EASTER CHAPTER.
Well, chapterS I should say. We're out here vibing.
Anyway I might have hyped this one up a little anyway, since like I said before, this is my favourite chapter. I've been really excited about sharing it since I wrote it. And thank you to junieyes for once again pointing things out that I didn't pay attention to - so a quick clarification before we begin: so, I mentioned in the post Christmas chapter that Sirius had his apparition licence, and I had done the calculation - he should be about seventeen right now. Plus, I remember Hermoine got her licence in sixth year while Ron failed it because he splinched and left behind half an eyebrow. Junieyes also pointed out that apparition ideally involves being able to visualise where you are going, but like, I am handwaving that for the sake of the story, I really hope you guys don't mind!
Also, JuggernautJJ had wanted to To Kill a Mockingbird chapter basically since chapter six. I am sorry it took so long, but 22 chapters later, here we are! I just wanted to make it as organic as possible.
I have some more explanations to give you guys, but I'll do that at the end notes! It's going to be something like an ESSAY, but you know what, I have a platform and I am going to use it!
To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
He looked up at the apartment building, and then down again to the slip of paper with the address. It gave him something of a thrill to see her handwriting sometimes – having taken so many months to study every curve of it, only to finally know who was behind it.
He was pretty sure this was her home. June lived far north. He had guessed as much from her accent, of course, but it was still surprising to think of. It was a small town, industrial, somewhere he couldn't imagine June fitting. June's house was not connected to the Floo, so he'd had to apparate. Given that he had never really apparated this big a distance before, he had been a little nervous – but nothing could deter him from meeting her.
Her letters had been short and mostly unhappy. He had been almost worried that she would not write back during the holidays, but she had made the effort to send him two letters in the brief time when the holidays had begun. He had looked forward to those with excitement that shocked almost everyone in the Potter household.
He looked up again at the apartment building, letting out a deep breath. In his bag, all he really had was her copy of To Kill a Mockingbird, which had been his insurance to make sure that June would meet him at least once during the holidays. He was wearing his leather jacket, which he always did when he needed a touch of courage. "Into battle," he murmured, stuffing the slip of paper into his jacket pocket.
This was her home. He had no idea about the kind of person she would be over here, but he was an expert in speaking June. He could tell discomforts, unhappiness, joy, pain. He had studied this handwriting for months, he could tell with the change of each letter what she may or may not be thinking.
He took the stairs to the fourth floor. Distantly, he heard a whistle from one of the other flats, and a baby crying. He squared his shoulders and knocked on the flat number she had scrawled on.
The door opened, and a tired, haggard looking woman stared at him. She was much shorter, much like June, and had her dirty blonde hair. "Yes?" she asked.
"Um – Mrs Williams?" he said politely. "I'm Sirius Black. June's friend."
She glared. "Come in," she said, with as much hostility as she could muster. She walked inside the flat. The island counters made a small breakfast bar nearby, which opened to a living room that looked rather faded. Everything was clean and well kept – even if fresh laundry was piled in a corner of the sofa. There were a bunch of daisies on the coffee table, surrounded by various Christian icons. Apart from that, everything seemed very… standard. Mrs Williams crossed the flat, muttering to herself, "very convenient of her to have called you while he isn't here, isn't it… we'll see about this." She rapped sharply on June's door.
June emerged from her room. "Someone for you," Mrs Williams said. "You didn't tell your father–"
"He isn't here," June interjected. She was wearing a white tee with overalls that were cut somewhere near her thighs. She was barefoot, which added a charm to the whole thing.
"He would want to know –"
"Mum, I thought we had an agreement?"
Mrs Williams crossed her arms. "I don't say this because I hate you, you know. You're allowed to have friends."
"And I'm exercising that right," said June firmly. "It's either this, or father takes it out on one of us. You pick which you would like."
The mutinous anger of Mrs Williams was so fantastically close to his mother's Sirius almost froze in fear. However, where his mother might have actually raised his wand at him by now, Mrs Williams chose to flounce to her room.
"Come in," said June, exhausted.
"Got you in trouble, didn't I?" he asked, as he sauntered towards her room.
"Ah, you know how it is," murmured June. "Nothing you haven't seen before."
She opened the door to her room. Sirius entered. "Holy Mary."
June suppressed a smile. "You know, I'm a good catholic girl, Sirius. We don't use the virgin mother's name in vain." She shut the door behind her.
It was a small room, with a small bed next to the wall. The windows were open, and the curtains fluttered from time to time. June seemed to like light oranges and reds, because everything was vaguely autumnal – from the curtains to the bedspread. There was a desk with a table lamp, and a closet that was covered in stickers from stuff he didn't recognise. On a hanger, June had put out a pink dress with a slightly fluffy skirt. Presumably, that was what she was wearing for the wedding.
What caught his eye, however, was none of this. Sirius was surrounded by large stacks of books. He recognised a number of them as old textbooks, but others were cheap paperbacks and mass market popular romances, with women featuring prominently on the covers. They had half ripped clothes in a variety of angles. Still other books were classics with sedate covers, and more and more with looming covers and heavy titles. One particularly terrifying one had nothing but a large eye splashed on the cover, with the title 1984 staring menacingly at him.
"Most of them are my Nan's," said June, sitting down on her bed.
"God bless you Sarah O'Connell," said Sirius with a low whistle.
He turned to her, still standing in the middle of the room. "So tell me," he said with a sly smile. "If you're a good catholic girl, do you happen to have one of those catholic school uniforms?"
She glared at him suspiciously. "Why do you know what a Catholic school uniform looks like?"
"I've been sneaking Muggle magazines into my house since I was twelve, June, just to annoy my mother," Sirius rolled his eyes. "Are you going to answer the question?"
She blushed an unbelievable red. "Please tell me you don't have an… appreciation… for that sort of thing?"
"You can't judge me for it," he said. "Not while you sit there with your overalls."
"What do you have for overalls?" she asked, looking properly alarmed.
"I'm an aristocratic boy, June," he said. "And the only time I encountered overalls was in Muggle Studies, when we did a class on different Muggle professions. It is very fetching to see you wear the clothes of the working class."
June's red was turning into orange. "You are going to be the first to go when we start using the guillotine," she muttered under her breath.
He laughed, and leaned forward to kiss her. June sighed against his lips. "Before we leave, could you do something for me?" he asked.
She looked up at him. Hazel-yellow eyes, and her face looking like the sunset. "Don't judge me," he said, his fingers on her jawline. He jabbed his thumb at the cupboard behind him. "But would you wear that dress? Just for a little bit."
She frowned for a second, until what he was saying became clear to her. "Sirius!" she said, pushing him away. He laughed.
"You are incorrigible!" she said, jumping to her feet.
"Please?" he said. He sat down on her bed and tried to plead to the best of his abilities.
She blew some hair out of her face. It looked so cute, he almost kissed her again. "Fine," she said.
She took the dress off the hanger, and she turned to look at him. "Turn around," she said, pink in the face and biting her lip.
He raised an eyebrow.
"I don't want Mum to know I'm changing my clothes," she muttered.
She really hadn't an idea how enchanting she was, did she? He shut his eyes and waited. He didn't even peek. He heard her hop on one leg for a second, a book fall, and a hanger clatter.
"Okay," she said.
He opened his eyes. For a second everything seemed blue, and then June came to focus.
She was as pink as the dress, if not more. The dress skimmed her knees, and flared rather prettily at her waist. The bodice was one of those – strappy ones, where the straps were tied at the neck. "Well?" she asked. "What do you think?"
He advanced on her, pressing her to the doors of the closet just before he kissed her. He normally made it a point to be gentle with her, but it was hard when she looked the way she did. The strappy top – it left her back bare, so his hands spread across it, tracing the moles and freckles. Her arms snaked around his neck. Whatever sound came from the back of her throat was so unlike her, he had to concentrate on not actually biting her lips off.
He spun her around, away from the cupboard, dipped her, and dragged her leg to his waist. She was breathing heavily when he paused. "Bit like a book, eh?" he asked.
"No book talked about this," she whispered, and kissed him again.
Why was everything she did so… intoxicating? So novel, so different? By all accounts, there was nothing about her that was trying to be new, trying to be different, or even trying to impress him. And yet, here he was, floored.
"June?" he murmured. "We're going to have to stop before we have a situation we can't control."
Her eyes became round as coins. "Oh. Oh! Of… of course."
The both steadied themselves as they stood upright. "You look disappointed," he said with a grin.
She was still pink from the snog, so he couldn't tell if this was a fresh blush.
"Perhaps when your mother isn't in the next room," he offered.
She nodded, and then instantly bit her lip.
"June?"
"Mm?"
"Stop me if you're ever uncomfortable, yeah?"
She swallowed, and then nodded.
"And if I'm going too fast."
Nod.
"Alright."
She smiled cautiously.
"You should change," he said. "I'll turn around."
He shut his eyes and turned around. Once again, he heard the sound of her undressing and then dressing again. Before he could ask her if she was done, however, he felt her arms around his chest. She had pressed her cheek to his back. "I like you a lot, you know?" she said from behind.
He pulled her arms off him, and turned around. "I know," he said, and kissed her again.
"Shall we go?" he asked.
The first thing June did was show him where she sometimes picked up a few extra shifts of work as a bookkeeper during two week holidays. Muggle money wasn't as useful as Wizarding money, but it was still money. "I have to earn something," she sighed. "They give me a roof over my head, and Mum usually gives me dinner, but I need more than one meal."
He gripped her hand tighter.
The second thing she took him for was the cinema. Here, she promised something very close to magic. Sirius was sceptical at first, but he had to admit – it was something very close to magic. They were watching a Hitchcock movie, she told him. This didn't mean that much to him – but he had heard of this… director? It was dark in the cinema hall, and to his surprise, June did take this opportunity to put her head on his shoulder. Of course, he encouraged her by putting his arm around her first.
After the film, they emerged in the real world and Sirius was filled with questions, questions that she refused to answer until they had eaten something. To combat this, she guided them to a chippy. "Here you go, aristocratic boy," she said with a smirk, handing him a paper cone with chips in it. "Time to eat some proletariat food."
He rolled his eyes. He'd never admit that he'd never really had chips this way, not to her.
They grabbed their burgers and chips and took to a bench near the river. The weather was slightly overcast, which June promised him was typical of her hometown. "It doesn't like me enough to have the sun shining on the day you're coming," she complained.
He'd disagree. June wasn't happy here, but her feet knew the potholes without confusion. She smiled at some of the people who crossed her – not all, but enough. They'd even run into someone called Maria, who hugged June. June had introduced him and she had seized him up in seconds, which really told Sirius a lot about her relationships in this town. It was a small, depressing place – horrible in all the ways you could think of, but June seemed to have memorised it in a way that she had not done with Hogwarts. There, she tended to press herself into the corners of the castle in order to disappear. Here, she just was.
"Before we start eating and I spill something, I wanted to return your book to you," he said. He dug through his bag and pulled out To Kill a Mockingbird.
"Oh, are you done?" she asked brightly.
"You have fantastic taste as ever," he said, finally dipping into the paper cone with the chips.
She twinkled. "It's a good book, isn't it? I had to use a lot of my savings to buy it. It's a really good thing my Mum and Dad don't read anything I bring into the house."
She took a bite of her burger. "I think this one is my favourite one after Pride and Prejudice," he told her. "I… something about the way the author tackled the story."
"I know. She's very… clever. She makes oppression… understandable. When you can read the story of how it happens, it feels like it can be combated."
"Do you think it can be?"
She took a breath and looked in the distance. "I dunno, Sirius. I'm not oppressed."
"Not here," he said. "You are where we come from."
"I suppose," she said. "I never really felt like I belonged there, no matter what I did or tried, so I don't know. I suppose that is a kind of oppression, but I'm not the worse off amongst all of this to begin with."
He fell silent. "You'd tell me, right? If I did something… cruel?"
She chuckled. "I'll try. You don't notice sometimes, once you get used to it."
He examined her, even as the wind blew some of her hair into her sandwich. It should have made sense to him – June – she wasn't very extroverted or anything, but she seemed to actively avoid ever being noticed when she was in Hogwarts. There was something different about her here – it wasn't that she was less shy, but… he couldn't put a finger on it.
They ate the rest of their meal, discussing different aspects of the book from time to time. They talked about the movie again, particularly for its ending. June pointed to the large Church where she still tried to go during the holidays. "I have some friends here, and I only ever meet them during the summer," she told him. When he asked her about Maria, she said, "She's a good friend of mine. She and Shankar. We go too far back, though, so it never naturally occurs to us to write to each other. I spend a lot of time with her during my summers."
"She gave me a funny look," he said.
"She thinks it's wild that I'm dating someone like you," said June, looking delighted. "You reek wealth, Sirius."
"I do not!" he said, offended.
"No, you really do," she said, still grinning. "I didn't want to be mean to you, but your London accent and everything – Maria's just judging me for having such a soft boyfriend, as she rightly should."
"I am not soft."
"You can barely handle a chippy," she said with a snigger.
"That is enough Williams," he said, eating another chip.
"You should be grateful Maria isn't here. She'd have torn you to shreds by now."
"We need to go somewhere where your working class roots don't show so much," sniffed Sirius.
"You'd best develop a thicker skin than this," said June, sipping her soda. "You have no idea how much I got teased when I started going to a posh school in Scotland."
"This is unbelievable," he said. "Hogwarts is considered posh?"
"Have you heard your accent?"
He wished he had a better response to her, but he could only glare. It was better for his dignity to change the topic. "So, how're things between McKinnon and Macdonald?" he asked, between bites.
June frowned. "You know?"
"McKinnon told me it was why she was breaking up with me," said Sirius with a shrug. "Truth be told, it wasn't like we were ever very serious or anything, and she just needed a reason, I think. And we were friends."
"Oh," said June, her expression clearing up. "I don't know. They're alright. I suppose. I don't really know how any of this works, if I'm being honest."
He grinned at her. "You're getting the hang of it, Williams."
She blushed, returning to her food with a smile on her face. They polished off the rest of their food. Before they got up, June took a breath and asked, "can we stop by the store for a second? I wanted to get something for your cousin."
"You don't have to, June –"
"I don't really have any other family members to impress," she said. "I'd rather do my best with yours."
He rolled his eyes and followed her. She took him to a department store, and went to the section with the chocolates. There, a boy wearing a red shirt waved at her. "Hi Shankar," she said.
"When'd you come back, June?" he asked. He was brown skinned and dark haired, and about as tall as Sirius.
"A few days ago? I meant to ring you," she said. "I was at Marge's engagement. And you know how Mum and Dad are. Anyway – this is Sirius. He's… my –" She took a breath even as Sirius grinned. "My date," she said.
"What, you've got issues with calling him your boyfriend?" asked Shankar. "Hey, mate. You have a real gem on your hands here."
Sirius laughed. "Believe me, I know."
Shankar's smile broadened. "Let me guess, he's from your posh school?"
June elbowed Sirius. "Of course he is," she said with a grin.
Shankar chuckled. "Well, ring me whenever you're free, June."
"I will," she promised. "I have to meet Maria some time as well, or she's going to have my hide."
It was weird to see her this way. So… at ease. Out of her flat and away from her mother, June was comfortable in this town. In a way that he had never really seen her before. He hadn't expected this of her – with all her books and everything – he had thought she must not fit in here. But it was Hogwarts that made her uncomfortable. By all accounts, she should be unhappy here – with her family being what it was, with being magic in a distinctly unmagical place. But he had never really heard her complain about her home, only about her family – and even that with reserve. More natural was her sense of unbelonging in Hogwarts, especially now that he had seen her here. It wasn't the chippy, or the convenience store chocolates – but she clearly had a life here that had no place in Hogwarts, no matter what she did or tried. And he'd made sure of that from years one to three.
He was used to the story being the other way around. Of magical kids being out of place when they were at home, of them not getting along with their old friends from the Muggle world. He was a pure blood with insane parents, so he'd never had Muggle friends to begin with, but even Evans – a muggle born – had only ever carried one friend from her home, and that was Severus Snape. Peter had told him it was harder to connect with your friends from the Muggle world the longer you were in Hogwarts – because there was lesser and lesser to talk about. Without any classes, without being able to discuss magic, half of Hogwarts got wrapped up in secrecy and the rest of it in growing up.
That hadn't happened here. June probably found it harder to talk about this small industrial town in Hogwarts than she did her posh boarding school at home. She might not have shared her classes and magic with Maria, but he could see from the look in that girl's eye that June had told her other things. Maybe about the expensive dinners, and about everyone's accents, and how she melted into the background without belonging. Money wouldn't have been an issue with someone like Maria, since she'd probably understand it more than anyone at Hogwarts ever did. It had never really been something he had to think about – but he was beginning to notice stuff like this more, especially since he started dating June. Sometimes, it was easy to feel like there really wasn't much wrong with Hogwarts that couldn't be fixed by hexing Slytherins – after all, Evans was muggleborn and no one raised eyebrows at her. And then he remembered that Evans worked very hard at being brilliant, and that really made him uncomfortable.
He'd never considered what it would be like for someone like June, who was magic in distinctly unmagical ways – she wasn't good with potions, or anything too closely attached to wandwork, but she would get cross over books. She was magic in her walk and her cooking, in her laugh, maybe even in the way she bit her lip or the way she watched you, quietly observing you and how you operated. There was nothing brilliant about her, except for everything, of course, but that wasn't something he could explain to anyone. Even Peter, one of his best friends, didn't get what it was about June that he liked, apart from the fact that she liked Georgette Heyer. Remus understood, but in a way that Sirius didn't really understand. He felt like James was the only person who really understood what he saw in June – and actually liked her. He couldn't base this on anything concrete, and he didn't know whether this was because James was his best friend or because James liked fudge – but James had never once questioned his sanity, never once really put forward the question of why this girl.
He almost wished James would start dating Evans sooner, if only so that he could have someone to talk to about the things he was noticing and how they made him feel. It had to be the cruellest twist of fate that Sirius would start dating the girl he liked before James dated Lily. He was getting there – Sirius had been sceptical of it at first, but it turned out that Evans was actually a reasonable person when approached reasonably.
And he had never seen anyone as certain as James was of Lily. No one except Sirius knew just how serious he was.
He watched her as she rang up her chocolates and made small talk with the person behind the counter.
"What?" asked June, as they walked out of the store.
"It's… nice," he said. "You're comfortable here."
She rolled her shoulders. "I… don't hate this place. Even if it feels like it hates me a lot."
He nodded, more to himself than to her.
They ducked into an empty alleyway, June clutching her plastic sack with gift-wrapped chocolates. "You have nothing to worry about," he told her. He felt a rush of affection for her when she neatened her socks.
"Pray that that's the truth, Sirius Black," she said tersely. "Let's be off."
Okay, so for some technical explanations: I know the catholic school uniform thing is weird, because in the movies they had something close to a catholic school uniform. But I was going by book descriptions, and there they mostly wear robes, so I worked with that instead. You can skip the incoming essay if you don't feel like it, but here we go:
There's a reason why this was my favourite chapter in the story. I mean, some of it is the fact that I really wanted to do June's backstory, some of it was all the stuff with the cinema, and the overalls, and everything. But a lot of it is in what the politics of the story are.
I really wanted to bring some new dimensions to what it means to be Muggleborn in this story. A lot of the fandom has done some really interesting stuff with what was a very badly framed racial allegory in Rowling's text, and made more of the characters who could have been people of colour, actually people of colour. I really do enjoy these interpretations, but truth be told, I'm Indian, and this is a very Western story. White, yes, but also Western - I find it really hard to enter the idiom and sensibility of writing and imagine someone who looks like me, when it's a British boarding school story, and that's as Western and White as it comes. If anyone would like to read more on this, I'd really recommend Mimi Mondol's essay, "Characters are Not a Colouring Book." I know people of colour who live in Western countries have less difficult a time doing this, which is why I leave this task up to them (side note, can I plug at_least_i_didn't_fake_it 's The Diplomat, if someone wants to read an Indian OCxSirius Black story?). Truth be told, when I am not writing fanfic, I write a lot of stories set in India, and absolutely none of them have white characters, which is more natural to me.
But I did want to work with feelings of alienation in Hogwarts. I made June working class for this reason - we often miss this in our criticism of Rowling, but she deals with poverty and class very badly as well. None, not a single one of her main characters are not middle class. I know a lot of people are going to point to Ron, but honestly, his father was a bureaucratic official who went to the same upper-class boarding school as everyone else, and we have no means of knowing why people like Stan Shunpike are conductors at all, especially since Hogwarts seems to be funding orphans like Tom Riddle. I really don't know how she left so many holes in her world-building, but they're there, and I can't address them or make sense of them, but I can deal with some of the alienation and loneliness that might come with being surrounded by a bunch of kids who don't really get where you come from. Even people like Lily and Hermione, who are muggleborn, are also almost definitely from a higher-income background, and also are brilliant, to boot. I wanted to think through the implications of a muggleborn... not being brilliant. Just being average, coming from a low-income household, reading mostly Muggle books and feeling out of place in Hogwarts.
I know none of these explanations were really necessary, but Rowling is such a massive asshole that I do feel like we should engage more and more critically with her text, and the whole of the fandom that produces work around her text. We should point to the things she really doesn't seem to have gotten right, in any way, shape or form, and look through our own prejudices and biases as well.
And also, I know I haven't been able to critically engage with gender in this story while writing it, but I would like to do more research before I can. Until then, trans rights are fucking essential, and it is disgusting how Miss Jowling Kowling Rowling uses her platform.
Stay wonderful, please review, and hope you had a wonderful week! And, of course, I hope you liked this chapter :D
