Chapter 15: The First of Many

James, Sirius and I all stayed for Christmas break that year, and we were practically the only Gryffindors, except for two seventh years. On Christmas day, after a delicious feast, we were relaxing in the common room, enjoying a competitive game of wizard chess.

"Good evening, boys," came a familiar voice, calm and almost sad. We glanced up from our game to find Professor Dumbledore observing us, looking more solemn than usual, the familiar twinkle absent from his eyes.

"Sirius, come with me," he said. Sirius stood.

"Can we come too, Professor?" asked James.

"No, James," said Dumbledore. "I need to see Sirius alone right now."

"Come on Headmaster. Where's your Christmas spirit?" Dumbledore's eyes flickered downward, and he was silent. This was not at all the usual behavior of the ambitious and witty headmaster we knew.

"Please can we come! PLEASE?" I begged. I'd had sugar, and according to James and Sirius, I get dangerous when I have sugar.

"Stay here, Remy," said Sirius. "And whatever you do, don't have anymore sugar while I'm gone." I grinned and held up several chocolate frogs.

"So, still up for that snowball battle later?" asked James. Sirius nodded as he left the room. James and I waited for him. We waited, and waited and waited. Finally, it got really late and we went to bed.

"Where do you think he is?" I asked James for the hundredth time, as we climbed into our four posters.

"I don't know, but I hope nothing is wrong," James replied. The next day, he still wasn't back. We decided to ask Dumbledore where he was, but all Dumbledore would say is that he couldn't tell us anything and that Sirius would be back after break. We spent the next two weeks in constant worry. Something had to be wrong. Sirius wouldn't have just left without telling us if it was nothing.

On the day when everyone returned from the holidays, James and I went down to the Great Hall extremely early to wait for them, in hope of talking to Sirius before the others arrived. We sat at our usual places at the Gryffindor table, which had been set up once again. The doors in the entrance hall suddenly swung open and the swarming melody of excited voices filled the air. A few seconds later, the Great Hall overflowing with its usual commotion and chatter. Lily was the first of the others to arrive at our table. We greeted her, attempting to act as normal as we could manage, but there was no fooling her. Her cheerful smile quickly vanished when she saw the worried looks we wore on our faces. Peter arrived next. We said hi to him, and he sat in his usual seat next to me, scarcely noticing that anything was out of the ordinary. It was Erin, who arrived next, that noticed that Sirius was missing.

"Where is Sirius?" were her first words when she got to the table. James and I exchanged glances.

"He's supposed to be back now," said James.

"What do you mean--?" Erin started to ask, but before she could finish, Sirius arrived at the table. He didn't look well. His eyes looked sad and I noticed he had several bruises on his face and arms.

"Sirius, where were you?" I demanded. "You were gone for two weeks." Erin, Lily and Peter listened to us, confused.

"I went home," said Sirius.

"Why?" asked James. "I thought you were staying." Sirius shook his head.

"It's okay," said Erin, taking his hand. "You can tell us when you're ready." Sirius sighed, looking pale and exhausted. He collapsed into his usual seat. I groaned as I noticed Snape parading his way over to our table.

"So, Black, what's this I hear about your dad?" he demanded.

"Shut up!" said Sirius.

"Got your father killed too, huh?" asked Snape. The next thing we knew, Sirius had leaped up and started punching Snape, who tried to fight back. Soon Sirius had him on the ground, pounding him in the face, with horrible cracking sounds and spurts of blood. Snape had taken a hold of Sirius' hair and was yanking it, while using his other hand in attempt to scratch Sirius' face. A crowd was gathering around them.

"Sirius! Stop!" wailed Erin.

"Come on, Sirius! Let him go!" James pleaded.

"Sirius, please stop fighting him. You're going to get yourself in trouble!" I shouted.

"Not until this damn filthy git learns to mind his own bloody damn business!" Sirius shouted between blows.

Meanwhile, Lily and Peter were trying to shoo the crowd away.

"Mind your own business!"

"This has nothing to do with you! Go away!" It proved a useless effort, and soon Dumbledore came rushing over, accompanied by Beaker. He grabbed Sirius and Dumbledore grabbed Snape, the two of them forcefully yanking the fighting boys apart. Both were shedding blood.

"My office. Now," he didn't sound pleased. They left. The crowd of people returned to their seats. We all stared at each other in silence.

"Did I miss something?" James asked. I shrugged.

"I don't know what gets into him," said Erin. She looked kind of upset. "I wish he'd tell me what's going on."

"Well, Snape said something about his dad," said Peter.

"Yeah," said Lily. "Something about him killing his dad, I think."

"This is Snape we're talking about," James pointed out. "It could have been anything."

"He's right," agreed Erin. "So Sirius didn't stay here with you over break?" I shook my head.

"Dumbledore came and took him on Christmas night," said James. "All he told us is that he'd be back after break."

"We need to get him to talk to us," said Erin.

"He seems to like to keep things to himself a lot," said James. I agreed. Sirius didn't come back during the meal. The five of us headed to transfiguration class without him.

"I hope he tells us," I said.

"He'll tell us," said James. "He just needs time to think, probably. You know how Sirius gets when he's mad, and if he was already upset then that makes it all the worse." I nodded.

"But what Snape said about his dad," said Lily. "Do you think it's true?"

"I don't know," I said, shaking my head.

"I hope not," said Erin. "His mum's already dead. Where will he go? I don't think he's got many other relatives."

"Don't worry yet Erin," said Lily. "Wait until we know what really happened." Erin nodded. We arrived at Transfiguration class late, but Professor McGonagall pretended not to notice. A few minutes later, Sirius walked in. Professor McGonagall asked him to come to her desk. She spoke to him quietly, then he nodded and sat down.

"Sirius," said James. "Will you tell us what happened?" Sirius took a deep breath and nodded slowly.

"My dad was killed on Christmas," he said quietly. It was true. We stared at each other in awkward silence.

"I'm sorry, Sirius," said Lily finally.

"Can we talk about this later?" asked Sirius. "I need to tell you something, but it's too dangerous to talk about it here."

"What is it Sirius?" I asked, feeling alarmed that my friend might be in danger. "Can you at least give us a hint?"

"All right," agreed Sirius. "It has to do with Voldemort." We gasped.

"VOLDEMORT?" The entire class was now staring. There, once again is that name, another innocent life taken by him. And more would come later. In those days, Voldemort was just gaining power. Lots of people had heard of him, but he didn't have any followers. There would be random attacks, no more than three or four times a year, for no apparent reason. No one knew why he chose to kill those certain people, in fact to this day we still don't know.

"Quiet," said Professor McGonagall.

"Sorry," we whispered.

"Oh guess what?" Sirius asked us quietly. "She told me that we should blow something up this class period. She says she can't stand seeing all of us this worried looking." I laughed halfheartedly. McGonagall wanted us to blow something up. That was something I never thought I'd see.

"I've got the perfect idea," said Sirius, though his usual marauder grin was missing. A few seconds later, Professor McGonagall's desk was transfigured into a small pig. We laughed hysterically as it raced around the room. Professor McGonagall smiled slightly.

"Class dismissed." We got up and left. When we were back in the common room, Sirius told us the whole story.

"Okay, this is what I needed to talk to you about," he began when we were all seated around him. "I don't know a lot, but what I do know is that Voldemort murdered my dad."

"Why?" asked Peter.

"I'm getting there," Sirius continued. "I told you guys he killed my mum, when I was little, because she was trying to protect me. Now he's killed my dad too. It's all because of me. He's after me." Sirius was trying to look calm, but he was worried.

"Oh my gosh, Sirius!" said Erin. "You have no idea why?" She looked at him.

"None at all," said Sirius. "Except that Voldemort knew I was powerful and I'd be a threat, or something like that."

"You don't think he'd try to attack you here, right?" asked James. "I mean with Dumbledore and everything." Sirius shook his head.

"I don't know James, I don't know." We all stared at each other silently. We'd never known fear this great. One of our best friends was in danger of being murdered. And both of his parents had been murdered. He had no one left, except for, how could have I been so stupid. In all of the commotion, I hadn't even thought of her.

"Addi," I said. "Is she all right?"

"Yeah, Remus, she's fine," said Sirius. "Voldemort never touched her."

"You mean she was there when it happened?" I asked, shocked.

"Yeah," Sirius didn't look like he was comfortable talking about it.

"I've got to write to her then," I said. "Where are you two staying now?" I asked.

"Oh, with my grandfather," said Sirius quickly, as though not to make a big deal of it. Erin put her hand on Sirius's arm to comfort him, but when she did, he winced.

"What is it?" she asked.

"Oh, nothing," said Sirius. "I just fell the other day and hurt my arm. It's fine, really, just a little sore."

James, Sirius and I looked for clues to why Voldemort was after Sirius. We spent more time in the library than Sirius had in his entire life in those three days. Still, we found nothing that explained anything. There were books on scars, books on exchange of extraordinary powers through dueling, and a several recently published book on theories of Voldemort's motives, however the latter was written by a young writer by the name of Rita Skeeter, and James reckoned it was rubbish. And so, nothing was helpful to us.

"Don't worry, Sirius," James would say. "We'll always be here with you. If Voldemort tries to kill you, he'll have to take us too." Even then, James would have died for Sirius. And so would have I. I can't stand looking back at all of this and then thinking how Sirius betrayed us. Like I said before, I guess none of us ever knew the real Sirius Black. Maybe he had been plotting with Voldemort the whole time. I didn't even want to think that.

I wrote to Addi, and she wrote back a few days later. She said she was all right and to remind Sirius that she didn't blame him for what happened. She mentioned very little of the actual incident, only that her father had passed away in the hospital on her and Sirius' birthday, and she was now staying with her grandparents, where she said she was content to live. Perhaps she should have blamed Sirius for what had happened. How could he have done that to her? His mum, his dad and his very own twin. It makes me so angry that I ever trusted him. But that's just the thing. He'd seemed so trustworthy, the most loyal friend you could ever have. I guess things aren't always what they seem.

The rest of third year went by slowly. Sirius insisted to us that he was fine, but we could tell that he was hurting inside. He and Erin grew closer than ever. He seemed to confide in her things he would never share with the rest of us, and we respected this, by not begging Erin to share the news. For the first few weeks after Sirius' return, we all seemed to silently share the common fear that Voldemort would try to do something horrible to him. It had become our unspoken agreement to never leave him alone without at least one of us with him. This accomplished little, aside from making Sirius quite annoyed with us. The days crept by and nothing out of the ordinary happened. It seemed as though Voldemort had forgotten about whatever he'd been planning to do. At the end of the year, Sirius seemed reluctant about going to his grandfather's house. I had the feeling something might have been wrong, but I didn't say anything.