A/N:
.
.
.
Pretty much nothing else interesting happened. Sirius found some more things to make the teachers at his school wish they were never born, and then obsessed over spell-o-tape for a while. Even completely spell-o-taped his backpack, then did it again with some colored spell-o-tape.
It was interesting!
Ah, well. Boredom does many strange things to a mind already going through withdrawal of the missing of its little sister and owl.
But, despite himself, Sirius survived to the Dreaded Day (well, no, not really) and got up a bit early (just incase!) dressing in muggle clothes (jeans and a black t-shirt that had the picture of a soda can on the back), threw his cloak on (fastening it hastily), dragged his spell-o-taped backpack downstairs (even fitted Yama's cage into it too! It was bilging!), checked out (very little money left), then proceeded to drag his bag out of Diagon Alley, and stopped to rest in the Leaky Cauldron.
There the bartender took pity on him and cast a temporary spell that would lighten his bag up a bit.
Then Sirius took off at a run while the spell still lasted.
It wore off around mid morning, and he was reduced to dragging it the rest of the way to the station.
But he made it!
He stopped at the barrier between platforms nine and ten, and waited patiently for some sort of magic folk to come along and tell him how to get on the train. Or at least find platform nine and three quarters.
Eventually, his waiting paid off. A tired looking boy with brown hair (that was currently messed up) and a woman (attempting to straighten his hair) and a man (shaking his head a laughing) came along. They were decked out in muggle clothing, but what told Sirius that they were magic was that the boy's father had a wand sticking out of his back pocket.
The woman noticed.
"Honey, put that thing away, are you trying to broadcast yourself - hold still, Remmy, I'm trying to get your hair straightened - all over Britain? Muggles everywhere, I wear - oh, hullo there, dear." She almost ran right into Sirius.
"Hi!" he said brightly. "You guys aren't muggles are you? I don't think so. Do you know where the train is? I can't find it."
"Oh, is it your first year? It's Remus's first year, too." She motioned toward the boy, who glanced shyly at Sirius, then continued to swat his mother's hands away from his head. "You just run right through the platform," she grabbed 'Remus' and dragged him through the barrier. Sirius stared after them.
"Cheerio!" the man said brightly, and then wheeled the trunk he had through the wall as well. Sirius stood dumbfounded for a moment, took a minute of pity for Remus (who was undoubtedly embarrassed by his parents), before dragging his bag over to the barrier, leaning against it, and promptly falling through.
On top of a kid standing too close.
"Quite sorry," he apologized, helping her up without looking at her or being sorry. He was more interested in ogling around him.
"Oh, it's alright," the girl said, brushing herself off. Sirius looked at her, then grinned. "Lily! It's me, Sirius, though I don't expect you remember me. we met in Diagon Alley, remember...?"
"Oh, I do! That's right, Sirius, I never got the chance to thnk you for helping us out."
"Mm-hmm," Sirius said distractedly. "Well, see you in school." He left her and dragged his bag over the first compartment, where he threw his bag in then proceeded to drag it down the train, looking for an empty compartment.
There really weren't any empty compartments, and he was still checking (even interrupted a couple of sixteen-year-olds, quite by accident) when the train started moving. Dragging his backpack was beginning to be a pain and tiring, not to say he wasn't foot sore already, and tired, but a nice, quiet compartment was what he needed.
After a while, he found his way to the very back, the very last compartment, which was empty.
Sighing in relief, he played around for a while, and then managed to get his bag in a space where trunks were supposed to go.
Then he collapsed in a seat next to the window, closed his eyes, and ended up falling asleep after studying the picture he had of Tome. He wondered how she was doing, and Yama. Had anything happened to Yama on her way to deliver...? Nah.
When he woke up again, he had somehow gotten his feet up on the seat too, curled with his back to the window. It took him a moment to figure out what had woken him up.
It was Lily, and the boy, Remus. Actually, Remus looked as though he had just been woken up, too.
Then the next obvious logical thought was that after he had fallen asleep, the other two had come in, Remus went to sleep, and now Lily had woken them both up. Or maybe it was the rain beating hard down against the train and windows. It was a thundering roar, and made Sirius wonder how he had slept through any of it. There was nothing to see beyond the blackness of the window.
"Sirius? Oy, are you two awake yet? Night time is for sleeping, you dolts!" Lily gave an exasperated sigh as Sirius gave her a dumb look. Then he saw a woman and a trolly out of the corner of his eyes, turned his head, and saw that was why Lily must have woken them up. He wasn't hungry, so he curled back up shaking his head, listen to Remus say "No thanks." And then his telling Lily what things were and what to get.
Muggles. Truly idiots.
He was almost asleep again when Lily's annoyingly chirpy voice said, "Hey, Sirius, you dropped your picture... ooh, is that your girlfriend? She's pretty!"
He snapped awake and was on his feet within an instant, startling both Lily and Remus. Lily was kneeling in front of him, where he had obviously dropped his picture of Tome.
He took it from her.
"How did you get the picture to move?" Lily asked. "Who is she?"
"The moving picture is... ask Remus. As for who she is, no, she isn't my girlfriends, and her name is," Sirius paused, sitting down again, "Hitomeko Black."
"She's really pretty. I think that she /is/ your girlfriend and your just too shy to admit it."
Sirius was about to snarl back at her, but she had already turned to Remus (who still looked tired yet alert, now) and was questioning everything that a child should know.
Sirius held his sister's picture close, closing his eyes once more.
But, he discovered almost an hour later, he was awake now and wouldn't get back to sleep any time soon. Yawning, he sat up straight, tucked Tome's picture in a pocket, then stood up. "I'll be right back," he mumbled to Lily and Remus, then made his way almost running to the front, where a few kids and teachers were conversing. He ignored them and continued on to the conductor.
"Excuse me, Mr. Train-driver?" he asked, rubbing an eye. "Do you know when we'll be there?"
"Shoo, kid, you ain't supposed to be here," the old man mumbled around the long pipe sticking out of his mouth. "A couple more hours, if this wind and rain keep up. Now get."
Sirius sniffed, and dropped a dungbomb on his way out, then ran a ways before almost collapsing on the floor laughing.
"What's so funny?" asked a voice of a boy, and Sirius sobered, getting to his feet. The boy was already in his Hogwarts robes, and held his wand. He had extremely messy black hair and glasses on over hazel eyes. He and Sirius were the exact same height.
"I just asked the traindriverwhatchymacallhim when we would get there, he gave me a few snide remarks, smoked his pipe, blew some smoke in my face... and I dropped a dungbomb on my way back."
"Hah, really? I was going to go ask when we would get there, too. So, you've got dungbombs, eh? What else?"
"Everything else you can think of."
"Not as much as I have. You ought to get changed, you know."
Sirius glanced down at himself.
"Yeah, I guess. A couple more hours and it's to school we go. By the way," he added, halfway passing the boy, "My name's Sirius Black."
"And I'm James Potter."
"Nice to meet ya."
Back in the compartment he shared with Lily and Remus, the two were munching on what was left of what Lily had gotten, and Remus explained everything he knew about Hogwarts.
"So, let me get this straight," Lily said, ignoring Sirius as he grabbed his bag and began digging through it, searching for his robes. "There are four houses, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, Slytherin, and Gryffindor. Am I right so far? Right. Slytherin is where all of the evil purebloods go, Hufflepuff is for the idiots, Ravenclaw is for people who are clever, and Gryffindor is for the brave people. The latter and Slytherin are mortal enemies. Right, so, we get sorted into one of those houses, and that's it, right?"
"Right."
"Well, how do we get sorted?"
"My parents wouldn't tell me. What about you, Sirius? Do you know anything?"
"Me?" Sirius asked, voice muffled slightly as he yanked his robes over his head. "No, I barely know anything about Hogwarts. Just that it's a wizarding school and the headmaster is Albus Dumbledore."
"Really? That's a shame, you probably don't know what house you'll be in, either, huh? Say, are you a muggle born?" Lily asked, instantly interested.
"No, if there's one thing I know about myself, it's that I'm pureblooded all the way back."
"Oh, then you'll be in Slytherin, right? Ask Remus, he knows all about this stuff."
"Do /you/ know what house you'll be in?" Sirius asked, looking at the brown- haired boy. He was skinny, tall, and looked rather tired despite his wide- awakedness.
He flushed. "My mum was in Ravenclaw, and my dad was in Gryffindor, so I expect I'll be in one of them, eh? They're both muggle born. Nobody really knows, I guess. Hey, wait a minute; Sirius, if your pure blood, then how come you don't know anything about Hogwarts?"
Sirius finished tucking his muggle clothing into his pack. "My mum went to, err, went to a wizarding school in Japan even though she was French, and I don't really know much about my dad. I expect he went to Hogwarts, though, eh?"
"I guess."
"Oh, that's sad." Lily remarked. "That you don't know anything about your family. If your mum went to Japan but lived in France, then how did you get into a British school?"
"My mum, I'll have you know, lived in England, and walked out on me in an orphanage a few years ago explaining that she'd never return." Sirius sat down, almost moodily. "So, I'm basically saying that it's none of your business. I'd rather NOT know anything about my family, because I really don't have one."
There was a long stretch of tense silence.
"Then, err, would you like to explain why you just got all naked and dressed in those robes in front of us?" Lily asked at last in a tiny voice.
"We'll be there shortly, best to get changed." Came the soft reply.
"... Oh."
.
.
.
Pretty much nothing else interesting happened. Sirius found some more things to make the teachers at his school wish they were never born, and then obsessed over spell-o-tape for a while. Even completely spell-o-taped his backpack, then did it again with some colored spell-o-tape.
It was interesting!
Ah, well. Boredom does many strange things to a mind already going through withdrawal of the missing of its little sister and owl.
But, despite himself, Sirius survived to the Dreaded Day (well, no, not really) and got up a bit early (just incase!) dressing in muggle clothes (jeans and a black t-shirt that had the picture of a soda can on the back), threw his cloak on (fastening it hastily), dragged his spell-o-taped backpack downstairs (even fitted Yama's cage into it too! It was bilging!), checked out (very little money left), then proceeded to drag his bag out of Diagon Alley, and stopped to rest in the Leaky Cauldron.
There the bartender took pity on him and cast a temporary spell that would lighten his bag up a bit.
Then Sirius took off at a run while the spell still lasted.
It wore off around mid morning, and he was reduced to dragging it the rest of the way to the station.
But he made it!
He stopped at the barrier between platforms nine and ten, and waited patiently for some sort of magic folk to come along and tell him how to get on the train. Or at least find platform nine and three quarters.
Eventually, his waiting paid off. A tired looking boy with brown hair (that was currently messed up) and a woman (attempting to straighten his hair) and a man (shaking his head a laughing) came along. They were decked out in muggle clothing, but what told Sirius that they were magic was that the boy's father had a wand sticking out of his back pocket.
The woman noticed.
"Honey, put that thing away, are you trying to broadcast yourself - hold still, Remmy, I'm trying to get your hair straightened - all over Britain? Muggles everywhere, I wear - oh, hullo there, dear." She almost ran right into Sirius.
"Hi!" he said brightly. "You guys aren't muggles are you? I don't think so. Do you know where the train is? I can't find it."
"Oh, is it your first year? It's Remus's first year, too." She motioned toward the boy, who glanced shyly at Sirius, then continued to swat his mother's hands away from his head. "You just run right through the platform," she grabbed 'Remus' and dragged him through the barrier. Sirius stared after them.
"Cheerio!" the man said brightly, and then wheeled the trunk he had through the wall as well. Sirius stood dumbfounded for a moment, took a minute of pity for Remus (who was undoubtedly embarrassed by his parents), before dragging his bag over to the barrier, leaning against it, and promptly falling through.
On top of a kid standing too close.
"Quite sorry," he apologized, helping her up without looking at her or being sorry. He was more interested in ogling around him.
"Oh, it's alright," the girl said, brushing herself off. Sirius looked at her, then grinned. "Lily! It's me, Sirius, though I don't expect you remember me. we met in Diagon Alley, remember...?"
"Oh, I do! That's right, Sirius, I never got the chance to thnk you for helping us out."
"Mm-hmm," Sirius said distractedly. "Well, see you in school." He left her and dragged his bag over the first compartment, where he threw his bag in then proceeded to drag it down the train, looking for an empty compartment.
There really weren't any empty compartments, and he was still checking (even interrupted a couple of sixteen-year-olds, quite by accident) when the train started moving. Dragging his backpack was beginning to be a pain and tiring, not to say he wasn't foot sore already, and tired, but a nice, quiet compartment was what he needed.
After a while, he found his way to the very back, the very last compartment, which was empty.
Sighing in relief, he played around for a while, and then managed to get his bag in a space where trunks were supposed to go.
Then he collapsed in a seat next to the window, closed his eyes, and ended up falling asleep after studying the picture he had of Tome. He wondered how she was doing, and Yama. Had anything happened to Yama on her way to deliver...? Nah.
When he woke up again, he had somehow gotten his feet up on the seat too, curled with his back to the window. It took him a moment to figure out what had woken him up.
It was Lily, and the boy, Remus. Actually, Remus looked as though he had just been woken up, too.
Then the next obvious logical thought was that after he had fallen asleep, the other two had come in, Remus went to sleep, and now Lily had woken them both up. Or maybe it was the rain beating hard down against the train and windows. It was a thundering roar, and made Sirius wonder how he had slept through any of it. There was nothing to see beyond the blackness of the window.
"Sirius? Oy, are you two awake yet? Night time is for sleeping, you dolts!" Lily gave an exasperated sigh as Sirius gave her a dumb look. Then he saw a woman and a trolly out of the corner of his eyes, turned his head, and saw that was why Lily must have woken them up. He wasn't hungry, so he curled back up shaking his head, listen to Remus say "No thanks." And then his telling Lily what things were and what to get.
Muggles. Truly idiots.
He was almost asleep again when Lily's annoyingly chirpy voice said, "Hey, Sirius, you dropped your picture... ooh, is that your girlfriend? She's pretty!"
He snapped awake and was on his feet within an instant, startling both Lily and Remus. Lily was kneeling in front of him, where he had obviously dropped his picture of Tome.
He took it from her.
"How did you get the picture to move?" Lily asked. "Who is she?"
"The moving picture is... ask Remus. As for who she is, no, she isn't my girlfriends, and her name is," Sirius paused, sitting down again, "Hitomeko Black."
"She's really pretty. I think that she /is/ your girlfriend and your just too shy to admit it."
Sirius was about to snarl back at her, but she had already turned to Remus (who still looked tired yet alert, now) and was questioning everything that a child should know.
Sirius held his sister's picture close, closing his eyes once more.
But, he discovered almost an hour later, he was awake now and wouldn't get back to sleep any time soon. Yawning, he sat up straight, tucked Tome's picture in a pocket, then stood up. "I'll be right back," he mumbled to Lily and Remus, then made his way almost running to the front, where a few kids and teachers were conversing. He ignored them and continued on to the conductor.
"Excuse me, Mr. Train-driver?" he asked, rubbing an eye. "Do you know when we'll be there?"
"Shoo, kid, you ain't supposed to be here," the old man mumbled around the long pipe sticking out of his mouth. "A couple more hours, if this wind and rain keep up. Now get."
Sirius sniffed, and dropped a dungbomb on his way out, then ran a ways before almost collapsing on the floor laughing.
"What's so funny?" asked a voice of a boy, and Sirius sobered, getting to his feet. The boy was already in his Hogwarts robes, and held his wand. He had extremely messy black hair and glasses on over hazel eyes. He and Sirius were the exact same height.
"I just asked the traindriverwhatchymacallhim when we would get there, he gave me a few snide remarks, smoked his pipe, blew some smoke in my face... and I dropped a dungbomb on my way back."
"Hah, really? I was going to go ask when we would get there, too. So, you've got dungbombs, eh? What else?"
"Everything else you can think of."
"Not as much as I have. You ought to get changed, you know."
Sirius glanced down at himself.
"Yeah, I guess. A couple more hours and it's to school we go. By the way," he added, halfway passing the boy, "My name's Sirius Black."
"And I'm James Potter."
"Nice to meet ya."
Back in the compartment he shared with Lily and Remus, the two were munching on what was left of what Lily had gotten, and Remus explained everything he knew about Hogwarts.
"So, let me get this straight," Lily said, ignoring Sirius as he grabbed his bag and began digging through it, searching for his robes. "There are four houses, Hufflepuff, Ravenclaw, Slytherin, and Gryffindor. Am I right so far? Right. Slytherin is where all of the evil purebloods go, Hufflepuff is for the idiots, Ravenclaw is for people who are clever, and Gryffindor is for the brave people. The latter and Slytherin are mortal enemies. Right, so, we get sorted into one of those houses, and that's it, right?"
"Right."
"Well, how do we get sorted?"
"My parents wouldn't tell me. What about you, Sirius? Do you know anything?"
"Me?" Sirius asked, voice muffled slightly as he yanked his robes over his head. "No, I barely know anything about Hogwarts. Just that it's a wizarding school and the headmaster is Albus Dumbledore."
"Really? That's a shame, you probably don't know what house you'll be in, either, huh? Say, are you a muggle born?" Lily asked, instantly interested.
"No, if there's one thing I know about myself, it's that I'm pureblooded all the way back."
"Oh, then you'll be in Slytherin, right? Ask Remus, he knows all about this stuff."
"Do /you/ know what house you'll be in?" Sirius asked, looking at the brown- haired boy. He was skinny, tall, and looked rather tired despite his wide- awakedness.
He flushed. "My mum was in Ravenclaw, and my dad was in Gryffindor, so I expect I'll be in one of them, eh? They're both muggle born. Nobody really knows, I guess. Hey, wait a minute; Sirius, if your pure blood, then how come you don't know anything about Hogwarts?"
Sirius finished tucking his muggle clothing into his pack. "My mum went to, err, went to a wizarding school in Japan even though she was French, and I don't really know much about my dad. I expect he went to Hogwarts, though, eh?"
"I guess."
"Oh, that's sad." Lily remarked. "That you don't know anything about your family. If your mum went to Japan but lived in France, then how did you get into a British school?"
"My mum, I'll have you know, lived in England, and walked out on me in an orphanage a few years ago explaining that she'd never return." Sirius sat down, almost moodily. "So, I'm basically saying that it's none of your business. I'd rather NOT know anything about my family, because I really don't have one."
There was a long stretch of tense silence.
"Then, err, would you like to explain why you just got all naked and dressed in those robes in front of us?" Lily asked at last in a tiny voice.
"We'll be there shortly, best to get changed." Came the soft reply.
"... Oh."