Author's Note: Hello all! Thanks again for reading and leaving your lovely comments and adding to your follow lists. I've been having a ton of fun writing, and I'm happy to share that joy with you guys. Heads up, this chapter is heavy with OCs, so if you aren't into that sort of thing, you've been forewarned.
Chapter 3
Remus apparated them to Kings Cross on the first of September.
Despite Remus trying to cheer him up, there was nothing that could bring Sirius out of his sullen silence on those last few days in the cottage. He dragged himself from room to room, brooding as August came to a close.
He recognized no one on the platform after he and Remus casually leaned into the barrier between Platforms 9 and 10 and passed through to Platform 93/4. There was a sea of students and parents bidding their goodbyes and students greeting each other excitedly after a summer apart.
Dread filled him as he beheld the vibrantly red Hogwarts Express. Soon he would no longer have Remus. He'd be on his own; no friends, no familiar faces. For the first time in his life, he really did not want to go back to school.
"It won't be so bad," Remus promised weakly. "Write as often as you'd like."
Sirius grunted in response.
"Just finish these last two years," urged Remus. "You won't regret it."
"Bye, Moony."
Remus held Sirius's shoulder. "I'll see you soon, Padfoot."
Sirius nodded curtly and wrenched away, unwilling to let the dread keep him tethered to Remus, the only thing in this new world he knew. Sparing himself one last look, Sirius boarded the train.
His stomach lurched as stared down the length of the train car. Students were sliding open compartment doors, laughing and meeting their friends; the smallest students found whatever seats they could without being told off by older ones. Uncertain, he tried a compartment door, but found a trio of people already there—two of them were hulking, oafish students and the last was a boy with blond hair and a haughty sort of look who raised his brows at Sirius.
"Who are you?"
Sirius scoffed. "Someone far too old to be sitting with the likes of you." He shut the door and started up the train, peering into compartments. Most were full already, and he realized as he traipsed through the train cars, he was attracting whispers. Who was that? He heard. Is that a new student? Yet none of them were invitations to sit with them.
Irritated, he settled on a compartment that held only a girl with bushy brown hair. He dropped into the seat closest to the window and pointedly ignored her, which was difficult because her knee kept bobbing nervously. She was peering out the window, clearly watching for someone, biting her lip so hard that it was white under her large front teeth.
"I was saving those seats, you know," she mumbled, still searching the platform.
Sirius rolled his eyes. "Well, train's about to leave. If they're not here now, I'd wager they found somewhere else to sit."
"No, I don't think so," she said. She paused, tilting her head as she looked at him. "I've never seen you before. Are you a new student? I've never heard of someone starting Hogwarts so late. You're far older than a first year."
"I was at Ilvermorny and then Beauxbatons," he said, remembering what he, Remus, and Dumbledore had agreed upon. "My parents have moved around the world quite a lot," he explained when she cast a bemused look at him. "I wanted to finish school at Hogwarts."
"Oh, I didn't realize you could do that," she said, wide-eyed. "How fascinating! You must know so much about the international wizarding community! I'm a Muggle-born myself, but I've tried to learn as much as I can since I found out I was a witch. Do you speak French? Well, of course you must. I took quite a bit of French before I came to Hogwarts, so I'm a little rusty, but if you ever need someone to practice, I'm always happy to brush up. I'm Hermione Granger, by the way. This is my second year. I'm in Gryffindor. Do you know which House you'll be in? Are you going to be Sorted with the first years?"
"Lysander Prewett, and I've been Sorted already. Gryffindor as well," said Sirius. Dumbledore assured him he would not have to sit before the entire school as a sixteen-year-old and be Sorted again.
"Oh good!" said Hermione. "Ron and Harry are in Gryffindor too. That's who I'm waiting for. I saw the rest of the Weasleys come through the barrier, but I didn't see the two of them. I'm sure they're on the train, though. Otherwise, how would they get to Hogwarts?"
But the train pulled away from the station, and soon, London was speeding by brick by brick, and still Hermione's friends did not appear. Sirius could only imagine that the Harry she spoke of was the one he knew, and a bit of worry knotted in his stomach. He must be on the train somewhere, he thought.
Hermione chewed her nail as they left London behind. She kept jumping at any sound outside, as if her friends were about to enter. When it was a quarter to the hour, and Sirius didn't think her knee could bounce any faster, she stood abruptly.
"I'm going to look for them," she announced.
"Good luck."
And then she was gone.
Sirius stretched out his legs, marveling at his own luck of finding a compartment almost completely to himself. He watched the countryside roll by, the familiar journey taking him back to 1976. If he closed his eyes, he could imagine James, Remus, and Peter with him. He could pretend they were all laughing, planning their next adventure and tinkering with the Map.
But the door wasn't closed for long. Sirius opened his eyes to find the trio of second year students he'd seen earlier. The boy, clearly the ringleader, narrowed his eyes.
"I thought Granger was in here," the boy said.
Sirius waved him off. "Well, she's not. Run along."
But the boy was frozen as he looked Sirius up and down, sneering as he did. Sirius resisted the urge to check himself for he knew what he looked like—his robes were of the everyday variety, well-fitted and new, and frankly, they rather matched this boy's.
"Don't you know who I am?" the boy said, a bit incredulous.
It was Sirius's turn to rake in the boy's appearance. Truthfully, it wasn't difficult to guess. In his experience, dark hair was much more common in pureblood families than red or blond, which made the Weasley family so distinctive. Sirius could think only of one family in particular known for their fairness and pomposity, and only because he knew that they had just been married. Lucius Malfoy and Narcissa Black, his cousin, were wed in a highly publicized event, to which Sirius was not invited.
But he pretended to look puzzled. "No, I don't."
"Draco Malfoy," the boy said, offering his hand. Inwardly, Sirius chortled but didn't take it. Clearly the boy saw he was no Muggleborn or half-blood, and debated whether or not if it was worth making an ally out of Sirius. "You've likely heard of my family."
"Haven't, sorry."
A bit of red crept into the boy's pale cheeks, though whatever bit of pride that had just been squashed was hidden by a tilt of his chin. He clenched his open hand and brought it back to his side.
"You would fare better if you didn't make me an enemy," Malfoy warned, his hand reaching in to his pocket. Behind him, the hulking boys were rolling up their sleeves, smiling menacingly.
Sirius shot to his feet, drawing his wand in a flash. Malfoy stared down the end of it, his eyes wide with surprise. "You dare threaten me? I don't care who you are, Draco, or who your family is. If you've come here looking for a fight, you'll get one. Is that what you want?"
Malfoy knew Sirius was not joking and stepped back. His hand twitched in his pocket, clearly debating if he could take on a sixth year. Then he jerked his head at his companions to leave.
Sirius seized the collar of his robe and yanked the boy close. Malfoy yelped, trying to scramble away.
"Leave Granger alone," Sirius hissed, "or you'll answer to me. Now go back to your compartment and stay there."
Malfoy didn't need telling twice. He and his cronies squeezed out of the compartment as Sirius slid into his seat, chuckling. He wished Malfoy would have tried to curse him or refuse to leave—he would've loved to unleash his wide variety of hexes and jinxes on him, many of which he and James had invented and perfected.
At least that was familiar. Malfoy was an example of pureblood mania, the sort of ideology Sirius had finally escaped when he ran away to the Potters' house. Narcissa would have delighted in bringing the boy up with the virtues bestowed upon her as a child, and from what he knew about Lucius Malfoy, the boy had considerable power and fortune at his disposal. It made the Draco insufferable, but Sirius was used to it.
Sometimes he wondered how Peter and Remus tolerated him and James, both of them raised within haughty, pureblood lines. Maybe James had come from a family that spoke out against blood politics, but there was no denying James had grown up in a world where his privilege had few boundaries. It leaked into the way James saw the rest of the world, how he couldn't understand the word No, and couldn't fathom the injustice of Remus's condition. Sirius, however, had been a product of the worst kind of wizards—the sort that bred for purity. No matter how he tried to distinguish himself from his family, somehow, a nasty streak of superiority bled out. Now that Sirius saw what he would become, he felt ill to think that it would later consume him.
When Hermione returned, she was on the verge of tears as she dropped into the seat.
"They're not on the train!" she said. "I checked every compartment. No one saw them on the platform. What if something's happened to them?"
"Well, that can't be," said Sirius. "They've got to be somewhere."
"They aren't. Fred and George, they're Ron's brothers, say they don't remember seeing them come through the barrier. I told Percy, and he's sent an owl ahead to Hogwarts, but what if it's too late?"
That was strange, he thought. He couldn't remember a student ever missing the train. Once, Peter and his mother had raced to catch it and they hauled Peter onto the moving train just before it picked up speed. There had to be other times in the last century and a half when a student might have overslept or been caught in Muggle traffic before boarding.
"If they missed the train, it's all right, Hermione," he assured her. "Dumbledore's not going to expel them for that. They might've been caught by one of the security folks on the Muggle side, right? They can't be the first."
Hermione sniffed and wiped her eyes. "It's just, since last year, I'm worried anything could happen to them. Oh, but you wouldn't know about that, would you?"
"Er—no."
"The whole school knows about this already, so you might as well too. Last year, we found out that one of the teachers was planning on stealing the Philosopher's Stone," she said. "You see, Professor Dumbledore is close friends with Nicholas Flamel who invented it and he was safeguarding the stone at Hogwarts. Well, we were quite convinced that our Potions professor was after it, and we thought to stop him before he could get it. The teachers all designed obstacles to stop intruders—Devil's Snare, a giant chessboard, a troll—and we got through them (actually, Harry got through them all). When Harry got through the last of the obstacles, he found that it was actually our Defense Against the Dark Arts teacher who sought the stone. The worst of it was, however, was that Quirrell was acting like a host to—to You-Know-Who."
Sirius, who'd already heard this story from Remus, feigned a horrified expression. Hermione, satisfied with his response, nodded.
"Quite luckily, Harry managed to get away, but the stone was ultimately destroyed. You can see why I might be…worried about them."
"Whatever happened with the Potions professor? Was he involved?"
"Oh," she said, "No. We were rather wrong about him, though I would protest that it's not hard to suspect Professor Snape when he's always lurking about—"
"Snape?"
"He teaches Potions, though there are rumors that he'd prefer Defense Against the Dark Arts."
Sirius gaped. It couldn't be. There must have been some other Snape in the wizarding world that he had never known.
"Snape?" he repeated. "Severus Snape?"
"Yes," Hermione said, face crumpling in confusion. "Do you know him?"
"I wish I didn't," said Sirius darkly.
He couldn't believe it. There was no way he was going back to Hogwarts to suffer Severus Snape as his teacher. Why hadn't Dumbledore warned him? If Sirius found out Remus knew, he was going to make his life hell. Would Snape even allow him in his class? A new dread filled him. Sirius had gotten an Outstanding on his Potions O.W.L. but Snape wasn't worth the N.E.W.T…
Maybe he could drop Potions but still take the N.E.W.T. in the next year. If Slughorn was still alive, he could have Slughorn show him how to do everything on the exam and never have to deal with Snape at all.
Hermione pulled out a book to calm her nerves, and Sirius closed his eyes again, trying to calm himself from the new horror he was about to face. He bought a few sweets when the trolley lady came through, and he shared a bit with Hermione, anything to get the girl to settle down. She nibbled on a Chocolate Frog, worriedly looking out the window as if to see her friends there.
As the train pressed on, he couldn't stop thinking about Severus Snape, the persistent plague on Hogwarts. A dark part of him wished Snape had really made it to the end of the tunnel. What if James hadn't stopped him? What if the werewolf would have taken care of Snape once and for all?
His heart nearly stopped. Was that it? Was that how his road to becoming a Death Eater began? Wishing he had killed another student? Even if it was someone who probably deserved it? He tried to shove the thought aside, but the silence in the compartment only made louder the voice in his head that screamed murderer!
"I'm bored," said Sirius, suddenly. Murderer, traitor. "Fancy a game?"
"I don't have anything like wizard's chess or Gobstones," Hermione said. "But I've got a pack of Muggle playing cards. Do you know any of those games?"
"No, show me."
Hermione taught him how to play one called Old Maid, which she claimed was a bit more entertaining with a larger group of players, but it was simple enough to explain, and Sirius got the hang of it quickly. They played several rounds until they grew bored and she taught him another called Battle, which was much simpler, and by the end neither of them were paying much attention.
The sky was darkening as they drew closer to Hogsmeade Station. Courteously, Sirius waited outside the compartment to allow Hermione to change into her robes, and she did the same as he changed into his. By the time he'd finished, her teeth had gone through her lip and split it. Soon the train slowed and the lights of Hogsmeade blazed through the darkness.
In 1976, he never would have imagined himself leading a twelve-year-old off the train to the horseless carriages that took them up to the castle instead of squeezing into one with his friends. Hagrid would have told them off, that four was too many to a carriage. Naturally, James and Sirius would find their own and meet Remus and Peter later.
Hermione's company was much less interesting now that she was beside herself with worry. He'd given up trying to assure her that Harry and Ron would be all right, and simply stared glumly out the window. Usually he was suppressing a grin at the sight of glowing lights through the castle's hundreds of windows, elated to be away from his family and back where he had made his own life, but tonight, he couldn't help feeling miserable.
By the time they climbed the steps up to the castle with the rest of students streaming over the grounds, Hermione said she was going to find a teacher and tell them what had happened. Sirius proceeded with the rest of the students.
The Great Hall glowed with firelight, illuminated with hundreds of candles floating in midair beneath the enchanted ceiling. Sirius drifted toward the Gryffindor table with its shining goldens platters and cutlery, unchanged by the last sixteen years. He chose a lone seat near the middle of the table. He felt jealous again as he watched the others find their seats, laughing amongst each other with familiar fondness. There was no sign of Hermione, and to his relief, no sign of Snape at the head table either.
Then he felt movement on either side of him. There were two girls. One was covered in freckles and still smelled like a beach holiday, her dark blond hair parted deeply over the side so it draped over her shoulder. The other was a pretty girl with black hair and a dazzlingly white smile.
"Hello, new student," said the first, extending her hand. Her grip was firm as she flashed a grin. "We heard about you on the train. I'm Claudia Hotchkiss. This is Annabelle Waddington. We thought you might like company. We're sixth years too."
"Lysander Prewett," said Sirius. He shook with Annabelle whose soft hand held his for a beat longer than he might have expected. There was a twinkle in her eye.
"Ooh, I like that," said Annabelle. "Lysander. Sounds like a Greek hero, doesn't it?"
"Right," Claudia murmured, her eyes sweeping up and down Sirius in a way that was very different from the way Draco Malfoy had done. "Where are you from? No one starts Hogwarts this late."
"I was at Beauxbatons," Sirius said. Her leg pressed against his. "Er—before then, Ilvermorny."
Annabelle smirked. "Did you like Beauxbatons?"
"No," he said.
"Why not?"
"My French is bad," he answered. It was true. No matter how many lessons he had over the years, he never got the hang of it. His accent was horrid and he could never find the right words when he needed them.
"Were you expelled or something?" asked Annabelle.
"No, but almost. I wasn't very popular amongst the teachers."
"Why?"
Sirius smiled. "I'm not fond of taking orders, and there's not a lot of tolerance for that sort of thing at Beauxbatons."
The staff were taking their seats, drawing Claudia's attention.
"Oh, look! There's Lockhart!" she said, grinning. "Crazy about him, eh? Never thought I'd have a famous wizard for a teacher. Well, except Dumbledore, of course."
Sirius whipped his head around to see Gilderoy Lockhart, a face he knew well from the covers of his required books, billowing into the hall with aquamarine robes and regaling an unamused staff with his excitement over the upcoming year. The corners of Sirius's lips drew down sharply.
"He's going to be our teacher?" he said. "Does Dumbledore want us to learn anything?"
There went Defense Against the Darks Arts along with Potions. Perhaps he shouldn't expect to take any N.E.W.T. level courses at all…
Annabelle followed his grimace. "Yeah, rotten luck it couldn't have been a year that didn't matter. At least he's nice to look at, but won't matter when he's teaching us nonverbals, though. Did you know? I've heard they make us do nonverbals in every class now. I hate to say it, but thank God for Potions."
"We should give Lockhart a chance," said Claudia, watching Professor Lockhart finally find his seat next to Professor Flitwick, who seemed to edge away from him. "He's had quite a lot of experience! Look everything he's done. I mean, if he turned that werewolf back into a man—I've never heard of anyone doing that before."
"Because it's impossible," said Sirius. "Lockhart would've been dead before he drew his wand."
Annabelle nodded her agreement. "Claudia knows it's all rubbish. She fancies him, is all. Anyway, which N.E.W.T.'s are you taking?"
Sirius listed off Transfiguration, Charms, Defense Against the Dark Arts, Potions, and Herbology.
"Me too," said Annabelle, lips curling into a self-assured smile. "You can partner with me in Potions since Claudia only managed Exceeds Expectations on her Potions O.W.L. Snape won't take anyone with less than Outstanding. Prick. You won't like him. He hates anyone who isn't in Slytherin."
"Sounds like a berk," Sirius muttered. Maybe he should drop Potions and take Care of Magical Creatures instead. There was no way he and Snape would both leave the dungeons alive. It churned in his mind, the nightmare of Severus Snape exacting his revenge. He suppressed a shiver.
"Lucky us, I don't see him at the head table," said Claudia. "Maybe he's finally left."
"Sorting's about to start," Annabelle said.
The Sorting of the first year students dragged as Sirius rested his cheek on a fist and tried not to drift off. Perhaps Annabelle and Claudia were perplexed that a new student wouldn't find the Sorting fascinating, but they didn't mention it. They watched as student after student trudged up to the three-legged stool, nervously sat before the whole school, and waited for Professor McGonagall to place the ragged wizard's hat on their head. Claudia and Annabelle made a game of it, guessing which House the Sorting Hat would pick. Tired of being wrong, Claudia merely guessed Hufflepuff for each one. When Sirius wearied of listening, he shut his eyes until the draw of sleep made his eyes slide shut. Annabelle snorted and nudged him awake, whispering that he shouldn't break his nose on the table on his first day.
"How were you Sorted?" she said. The hiss of her breath was hot on his ear.
"In Dumbledore's office," he replied, rubbing his eyes. "He didn't want to make me do it in front of everyone."
"That was nice of him."
They were shushed by a bespectacled redheaded boy who glared at them and mouthed to be quiet. Annabelle and Claudia grinned at the boy and made rude gestures until he turned back, affronted.
"That's Percy Weasley," Claudia whispered to Sirius. "He's in your dormitory, unfortunately."
"Learn a snoring charm, or he'll know you're out of bed after hours," Annabelle warned.
Speaking of Weasleys, there had been no sign of Ron or Harry since the Sorting began, and Hermione had returned to nervously sit at the very end of the Gryffindor table alone. Worry knotted in his stomach. Where could the boy have gone? How could he and Ron Weasley miss the train if they were right behind the rest of the Weasleys on the platform?
As if you have any right to worry about him, a voice in his head sneered. The thought paralyzed him until he realized the Sorting was over. Food appeared all along the tables on golden platters. The girls helped themselves ravenously, piling potatoes and roast beef and vegetables onto their plates. Claudia in particular stacked enough food that would have made even Peter ill. She grinned as Sirius stared at her pillar of provisions.
"Bet you don't think I can eat all this, huh?"
"Can I watch?" said Sirius, eyeing her small frame.
Annabella stuck out her tongue in a disgusted way. "Don't encourage her. And for all of our sakes, Claudia, please don't eat all of that. We know you can do it. Just…don't."
Sirius was scooping potatoes onto his plate when he noticed the students around him whispering. He glanced at Annabelle whose ear was offered to the student next to her. The boy, no more than fourteen, was telling her about something, his eyes wide and excited. When he was finished, Annabelle swiveled in her seat to lean into Sirius and Claudia.
"Harry Potter and Ron Weasley just arrived at school," she said, her mischievous smile tightening. "And they flew a car. Can you believe it?"
Claudia, however, looked glum. "Wish I would have thought of something like that! And to think, we took the stupid train. Look at the Weasley twins! Bet they're thinking the same thing."
Sure enough, a few seats away, the twin boys with bright red hair were looking exasperated and disappointed, shaking their heads. Sirius himself felt a surge of envy. What a way to arrive! Harry and Ron had, however, left their other best friend behind on the train, which made him wonder if it hadn't been planned. While Hermione didn't seem to be the type to condone a fanciful flight to Hogwarts, he couldn't imagine they would leave her to ride the train if they thought it was unavoidable. He, James, and Peter would never have left Remus behind in the same way.
"As if anyone ought to be surprised. Potter has a knack for finding trouble," Annabelle told him.
"Really?" said Sirius, imagining the boy from Diagon Alley. Perhaps he was more like James than he thought.
"Well, actually, he's more of a magnet for trouble," said Annabelle.
"Stumbles into stuff," Claudia added, mouth full. "He got on the Quidditch team last year 'cause he caught a Remembrall mid-air during his first flying lesson, and McGonagall happened to see it and got Oliver to make him Seeker." She swallowed, the lump visible in her throat as it went down.
Sirius gaped. "Seeker? As a first year?"
"He's pretty good," said Annabelle. "You'll see. Did you know he grew up with Muggles? Wouldn't know it if you saw him—he's a natural flier. My dad says it runs in his family."
Sirius almost opened his mouth to agree, to say that James was one of the best fliers he'd ever seen, but shut it quickly. Then it occurred to him—did he know Annabelle's father? Down the length of the table sat student after student, and not all of them could be Muggleborns, so how many had parents that went to school with him?
"You must be a pureblood," said Claudia said suddenly, eyeing him.
Sirius choked, and Claudia slapped his back.
"Not in a bad way!" Claudia insisted. "It's only…" She glanced at Annabelle for help who shrugged and neatly scooped a cluster of peas onto her fork. "Well, Lysander Prewett isn't a name you'd get on a Muggleborn, you know?"
"Is Claudia Hotchkiss a Muggleborn name?"
"Not really," said Claudia. "Dad's a Muggleborn but Mum comes from a whole line of witches. Annabelle and I are cousins, sort of. Distantly. Very, very distantly. We have the same great-great-grandmother who was also named Claudia. Annabelle's parents are purebloods—"
"No, my mother is a half-blood," corrected Annabelle, chasing a pea with the tines of her fork. "My father's a pureblood, but there's enough Muggle heritage in there, if you're going to be nitpicky. But does it really matter anymore? The only people who care are Slytherins, and even then, I think some of them have lost interest. Can we please talk about Oliver Wood's new haircut instead?"
Oliver Wood, the captain of the Gryffindor Quidditch team, seemed to have a few admirers in Annabelle and Claudia who discussed very seriously the apparent mistake Wood had made in shearing off most of his hair. Wood was gesticulating wildly at a couple of girls who, as Claudia informed Sirius, were on the Quidditch team; he seemed to be miming throwing a Quaffle and at some point, pretended his hands were broomsticks. His audience was half-listening, eyelids drooping.
Dumbledore stood finally and declared the feast over. After he welcomed in the new and old students, he sent them off to bed. Sirius almost shouted his gratefulness. Claudia looped an arm around his and she tugged him from the table, insisting she show him the way to Gryffindor Tower. Unnecessarily, of course, since the number of students streaming from their table would have been enough to go on, other than the fact that he could have found his way with a blindfold.
Gryffindor Tower was as he, James, Remus, and Peter had left it. The same sofas, the same chairs, the same study tables, the same portraits on the walls. Claudia dragged him to a cluster of armchairs that circled a small table and bade him to sit down. Annabelle lowered herself into the one beside him and Claudia dropped down so hard into the furthest one, he thought he heard something snap in the chair.
To his surprise, the students weren't retreating to bed like he would've preferred. Instead, they were clustered in the common room, and Sirius understood why as he overheard the chatter. They were waiting for Harry Potter and Ron Weasley to arrive. As far as anyone knew, they had been expelled. Or perhaps that had not been expelled? How brilliant! No one had arrived in a flying car before!
As students continued to pour into the common room, there were few places to sit or stand with a good view of the portrait hole, so they began to climb onto tables and chairs. With everyone towering above, Sirius felt like he was crouched at the base of a canyon. Excitement ran like an electric current as they waited for the heroes of the hour to arrive. Annabelle was telling Claudia something that Sirius couldn't hear over the din, yet the way Claudia's eyes glinted at him in the firelight gave him an idea.
When finally the portrait hole opened again, the common room erupted in earsplitting applause as Harry and Ron were pulled in, trailed by Hermione Granger who was rolling her eyes at the spectacle. The Weasley twins were lamenting, as Claudia predicted, that Harry and Ron hadn't included them in the car, and the rest of the Gryffindors were thumping them hard on the back, congratulating them on their spectacular arrival.
Harry tried not to smile, and Sirius's heart thudded. He hadn't forgotten, but Harry looked so much like James, it was hard to remember that they were father and son and not the same person. He stood with the rest of the crowd, to the confusion of Annabelle and Claudia, and beaming, shoved his way until he was gripping Harry's shoulder.
"That was quite an entrance, Potter," he said.
Harry's smile slipped when he recognized Sirius. "You!"
"Didn't I say I'd see you at Hogwarts?"
"I guess—" Then Harry glanced beyond Sirius and grew pale. Behind them was Percy Weasley, trying to plow his way through the crowd toward Harry and Ron. Sirius flashed his teeth in a grin and advised him not to let Percy Weasley get a hold of him and Ron. Harry urged Ron that they ought to go to bed, and together they shoved aside students until they reached the spiral staircase and disappeared up into the dormitory.
The excitement melted as the exhaustion of the day caught up with the students, and soon the rest of them were filing off to bed as well. All that remained were a few people who lounged in the quiet common room, finally catching a break to speak in hushed tones to each other. Annabelle had swung her legs over the armchair, dangling her feet and watching the fire when Sirius returned. Nothing but a flattened pillow and a deep impression of Claudia remained on her chair, however.
"Where's she gone? It's past curfew," said Sirius. He dropped into Claudia's seat. Not that he'd ever cared about curfew, of course—he and his friends went wherever they liked whenever they liked.
Annabelle shrugged. "She's gone to see her boyfriend. He's in Ravenclaw. He's a snob, but she thinks he's brilliant."
"Where's your boyfriend?"
The eyeroll he received must have given her a headache. "I'm between, thanks. Did you leave a girlfriend behind, wherever you came from? Beauxbatons?"
"No," he said honestly. He'd never had a girlfriend before. There were girls he'd snogged or taken behind the greenhouses, but dating seemed like a waste of time. He had better things to do than ingratiate himself to some person who wasn't worth the effort.
"Really?" she said, scouring him with penetrating eyes. "You look like someone who's had a number of girlfriends or…boyfriends. Why haven't you?"
"Looking to start something?"
"No," she snapped. When she noticed his grin, her shoulders relaxed and she waved her hand. "I'm trying to get to know you. Claudia fancies you, of course, but she fancies everyone."
"But we just met."
"Yeah," Annabelle agreed. "D'you like her?"
His lips parted. Did he have interest in a girl he'd known for less than a few hours? Perhaps she was lovely with her cascading, dark blond hair and bronzed skin, but dating was the last thing that occurred to him while starting at a school as a new student despite having attended that school for five years and also awaiting the arrival of his best friend's son in a flying car. Was this what girls were like when you befriended them?
Annabelle snorted and sat up, bringing her legs around to kick off her boots and then cross her ankles over the ottoman.
"I told her you didn't," said Annabelle. When Sirius began to retort, she held up a hand. "It won't hurt her feelings. She's tougher than that. But do you? Just so we're clear."
"I—it's a bit early to tell? And she has a boyfriend."
"Well, she keeps her options open. I also think she'd like to see a couple of boys fight over her."
The conversation didn't last much longer. Annabelle merely suggested that if he liked Claudia, he wouldn't regret meeting her on the Astronomy Tower. Then Annabelle took her shoes and walked stocking-feet up to the girl's dormitory, wishing him over her shoulder a pleasant first sleep at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry.
Dread sat like a brick in his stomach as he followed Annabelle into the dungeons. The Potions classroom was as he remembered with the same acrid smell of something burning tickling his nose. They found a table off to the side.
He'd gone in knowing what would happen. A single word from him would have Snape cursing him to the back of the room and giving him a month's worth of detentions, but Sirius would not allow that sort of abuse from his greatest foe. His plan was simply to bite the inside of his cheek. Snape would expect him to be insubordinate and fight him at every turn. If he could just keep his mouth shut, Snape would look like the idiot.
In the eyes of the other students, Snape had no reason to dislike him more than the average Gryffindor. Unjust behavior would raise eyebrows, and Sirius knew Dumbledore had strictly forbidden the professors from treating him differently from the others.
All of that, however, slipped out of his mind as a billowing blackness entered the classroom, and the quiet conversation hushed immediately. Severus Snape, his hair just as greasy, his face just as sallow as it was when he was sixteen, faced the class. Black eyes glittered in the lamplight, searching through the sea of sixth year faces. This class was mixed with all four Houses—the only students who managed to receive O's on their Potions O.W.L. Snape's survey did not take long before he found Sirius.
Sirius felt the same sneer that pulled back Snape's lips on his own face as they locked eyes. Any promises he'd made to himself seemed stupid now. It was all he could do not to throw his shoe at Snape.
But Snape tore his gaze from Sirius quickly and addressed the class.
"This year, you will begin your N.E.W.T. level coursework," Snape began. His oily voice made the students shiver. "There are those in this classroom who only just managed to achieve an Outstanding on their O.W.L. exams, perhaps due to a supreme stroke of luck or the negligence of an evaluator. To those students, I do not expect you to last the term. The coursework this year simply will not allow anyone to scrape by. I will not waste time reviewing basics, and you will not waste my time by forgetting them. Each day, I will provide the necessary tools for brewing the potion of my choosing. Any result less than perfect will receive a failing mark. Three failures in a term will result in expulsion from this class."
Suddenly, a bit of chalk squealed against the board as it wrote as if by its own accord. Draught of Living Death, it read. When the chalk dropped, Snape told them to begin.
Students scrambled in pandemonium to open their books and race for ingredients among the stores. Annabelle told Sirius to begin reading the potion's instructions while she fetched the supplies. It was a complicated one, that was certain.
They worked for an hour while Snape sat at the front desk, watching them all. Once in a while, Snape would stroll about the room, offering nasty comments and critiquing the way a student stirred or scoffing as he peered into a cauldron. To Sirius's relief, Snape largely ignored him and Annabelle.
Sweat glistened on Annabelle's face as she worked, crushing the Sopophorous bean and feeding its juices to the potion. If Sirius excelled at Transfiguration and Charms, Annabelle's expertise was in potion-making. The cauldron bubbled when it was supposed to, it turned the right colors at the right time, and by the end of the hour, the potion was nearly complete.
"You should be finished stirring by now," Snape called lazily.
Panic gripped the room and soon, students who hadn't been stirring were now stuffing ladles into their cauldrons and swirling, but Annabelle removed hers with a smug little smile at Sirius.
"A failing grade, Prewett," said Snape, as he examined the cauldron.
"What?" Sirius yelped. "Why?"
"And ten points from Gryffindor, Miss Waddington. You were not supposed to brew it for him. This was not an opportunity to show off, no matter how much you might enjoy it."
Sirius's fists clenched. Annabelle had taken the lead, that was clear, though he hadn't sat around with his finger in his nose either. He had done roughly half of the potion's work, following Annabelle's corrections when she noticed him about to do something incorrectly. Injustice swelled in his chest. If Snape didn't want them to work together, why did he send them off in pairs?
"You—" started Sirius. But then he nearly choked, and the rest of his words were lost.
"Sorry, Professor," said Annabelle, loudly. "It won't happen again."
Snape stared at Sirius, suspicious but unable to put his finger on it. Then he shifted his gaze to Annabelle who managed to feign shame with her downcast eyes. He lingered for a moment more before moving on.
There were no words because someone had silenced Sirius with a nonverbal spell.
It wasn't until they were leaving the dungeons that he heard Annabelle say quietly, "Finite incantatem."
Sirius whirled on her. "Why would you do that?"
She shrugged. "You were about to do something stupid, and I thought I'd save you a detention. You saw the way Snape was glaring at you. I'll bet he was just waiting for reason to give you a month's worth of detentions. You should be thanking me, Lysander."
Sirius didn't.
The first class had gone better than he imagined, but he'd have to comb down the hair on his arms because the shiver from the dungeons hadn't gone away. How had Snape gotten the job anyway? All he did was stand around the room, barking insults at people. Dumbledore's judgment had always been dodgy; perhaps he'd had a few too many sherries when he hired Snape. He said as much to Annabelle whose default response seemed to be raising her shoulders and letting them fall.
"He's brilliant, of course," she said as they climbed through the portrait hole into the Gryffindor common room. "Sometimes being a twat comes with that."
"I'm brilliant, and I'm not a twat."
"Is that why you let me brew that potion all on my own?"
"I helped!" said Sirius indignantly.
Annabelle made for the girl's dormitory, pausing before she went up. "Well, let's see how you do next time when Snape forbids partners. Meet you down here in ten minutes." She excused herself to change and drop her books off, disappearing up the staircase.
The common room quickly filled with students unloading their belongings after class and sinking down into the many overstuffed chairs. The first few days had taken their toll already, and Sirius felt it too. Despite having more free time than in past years, the amount of work assigned by the teachers drank greedily on those precious hours. Sirius draped his body over a chair, savoring in a bit of laziness before Annabelle returned.
Harry and his friends came through the portrait hole, their faces scarlet and shoulders sagging with exhaustion. He saw Harry glance at him but continue on to the dormitory with Ron.
"What happened to you three?" Sirius asked Hermione before she went up to the girls' dormitory.
"Oh," she huffed, "Nothing. Professor Lockhart presented Cornish pixies to the class today, and it may have gotten a bit out of hand. He asked the three of us to help contain them. They didn't want to go back into the cage."
Hermione's bushy hair looked bigger than it usually did. She smoothed it down quickly, blushing slightly.
"Cornish pixies?" Sirius repeated. "What did he do? Let a flock loose?"
"Well, he's a bit daring. Anyway, I've got to freshen up before dinner."
Daring was not the word he'd pick for Lockhart, he decided the next day when he, Annabelle, and Claudia filed behind their classmates into the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom. Like the other students in this time, he never had a teacher of the subject that lasted more than a year. He would be glad to see Lockhart go.
Class began with a quiz regarding Lockhart's books. Apparently, they were expected to have read them all. There were parts of which Sirius had read aloud to Remus one evening which had them both guffawing over their plates, but apparently he hadn't read it close enough since he couldn't answer any of the questions.
Annabelle scoffed every now and then, scratching answers with her quill in her fist, pressing so hard that the nib went through the paper. Claudia was drawing her answers prettily, adding little hearts to her I's. Sirius, meanwhile, was pretending Lockhart was a very large troll and answered the questions accordingly—his greatest challenge was translating English into grunts.
Lockhart was rather disappointed, evident as he shuffled through the quizzes, but by now, he had doled the quiz out to several classes, and learned to manage his discontent with a wide smile that didn't quite reach his eyes.
"None of you recalled that my secret ambition is to rid the world of evil and market my own range of hair care potions. Tut, tut, and this is supposed to be the advanced class!" Lockhart said, paging through. "Well, we'll just have to press on, I suppose."
He thrust the papers away and opened his arms wide as if a camera were pointed at and snapping photos of him. Sirius and Annabelle exchanged wide-eyed looks before they both smothered their snorts as Lockhart introduced the lesson.
"We will begin with nonverbal incantations," said Lockhart "A very complicated, very intricate skill that only the most powerful wizards like myself can master. Perhaps a demonstration? I shall need an assistant!"
A few hands went up, including Claudia's. She tried to catch Lockhart's eye as his gaze swept over the class; she pushed into Annabelle's side as she followed his line of sight. Sirius intently pretended to take notes, a small voice pleading with Lockhart not to pick him. Even Percy Weasley was hiding his face with a hand over his brow.
"Ah yes, you!"
No one moved, and as Sirius looked up from his scribbles, every eye in the classroom was on him. Inwardly, he cursed. Of course Lockhart would choose him. Claudia's face fell, but the dread on Annabelle's face had turned to delight as she watched him roll his eyes and push back his chair to meet Lockhart at the head of the classroom.
"Mr. Pratchett, is it?"
"That's me," drawled Sirius, smirking at Annabelle.
"I must ask you to remain calm, for I shall not hurt you, but I must demonstrate the intricacies of a nonverbal spell. What I need you to do is stand over there—" Lockhart waved his hand toward the windows "—and wait. I am going to cast a spell, but you won't know which one, for I will do it without uttering a single word."
He must have thought this would have a greater effect because he left a pause for the crowd to gasp, which of course, they did not. For a moment his face fell, but soon he was sweeping into position and aiming his wand at Sirius.
Sirius braced himself. Annabelle's amusement turned to concern, and Claudia was covering her mouth with a hand. Sirius, however, wouldn't let Lockhart best him in front of the class—he would not commence his last two years at Hogwarts getting tossed around a classroom by a clown. He gripped his wand and watched carefully.
Lockhart's face crumpled and reddened with concentration; his fingers twitched on the handle of his wand, and Sirius sensed the unspoken hex hurtling his way.
"Protego!" Sirius shouted as the shield absorbed Lockhart's spell.
Even Lockhart seemed surprised, yet he recovered with a chuckle.
"Ah, you see, I was waiting for Mr. Pratchett to throw up his shield! Otherwise we would have seen him tapdancing across the room. Perhaps this time, I shall not go so easy on him!"
Sirius threw up another shield, this time without opening his mouth, focusing on the nonverbal spell. He felt Lockhart's hex, as if the frustration had thrust power into the spell, but his shield held and had Lockhart stumbling back. The rest of the class exchanged confused glances.
"Are you all right, professor?" Sirius said, simpering.
"Quite all right, my boy," Lockhart assured, though the twitch of an eye suggested otherwise.
"Ooh, was that a nonverbal shield?" said Claudia.
"Why yes, it was, Miss Hotchkiss," said Sirius. "Thank you ever so much, professor. I've learned loads just standing in your presence. I never would have had the confidence to try a nonverbal spell without you."
Lockhart swept his shining hair back and, ego restored, thanked 'Mr. Pratchett' and excused him from the demonstration. Soon he had the rest of the students partnering up and instructed them to hurl silent curses at each other, which soon had everyone looking like they were having stomach trouble. Meanwhile, Lockhart waltzed about the room and offered pointless tips.
Claudia took Sirius by the arm and pulled him to the side of the room to practice. Her fingers clawed into the sleeve of his robe as she grinned.
"You made him look like a complete idiot," she said.
"He did most of the work," admitted Sirius. "And I thought you fancied him?"
"Not anymore!"
Claudia was not very good at nonverbals, but she was fun to duel with her creative hexes and swift movements as she hurled a spell and dodged out of the way of his. She seemed to sense when he was about to hex, even when he did it silently, and ducked just in time, giggling as she did, swinging her dark blonde hair like a majestic cape.
"You keep moving your lips," she said, pointing at his mouth. "I can tell when you're about to do it. Stick your tongue out. You can't move your lips then."
He felt about as idiotic as Lockhart, but he tried it, sticking out his tongue as he flung a Jelly-Legs hex which hit her in the abdomen and she collapsed, laughing hoarsely.
"See? You look stupid but it works!"
"What about you?" Sirius said. He lifted the hex and gave her his arm to heave her back to her feet. "You haven't tried a nonverbal once. Let's see you try."
Claudia shrugged. "No thanks. Class is over anyway."
And so it was. Annabelle was still chortling over Lockhart when they went down to dinner later that evening. The class buzzed about it, some patting Sirius on the back and thanking him for putting Lockhart in his place. Even Percy Weasley commended Sirius on his command of nonverbal spells, lamenting that they couldn't have a better professor in such a pivotal point of their Hogwarts careers.
That evening, Annabelle and Claudia wished Sirius a good night as they clambered up to the girls' dormitory, sneaking glances at him as they did. Their behavior struck Sirius as odd, but he decided to call it an early night too, especially after the exhausting week back. Typically, he and his friends would nip down to the kitchens on the first Friday night and greet the House-Elves and celebrate with their own little feast. Sometimes they would sneak down into the Shrieking Shack and get a bit indulgent with Ogden's Old Firewhisky, waking the next day with pounding heads and weak grins, but he was glad to have a moment to himself finally.
Percy Weasley came in swiftly after Sirius had shed his clothes and tucked into bed, declaring that he'd never been so glad to see the weekend. Soon Oliver Wood and the other boys in their year—Thomas Duncan, Owen Parrell, and Simon Robinson—were climbing into bed as well, which seemed odd. For all five Gryffindor sixth years to be going to bed at quarter to ten on the first night of the weekend seemed just short of a miracle.
Sirius closed the curtains around his bed, and curled on his side. Sleep moved in, claiming him almost as soon as his eyes shut.
It was not to be.
Only a half hour had passed before he heard a bit of shuffling around the room. Too tired to care, he squeezed his eyes shut and willed himself to go back to sleep until the noises around the room went silent. Then he started to hear snoring.
Suddenly, there was a hand clamped down on his mouth.
Sirius threw the hand off, only to see the person whose head was poking through the curtains was Annabelle. She pressed a finger to her lips and tugged on his hand until he followed her from the bed. In the moonlight, she mimed for him to put his clothes on. He shoved on a pair of trousers and a shirt, and he followed her from the dormitory down into the common room. She didn't stop there. They climbed through the portrait hole, out into the corridor beyond.
They pressed against the walls, watching for shadows as they crept along until they reached the stairs. Sirius typically never needed to creep around like this, not when James swung his Invisibility Cloak over their shoulders.
Recognition dawned. They were headed towards the Astronomy Tower.
Sure enough, by the time they finished climbing to the very top, they came upon at least a dozen students lounging against the crenulations, laughing and sharing a few bottles of firewhisky and a Muggle bottle of peppermint Schnapp's. Faces were fresh and bright, as if the party had only just started. Claudia was already there, tangled in the arms of a dark and soulful looking Ravenclaw. She waved. The rest of the boys' sixth year dormitory were there as well, some of them looking sheepish when they saw Annabelle emerge with him in tow. Percy Weasley was nowhere to be seen.
"Sorry, mate," Thomas Duncan said. "Can't have Percy getting wind of this. Glad you came though!"
"I was always planning on getting you," Annabelle murmured in his ear.
The other Houses had come too. A few Ravenclaws were chatting with each other, a couple of Hufflepuffs were laying down, watching the stars above, and even a handful of Slytherins stood about the top of the tower. Annabelle snatched a bottle from Claudia's hand and thrust it into Sirius's.
"I trust you know what to do with that?" she said.
Sirius grinned. He certainly did.
The sixth year students of this time weren't bad, he decided. Perhaps they were even like the ones from his own time, not that he would know since he'd never really gotten acquainted with many of his other classmates outside of his own friends.
Without the rest of the Marauders surrounding him, it seemed that girls were a bit more comfortable in their approach. The Hufflepuff girls drew him in, bidding him to sit beside them and watching dreamily as he talked about his encounter with Lockhart earlier in the day. If they were listening, he couldn't know. One of them kept stroking his knee.
The bottles passed from hand to hand, and Sirius took a swig from each one as they came to him, relishing in the burn as it filled his mouth. The tips of his fingers tingled as he talked and talked, moving from group to group as they all descended into blurry figures. He lost track of Annabelle, but soon there was Claudia who was pulling him away from a mix of Ravenclaws and Slytherins.
She was wobbly on her legs as she stumbled into him, her teeth bared in a wide smile. Sirius gripped her arms to keep her upright, dancing them away from a pair of snogging people that he didn't recognize, and she held on tightly. The breath from her was hot with the pinching smell of mint. Her brown eyes stared up at him, her smile faltering. She was close enough for him to count all of the freckles across her nose and smell the last bit of summer in her hair.
The gap closed between them, and suddenly his hands were curling in the blond tresses, clutching her closely as her fingers grasped the fabric of his shirt. Her mouth was warm and she tasted like the orchestra of the party's liquor. Desperation bloomed in his chest and he couldn't stop it, deepening the kiss, feeling the curve of her body against his, feeling as if he were about to explode. The bones of her fingers pushed painfully into his chest, pinched between their bodies. Then she broke away, her lips wet and plump, her eyes cloudy with passion and alcohol, and her hair mussed.
The world swam by as if they were underwater as she led him away from the party, down the stairs from the Astronomy Tower and slinking back through the darkened corridors. He tugged on her hand, wondering where Annabelle had gone, only to be shushed and pulled along.
"Where are we going?" he asked.
"Back to Gryffindor Tower," she whispered.
Later he would remember giving the password to the portrait of the fat lady who barked her scandal that they were returning so late, to tiptoeing through the barren common room, to following Claudia up to the boys' dormitory. Behind the door, the snoring charms were strong. Claudia pointed to the beds in question, and Sirius indicated his. Soon she was crawling in between the curtains.
He froze at the opening, hand clenched on the hangings. Images and thoughts swirled behind his eyes, contemplating the implications of a girl wedging her way into his bed and propping herself on her elbows. He hardly knew her, and he wasn't even certain he liked her more than as a friend, but he couldn't deny the way his blood pulsed through his veins as she crooked a finger at him.
She welcomed him with a kiss as his arms wrapped around her. Her legs, long and gangly, ensnared his waist and she was pressing her lips everywhere. He was lost to the sensation of her kissing his jaw, his neck, his earlobe, until a splitting pain erupted behind his eyes. He let her go, letting her sink into the pillows, pressing the heel of his hand to his brow.
Pain like someone hammering against his skull blinded him. It wasn't alcohol—it was like someone or something invading his mind, battering against the confines like a tiger in a cage. He squeezed his eyes shut, willing it to go away. When it did, he blinked down at the girl beneath him.
Then she snored.
Through the pounding headache, he felt a cool wave of relief. She'd fallen asleep. He fell back into the bed as well, closing his eyes.
The pain was knocking on his skull, and he could almost hear the echo of someone calling for him, almost like hundreds of miles away, pleading with him to answer. Sirius clenched his fists.
"Go away," he growled, and suddenly, the pain vanished.