HP. Make me believe otherwise.

9: This story can be found on this platform and ao3. Please DO NOT repost to any other platform, and if found on another platform, please report as it is not my post.