Chapter One: You call this a holiday?

Sirius Black lay on his bed and stared at the ceiling. "I can't believe fifth year is over", he thought to himself. Remembering back to the last month or so, he allowed a grin to pass his face as he relished his OWL results. "I can't believe me and James passed even when we did hardly any work and no revision!" At the thought of his best friend, the grin faded as he came to the same realisation his mind kept returning to: that he would have to spend two months away from both him and Hogwarts, 'enjoying' the company of only his insufferable family.

As if on cue, his snotty younger brother Regulus barged into the room, banging the door so hard that the windows rattled. Sirius merely raised his head and glanced at him, then went back to staring at the ceiling, which, after all, was a lot more interesting in his opinion.

"What are you doing?" Regulus demanded. The attitudes of their parents – that Regulus was a far more promising son than black sheep Sirius – had obviously rubbed off on him, and as a consequence he seemed to expect everyone to show him such deference.

"I'm wrestling a hippogriff, what does it look like?" Sirius said to the ceiling, and although he couldn't see Regulus' stuck-up face, he knew he would be pouting.

"Well, Mother says to come downstairs, she has some chores for you to do," Regulus got back at Sirius' put-down by delighting in his mother's favouritism.

"So?" Sirius said, still examining the ceiling. He noticed a tiny spider scurrying across it, and wondered how it could hang on upside down. "Can't you see I'm busy?"

Just as Regulus started to get really irritated, which would have been just the cheer up Sirius needed, they heard the awful screech that everyone accepted as Mrs Black's voice.

"Sirius!" it ripped through the air up the stairs and into Sirius' brain. "Get down here, you insolent boy!"

Sirius sighed and slowly rolled off the bed. As much as he didn't want to get any closer to his mother than was absolutely necessary, he knew that later on he would regret disobeying her at such an early stage of the holidays. He walked past Regulus, appreciating his height advantage.

"Have fun," snickered Regulus. Sirius ignored him, not liking to waste good comebacks on such an unworthy recipient. As always, when he made his way down the stairs he tried not to look at the unpleasant paintings of his snobbish and evil-looking relatives, and as always he wished like hell that he belonged to a different family. For what seemed like the millionth time, Sirius felt a pang of jealousy in his heart towards James; he didn't know how lucky he was, having parents who were at least polite to him.

As he reluctantly entered the kitchen, Sirius bitterly wondered what long list of gruesome tasks his mother had in line for him. He was sure that she saved up the worst ones especially for him when he returned from Hogwarts. "I suppose she must consider me after all," he thought ironically. He also wondered how long it would be before Regulus came down to watch him and eat sweets.

"There you are," snapped Mrs Black, looking up, wand in hand, from putting the finishing touches of stitching on what looked like a tea towel decorated with a pattern of green intertwining snakes. Sirius kept his eyes off it, the familiar disgusted feeling coming back whenever he thought about his Slytherin family and their contemptuous opinion of him, a Gryffindor.

"You took so long I'd forgotten I'd called you," she continued.

"Summoned me, more like," Sirius thought, and waited for his orders.

"Don't look so insolent, boy, now many times do I have to tell you to respect your elders and especially your mother?" Mrs Black looked him up and down, taking in with an intense look of dislike his red Gryffindor jumper, which he chose to wear as often as possible, in protest to their evil Slytherinness. She seemed to decide against commenting this time. Sirius knew that she would wait until dinner to start insulting him and his 'disgraceful' friends, so that the whole family could hear and join in.

"Alright, here you are," Mrs Black handed him a piece of parchment on which a list of chores was written in green ink. "Should keep you out of trouble in any case," she added with an extra-mean glare.

Sirius took the parchment out of her long-nailed claw without speaking and left the room, closing the heavy wooden door behind him. He glanced down at the list now, his heart sinking as he saw all the errands, each one more tedious than the last.

"De-gnome the garden; polish the drawing room cabinet...oh God, I'll have to touch all those Dark ornaments... clear out the attic, you gotta be kidding me – all that junk? Repair hole in roof," And there were lots more, though Sirius didn't read them all aloud. "What's next?" he asked himself. "Wash Snape's hair? Do Regulus' homework?"

"Yes, thanks, that would be great." Sirius hadn't realised his brother was sitting on the stairs, listening.

"At least I'll be able to set up some pranks," muttered Sirius, as though Regulus wasn't there.

"What?" Regulus got up off the stairs; his voice suddenly sharper now, unlike the lazy, gloating drawl he had used a moment ago. "What did you say?"

"I said have you remembered to put on your pants?" Sirius answered wearily, deciding which job to get a start on first.

"You know," Regulus began casually, "I heard Mother say the other day that if you don't shape up to her expectations then you won't be going back to Hogwarts." He leant against the wall, waiting to see Sirius' reaction.

Sirius merely looked at the haughty, smug face for a moment, and left the room. He refused to let the worry he had felt at Regulus' words show on his face, but inside he didn't trust it merely to be his brother's malevolence, and he wouldn't put it past his mother to take every opportunity to make him miserable. He tried to put this out of his mind, and looked at his list.

"Right, what's the worst thing I have to do?" he muttered to himself. "Clearing out the attic, I suppose. I don't think I can face that now; I'll do that evil cabinet first."

So he made his way up to the first floor, where the drawing room was. Inside, he couldn't help but look at the large tapestry of the family tree, the 'Ancient and Most Noble House of Black', and give it a glare of hatred. It epitomised the one thing he loathed above all about his life: his family. And that was quite a large part of his life, he knew. Every time he saw the family tree, which covered a sizeable part of the wall, the shame he felt of being part of such a despicable group of wizards was so intense that he had a great urge to scribble his name out.

Tearing his eyes away form the terrible parchment, or contract, as Sirius saw it, an immovable contract, tying him to the family, he instead turned his attention to the great black cabinet in the corner of the room. This he also hated, but with not nearly so much venom. Putting aside his revulsion, he strode purposefully over to the cabinet and opened it. He spent the next hour cleaning each of the artefacts carefully – not because he was at all concerned with the well being of his family's precious things, but because he knew some of them could be quite dangerous if you handled them incorrectly. As he worked he tried not to think about what he was doing too much, and instead set his mind to deciding what the best prank was that he and James had pulled on Snape that year.

He came down to the two best ones – the first of which was when they had put an enchantment on Snape so that everything he said came out in song (they had been tempted to also jinx his legs so that he would have had to dance everywhere, but Remus thought this would be going too far), and the second was planting a potion in his drink towards the end of term which resulted in him growing a pair of very conspicuous antlers, as well as green webbed hands, and hooves instead of feet. They had kept this potion restocked and continued to secretly feed it to him via the elves' kitchens at every evening meal for a week. Although both had a very high comedy value, Sirius was just coming to the conclusion that this was the better of the two, not least because it had supplied the Marauders with the treasured memory of Snape making loud clopping noises everywhere he went and having to do his OWLs sporting the antlers (Madame Pomfrey had managed to get rid of the frog-like hands in time, but could not go as far as the rest without Snape missing the exams, much to the Gryffindors' delight), when he got a nasty shock. The black engraved snuffbox that he was currently dusting must have objected to his rough treatment, because suddenly it sneezed right into his face.

"Oh shit," Sirius thought in alarm, "Who knows what that stuff will do to my face?"

Luckily he had with him his wand and the small hand mirror that he used to communicate with James. It was an invention they had worked on together in the fourth year; they both had one of these magical mirrors, in which, if one said the other's name into it, he would appear and they could talk to each other through it. Sirius looked into his mirror now and saw to his horror that his face was beginning to sprout brown fur the same colour as the snuff from the black box. As he watched, aghast, he could actually see it growing at an incredibly fast rate. Grabbing his wand, he racked his brains for a spell that would stop it, but then remembered that students weren't allowed to perform magic away from Hogwarts.

He made to pick up the mirror again, but realised with surprise that he could feel the horrible course fur falling out already. Relieved, he checked it was all gone, then, not liking to touch it too much, used the duster to get it all off his clothes.

"I wonder why it only lasted a second," he said, grinning now that the panic was over. "Maybe it has a charm to prevent it from harming Blacks," he thought bitterly, not liking to be thankful for being a member of the family. "I blame it all on Snape, anyway, I was thinking about that antler prank."

It didn't take him long to finish the rest of the ornaments quickly, then he left the drawing room appreciatively and went up another staircase to his room, where he did a proper check of his face to make sure all the fur was gone. He felt very glad that Regulus had been absent for the whole affair.

He spent the rest of the day completing the rest of his mother's tasks, even making an attempt to sort through the attic, although he didn't see why he had been allocated this job, as most of the stuff was old things belonging to his parents, which he didn't know if they wanted to keep or not. "Just like her," Sirius grumbled to himself as he sorted through the crap, "to make me do the pointless things."

The only activity he vaguely enjoyed that day was the de-gnoming of the garden, as he got to go outside for this. Each time he grabbed one of the horny-skinned little creatures by its feet and slung it as far as he could over the garden wall, he imagined it was a different member of his family.