It had been almost two months since Sirius had talked to any of his three best friends, outside of being forcibly paired with them in class, and the effect was starting to show.
He had lost the will to eat, he couldn't sleep and he barely spoke unless spoken to first.
At the beginning of his separation Sirius had tried everything for them to talk to him again, even if it was just to yell, but all he ever got was deadened expressions or disgust if they ever had to look at him.
He was looking so bad that even Lily Evans stopped him in the corridor to ask him if he were alright.
Sharing a room became so unbearable for Sirius that he found himself not returning to the Common Room at night, preferring to sleep in secret places in the castle or somewhere in the forest rather than face their accusatory glares.
Not that he slept much.
He had even stopped caring about how he looked, too miserable to summon up the energy to care.
It was physically painful to be separated from his friends like that, especially James who was the first person he had ever loved like family, the first person who had thought he was worth something.
And Remus just looked so… hurt, all the time.
He wanted to explain himself. Explain how he had thought that the prank would be funny, how the lines of right and wrong had been inexplicably blurred by his family's loose morals; but he just couldn't justify it, not even to himself and trying to only made him more disgusted with himself.
Sirius had gotten so bad that even teachers began to notice during their classes.
Professor McGonagall had held him back one day and attempted to get what was making him look so lifeless out of him. He told her, his head hanging, that he missed Remus, James and Peter and that it was his own fault then he left without another word.
She, of course, had been told by Dumbledore what had happened and had thought she had no sympathy for the boy. That was until she heard how broken he had sounded when he spoke of his friends.
Sirius was, after all, a good boy, he just had a cruel sense of humour sometimes, probably due to his horrific family.
She tried to speak to James about it but, although the boy looked just as unhappy about being separated from his friend, he was adamant that Sirius was not be forgiven, not anytime soon at least.
As the days wore on Professor McGonagall could see that his conviction was fading. She would catch James throwing concerned looks at the back of his former best friend's head or she would notice Remus opening and closing his mouth, on the point of saying something but swallowing his words instead and returning to his work.
It broke her heart to see her students suffering so much.