A/N: Dedicated to Faith, in absolution for being a non-HP reader, and gratitude for being a terrific friend. Timeline used: the old one where Snape is 35 in OotP. (I nearly had a heart attack, when, one-fourth of the way through this fic, I found Rowling's latest timeline has that crew being 35 at the start of the series, so it went... erm, ignored.) This chapter later to be revised once we actually hear how Aberforth talks in Book 7.
Noxing
Chapter I – Which is the Prologue
When he was nine years old, Sirius Black saw a motorcycle. He was with his brother Regulus. It was very seldom they were ever outside in their neighborhood, but the Floo Network had broken down and Apparition, impossible in and out of the house, was necessary.
Mr and Mrs Black were fussing indoors for just a moment with coats and adult chitchat. They were very wary of the attention they would attract from those unknown, unseen neighbours, but they needn't have worried. Nobody save themselves was up, nor was convinced ten-thirty had an a.m. It was that sort of neighborhood, though were it the avenue of millionaires Regulus's aristocratic sneer at it would not have been much less pronounced.
Sirius, however, was interested, not to be put off by the trash blowing down the deadish street on slightish winds. He was snuffling about the unkempt hedges separating number twelve from number fourteen, in which bright but sadly bedraggled streamers were strewn. Even in their forlorn state they were much gaudier than anything the Blacks would ever use. Over the hedge in a thinly-grassed front yard a doll lay naked and decapitated. Sirius had never seen material the like of the doll, hard and shiny. He was on the verge of pointing this out to his younger brother when a rumbling crept into their ears… under their ribcages.
"What's that?" asked Regulus, an unaristocratically fearful note in his voice that suited his years better.
"Is that a car – "
Louder and louder every millisecond – and then it zoomed by. Regulus covered his eyes, cowered next to the wall of the house, but, obedient to their father's orders, made not a sound, however instinctive a good long scream was.
Sirius crouched, too, partly ready to kneel and hide his head… but only partly. The greater part stared avidly. Though the view lasted mere seconds, and though Sirius knew very little about those exotic barbarians, non-wizards, he was sure it wasn't exactly a car. It was the wrong size, and shape, and in cars the Muggles inside weren't visible enough for comfort. This one was clearly exposed.
The rumble filled his ears and banged its way through his bone-marrow and then died off.
Mr Black had run out of the house; with the door cracked open, they had heard the noise even within. Normally not a solitary Muggle sound penetrated Mr Black's spellwork. His wand was out. "What happened! What happened!" It was a shouting-whisper. "Sirius! Regulus!"
"It's gone," said Sirius, whose eyes were still fixed on the point of the phenomenon's disappearance. His voice was toneless.
"Don't be so sure!" said Mr Black, highly respected first citizen, grabbing Regulus inside by the collar of his robes and beckoning Sirius with his long, knobbly fingers. "You can never trust your senses with Mugglery – "
"What was it?" demanded a shrill voice from inside. It shattered her husband's low-toned cover.
"Remember that, Sirius – never trust your senses with Mugglery – "
"Are the boys all right?"
" – the tricks they get up to – Sirius, come in!"
Mrs Black peered. "Did they white his mind?" she asked, with almost clinical interest.
"Sirius!"
And Mr Black Summoned his eldest. It hurts a bit to be yanked back thus with that spell, and Sirius did not find his footing before landing. "I was coming!"
This was not a nine year old's whine, entirely. The last word was bellowed.
Regulus was trying to cling to his mother's cloak, but that would not do; Mrs Black intended to go to the luncheon and could not have the cloak folded. The foyer was incredibly dark in comparison to the pearl grey sky outside, and Regulus felt as good as blind and deaf.
"So they're both unharmed," said Mr Black, more his dignified self. "I don't suppose they actually met with any Muggle – "
"We didn't," said Regulus.
"When I want you to speak I shall address you," said Mrs Black, all of one half-breath. The other half: "It's horrible around here! It's gone to absolute filth!"
"Sirius is crying!" said Regulus loudly. Younger brothers have a tendency toward such helpful public service announcements, and, like older brothers, Sirius had incurred an ever-mounting debt to be capitalized on in such opportunities. "He's crying!"
The parents' heads both jerked to Sirius on the floor. "I am not!" But he almost was. Sirius had rarely or never felt contentment or happiness, but this was the first time it ever occurred to him that outside the presence of his family he could. Now, as had happened before, he longed to have them away, so that they didn't drive the vividness of the memory from him any more quickly than would naturally happen, and he joined this longing for the first time with possibility. The vexation alone was enough to tax a hungry nine year old, but the bewilderment suffocated his brain to boot.
"Get up from the floor, Sirius," said Mr Black in exasperation. "And quiet, both of you."
They were quiet – it took no noise to glare and make faces and creative mimes at each other as their parents waited tensely before deciding that it might prove safe to step out now. "Hold tight to me," Mr Black ordered, taking out a long piece of reed that snaked around them all of its own bewitched accord (Mr Black could no more manage Side-Along Apparition without this tape than you or I could).
"There really ought to be an Apparition point inside the house," said Mrs Black, loosening the tape around her wrist with her forefinger.
"So that they can get inside?" It was a horrified sneer.
"Orion," Mrs Black said, "Muggles" – she managed to make the funny-sounding world filthy – "cannot Apparate."
"I'd rather take no chances."
Sirius didn't enjoy the Apparition half as much as he anticipated it. You squeeze in on yourself a bit, and then arrive at your destination a bit out of breath a second later, but where was the journey? Not that Sirius could have articulated this, even in thought.
At the Aubreys' the senior Blacks and Regulus looked askance and at times downright snooty at how the house was something less than atmospheric for a party of the undead. Sirius sought trouble. When the adults sat down for tea in another room, he asked Lucinda Aubrey about the not-quite-a-car.
Regulus's large, pale eyes narrowed.
"Don't be a snitch, Regulus," said Sirius, lordingly, cowing all three Aubreys, but not Regulus.
"That doesn't sound like a car to me," said Lucinda. "Sounded like a what-d'you-call-'em. Mortorcycle?"
"Motorcycle," her brother corrected.
"Right."
"Motorcycle," Sirius repeated under his breath, as the unfortunate Mrs Aubrey's lone laugh tinkled throughout the first floor yet quickly, nervously died. Evidently his parents had seized up the Aubreys in much the way Regulus had.
Regulus looked a prince in miniature as he asked why they knew so much about Muggles.
The Aubreys were a smart-alecky family, as later events would prove. Lucinda flared.
"Why don't you?" she demanded, looking down at the boy a good seven years younger than herself. Regulus flinched instinctively toward Sirius but then managed to hold himself as the more-or-less unadulterated blood of a millennium demanded. I don't think I have to tell you that Sirius thought this was a valid question.
In imitation of their parents, the minor Aubreys and Blacks managed to avoid talking to each other until the latter left.
---
Muggle – a being, human or at least humanoid, without the powers of witchcraft and wizardry; colloquially, one without magical powers, uninitiated into the Wizarding community, having only the most rudimentary and often inaccurate knowledge of magic or the existence of magical persons, creatures, artifacts, etc.; often one unaware or in disbelief of the existence of magic; one with no Wizarding contact, born and bred of like persons; v. & cont. Squib
("Muggle." The Ingillis Standard Dictionary for the Modern Wizard. Brit. edition. 1967.)
---
The finer readers among us might protest the opening scene. Do nine year old boys really act and think like that?
Don't protest aloud till we reach the '80s at least. This nine-year-old was a Black.
Nipping for a moment into that safer decade, with the Black line much weakened, and never up to protecting Sirius from libel or indeed the truth, we can pretend for a moment he's no such thing – maybe a White or a Green or an Aquamarine, your run-of-the-mill sort of name. We can just assume he's a regular nine year old boy. Do non-Black ones really act and think like that?
Sirius Doe was of the blazing great generation leading up to the First War. For a solid decade and maybe add a few years more, from 1967ish to 1977ish, Hogwarts rattled with the brilliance and energy of the doomed. Mixing up their mythologies quite a bit, newspaper columnists called them the Golden Lambs. It was the sappiest name imaginable, so of course it stuck. And it was widely lamented how so many shooting stars (that was another phrase that hung around this bunch in posterity) died so early, and how so many survivors developed drinking problems, and then the Second War came and devoured quite a few others, and basically no one fun was around from this generation anymore.
In this vein, 1976:
"So. Have you found your doppelganger yet?"
"I beg your pardon?"
"Well what with all those wunderkinder Gryffindors up at your school lately I figured you'd at last found one of those brats you always said you were sticking around for."
"Ah. That. In point of fact I have given that up… And it is rather rude of you to snicker so."
"Now how can I not? What with all that my poor ear was subject to for the past seventy years, about how you were such a genius that you could only find your intellectual equal in a kid, and that line… Thank you."
"Come now."
"Oh no. I'm crowing, and I'm being petulant, and I'm milking your guilt for all its worth. And now all the sudden he's given it up!" Said to a perfectly inanimate stool. "Heh."
"To make you quite euphoric – yes, I realized I was in the wrong. I cannot place such burdens on my students."
"Albus Dumbledore, admitting he was in the wrong. I've waited for this."
"I know. To you… To your satisfaction, and my resolution. May both last."
The satisfaction lasted till the second drink. The resolution lasted a couple of months. We all have our weak points.
---
"The First War," or the Dark Wizard Voldemort's first of two ascents to power in the British Wizarding community –
That academic clarification hath demolished the mood. Let me begin again.
The First War made its budlike beginning on a sweltering evening with the "disappearance" – and, predictably, murder – of the irritating but innocent Mr H Summers, an employee of –
Never mind that. This is not an account of the war. Only two people, one dead and one as good as, could give that account in toto, of whom I am neither. The angle of my work is a bit different. Our setting is Hogwarts School, which, technically, had nothing to do with the war – indeed, one of the few casualty-free spots in all the country during these eleven years. At least, according to the strict definition of 'casualty.'
Enough of this authorish prattle. It's past time for me to step aside and let Hogwarts open itself up through the students of the war's budding. But just this last: to those unfamiliar with the Houses, pay close attention and learn 'em. There's a lot of information in the next chapter bound to be forgotten, and that's fine, save for anything you can glean of the Houses. There's four, and there all but wouldn't be a story here without them.