Wednesday, September 1, 1976
"Nice one, Padfoot!" Peter exclaimed, applauding enthusiastically as Sirius managed to catch a Bertie Botts in his mouth while hanging by his knees from James's broom.
"We've run out of Bertie Botts," James observed, shaking the empty box fruitlessly before tossing it aside.
"That's no good," Sirius said, maneuvering himself down from the broom and sitting down."There aren't even any on the floor we can re-use. Guess I'm too accurate for my own good."
"Moony always says it's disgusting when you use the ones from the floor," Peter pointed out.
"Yeah, well, Moony's patrolling the corridors so he's not here to scold me, and there aren't even any floor beans anyway, so it's a moot point," Sirius retorted.
"We could go over my new Quidditch plays instead," James suggested innocently, glancing sideways at Sirius to see his reaction.
"Sure," Peter said with a shrug, but Sirius scowled and shook his head.
"He's only joking, Wormtail, or at least I hope he's bloody joking," Sirius said, glaring at James. "All we did this summer was go over the new Quidditch plays. I'm pretty sure I could run them in my sleep, and I'm not even on the damn team."
"I was mostly joking," James explained, grinning and running a hand through his hair. "Although I'm still not sure about some of the Seeker maneuvers…"
Sirius waved his hand dismissively. "Your Seeker will be fine, she's the least of your worries. Turn off your Quidditch Captain brain, Prongs. We're going to have a nice, relaxing train ride."
"We could play chess," Peter suggested.
"Nah, you always win, and I'm not in the mood to lose at the moment," Sirius replied.
"Well, maybe you should work on improving your game," Peter said. "You always take out your queen too early."
"I don't have the patience for it," Sirius replied, unconcerned.
"Me and Prongs could play, then," Peter said hopefully.
"No, then Padfoot will be bored and he'll just annoy us until we stop playing," James pointed out.
"I'm not a child, Prongs," Sirius complained. "But I would get rather bored if you two play and I'd probably be forced to pester you until you pay attention to me. I guess there's only one solution: I'm going to go buy more Bertie Botts."
"I can go if you want," Peter offered. Going out for more snacks was normally his job.
"It's all right, I want to take a walk anyway," Sirius said, standing and stretching before striding across the compartment and pulling open the door.
"If you see Moony, tell him we miss him," James said, grinning. "And if you see Evans, tell her there's a seat in this compartment with her name on it. Wait, no, don't say that, I forgot I'm trying to be less of an obnoxious git this year."
Sirius gave him a thumbs up and stepped out of the compartment, shutting the door behind him before setting off down the corridor at a leisurely pace. He spotted the elderly witch pushing her trolley up ahead, and he sped up to catch up to her.
"Hello, love," he said, flashing her his most charming smile and reaching into his pocket for his money. "Could I trouble you for another box of Bertie Botts?"
She pursed her lips and frowned at him, but nonetheless accepted his proffered coins and handed him the requested sweets.
"Come on, there's no need to look at me like that every time," he protested. "I've got to be one of your best customers."
"I haven't forgotten the time you and your friends tried to escape from the train," she replied sternly.
"But that was years ago," Sirius said, smiling at the memory. "We'd never dream of doing something so reckless and idiotic now - at least not on the train, we prefer to save our most reckless and idiotic stunts for when we actually get to the castle." When she failed to return his smile, he went on, "Besides, escaping from the train wasn't my idea. I tried to stop them, but they didn't listen, so I had no choice but to go along with it."
"Whose idea was it, then?" she asked, eyeing him suspiciously.
"The pudgy blonde one," Sirius said at once. "Kind of short, looks innocent with those blue eyes, but wouldn't you know it, he's always the one coming up with the wild schemes to break the rules. Keep your eye on him." He winked, then turned and strolled back down the corridor, clutching his Bertie Botts and chuckling to himself. He stopped in the doorway of an open compartment when he glimpsed Mary Macdonald, immersed in a Witch Weekly magazine with her legs tucked under her and her curly brown hair tumbling into her face.
"Hello, Macdonald," he said, leaning against the doorway casually and grinning at her.
"Oh, hi, Black," she said, closing her magazine and looking up at him eagerly. "Come and sit with me for a minute, I'm about to die of boredom."
He took a seat across from her, moving aside a jumper and a Potions textbook that he assumed belonged to Lily. "Why are you sitting all alone dying of boredom?"
"Well, Lily is out doing official prefect duties," she said, rolling her eyes. "Ann is dating Stebbins now, so she's gone to sit with him."
"You're joking!" Sirius said incredulously. "What, was she just waiting around for you to be finished with him so she could have her chance?"
"Apparently," Mary replied, shrugging disinterestedly. "I don't care, I told her she's welcome to him, but I'm not going to sit here and watch them snog, it's disgusting, so she's joined him in his compartment with his Hufflepuff friends. And Olivia is a Sluggy, so she's gone off to eat quail and crystallized pineapple and talk about whose parents are the most successful, or, I dunno, is that what they do at those things?"
"Don't ask me, I've never been," Sirius replied, looking offended at the mere suggestion that he might attend a Slug Club event. "Sounds dead boring, in any case."
"Although sitting here alone reading Witch Weekly isn't much more entertaining," Mary pointed out.
"True." He pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket and shook one out, then offered the pack to Mary.
"Ooh, Lily's going to be furious if she catches us smoking in here," Mary cautioned, but she took a cigarette from the pack anyway.
"So will Remus, but we'll just open the window." Sirius pushed the small window open to let in the crisp September air and lit his cigarette, inhaling deeply before doing his best to blow the smoke out of the compartment. Mary joined him, lighting her own cigarette and standing quite close to Sirius in order to aim her smoke out the window.
"You know, this is around the spot we tried to jump off the train," Sirius mused, gesturing out the window as the train hurtled past a clear pond with flowers growing along the bank.
"What?" Mary asked, eyes wide. "When was this?"
"You've never heard this story?" Sirius demanded, incredulous. "I thought everyone knew about that." He took a drag on his cigarette, then exhaled and cleared his throat dramatically. "Right, it was the end of first year, and I wasn't exactly thrilled to be leaving school for the summer, so I think I said something like, 'I wish I didn't have to go home,' and James said, 'Then don't.' So we had it all worked out, we were going to jump out the window and do a Cushioning Charm to break our fall, and it probably would have worked, too, as long as we jumped far enough to avoid getting run over. We'd hoisted James up and got him halfway out the window before the trolley witch burst through the door and yanked him back in." Roaring with laughter at the memory, Sirius barely managed to finish the story.
"No way!" Mary gasped. "I can't believe I've never heard that story before!" She threw her head back and laughed, then dropped her cigarette and hastily bent to pick it up before it burnt a hole in the carpet. "Are you sure you're not just making that up?"
"I swear!" Sirius insisted. "Come with me next time I buy anything from the trolley witch. She still doesn't trust us - you should've seen the way she looked at me when I went to buy Bertie Botts."
"Well, thanks for that ," Mary said, finally getting herself under control. "I can't remember the last time I laughed that hard."
"Me neither," Sirius said truthfully. "I haven't thought about that in ages."
They stood smoking in silence for several minutes, both sensing the slight electricity that crackled between them. They had spent an enjoyable night together at a party at James's house over the summer, and the memory of that encounter clearly remained fresh in their minds.
"I sort of expected you to write to me," Mary admitted ruefully, finally breaking the silence.
"I thought about it," Sirius admitted. "But then I wasn't sure if that would go against our mutual agreement to keep things casual." He grinned at her. "You could have written to me too, you know."
"Yeah, I know. I suppose I had the same thought you did." She took a last drag on her cigarette, then put it out on the window ledge and flicked the butt out the window. "How was the rest of your summer?"
"Not bad," Sirius said. "I ran into my mother and Regulus in Diagon Alley, so that was a whole fucking thing." He grimaced. "But other than that it was all right. What about you?"
"Not bad," she said, echoing him. "I worked a lot."
"Ugh, that sounds awful," Sirius said with disdain. "Why in the world would you want to do that?"
She laughed. "I didn't do it because it was a laugh, I did it to earn a bit of money." She returned to her previous spot and sat down again, turning sideways and stretching out her legs across the seat. "My mum got me a job at the diner she works at. It's just down the street from our flat and it pays all right." She grinned. "We have some regular customers that come in every single day. It'll be strange not seeing them all year. I mean, some of them are horrible, but some are lovely." She spent the next ten minutes describing the most interesting regulars at the diner, including a perverted old man who always stared at Mary's cleavage but left incredibly generous tips, and a sweet middle-aged woman who read smutty romance novels while she ate her chocolate chip pancakes.
"And then, if you can believe it, he chucked his spoon at me - I would've ducked, but I was carrying two mugs of coffee, so I had no choice but to let it hit me in the head - all because he claimed his toast was 'too toasty!'" By the time she finished this story about a particularly nasty customer, she and Sirius were both hanging onto each other, laughing hysterically.
"I would've thrown the coffee in his face," Sirius said, slightly out of breath from laughing so hard. "Hang on, is this a Muggle restaurant?" Sirius said, as if this thought had just occurred to him. "As in, they make the food and wash the dishes and do everything without magic? And they pay you in Muggle money?"
"Yeah, that's the idea," she said, amused by his interest.
He contemplated this for a minute. "That's so strange. But also brilliant. If you work there next summer, I'm coming to visit you at work," he proclaimed, sounding positively ecstatic at the thought of visiting a Muggle establishment.
Mary shrugged. "All right, if you like." She glanced at her watch. "Shit, we've been talking for ages. Lily should be back any minute."
"I'd suppose I'd better get back to my compartment, but I'll see you around." He waved, then turned and walked out of the compartment, unable to keep a smile off his face. When he slid open the door of his compartment and stepped inside, he saw that Remus had rejoined them in the time Sirius had been gone.
"-had to cut the conversation short, because Lily had to go make an appearance at Slughorn's compartment, but she had nothing negative to say about you, Prongs, which I'd say is progress," Remus was saying as Sirius walked in. "Oh, hello, Padfoot."
"What took you so long?" James demanded. "We got bored, so we started a game of Exploding Snap - I'll deal you in." He shook his head disapprovingly. "You didn't even tell Moony we missed him."
"I went looking for you," Peter added. "I asked the trolley witch if she'd seen you - she gave me the meanest look, it was a bit scary, actually." He frowned, then picked up his Exploding Snap cards and began sorting them.
"Why are you looking so cheerful?" James asked.
"No reason," Sirius said innocently, taking the empty seat next to James. "Go on, then, deal me in. Moony, what were you saying about Evans?"