Sirius didn't make it back to the castle until nearly three in the morning, and he didn't get any sleep after that. However, life continued whether he wanted it to or not, and at seven fifty on the dot James's alarm went off and he sat up in his bed to make sure Sirius was up and getting ready. Sirius had agreed to meet Vance for one-on-one practice that morning at eight o'clock, which would be followed by a team practice scheduled at nine.

James looked startled to see Sirius already sitting up in bed, but he gratefully plopped back down onto his mattress, his head propped up on his elbow.

"I'm glad to see you're taking this seriously," he said, voice laced with sleep. "Vance really does need the reps."

Sirius's pillow hit James directly in the face.

"Shut up, Potter. If you care so much, you go practice with her."

James spluttered for a moment and then laughed, chucking the pillow back. He didn't bother to answer, as they had already argued about this and concluded (reluctantly on Sirius's part) that James was woefully out of practice as a Chaser, and their Keeper would be better off trying to block shots from Sirius than anyone else.

Sirius rose to dress with a groan, taking the time to stretch and feel the satisfying cracks of his shoulders and back before he bent to retrieve the robes he had unceremoniously dropped onto the floor next to his bed a scant few hours earlier. James had already fallen back to sleep when Sirius came out of the bathroom a few minutes later. Sirius had half a mind to hex him with terrible acne or Vanish all his hair or something, but after a moment's thought he decided that he wasn't really in the right mindset to start a prank war with James.

The clock in the common room had just stopped chiming eight when Sirius hit the last step. Emmeline Vance was standing impatiently by the portrait hole, her honey blonde hair swept into a high ponytail and her Comet 220 thrown over her shoulder.

She let out a snort of amusement when she caught sight of him.

"Nice, Black," she chirped, eyes sweeping over him. "Did you stay up all night shagging Edgecomb or something?"

"No, and I'll thank you to leave Janice out of it," he replied coldly.

Still, his free hand went to his hair to try to smooth the tangles and flyaways he'd gained from having Rabastan's fingers grasping at him, and then his own tossing and turning in bed the rest of the night. It hadn't occurred to him to fix it this morning. He hadn't brushed his teeth or looked in a mirror yet—he just hadn't cared enough to do any of that.

Vance's lips pursed for a moment, then her face smoothed and she shrugged. "Alright. That's fair."

Sirius followed her out of the portrait hole, flexing his hand, which he had just noticed was still throbbing from its collision with Rabastan's face the night before. It was funny how one could be so distracted by other things to not notice aching knuckles. He contemplated asking Vance if she'd mind taking a detour to the hospital wing before they headed outside to the pitch, but he really didn't want to give the girl anything else to wonder about or use against him so decided to just suck it up. If practice turned out to be too difficult, then he'd head to the infirmary later.

The good thing about practicing with Vance (maybe the only good thing about practicing with Vance) was that they barely had to talk to each other, if at all. She took to the air and did a few warm up maneuvers while Sirius went to the equipment shed to fetch a Quaffle. By the time Sirius mounted his Nimbus 1001, Vance had taken her position in front of the three rings on the other end of the pitch.

Sirius kicked off and entered a series of lazy spirals, performing a loose corkscrew until he was higher than the nearest tower in the stands. Just when he knew he'd annoyed Vance with his dawdling, he suddenly nosed into a dive and streaked towards the other side of the pitch, leveling out a few seconds before he wound up to take a throw at the bottom of the left-most ring.

Vance spun her broom around to block his throw, and at the last second Sirius jerked the nose of his broom upwards and sunk the Quaffle through the upper part of the center ring, just out of Vance's grasp.

He heard her huff in exasperation as she turned to retrieve the Quaffle from where it had landed in the stands.

The next time she was waiting for him to pull some sort of trick and managed to knock the Quaffle away with just the tips of her twigs.

They continued that way for another forty minutes, Sirius tossing difficult but manageable Quaffles and Vance stopping the vast majority of them. Every once in a while he did throw in an exceptionally difficult-to-block pass just to practice his own skills (and to prove to Vance that he could), but overall he was quite pleased with her progress and was sure that James would be ecstatic.

After one particularly difficult block, instead of tossing the Quaffle back to Sirius, Vance waved him over.

"Can you focus on the right ring?" she asked once he was within easy hearing distance. "I still feel a bit weak on that side."

Sirius easily assented to her request and had just reached out to take back the Quaffle when Vance gasped and dropped it in the air between them. Sirius watched it fall for a moment and turned to berate her, but she seemed to swoon and took a dangerous dip on her broom.

"Morgana's tit, Vance!" fell from Sirius's mouth as he reflexively lurched forward and grabbed the handle of her broom to steady it.

He was glad that he had a Nimbus. Had he a slower broom, she may have plummeted to the ground before he could catch her. He didn't like the girl, but he didn't want her dead. Besides, James would murder him if anything happened to her.

Vance leaned heavily against him and clutched at his robes, seemingly unconscious of what she was doing (or to whom she was clinging).

As he was easing them to the ground, Sirius caught sight of Professor McGonagall hurrying across the pitch with three men Sirius didn't recognize. Two of them were wearing the distinctive scarlet robes that Aurors wore when they wanted to be recognized, which went a long way towards explaining the constant murmur of "No, no, no…" from the insensible girl in his arms.

They landed heavily, with Sirius supporting most of Vance's weight. She was digging her fingernails into his bare forearm and pulling so hard on the front of his robes with her other hand that he was sure he'd have a friction burn on the side of his neck. He felt nothing but relief when the group of adults reached them, as Vance released him and all but threw herself into the arms of the one man not wearing Auror robes.

"Uncle Ernie," she cried, her tone reminding Sirius very much of how Regulus had sounded that Christmas several years earlier when he had been facing their grandfather's wrath after calling Sirius a blood traitor. Vance turned her face into her uncle's chest, and Sirius could barely hear her next words even though he was standing right next to them. "Please don't tell me!"

The man looked gutted as he patted her hair. "I'm so sorry, Emmie…."

Professor McGonagall's expression was severe, but her hand on Sirius's shoulder was gentle. He took the hint and, although he was insanely curious, swung both Vance's and his own broom over his opposite shoulder and let his head of house lead him away from the Vances and the Aurors.

"What's happened?" he asked, unable to resist the temptation.

McGonagall's lips pursed unpleasantly, but he knew his head of house well enough to recognize that she was more upset than angry.

"I shouldn't tell you, Mr. Black," she told him gravely, pausing as a high pitched scream sounded from behind them. "However, I expect that you will find out from the morning paper whether I do or not. Miss Vance's parents were killed in an attack last night."

Sirius took a deep breath in through his nose.

"Oh."

"Indeed," replied McGonagall.

Sirius appreciated her stoic silence as they made their way across the still-damp lawn towards the castle. He was too much in his own head to have managed even minimal conversation. The white flash of Rabastan's mask in the darkness replayed in his mind's eye over and over. He had known, of course, that Rabastan and his other friends and family were involved in the growing number of attacks and disappearances in the last year or two, but before it had always been an abstract sort of knowledge. He'd never known for sure that any of his loved ones had been involved in any particular attack, and until today he'd never had any personal connection to any of the victims That is, if his having spoken to Vance's parents once and having been present when she found out about their deaths could be called a personal connection.

He wondered if Rab or Bellatrix or Lucius or his Uncle Alphard or Dolohov or anyone else he knew had been the one to land the killing blows.

He had managed to pull himself together into a sense of detached acceptance by the time McGonagall led him through the castle's giant front doors. Sirius followed the professor into the Great Hall for breakfast rather than heading back to Gryffindor Tower. McGonagall reached out and gave his shoulder another squeeze before veering towards the staff table. James and Remus were sitting at the Gryffindor table, heads together and laughing about something, but Peter was nowhere to be seen this early on a Saturday morning.

James's eyebrows rose in surprise when Sirius sat down next to him.

"Finish early today?" he asked. Sirius could hear a mild rebuke in his tone. "I was going to gather the others in a few minutes and head down for team practice."

Sirius finished balancing the brooms against the bench next to him and then turned to lean his head in close to James's, waiting until Remus leaned in from James's other side so he'd only have to say it once.

"Vance's parents were killed last night. McGonagall and some Aurors just found us on the pitch a few minutes ago."

Remus's spoon fell from his fingers and clattered against his plate before landing with a heavy thunk on the table.

James not-quite-whispered, "What?!"

Suddenly the attention of every Gryffindor and Hufflepuff within earshot was on them. A flash of red caught Sirius's attention, and he turned in time to watch Lily Evans notice his presence from where she was sitting alone at the other end of the table. Their eyes locked for the briefest moment, and her eyebrows rose in confusion as her gaze slid past him and onto the two broomsticks next to him.

"They're monsters," snarled James. He was glaring at the students chatting and laughing at the Slytherin table on the opposite side of the Great Hall. "I'll bet they're laughing about it now. They're all planning to join up just as soon as they leave Hogwarts, if they haven't already."

Remus, who had gone even paler and more sickly looking than usual, shook his head slowly, as if he were unsure whether he actually wanted to argue with James's statement but was determined to do it anyway.

"The Slytherins didn't have anything to do with it—"

"Well, they would have if they could!" James declared a little more loudly than necessary. "And who's to say they didn't know about it? It's their parents and older brothers and such who are out there wearing masks! They shouldn't let families like that into Hogwarts at all—Dark wizards the lot of them!"

Remus jabbed his friend in the side rather viciously and growled out, "Not everyone is like their family."

James visibly startled and turned towards Sirius, as if he had only just realized that his words might apply to his friend. He waved an emphatic hand in Sirius's direction.

"Oh, obviously I don't mean you, mate. You're not like them."

"Yeah," mumbled Sirius. "I-I'm not."

What else could he do but agree? He couldn't exactly say that actually he probably knew as much about the Death Eaters as any Slytherin did, and he was exponentially more upset at his Death Eater family for meddling in his affairs with his Death Eater lover than he was for them being Death Eaters in the first place. Fortunately, no one seemed to require any further response from him.

He could vaguely hear James informing the people nearest them what had happened.

Sirius abruptly stood from the table and made his way down the aisle between the Gryffindor and Hufflepuff tables. Voices seemed to follow him as he went, but to Sirius it seemed like he was underneath the surface of the black lake and the noise was no more than a wave passing across the surface above him. He tried to avoid their stares as well, keeping his eyes on the doors to the Great Hall and studiously avoiding the upturned faces on either side of him, feeling the entire time like he was on the verge of either crying or throwing up.

He barely managed to barrel through the middle of a group of students who were coming through the doors at the same time he was trying to exit and turn the corner so that he was out of sight before his stomach lurched and he vomited onto the stone floor.

Sirius had barely eaten anything at dinner the night before and hadn't had anything for breakfast, but his body continued to shake and heave despite his stomach having nothing left to give. As the spasms continued, it was all he could do to hunch over and prop himself up against the cold stone wall without collapsing.

A soft hand touched the small of his back and rubbed upwards gently.

"Do you need to go to the infirmary?"

Sirius couldn't speak, as he was too busy taking giant gulps of air, but he shook his head as emphatically as he could manage.

"Okay," said Janice.

She mercifully remained silent after that while she rubbed small, soothing circles between his shoulder blades with one hand. With the other she brought up her wand to Vanish the mess he'd made and cast a cleaning charm at his shoes and trousers. Sirius was afraid that if he tried to thank her that he would only set himself off again, so he kept his mouth firmly shut and concentrated on taking slow, deep breaths in through his nose.

They were making a spectacle for every student that passed through the entrance hall, but Sirius supposed he could thank his reputation for merciless retaliation for none of them having the bollocks to approach.

Finally, he felt like he wasn't going to start dry heaving again if he moved, so he tentatively straightened his spine until he was standing upright. Janice's hand fell to the small of his back, still rubbing the same circles. Sirius released his wand from its holster and performed a freshening spell on his mouth, twice for good measure, then let the wand go back into his sleeve and wrapped his arm around Janice's shoulders.

He seriously considered taking her down to the room he used to practice in the dungeons, as it was much closer, but ultimately he didn't want her to know about it. Instead, they exited the castle from the corridor running along the back side of the Great Hall and ambled down the cloister in silence. The cold, mid-October air was invigorating to Sirius, but Janice was shivering by the time they had circled the entire courtyard and entered the nondescript wooden door that led into the base of the clock tower.

The trip up the rickety wooden ladder was familiar to them, although they used it much less frequently than the narrow corridors that connected the tower to the castle from the third and fourth floors. Once they reached the landing on the third floor, there were more substantial wooden steps going all the way up to the fifth floor, where they would be able to hear anyone coming from the floors below and could look through the clock face out across the grounds and the lake.

Sirius wordlessly cast a spell to warm the area and then another to soften the plank floor and make it feel as if they were sitting on a proper sofa. He sank down with his back against the wall, and Janice took up her customary position at his side.

Finally, after she could obviously contain herself no longer, Janice asked, "Do you… want to talk about it?"

"No," he replied honestly, "but, but I think…"

What was he supposed to say? Oh, it's nothing, just my not-boyfriend broke up with me last night even though I all but bent over in invitation, and then he went and killed our classmate's parents. Or maybe it was my uncle or cousin who killed them. How was your night? Yeah, he could see her taking that well. Sirius sucked his lower lip between his teeth.

"I-I don't want to pressure you," she ventured quietly, "but maybe you need to talk about it. By now the whole school knows that something is wrong, so whatever it is won't be a secret anyway."

Sirius snorted rather inelegantly. "Sure, they know by now that Vance's parents are dead."

They just didn't know anything else.

Janice audibly sucked in a breath. Obviously she hadn't heard the news before she ran after him.

"Yeah, they were killed by Death Eaters last night. McGonagall brought some Aurors out to the pitch to tell her. " He ran a hand through his hair. "Probably some other people were killed too, but McGonagall only mentioned Vance's parents."

"That, that's terrible…."

Sirius turned to face her and wrapped his hand firmly around her bicep. "Can you keep a secret, Janice?"

"I… oh…" Her expression said that she wasn't sure she wanted to know whatever he wanted to tell her, but after a few moments she set her jaw and reached up to place her free hand on his shoulder. She squeezed gently. "Of course."

Sirius knew that this was a terrible idea, but he had been holding everything in for ages. The only people who knew most of it were Uncle Alphard, who had insisted that he repress all of his feelings to make himself a better Occulumens, and Rabastan, who had walked away from him. He couldn't tell Janice everything, of course, or anything even approaching everything, but he could tell her something.

He swallowed his nerves and looked into her warm eyes. "I knew that an attack was happening last night."

Her eyes widened as she processed what he'd said. Finally, her voice a bit shaky, she asked, "Your family told you?"

"No, it was… a friend."

"Oh," she replied.

"He works with some of my family, though," he clarified a bit miserably.

"They're…" she trailed off and bit her full bottom lip for a moment, the natural pink color going white while she held it between her teeth to gather her thoughts. Or maybe to gather her courage. "They're recruiting you, aren't they?"

"Yes. No." A single, humorless laugh escaped from somewhere in the back of his throat. "Some of them are, but my grandfather has forbidden me from joining up. My cousins and their friends will probably do something awful to me if I say I don't want to be a Death Eater, but my grandfather will disinherit me if I join. I don't even know whether I'd want to!" he declared, his voice raising a bit hysterically. "I know that half-bloods and mudbloods aren't as bad as my family say—I know that! But, but they do persecute every bit of magic they don't understand as Dark and evil, and they risk all of us every time we have to tell their families about magic or they decide to marry a Muggle."

"Oh, Sirius…"

"I'm not saying that Mudbloods and blood traitors deserve to die," he plowed ahead, "but I also can't blame the Death Eaters for wanting things to change. And how much better are the Light wizards anyway? If James had his way then I'd never have been let into Hogwarts in the first place, because I come from a family of Dark wizards. And he isn't alone."

Janice lifted herself onto her knees and pulled him against her chest, her arms wrapping around him. Sirius gratefully rested his head in the valley between her generous breasts and wound his arms around her waist.

"My friends don't understand why I would want to have any contact with my family," he continued quietly. "My family are just, just Dark. Evil. You know. Maybe James is right. A lot of my family and my friends from Slytherin are Death Eaters or at least support that way of thinking. But they're… I love them."

Or at least he loved some of them. At the moment he wouldn't mind if Bellatrix and Narcissa got strangled by Venomous Tentacula.

Once of Janice's hands found its way to the back of his head, and she cradled him against her. "I'm so sorry."

"I, I care about James and Remus and Mr. and Mrs. Potter, too, not just my family and my friends in Slytherin," he continued, quite unable to stop now that he'd got started.

"I know you do," said Janice. "Do you remember that night in second year when you told me you'd learned that something you had been told all your life was a lie? If you didn't care about your friends, you wouldn't have been that open to hearing whatever it was they told you."

Sirius did remember that night. He had just found out that Remus was a werewolf, and he had been struggling between his fear and the urge to write his father immediately, and the knowledge that he'd spent a year and a half in the same dorm with Remus and considered him a friend.

He let out a miserable sigh. "No matter what I do I'll be a traitor to someone."

Sirius realized that he was crying. He jerked away from his girlfriend in embarrassment, though what he thought he was going to do to make Janice not notice his tears, he wasn't sure. She did not release him and let him go, but brought one hand up to wipe his tears away with her fingers.

He smiled sheepishly. "Throwing up and crying all in the same morning—I must look horrible."

"You do resemble a pomegranate," she told him as she trailed her fingers up his neck and pushed his hair out of his red-splotched face. In response to his bark of laughter, she nodded sagely. "But you're the most handsome pomegranate who's ever thrown up on my shoes or cried on me."

Before Sirius could begin to think up a response, she had captured his mouth with hers. He was surprised, but it only took a handful of seconds for him to sink into the kiss as if he'd been planning it all along. Janice's lip gloss tasted of some unidentifiable mixture of ingredients meant to resemble fruit, and he could also taste the raspberry jam she'd had at breakfast and the lingering minty aftertaste of his freshening spell and the salt of his own tears. Her fingers were gentle and sure as they combed through his hair, and the give of her soft breasts against the hard planes of his chest was both erotic and somehow inexplicably soothing.

It felt good, and there weren't many things at the moment that made him feel good.

Somewhere in the back of his mind where his inner thoughts sounded unsettlingly like his grandfather, Sirius questioned how he could have been ready to have sex with Rabastan and have been so soundly denied mere hours before, and how he could feel so angry and heartbroken, only to find himself in this situation with Janice now. But the part of his mind that was hurting from the months of silence and the cruel dismissal of the night before overrode any other desire he may have had to berate himself.

Rabastan had made his choice. He had suffered from what Bellatrix had done to him, and sure he had been between a rock and a hard place, but he could have decided to brave their families' anger. Or at least to ask Sirius what his thoughts were before unilaterally announcing that it was over between them. Probably for forever, no matter what empty promises he tried to make.

At least Janice wanted him and made it obvious that she did. At least she treated him like he was capable of making decisions on his own without being treated like a child. Why should he deny himself pleasure with her? Especially not when Rabastan had been spurning Sirius's sexual advances for months. If anything, he should feel bad that he'd been cheating on Janice with Rabastan!

As it turned out, this wasn't going to be the occasion when he needed to sort out his feelings or make up his mind. Janice pulled away from him almost as abruptly as she had kissed him in the first place.

"Come on," she said. "I think that what you need is rest. Why don't we go see Madam Pomfrey and ask for a Dreamless Sleep Potion?"

Sirius wrapped his fingers around her wrist before she could pull further away. "Forget Madam Pomfrey. Sit here with me?"

The absolute last thing he wanted was to take himself to the infirmary, which would get around to the entire castle before the matron had time to force him into a bed. It was bad enough that everybody surely already knew about what had happened in the entrance hall. Most of all, he wasn't ready to face his friends—Remus and Peter might respect his wish not to talk, but James would not. Especially not since Sirius had been acting more than strange for weeks now.

Fortunately Janice did as he asked. Even more fortunately, she seemed to realize that he didn't want to talk anymore. She curled up next to him and pulled one of his hands into her lap. Sirius released a deep breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding and let himself lean against her.

By the evening prior to their Quidditch match against Slytherin, Sirius was so irritable that the denizens of Hogwarts were giving him almost as wide a berth as anyone had ever given Bellatrix. Sirius's prediction that the entire castle would know about his episode before the end of breakfast had come true in spades, and he had spent the entire rest of the week fending off concerned questions and curious glances and loud whispers.

It was almost as if Sirius Black reacting poorly to Emmeline Vance's parents being murdered was a bigger deal than Emmeline Vance's parents being murdered.

Of course, Sirius was more popular and by far more notorious among their fellow Hogwarts students than Vance had ever been, and he was actually present for people to gossip about, whereas Vance had been at home with her uncle since the morning she'd found out...

Still, Sirius thought the entire thing was ridiculous.

Thus, he was in a particularly dark mood that Thursday evening as they got in one last desperate practice. It was cold, and there was a steady mixture of rain and ice pelting the Gryffindor Quidditch team. Slytherin had not been gracious about Vance's situation and had not agreed to postpone their match until Gryffindor's Keeper could return. Sirius couldn't blame them, and although James was as righteously angry and bent on the evilness of Slytherins as Sirius had ever seen him, he was quite sure that if the situation had been reversed James wouldn't have agreed to postpone the game either.

As it was, this left the Gryffindors in the difficult situation of trying to get their backup Keeper, a third-year named Euan, up to scratch within a week. Sirius didn't think the boy would manage to be marginally competent even if they had a month to train him. He missed every Quaffle that was thrown outside of his immediate arm span, and on one occasion he had even been clobbered in the face by one that Sirius threw directly at him. But the kid was clearly doing his best and had made some small improvements.

When James berated him, the boy performed even worse than he did naturally.

"James, you're not helping, mate," Sirius felt compelled to inform his friend after James had flown from across the pitch to inform their Keeper exactly what he was doing wrong. "Can't you tell that you just make him more nervous?"

James did not bother to turn his broom but whipped his head around to glare accusingly at Sirius.

"I'm not helping?! If this is the best he can do after a week practicing with you, then obviously you're not helping!"

Sirius swallowed down a nasty retort. Instead, he tried to infuse his voice with a calm he didn't feel. "We all know that Euan isn't Vance, but we've both worked as hard as we can to make sure he's ready for tomorrow."

"Well it isn't good enough!" cried James. "If I thought you'd bollocks it up this badly, I'd have taken over his practices myself!"

By now the rest of the team had formed a loose semicircle around their leaders and their backup Keeper. Greg Towler, one of Sirius's fellow Chasers, was pursing his lips and looking between Sirius and James in apparent indecision. Arthur Midgen's spotty face had flushed pink all over.

Sirius stared James down until ultimately his friend blinked and, if the expression on his face was anything to judge by, realized that he may have made a rather poor decision.

"Sirius, mate..." he began, then trailed off, clearly unsure what to say.

"No, you're right," said Sirius, his voice deathly calm. "Since you're so much better than me, I'm sure you'll do fine playing both Chaser and Seeker by yourself. I quit."

He didn't throw the Quaffle particularly hard, but they were within a few meters of each other and James clearly wasn't expecting the ball to suddenly fly right at him. It hit his nose with a sickening crunch. He yelped and let go of his broom to raise his hands to his face, but Sirius didn't see the result as he was already halfway to the ground. There were shouts behind him, but they quickly faded away as he flew his Nimbus at high speed across the lawn towards the nearest entrance into the castle, his toes skimming just above the manicured grass.

Given these events, when Sirius trudged into the common room he was in absolutely no mood to tolerate it when Gawain Robards, the fat boy they had kicked out of his compartment on the Hogwarts Express, directly challenged him over a seat in front of the fireplace.

"And what are you going to do if I don't move?" he demanded angrily, his high voice sounding particularly young and annoying. "Throw up on me?"

The boy had told the story of what had happened on the Hogwarts Express far and wide, though not, to Sirius's mild surprise, to any professors. No one had paid him much mind or seemed to care what the Marauders had done to him, probably because Gawain Robards was a bully to anyone smaller than him (which included all of his own year mates, a lot of the second years, and a few unfortunate third years) and everybody thought he deserved what he got.

Apparently he had been clinging to his resentment since the start of term, because he took more pleasure than anybody in snickering behind his hand whenever Sirius passed by and making retching noises whenever he was sure Sirius wasn't anywhere nearby.

Sirius had obviously ignored this behavior. It was not worth his time even to acknowledge. Unfortunately, it seemed that Robards had taken his lack of response as some sort of encouragement to push his luck, and he had chosen the entirely worst time to do it.

Sirius's world narrowed to a white hot brand of fury.

He didn't even realize that anyone was screaming until somebody latched onto his arm and tried to physically forced him to lower his wand from the first year who was gagging and heaving on the rug in front of the fireplace.

"Stop it! Sirius, stop!" the person yelled into his ear, and Sirius turned his head a fraction and realized that it was Remus.

Lily Evans was standing at Remus's elbow with a look on her face caught somewhere between disgust and fear. Still, her hand was soft and gentle when she grasped Sirius's wrist, and her voice only betrayed a glimmer of her feelings.

"Let him go, Black," she urged quietly but firmly. When he didn't immediately comply, she tugged at his arm. "Come on, Sirius. He can't breathe. He's about to pass out."

He did so reluctantly, but Sirius countered the vomiting curse he'd been holding the first year under for Salazar only knew how long. The counter curse was immediately met by a wheezy intake of breath by Robards, which he released almost immediately in a fit of choking coughs and sobs. He made no move to remove himself from the mess he was laying in. Sirius had never been under the curse, but he imagined that Robard's throat and nostrils were so raw that breathing was painful.

"Do you still think it's funny, Robards?" demanded Sirius.

The first year made a high-pitched, fearful sound that Sirius chose to interpret as a no. Nobody else in the common room made a sound. Sirius shook off Evans's and Remus's hands and turned to take in all of their pale faces.

"Anyone else?" he directed to the whole room, meeting a few of their eyes, which they immediately averted.

Evans had taken the opportunity to cast a few cleaning charms on Robards and his immediate surroundings, and when Sirius turned back towards them she was knelt down beside the boy trying to help him up.

"I'll have to take him to the hospital wing," she said, the firelight catching in her bright hair as she turned her judgmental look on Sirius. "There's no way you can avoid Professor McGonagall finding out about this."

Sirius let out a sound that somewhat resembled a laugh.

"Do whatever you want, Evans. I swear to Merlin, I don't give a fuck."

Evans, of course, did take Robards to the hospital wing, and word did get around to McGonagall almost as soon as they crossed the threshold. Sirius had gone upstairs and taken a long shower, which had gone a long way towards calming him down. When he had gone back to their dormitory, he found James waiting for him. His nose had clearly been fixed, but his face was still chalk white.

"McGonagall's in the common room waiting for you," he announced. "I guess it's a good thing I volunteered to come get you. She might have died of shock if she'd gotten an eyeful like this."

Sirius didn't respond to the announcement or to the joke. He dropped his towel silently and stooped to dig a pair of pants out of his trunk.

James cleared his throat awkwardly.

"We told her and Pomfrey that my nose was just a Quidditch accident. I don't they think believed it, but the entire team backed you up so there's nothing they can do about it." He paused for long enough to determine that Sirius still wasn't going to say anything, then he sighed. "I'm sorry, Sirius. I was a jerk."

"You are a jerk."

James snorted. "Yeah. That's fair. I, I know that I go a bit overboard about the team, but I didn't mean what I said. And the rest of the team told me that if you go then they go, so I think they feel the same way."

Sirius shrugged a t-shirt over his head and finally turned to look at his friend's contrite face. "I wish I had more time to talk about how sorry you are, but I have to go get expelled now."

"You don't think she'll really expel you?" James cried incredulously as he trotted to keep up with Sirius's quick pace down the stairs. "I only got a month of detention for fighting with Snivellus."

"Well, you were fighting with Snape on equal ground, yeah? I attacked a helpless first year."

Sirius had more or less resigned himself to getting kicked out of Hogwarts. He'd been the first Black to get sorted into Gryffindor, so why not go all out and be the first to get expelled? His family would be humiliated, but he thought it might actually end up being a good thing—they'd have to either send him to Durmstrang or have him tutored at home, and either way he'd be free to practice whatever magic he liked and wouldn't have to pretend like he was completely okay with consorting with mudbloods or like he didn't want anything to do with his family.

Professor McGonagall had managed to clear out the half of the common room nearest the portrait hole. She was standing tall and severe near the exit, all-but glaring at him as he walked across the stone floor toward her. The other students were all huddled on the other side of the room, some pretending to play chess or do schoolwork but most openly staring.

Sirius held his head straight and proud, though he was aware of the trickle of water droplets down the side of his neck from his still-damp hair and that he was underdressed in just a t-shirt and a pair of loose-fitting sweatpants. If he was going to be expelled, he certainly wasn't going to dress up for the occasion.

"Mr. Black."

That was all McGonagall said before she motioned for him to go out of the portrait hole ahead of her.

He went without comment, figuring that at this point there was nothing he could say or do that would change the outcome. His head of house didn't seem to have anything to say to him either. They walked all the way from the entrance to Gryffindor Tower on the seventh floor to the entrance hall without a word being spoken, which was fine with Sirius. He was happy to shiver in silence in the drafty corridors, as it gave his mind something else to focus on besides his bleak mood and his upcoming removal from the castle.

"Mr. Black," the deputy headmistress finally said, and for a moment Sirius naturally assumed that she was addressing him, "I see that you have already arrived. I hope you haven't been waiting long."

Sirius startled and looked across the darkened entrance hall in growing horror as the tall figure approached. Orion Black did not look pleased to be there. He looked furious, and the way the dimly flickering candlelight illuminated part of his face and cast the rest in shadow made him look all the more sinister.

He curled his lips into a frown. "Hogwarts' hospitality leaves something to be desired. The groundskeeper—Haggard, was it?—left me standing alone in this dark hall some minutes ago."

Of course, Orion was perfectly capable of having lit the candelabras himself if he had been so inclined, but Sirius supposed that would have defeated his purpose.

Professor McGonagall got half a syllable out of her mouth in response before Orion finally let his gaze sweep down to his son standing slightly behind the woman, and he cut her off with an angry hiss.

"Great Merlin, did you drag the boy here straight from the bath? Is this your idea of discipline?"

Sirius didn't catch her response, if she made any, because a warm rush of air engulfed his head and there was the flapping of fabric as a cloak materialized from thin air and settled around him. The next thing he knew, his father's arm was draped across his shoulders and he was being led down the corridor that ran next to the grand staircase, where the deputy headmistress's office was located. If it could he called an office—it was only half the size, at best, of his father's office at Grimmauld Place, and appeared rather more like a sitting room than a proper study.

Sirius sat stiffly on the edge of a chair positioned in front of the enormous fireplace, which would have been more suited to a room three times larger. He was glad for the added warmth.

"Mr. Black, your behavior is simply unacceptable," began Professor McGonagall. "We do not tolerate cursing other students."

Sirius did not think that a response was required to such a statement. However, the woman stopped talking and he looked away from the dancing flames to find her glaring at him, so he offered a bland, "I know."

"Is that all you have to say?" she demanded, her Scottish accent creeping into her voice a bit more than usual.

"Yes," he replied in the same dull tone as before.

Her lips pursed and her nostrils flared. "I had hoped that you planned to explain yourself!"

Sirius had tried to keep his cool, he really had, but he was rapidly failing. He wanted to ask his head of house why she hadn't bothered to curb his housemates' curiosity or the rumors and whispers that followed him around the school, which even the professors had to have heard, or why she hadn't bothered to pull him aside and ask him how he was doing. He wanted to know why she only cared after he finally lost it.

Orion watched the emotions play across his son's eyes for a moment and nudged Sirius's foot rather hard with his own, which was enough to stop the words from forming on his tongue.

Sirius slouched back into his chair and crossed him arms.

"This is irrelevant and, frankly, tiresome," declared Orion in the same supercilious tone he used with less than accommodating shopkeepers and the undesirable element that sometimes begged him for money, which drew McGonagall's attention back to himself. "Would his explanation affect the outcome of this meeting? I think not, and I would prefer to move things along so that I can take Sirius home."

Even though he had known it was coming, Sirius's stomach lurched and then did a nosedive.

"I'm to be expelled then?" He was impressed with himself that he managed to keep his voice calm and even.

Professor McGonagall turned narrowed eyes back on him, and although the pause before she spoke was likely only a few seconds long it felt interminable to Sirius.

"Not today, Mr. Black. You are suspended for one week, however, and I hope that you use that time to gain control over your temper."

Sirius barely heard what she said after she announced his punishment, he was so relieved. Only a suspension? No matter about his stiff upper lip and what he had told himself while he'd been marching to his fate about how being expelled would be a blessing in disguise, now that he knew he would be coming back to Hogwarts he let all of that fly out the window. Things were difficult and he didn't know how to handle the situation between his friends and his family and half the time he wanted to forego Quaffles and just beat James over the head with a Beater's bat, but he loved Hogwarts and he loved his friends.

"In addition," she continued, and Sirius struggled to take in what she was saying, "you will be banned from Hogsmeade trips for the rest of the school year."

Sirius hardly minded, since he could go into the village whenever he wanted through the secret tunnel he and James had discovered in third year. And things would get even easier when he mastered his Animagus transformation. Janice would be the person most disappointed by Sirius having his Hogsmeade privileges revoked, but he would think of something to make it up to her.

He noted with a glimmer of amusement that McGonagall hadn't suspended him from the Quidditch team, which would have been a bigger blow to him (despite his furious outburst earlier) but also to McGonagall herself. For one insane moment he considered asking her whether he would also be suspended from Quidditch just to see what she would say, but he thought better of it and sunk deeper into his chair to watch his father and the deputy headmistress signed all of the necessary paperwork.

They were able to Floo directly from McGonagall's office. Orion grumbled unpleasantly that it would have been nice to be able to Floo directly to Hogwarts rather than having to trudge up to the castle from the front gate in the cold, but Sirius knew better than to respond and he said it too lowly for McGonagall to hear.

Walburga was waiting for Sirius when he stepped out of the Floo. She was perched anxiously on the edge of a gray velvet sofa, which Sirius peripherally recognized as a new addition, but at the sight of him she leapt up with none of her usual grace. She was wearing a lacy dressing gown over a green silk nightdress, with her feet clad not in her usual heels but in delicate slippers that matched her dressing gown. Her gleaming black hair was hanging over her shoulders in two heavy plaits, and her lips lacked their usual ruby hue.

They must have received Professor McGonagall's owl as they were getting ready for bed. Sirius couldn't remember ever having seen his mother in such a state of undress; even when he had been very young, Kreacher had always taken care of him during the night instead of his parents.

She stopped in front of him and swept her gaze over his long, unkempt hair, which he could only imagine looked absolutely awful after his father had magically dried it, and down to the t-shirt and sweatpants visible under his cloak.

"Sirius," she said his name as if testing it out on her tongue for the first time, and he couldn't tell whether she was angry or not. "What happened?"

"He's been suspended for a week," supplied her husband as he stepped out of the fireplace. "I told you they wouldn't expel him."

Walburga leaned around Sirius to glare at Orion, and Sirius was struck by the fact that he was now almost a full two heads taller than her so that she could no longer see over his head or even his shoulder.

"I knew that," she insisted, although Sirius suspected that she had immediately been thrown into hysterics over the possibility of him being expelled, even if she would never admit it. "I mean what possessed you to curse a younger student in front of witnesses?"

It did not go unnoted that she clearly didn't care that he had cursed a first year, just that he had been seen doing it. And why should she care, when she had taught him most of the curses he knew? Sirius felt a not entirely welcome rush of affection.

Sirius had no intention at all of trying to explain to his parents everything he'd been stressing out about over the past week. He let out a heavy breath through his nose. "I lost my temper. That's all. I don't even really care about Robards, but he was in the wrong place at the wrong time."

Orion made an undignified, exasperated noise that surprised his son and earned him another half-hearted glare from his wife.

"Should we be worried that losing your temper and consequently losing control of your actions is becoming a habit, Sirius?" he asked.

It took Sirius a good few seconds to realize what his father was talking about. A startled laugh escaped his throat.

"No. You've never asked me about it, but if you had I would have told you that I meant to hurt the dueling instructor. I admit it was impulsive and ill thought out, but I meant to do it."

It was probably a sign of how fucked up his entire family was that the look his parents shared at that revelation was one of relief.