Sirius is fourteen years old, and there are girls everywhere. They drive him to distraction. Wherever he looks, there they are, with their giggles and rosy cheeks and blossoming bosoms. One girl in particular has captured his attention: Maggie Lewis. She's always around.
Maggie has just turned thirteen, and her bright, hazel eyes are fixed upon - Remus Lupin. Sirius can't stand it. Why is this annoying little girl so fixated on Remus? Why does it bother him so much? Well, Remus is his best friend in all the world, apart from James, and this little minx is going to poison him with one of her damned love potions.
The Dementors paused in the passage outside Sirius's cell. One reached out a hand to tweak the memory.
And now Remus is smiling back at Maggie. She's halfway across the room, over at the Ravenclaw table in the Great Hall, but the way they are looking at one another, they might as well be alone in the world. Sirius punches Remus in the shoulder, trying in vain to get his attention.
"In a minute, Pete," Remus mutters vaguely, still staring at Maggie with a look one could pour over ice cream.
Sirius slams away from the table and stomps up the stairs, his appetite for supper gone. It's bad enough that James keeps talking about that Evans girl all the time; now he's losing his other best friend to some Ravenclaw wench! It's just not fair.
Like most teenage boys, he's not much good at soul-searching or self-analysis. The only conclusion he can come to is that he is jealous because everyone has a girlfriend but him. Well, everyone but Peter, and Peter doesn't count.
He flops down on his bed and declares loudly to the empty room, "I am going to get the prettiest girl in the school, and I am going to be the first of us lot to get a shag!" Yes, he decides, this will make him feel better.
His first task is to decide who is the prettiest girl at Hogwarts. No one under thirteen, he decides, and no one in Slytherin. Over the last three years, that house has definitely lost its shine in his eyes, and besides, he's related to too many of them. He rejects this girl for being too short and that one for being too tall, another for having no bosom, and yet another for having an annoying laugh. Before long, there's no one left on the list. He knows he's being too picky, but the truth is, there is no girl at Hogwarts he really wants.
How am I ever going to get a shag, then? he wonders, disgusted.
He decides that if there is no girl he wants, he will try the next best thing and get the girl everyone else wants. Yes, Ariadne Diggle will do nicely.
But Ariadne is a sixth year, and will not have him. She giggles and pronounces him "cute", and sends him on his way. He tries again and again, approaching this girl and that, moving further and further down the list of desirability. None of the sixth or seventh year girls are interested in a lowly fourth year, and most of them already have boyfriends.
At last, he catches one of Maggie Lewis's giggling friends in an empty corridor, and turns all his desperate, spotty, fourteen-year-old charm on her. She giggles and nods and he grabs her by the arm and drags her to a spot where they are sure to be discovered, hoping to secure himself a Reputation.
But as he rounds the corner, he sees something which makes the bottom drop out of his stomach. Remus. Remus is kissing Maggie Lewis, right there in the corridor for everyone to see! They break their kiss, and look up at Sirius, matching, smug grins on their swollen lips.
"He's mine," says Maggie as Remus wraps an arm around her waist and pulls her close against his side.
Suddenly, all the students and teachers who had paused to watch the kissing couple are looking at Sirius and laughing as if the look on his face is the funniest thing they have ever seen. James is doubled over, slapping his thigh, tears of mirth streaming down his cheeks.
Sirius looks back at Remus and Maggie, who are suddenly adults. "Maggie and I are in love," he tells Sirius, grinning. "We're getting married."
"Yes," says Maggie. "We're going to have two darling little boys, and name them James and Peter. Isn't that right, my Love?"
Remus is gazing at Sirius with pity in his eyes now. "Did you really think I could love you as much as I love Maggie, Sirius?" he says. "Don't be a fool. A man needs a woman for real love, and we have a duty to bring magical children into the world."
Sirius is lying on his bed in Gryffindor tower. He can still hear the laughter echoing in his ears, but now he cannot remember whether the scene with Remus and Maggie in the corridor was real, or if he only imagined it. The thought of them kissing is enough to fill him with despair, and now he knows why. He knows why he has made excuses, rejecting the potential of every girl at Hogwarts. He doesn't want them. He wants Remus.
Horror fills him. He fancies a bloke. Words swirl in his head. Poof. Queer. Pervert. Freak - and many far less innocuous. He can never let anyone find out. His family, already disappointed in him for being in Gryffindor and liking it, will disown him for this. He is disgusting. He can never tell his friends. He can certainly never tell Remus.
Remus's face swims across his mind, wearing a look of abject horror and disgust. "Don't touch me!" he says. "Don't look at me. Don't ever speak to me again, Sirius Black!"
He will be thrown out of the boys' dormitory. No one will want to sleep where he sleeps or bathe where he bathes. He is a nasty, filthy pervert.
There is only one thing he can do. He will hush it up - never mention it. Why should anyone have to know? He can pretend he likes girls. Some of them will probably like him. Surely he can kiss them and fondle them and do all the things normal men and women are supposed to do together. Yes. That is the best way. No one has to know.
And it works - for a while, anyway. Sirius is fifteen years old now, and most of his spots have cleared up. He is letting his hair grow out. Girls are noticing him. Girls are, in fact, being incredibly forward with him. He had thought it was always the boy's job to catch the girl in a corner and kiss her, but more often than not, it is he who finds himself cornered by some determined female and her breasts.
God! They have breasts! And they want him to do something about it, don't they? What is he supposed to do? Squeeze them? Pet them? Say nice things about them? Having to kiss all these girls is bad enough.
Simpering blue eyes surrounded by thick lashes are looking up into his. "I love you, Sirius," she says. And then a look of concern fills her eyes. "Don't you love me?"
He looks up, and Remus is standing there, giving him a sad look. Every time Sirius kisses a girl, Remus is standing there when he looks up.
"Do you love her, Sirius? Does she make you happy?" Remus turns and walks away.
"Remus, wait!"
Sirius pushes the girl aside and runs after him, but he can't find him anywhere. He sprints up one corridor and down the next, searching every corner of the school, but Remus is not there. He has lost him.
Why am I such an ass? he thinks angrily.
Kissing girls. Playing pranks. Tormenting Snivellus. Everything he does is so bloody juvenile! No wonder Remus thinks so little of him. Remus doesn't need him. He is worthless.
The more time passes, the more distant Remus becomes. Suddenly, at the end of fifth year, Remus stops speaking to him altogether. Sirius doesn't even know what he has done this time to push Remus away. The young werewolf becomes almost as withdrawn as he was in their first year. Sirius sometimes catches Remus giving him sad looks, but that's all.
Now we're not even friends, Sirius thinks in despair.
He becomes obnoxious, irritable, and rude, trying to cover the pain of losing his friend.
That summer is horrible. For his sixteenth birthday, his parents arrange a proper pure-blood, high society party. What in the old days was called "coming out". His school friends, he is told, are not welcome. His relationship with his family has been rocky since he was sorted into Gryffindor, and this summer it has deteriorated badly.
He tries to bait and shock them, getting very drunk at the party and vomiting in the punch bowl. He even considers publicly declaring himself queer, just to see how they will react. His family despises him. Remus will not speak to him. What has he got to lose?
It is that line of thinking which results in Regulus walking in on his brother having a wank to a picture of a naked, wet and laughing Remus, standing thigh-deep in the Hogwarts lake, and being pounced upon and wrestled beneath the surface by a large, black dog.
Regulus, mouth open, stares at the scene as if he's just been Stupefied. Sirius glares back at him, defiant, the photo of the joyful boy and dog in one hand, his cock still hard in the other. Regulus flees.
A moment later, his parents are standing in his doorway. He is sitting on the bed facing them, still naked, challenging them with his eyes. The photo of Remus lies face down beside him, as if to shield it from exposure to the coming unpleasantness.
"Is it true?" His father's voice is like ice. "Regulus said that -" His eyes fall upon the downturned photo on the bed. "Sirius. Is that photograph, or is that photograph not, of a girl?"
"It is not," Sirius says shortly.
His mother screeches and looks as if she is about to launch herself across the room at him.
"No son of mine," growls his father, "will ever -" but he cannot seem to find the words to finish this sentence. "Get dressed," he says. "Get out of this house."
"Gladly," Sirius declares.
He begins to move about the room, slamming drawers open and shut, flinging clothing and other items into his trunk. He does not bother dressing; he wants them to be uncomfortable.
"I'm sick of you lot anyway," he says. "All your stupid fucking pure-blood nonsense. You're all just a bunch of fucking sheep, following old Moldywart around. B-a-a-a-h! B-a-a-a-h! But you're too weak to declare for him, aren't you?" He gives his parents a contemptuous look. "You're happy to just go around saying what wonderful ideas he has, and how he's the best thing to happen to the Wizarding world in ages, but you don't have the balls to join his little harem!"
His mother grabs him by the shoulder and delivers such a slap that the room seems momentarily to spin, and he almost has to sit down. He can feel the sting where her long nails have gouged his cheek.
"The Dark Lord is a great wizard!" shrieks his mother. "He's giving the world back to the pure-bloods. You're just too stupid to understand. You and your Gryffindor friends and your 'equal rights for werewolves' and that mudblood-loving Potter boy and that half-blood nancy-boy friend of yours and that blood traitor Pettigrew!" she sneers. "Well, the Dark Lord is coming for you, too. He'll cleanse the world of mudbloods and traitors and filthy queers like you! Just you see if he doesn't!"
And she smiles the nastiest smile a mother ever gave a son. It makes him feel sick inside, because he knows she's right. Voldemort is coming.
"Out," says his father, voice still icy. "You're not welcome in this house. You are no longer my son. Go. Change your name and sink to your own level and never darken our door again."
Sirius has his hand on the doorknob. He is dressed now, and his trunk is packed. The picture of Remus is still in his hand. He gives his family one final smirk, raises the photo to his lips, and gives it a long, deliberate lick.