AN - First off, a huge thank you to crazylame1 and Ethylmethylamine for the reviews - they really made my week :). I'm trying to keep the pacing of this steady, without it getting too stale with too many filler parts, and the 'action' so to speak picks up quite steadily from here. This chapter was a rather fun one to write!

If you like what you read, please leave a review and let me know :). I like to know what's working and what's not, what you want more of and what I should tone down. It really does help to get feedback and I truly appreciate all that has been left so far!

Year of the Wolf

3. Scarlet and Gold

Mr. and Mrs. Potter had many things, being both from rich pure blood families, but the only thing they had ever truly wanted was a child. They had planned the achievement of this wondrous dream not long after marriage, but careers managed to get in the way and the idea was pushed to the back of their minds. But it never truly went away. It was, after all, something they both wanted with all of their hearts.

As the years went by, they found their careers less and less fulfilling with this ache inside them, this hole in their lives and in their hearts. But years had passed, and neither of them were getting any younger, and they found that they just could not wait any longer.

The first few months were hopeful, and friends would comment that they had never seemed happier or more alive. The next few were a little tougher, but they got by and their friends still smiled, if only politely. After a year, Mrs. Potter began to hide her tears every time she bled, every time she was reminded that she was not carrying the child of the man she loved. They waited it out a few more months before acknowledging that something was wrong, that it should be happening, why wasn't it happening?

Mr. Potter had held her hand as they sat for hours in St. Mungo's, waiting to hear the news they both knew was coming. And when it came, it burned, not like the cauterizing lick of a flame, but like the searing sting of ice. They had left it too late. There were other reasons, but the bottom line was that if they had not waited so long, they may not have been sitting there wondering why they had not started trying the day they were married. It would be "difficult", they had said, and had the Potters considered adoption?

It was years before they considered anything, and by then they had all but accepted that they were just not meant to be parents.

And then he came. He came as a bona-fide miracle into their life, and for nine months Mrs. Potter wore the biggest smile on her face as she wore the pregnancy with a motherly glow that suited her so well.

James, they called him. And from the moment he was born he was showered with love and affection. He was the child they never thought they would have, and yet there he was, and they loved him so much that nothing they did ever seemed enough. Their friends thought that they were mad when they eschewed the usual "rich pure blood" tradition of hiring a tutor for their son and taught him in his pre-Hogwarts days themselves. They laughed when they announced that there would be no house elf, that they wanted to cook and clean and do everything for this little miracle themselves.

James was a very outgoing and friendly child. He would talk the ear off anyone who visited, and got on well with the other children he mixed with, but there were never really any friendships that stuck. When his Hogwarts letter arrived he was positively ecstatic and showed a sudden interest in their old school memorabilia.

Now James was a pureblood child, we mustn't forget this, and he had been pampered from birth. His parents had raised him to be good and honourable, and they had succeeded, but of course you can't go eleven years treating your child like a prince without some negative attributes springing from the experience. He was arrogant and just a little bit conceited, but this was often lost amidst the confidence that simply radiated from him.

And when he met that boy, that haughty-looking black-haired boy with the grey eyes and mischievous smile, something happened in the very fabric of his soul. This boy wasn't offended or overwhelmed by him, seemed actually to drink in his entire being and bounce it back at him with a slightly darker edge.

An entire family in Slytherin? He wasn't having that. He knew Slytherin, knew Gryffindor, and he knew which house this boy belonged in. He was a Black, but he was not like the Blacks he had heard of. This boy was not callous, and had as much disdain for the Dark Arts as James himself had. There was a fire inside of him and it burned hot, not cold, and it burned bright. It burned, as it turned out, scarlet and gold.

In no time at all, these two boys were the closest of friends. They were closer that that, even. They were brothers, twins...they just happened to have been born into different families. And boy were their families different.

Sirius always did have thicker skin than him, James noted, sitting by the fire of the Gryffindor common room in his fifth year. While James was protected from hurt and sadness by his parents, Sirius's exposed him to it on an almost daily basis. It was impossible for most to tell, but beneath the devil may care attitude, there was a lot of internalised trauma.

In the beginning, it was funny. They would joke about stiff old Walburga and Orion and their archaic views, and some of their more reckless plots were based around things that would annoy them, that would rub in the fact that Sirius's heart was not as Black as theirs. But soon, as the toll their parenting took on their son became more and more visible, James found the whole thing less and less amusing.

He could still remember the first time Sirius visited his house, and the way he had looked at his parents, the Potters, like they were practising some kind of foreign magic. James's mum had been nervous about having a Black staying, had obviously only accepted her son's friendship with the Black heir because James cared very much about him and if it made James happy then it made her happy. And Sirius was weird with her, calling her "ma'am" and his dad "sir" and sitting stiffly at the dinner table. He had only relaxed when James got sick of it, filled his mouth with mashed potatoes and punched his cheeks. Sirius was so shocked to see such behaviour and the Potters' furious yet not incensed reaction that it seemed to jolt him right out of his silly mood.

Mrs. Potter warmed to him soon after that, and showed him the same affection she showed her own son, perhaps realising that their guest was not really a Black at all, he was just Sirius.

'Do you know what Sirius said, the first time he stayed at my house?'

Remus looked up from his essay and hummed to show that he was listening. The question had come out of nowhere; James had been lost so deeply in thought for so long that Remus had apparently tuned him out.

'He looked at me and he asked in this horrible quiet voice "Why does your mum do that?"'

'What did she do?'

James looked at him, unsure if he wanted to continue. This was really Sirius's story, and he wasn't so sure that he'd feel all that comfortable with him telling anyone. But this was Remus - they didn't call him their best friend for nothing.

'She tucked him in,' James said lightly. 'She just pulled the covers up to his chin and kissed him on the forehead.'

He had Remus's full attention now - the quill was down and the parchment had begun to curl.

'He'd never been tucked in before?'

James shrugged.

'Probably not. But he was just so confused over why mum was hugging me and smiling at me. He thought it was just something parents did on the platform, before they sent their kids off to school.'

The silence between them now was heavy and uncomfortable. James didn't even know what point he was trying to get at, he only recalled what he had caught of Sirius's argument with his brother and the fact that it was now the end of that day and he hadn't seen Sirius since he had slunk up to their dormitory soon after they had arrived back from dinner.

'I don't understand why any parent would not do that,' Remus said.

'Some pureblood families are just like that,' James said, finally moving in an attempt to alleviate the cramp in his arm. 'Dark Arts, you see. They're all about the dark end of the spectrum; love and affection are signs of weakness, they're not good.'

James couldn't imagine never being able to hug his parents, and he could tell by the look in Remus's eye that he felt the same way.

'He's dealt with it for sixteen years,' Remus said, seeming to understand James's concern. 'He'll be okay. He just gets in these moods from time to time, you know that.'

'I don't know,' said James, sighing. And he looked up at the ceiling, wondering if Sirius would be asleep or if he wanted to go raise some hell. 'Something's different this time.'

Sirius couldn't remember the last time he had walked to class alone, and it felt weird. He had only been gone ten minutes at the most, to retrieve his Potions book from the dormitory, yet when he had returned to lunch the others were nowhere to be seen.

All the way to the Dungeons, he kept an eye out for his friends amongst the ever-thinning crowd, but no such luck. He did meet eyes with Lily Evans as she spoke to another student, but she looked away just as quickly.

It wasn't until he was closing in on the classroom that a voice called his name. He looked up and a hand moved towards his wand, because it was not a friendly voice. In fact, given the utterance of his surname, he had half-expected his brother to be the subject of the call.

'Where's your boyfriend, Black?' Snape snickered with a look of delight upon his face. Of course he would be brave, flanked by two other fifth-year Slytherin boys and a sixth-year he recognised as his cousin-in-law Evan Rosier.

'Well, well,' said Sirius, returning the smile. 'If it isn't Snivellus and the gargoyles.'

Avery seemed to dislike this description of himself, but there wasn't a single person in their year who would not have agreed with it (though maybe not to his face).

'Surprised you're still so tough without your friends,' said Mulciber. 'Wonder how long that's going to last.'

They all chuckled horribly, but Sirius did not back down. He was just in the mood for some Slytherin-baiting and it didn't matter if he was outnumbered; if anything it meant that he would be able to get away with more in the name of self-defence.

'If you have to draw your strength from the people you're with, it's not really strength at all, is it?' he laughed. This did not go down well.

'Your mother was right, you know,' said Rosier. 'I'm surprised Orion and Walburga haven't kicked you out yet. Aunt Druella said you'd have been out on the streets if you were hers.'

'Like her daughter, huh?' Sirius shot back. He could feel the anger rising inside of him but he embraced it gleefully. 'Heard she had a baby, you know. They seem to be doing pretty well without the rest of the family - I'm sure I'd have done just fine too.'

He watched as the words hit Rosier and delighted in his discomfort. He seemed to have nothing more to say, and the other Slytherins looked at one another uneasily. Did they even know about Andromeda's disowning?

Rosier deserved the Blacks. He was far too proud to be related to them. Then again, his family was hardly any better - from what Sirius had discovered, his father was one of the first Death Eaters. It didn't take a genius to figure out which direction his life was heading.

'I don't think the blood traitor has a right to speak to us like that,' said Mulciber cracking his knuckles. He was tall (though not quite as tall as Sirius) and gangly and just a little greasy; Sirius could not have felt less threatened if he had tried.

'Oh, you're thinking! Careful, gents, might want to step back-'

'You're so pathetic, Black,' spat Snape. He stood at the front of his group and looked surprisingly confident. 'You are born into a family as honourable as the Blacks and you just spit in their face and trample all over the name. If it's not bad enough that you associate with mudbloods and blood traitors. No wonder your parents are ashamed of you.'

Sirius jerked his arm so quickly that it genuinely threw him when another wrapped through it, halting the movement of his wand.

'Sirius, there you are!' said Marlene McKinnon, her voice far too sickly and sweet. 'We're going to be late, come on.'

Mary Mcdonald was with her, grabbing his other arm, and together they physically pulled him away from the gang of Slytherins, who laughed and called after him.

'McKinnon and the mudblood to the rescue!'

He tried to turn, but the girls were surprisingly strong (for a moment he thought to himself that he actually would not mind being rescued by two beautiful strong women and perhaps that was where his own strength failed).

'What did you do that for?' he snapped when they released his arms, the Slytherins now far behind them.

'I could ask you the same thing,' said Marlene, her voice back to normal. 'You're an idiot, Sirius. There were four of them and only one of you. Don't give me that look! Avery and Mulciber alone are nasty pieces of work.'

'I can handle myself.'

'That may be so,' said Mary. 'But they'd have put you in the hospital wing for Merlin knows how long and Reed would have killed me if I'd let that happen. He's quite scary when he gets going, you know.'

'They called you a mudblood!' he pointed out, trying to win some support.

'How very gallant of you, but I'm used to it,' Mary said, though she grimaced.

'You could at least have let me hex them.'

Mary stopped, yanking on his arm.

'And how do you think I would have felt, knowing you'd got hurt because of me?'

Sirius didn't know what to say to that. James had said once or twice that he was rather blinded when it came to revenge at times. And perhaps he was.

'Sorry,' he mumbled, and the smile returned to Mary's face. She rather did, he noticed, suit that smile. She was perhaps not as typically attractive as Marlene; her mousy brown hair was not quite as lustrous as Marlene's blonde, and her blue eyes were ever so slightly duller than her friend's. But she was a pretty girl, and she was just as strong and stubborn as Sirius himself.

They pushed him into the dungeon classroom, evidently not willing to take the chance on him trying to run back to the Slytherins.

James, Remus and Peter wandered in only minutes after Snape, and perhaps one before Slughorn himself.

'Where were you?' he demanded when they joined him at their usual bench.

'Forgot I ran out of ink this morning,' James said, shaking a pristine bottle that he produced from his bag. The ink inside it sloshed about. 'Thought we'd run into you, but you must have went a different way.' Then he studied Sirius's face. 'What happened to you?'

'Nothing. Why?'

'I don't know,' said James uncertainly, and he turned to Remus for help. Remus just laughed.

'Don't look at me, James,' he said. 'You're the one that understands him, remember.'

Nervous, Sirius ran a hand over his face, wondering if one of the Slytherins had hexed him quietly. Didn't they work on non-verbal spells in sixth year? He certainly wouldn't have put it past Rosier. However, he felt nothing out of the ordinary, and chalked it down to James just being strange.

Slughorn started the lesson off with theory, and James slowly scratched words onto the parchment before him. Potions was perhaps the subject that he was least competent in, but that simply meant that he occasionally had difficulty understanding something as opposed to growing bored with how easy everything was.

He saw Remus look baffled at the pages of his book a time or two and flip through the chapter exasperatedly before Sirius looked up and began to explain the theories to him. Potions was always a strange class, because it was the only one that Remus outright struggled in, even with copious amounts of review. He'd still scrape an "E" at least, but it was always strange seeing him completely perplexed.

'Ten more minutes and then we'll get our cauldrons out,' announced Slughorn happily.

Sirius finished first, setting his quill down absently. His mind seemed to have been somewhere else since the lesson had begun, and when he finally had nothing distracting him, he began to stare at Snape a few benches away.

James wanted to hiss 'don't even think about it' across the table at him, because he could see in his eyes that something had happened and he was now very likely thinking of what to do about it. But he decided against it, because Sirius would not be so stupid as to act when the class was silent and Slughorn was in such a good mood; he would wait until they began their potion-making and James was more than happy to let, even assist, him at that point.

He turned to Snape, who had also apparently finished, and was now resting his head on his hand, staring at Lily Evans across the table. And perhaps that was why he didn't react when he heard a whisper across the table from himself. Something burned in his chest and in that moment he wanted to do something rather nasty to Snivellus himself.

But nothing happened. Sirius was apparently only muttering under his breath, despite having the biggest grin on his face.

A full two minutes passed before there was a commotion behind him and Sirius burst into hysterical laughter, followed by the rest of the class (even the Slytherins). Snape still had his hand pressed against his face, but he seemed unable to detach one from the other. He struggled on his stool, flapping his arms about like a frantic chicken. It was the funniest thing James had ever seen and he too started to laugh as Lily leapt to her feet to try to help her best friend.

'What is going on?' demanded Slughorn. He lumbered from behind his desk over to Snape, but at this point the tears that were spilling from James's eyes were almost blinding him. He tried to catch his breath and turn away, but the moment he locked eyes with Sirius it started again and his chest tightened until he couldn't breathe. He wanted to reach across the table to high-five his friend, but he was worried that if he unwrapped his arm from around himself his insides might just spill out.

He looked away again in time to see Slughorn remove the charm and turn furiously to their table.

'Which one of you was it?' he demanded. He had turned a glorious shade of red, which only made him look like a giant tomato with a moustache.

Still laughing, and a rather impressive shade of red himself, Sirius raised a hand, apparently unable to speak. He looked so proud of himself, and James was rather proud of him too.

'Mr. Black, did you cast a sticking charm on Mr. Snape?'

'Well, it wasn't a permanent sticking charm,' he said, barely able to string the sentence together.

'Missed opportunity there, mate,' said James, and they roared with laughter again, daring to strike a high-five. Marlene McKinnon had her head in her arms but her shoulders shook, Mary Macdonald bit on her quill with a grin, and the other Gryffindor girls giggled freely. Except for Lily Evans, who looked as though she might murder them both then and there.

'ENOUGH!' roared Slughorn and they all fell silent. 'Detention, Mr. Black. And five points from Gryffindor for that comment, Mr. Potter. You are fifth years, when are you going to learn that this sort of behaviour is unacceptable?'

James sighed but did not protest the docking of points. Slughorn was not an unkind teacher, far from it actually, he just happened to be unlucky enough to play host to a lesson Gryffindor shared with Slytherin and had suffered through five years of intense house rivalry.

He looked up at Sirius to see that the smirk had not fallen from his face. He seemed rather proud to have earned his detention and from that gleam in his eye, James could see that he was angling for another. When Slughorn told the class to pack away their parchment and prepare to brew, he moved over to Sirius's side of the bench.

'Don't do it,' he whispered.

'Don't know what you're talking about, James.'

James pushed him, though not hard enough to draw attention.

'I mean it!' he hissed, and Sirius glared at him. 'Don't push him.'

'Oh, what's he going to do?' Sirius sneered, squaring up to James. 'Give me another detention? Take some more points? Trust me, it'll be worth it.'

The glint in his eye was rather manic, and James could tell that he was riled up. He didn't know what happened and in that moment, quite frankly, he didn't care. Ordinarily he would have been on his side, plotting their next move and how to really earn that extra detention. But Sirius was reckless when he was angry, and James didn't want to feed into whatever had got him in such a state. However professional a troublemaker he was, he was too good a friend for that.

Where on Earth is this new responsible streak coming from?

'For the love of-' James's hand shot to his hair and he began to ruffle it frantically. 'Do it for me. Or rather don't do it for me.'

Sirius sighed, but relented. Very rarely did James ask him directly for something, because he would always do whatever it was (and the same vice versa). But he felt that the situation called for it.

'Thank you,' he said, moving back to his side of the bench. 'And when we get out of here you can tell me what he did and we can plan this thing properly.'

Sirius did not smile at this, which James found most unusual. But at that moment Peter pleaded for help and so his attention was diverted, and remained so for the rest of the lesson.

It was a fairly dull lesson, for all that had happened, and Evans refused to look at him as they approached Slughorn's desk together to hand in their samples. While he never professed to understand girls very well, Evans was an enigma. It's because he's her friend, he told himself. Not that he understood why she was friends with Snivellus of all people.

She pulled Snape out of the classroom long before they reached the door, and when they did Peter began to gush over Sirius's antics. James could not help but feel just a little left out. While he was used to sharing attention with Sirius, he very rarely found that it was showered on his best friend over him.

'You seriously need to be careful,' he warned, unsure if it was genuine concern or jealousy that encouraged the words.

'We're not on this again, are we?' Sirius groaned. 'Seriously, James, what's gotten into you? Any other day and you'd be plotting round two for me.'

But it's different this time, he wanted to say. I'm not encouraging you when you look like you're hanging on a very rusty hinge.

'I'm just saying. What'd he do to get you like this anyway?'

'Nothing.'

'I don't think that's true.'

'Why are you so bothered anyway?'

James felt at a loss. He knew these moods, knew that there was no getting through to him when he was like this. So why then did he feel so compelled to try?

'You've been acting weird since the start of term,' he said, broaching what he knew was a rather dangerous subject. 'Did something happen?'

'I'm not sure that's any of your business.'

'You're my best friend, Sirius, how about I make it my business?'

Sirius stopped so suddenly that Peter walked straight into him and Remus almost tripped over his own robes. He was glowering at James now, every hint of friendliness gone from his expression. He looked pissed.

'Never could keep to yourself, could you?' he asked scathingly. 'Like you nosing at my conversation with Regulus yesterday. That had nothing to do with you and you couldn't help-'

'Well sorry for caring about you, mate-'

'Maybe I don't want you to care!' Sirius roared. It was uncanny how much the family resemblance shone in his moments of anger. 'I can take care of myself, Potter. So you know what? You can just piss right off.'

'Sirius!' Remus called, but with a swish of his robes he was gone.