Chapter 12 - 2.2 or "What Do I Need Regulus For, Anyway?"
The Great Hall was adorned with its usual splendid decorations for the start of term feast when the students began pouring in, having just been delivered by the horseless carriages through a torrential downpour. Hundreds upon hundreds of candles floated above the house tables, flickering light off the golden plates and goblets that sat gleaming on the polished wood. The enchanted ceiling swirled with dark clouds and, every so often, lit up with flashes of violent lightning. Sirius followed Remus toward the Gryffindor table and, despite the loud cracks of thunder and the rain water that had snuck into his shoes, a sense of peace flowed through him.
He was home at last.
"Psst, Sirius," hissed James, prodding him in the back, "it's Snivellus."
Sirius turned and saw Snape making his way toward the end of the Slytherin table. Perhaps he had not been able to secure an umbrella from the carriages, as water dripped from his greasy hair and onto the wet shoulders of his black school robes. He looked rather miserable.
"What do you reckon?" James asked. "Try out that Tripping Jinx?"
Sirius glanced up at the staff table, but there were so many students walking about that there was no way the teachers would be able to spot them. He nodded. "Better make it quick, though. The sorting's about to start."
James pointed his wand at Snape and whispered, "Gradius." Snape immediately tumbled forward, knocking several Slytherins down around him.
"Watch where you're going, Snape!" they heard Mulciber shout, brushing off his robes angrily.
James and Sirius barely had time to laugh at the situation before James tripped as well, sprawling to the ground most ungracefully. He looked around indignantly to find Lily Evans standing over him with her wand out, an unabashed smile on her face.
"Don't worry, Potter," she said loudly, "you'll learn to walk and talk at the same time…eventually." And with that, she strolled happily to the other end of the Gryffindor table and took a seat next to Adin Balini.
James jumped off the ground as the students around him laughed at Lily's gibe.
"What'd she do that for?" he asked his friends as they found seats at the table.
"Well what'd you trip Snape for?" asked Remus.
James stared at him, his mouth gaping open comically.
"Because – because it's Snape!" he sputtered. "And I've been wanting to try that Tripping Jinx out for ages now…"
"Maybe Lily's been practicing it this summer too!" suggested Peter.
James frowned, looking very put out indeed. Sirius had more important things to worry about, though. Professor McGonagall had just entered the Great Hall, leading the line of first years toward the Sorting Hat. Craning his neck, Sirius was able to spot Regulus, standing nervously next to the boys he had ridden the train with. The Sorting Hat broke into song, but Sirius barely paid attention; he was almost more nervous than he had been last year at his own sorting. The stirrings of hope that he had unearthed on the train ride once again pulled at him. He could see it – Regulus being sorted into Gryffindor, Regulus and Sirius together starting the new Black legacy, his parents realizing that Gryffindor was not an abomination and accepting the deviating path for both of their sons…
The hat finished its song to loud applause from the crowd. Underneath the table, Sirius crossed all of his fingers.
"Balini, Kaia!"
Adin's younger sister made her way to the front of the line and put on the hat.
"GRYFFINDOR!" the hat bellowed. The Gryffindor table erupted into cheers as Kaia, looking immensely relieved, hurried over to sit with Adin and Lily.
"Black, Regulus!"
It seemed to take an eternity, Sirius thought, for Regulus to make his way to the front. Sirius held his breath when his little brother disappeared under the hat, which was much too big for his head. He heard Peter whisper something to Remus, felt James shift on the bench beside him, but Sirius paid them no attention. He stared at Regulus hard, hoping, willing the hat to place him in Gryffindor…
"SLYTHERIN!"
Sirius let out the breath he had been holding with a whoosh. It felt as if he had been punched in the stomach. He watched as Regulus walked over to the Slytherin table and sat next to Marshall Avery and Evan Rosier, watched as they patted him on the back, clapped and cheered for him, watched as Avery looked up, his eyes meeting Sirius's in a look that indicated a sort of vindictive triumph…
"Are you okay, Sirius?" James whispered, as "Crowe, Rebecca" became the first new Hufflepuff.
Sirius swallowed hard, tearing his eyes away from the sickening scene at the Slytherin table to look at his friends, who were all staring back at him anxiously. He tried to smile at them, to brush it off with the same air of nonchalance that he had perfected the previous year, but it felt strained and unnatural.
"Of course," he said in a funny voice. "Why wouldn't I be? Everyone expected it, really. My parents will sure be pleased."
None of them spoke for the rest of the sorting. When the food appeared on the golden platters and the rest of the students dug in voraciously, Sirius merely picked at his dinner. His stomach churned queasily and he suddenly had no appetite. Throughout the feast, so intent was he in his disappointment, that he barely even listened to the conversations taking place around him.
"Who's that up at the staff table, next to Slughorn?" Peter asked as the pudding was cleared away. Sirius looked up from the glass of pumpkin juice he had been staring into. A small man with big ears and thick glasses was indeed sitting next to Professor Slughorn, eating his trifle with enthusiastic vigor.
"I don't know," said Remus, his eyes traveling down the table. "He must be new. Who's missing?"
"Wait a minute," James said, standing to get a better view of the professors. "Where's old Cyclops?"
"Yeah, you're right, Eldon's missing!"
Newlyn Gallit, a sixth-year prefect who was sitting on the other side of James, had overheard their conversation and turned toward them.
"You didn't hear?" he said, trying to contain a laugh. "Eldon resigned. She and Pringle ran off together!"
"You're joking!"
"I'm not!" said Newlyn, letting out a chuckle. "They both turned in their resignations to Dumbledore at the end of last term. Told him they were eloping! I heard it from Linus Merriweather, who got Head Boy this year."
"You mean Pringle's gone too?" asked Sirius, his interest finally piqued enough to warrant speaking. He and James had gotten on Pringle's bad side the year before and had spent countless hours in detention with him, sharpening the knives and screws in his office.
"Yep. They got some new bloke, but I haven't heard anything about him. I bet Dumbledore will say something when he gives his notices. He usually does."
"Linus Merriweather got Head Boy, then?" asked Remus thoughtfully. "Isn't he a Gryffindor too?"
Newlyn grinned and nodded. "You should have seen Malfoy in the prefects' meeting earlier today, he looked like he was going to spit nails. This is the second year in a row the Head Boy's been a Gryffindor, and Merriweather wasn't even a prefect last year, to really add insult to Malfoy's injury…"
"I thought the Heads were always prefects first," said Peter. "I thought that's how it worked."
Newlyn shrugged. "Dumbledore doesn't always follow the rules does he? Anyhow, I'm hoping that Merriweather doesn't hurt my chances at Head Boy next year, though the Slytherins might revolt if Dumbledore goes Gryffindor for the third year in a row." He paused and glanced up at the head table. "Oh look, here he goes now…"
The boys all turned and watched as Dumbledore rose from the staff table. At once, the chatter in the Great Hall died out, every head turned toward him expectantly. The only sounds were a low rumbling of thunder and the rain lashing against the castle's windows.
"Welcome to another year at Hogwarts!" Dumbledore said, beaming around at them all. "Now that your stomachs are sufficiently stuffed and your eyelids are sufficiently heavy, I have a few announcements to make. First, all students are to remember that the forest on the grounds is strictly off-limits, hence its moniker, the Forbidden Forest. Secondly, I would like to introduce two new members of our staff. Mr. Argus Filch will be filling the role of caretaker, as Mr. Pringle has left us."
Dumbledore gestured to a pouchy looking man who stood at the end of the hall in a moldy tailcoat. A dust-colored cat circled his feet.
"Just think of all the fun we can have messing with him," James whispered to Sirius while the applause for Filch died down.
"Additionally, as Professor Eldon also left in search of, er, other pursuits," Dumbledore continued, the corners of his mouth twitching, "I am pleased to announce that Professor Philpott will be stepping in to teach Defense Against the Dark Arts."
"He looks like a bit of an idiot, doesn't he?" said James. Sirius had to agree, seeing as how Professor Philpott was biting his fingernails and giggling nervously at the applause for him.
"Well, you have heard an old man's ramblings for long enough, then," said Dumbledore. "And you must be tip top for classes tomorrow, so off to bed you go."
The sound of the rain on the windows was at once drowned out by the noise of benches being pushed back as students clambered to their feet, chattering excitedly with their friends. Sirius followed James, Peter, and Remus as the slow swell of the crowd propelled them toward the door of the Great Hall. It was only just after they made their way into the entrance hall that they passed very close to Regulus, who was walking with Nott and Montague. He tried to get Sirius's attention, but Sirius pointedly ignored him.
"Don't worry, Black," said a cold voice from behind them. Turning, he found Avery, flanked by Wilkes and Mulciber, sneering at them. "We Slytherins will take real good care of him. I daresay we will become the best of mates."
James and Remus grabbed either of Sirius's arms as he made to jump on Avery. The Slytherins, laughing, disappeared down the corridor leading to the dungeons.
"I'll kill him," Sirius growled to no one in particular.
"Don't listen to them," Remus said as they started up the marble staircase. "They're just trying to get a rise out of you."
Sirius did not give any indication that he had heard Remus, and, indeed, the blood was thundering so loudly in his ears that it was surprising that he could hear anything else.
"How about Eldon and Pringle running off together, eh?" said James after a minute, obviously trying to lighten the mood.
"Old Pringle must have a think for cyclopses," said Peter, laughing.
"Or maybe Eldon has a thing for chains and screws," James said.
"Eurgh!"
"Gross!"
Sirius walked silently, following his friends up to Gryffindor Tower. Why was he surprised, really? It had been delusional to think that Regulus would be sorted anywhere other than Slytherin. Regulus had always been the good son…had never shown any desire to go against his family or to think for himself. But now he was stuck with all of those nasty purebloods, with Snape and Avery and Mulciber and all the other boys whom Sirius loathed so viciously. For a few hours, a few glorious hours, Sirius had allowed himself to believe that maybe there was a chance that he wouldn't be alone anymore…
Before Sirius realized it, he was climbing through the portrait hole and directly up the stairs to the second-year boys' dormitory. The others were all talking happily, changing out of their robes and getting ready for bed, but Sirius didn't feel remotely tired. He knew that attempting to sleep anytime soon would be worthless – he was simply too angry. Angry at Regulus, at his family, at the Slytherins, and angry at himself for caring.
The Sorting Hat's bellow rang through his head, mingling with the words of his mother and father, his cousins, the Slytherins…
"SLYTHERIN!"
"You are an embarrassment to your mother and me and to the name of Black."
A rage unlike any he could remember broke through him, boiling in the pit of his stomach like hot lava. He kept seeing Regulus with the hat on…running over to the applauding Slytherin table…Avery's sneering face…his mother's voice…his father's wand…
"We Slytherins will take real good care of him. I daresay we will become the best of mates."
"She told me to tell you to not bother coming home for Christmas or Easter, because she can't stomach having a blood traitor in her house."
Before he knew what he was doing, before he even considered the fact that there were four other boys in the room to witness his rage, he started punching the first thing he saw – the stone wall of the dormitory.
"Is this your brother, Regulus?"
"Black, the Gryffindor blood-traitor."
He could hear the others' shocked yells from behind him, but he kept punching. His hand was aching, bloody, throbbing, but something inside of him seemed to have snapped and he couldn't bring himself to stop hitting the wall.
"How dare you think you can usurp generations of honor with your selfish, insubordinate ways?"
"SLYTHERIN!"
Someone was restraining him now, pulling him backward, away from the bloody spot on the stone that his fist had made. After a few seconds of fruitlessly struggling to get away, he gave up. Turning, he saw that it had been James who had pulled him off the wall. Remus, Peter, and Goomer were standing around the dormitory, staring at him with varying degrees of shock and incredulity on their frozen faces.
"What the hell?" said James, panting slightly from the exertion of restraining his friend.
The rage seemed to be seeping out of Sirius. He looked around at his roommates and felt shame take over. He slid to the ground, his back against the wall, and didn't meet any of their eyes. Embarrassment coursed through him and, on top of that, his hand really hurt.
"What. The. Hell." James repeated.
"Sorry," Sirius said weakly. "Sorry…" Nobody moved. Nobody said a word. After a minute, Sirius looked up at James and said, almost pleadingly, "It's my little brother, James."
James exhaled slowly and sat down on Sirius's bed.
"Yeah, I know, but..." he said, fading off and gesturing to the bloody wall.
"He's in Slytherin!"
"It's gonna be okay, mate."
"No, it's not," said Sirius, staring down at his bloody, bruised hand. "He's in there with Avery and Mulciber and bleeding Snape. I just thought...I just hoped that maybe...I mean..."
He trailed off, suddenly aware of the fact that everyone was watching him. He rose quickly from the floor, wanting nothing more than to get out of that dormitory and away from them.
"I just want to be alone," he muttered, striding to the door and throwing it open. James made to follow him. "No, really. Just…just leave me alone." And with that, he hurried down the stairs, leaving the four boys in the dormitory staring open-mouthed at each other in his wake.
Sirius didn't know how long he spent wandering the corridors of the castle. He knew he shouldn't have been out that late and that if he got caught, it'd be at least a week's worth of detentions, but he could not seem to care. There were a few close calls where he almost ran into professors or Peeves the Poltergeist, but he was always able to slip away through the many secret passageways they had found the previous year. He walked for what seemed like hours, trying to allow for the rage, disappointment, embarrassment, and infuriating sadness to flow out of him. Half of him longed to run into a Slytherin, to give his fist a more agreeable target than the stone wall, but he saw no other students except a pair of patrolling Ravenclaw prefects. Sometime in the night, he realized his feet were freezing, so he made his way back up to the Gryffindor common room, where he sat by the fire, staring into the flames.
This was where Lily Evans found him when she got up at dawn to send a letter to her parents.
"Black?"
He might have been sleeping, though it was difficult to say. He started at her address as if it had been gunfire and looked at her where she was standing at the bottom of the girls' staircase.
"Oh," he said dully, scrubbing at his eyes with the heels of his hands and turning back toward the fire. "Hey Evans."
He looked terrible. He had dark circles under his eyes and was now staring into the fire as though not really seeing it at all.
"Are you all right?" she asked.
"Fantastic," he said in the same dull tone.
She hesitated before crossing the room and sitting down on the couch next to him. He did not move, or even acknowledge her at all.
"Have you been here all night?" He shrugged but said nothing. Looking down, she noticed that one of his hands was bloody and battered, the skin at the knuckles torn and bruised. "Sirius!" she gasped. "What happened to your hand?"
He glanced down at it, as if not remembering it was there at all. "Oh," he said. "I punched a wall."
"You punched a wall?"
"Several times, actually."
"Well that was a clever thing to do."
At this, he looked at her briefly and then started laughing, but it was a strange laugh, hollow and humorless. His grey eyes were dark and didn't have the twinkle of mischief they usually had. She stared at him. In the distance, she heard a low, extended rumble of thunder and reconsidered her errand to the drafty Owlery.
"Why did you punch a wall several times?"
He stopped laughing, but did not answer. She hesitated, not knowing him well enough to know if she should press him, but she was never very good at biting her tongue.
"Was it because of your brother? Because of his sorting?"
He didn't respond, but pressed his lips together in a thin line. Lily figured this was as good of a confirmation as she was going to get from him. Sighing, she tucked the letter for her parents into her pocket and leaned back on the sofa, sitting next to him in silence for several minutes, both of them staring into the fire.
"I suppose you don't know about my sister, do you?" she asked, knowing that of course he didn't know about Petunia, but allowing him a chance to respond anyway. Sirius looked up at her, clearly surprised by the question.
"I didn't know you had a sister."
"Yep," Lily nodded. She turned her body to face him now, leaning her back against the armrest of the couch, pulling her feet up underneath her and hugging her knees to her chest. "Petunia. She's two years older than me."
"She's a Muggle?"
"Yes. I'm the only witch in my family, as far as I know." Lily paused, her throat tightening at the thought of Petunia. Severus, of course, knew these details, and Lily had given a brief overview of hers and Petunia's relationship to some of her other friends, but it still felt odd, to open up to Sirius Black about something so personal and painful to her.
"She and I were best friends. My whole life, we did everything together. Even though she's older, she's kind of, er…shy…I guess, so she always hung round with me and my mates in school. At least, she did until I found out that I was a witch."
It was difficult, telling him this, but it was the only way she could think of to make him feel better. And as she spoke, she thought of the little she knew about Sirius Black and his family, and she considered for the first time that perhaps they were not so different after all.
"She's scared of magic, I thought. She started to hate me. Avoiding me all she could…never talking to me anymore, but when she did talk to me, she would just yell at me for no reason. She stopped enjoying the things she used to enjoy, like playing on the swings, or building forts out of the bedding… Anyway, then I found out that she had written to Professor Dumbledore, asking if she could come to Hogwarts too. He wrote her back a very nice letter, but she's not a witch. There was no way she'd be able to come to Hogwarts."
"I didn't know Muggles could write to Hogwarts," said Sirius, and Lily almost rolled her eyes that this was the detail that he picked up on.
"I don't know how she did it, she won't tell me," continued Lily. "The last time she spoke to me – I mean, really spoke to me – was on the platform at King's Cross, before first year. She called me a freak."
"She called you a freak?"
"Yes. And she hasn't spoken to me since."
Sirius stared at her. "Well that's rubbish."
"It's hard," Lily said, breaking his gaze to pick idly at a loose string on her sleeve, "to be different from your family."
They were quiet for several long moments before Lily looked back up to find him still staring at her.
He swallowed heavily before speaking. "I know that I'm being stupid, but I thought there really might have been a chance that he would be Gryffindor too."
She nodded, understanding. "Are you and your brother close?"
Sirius shrugged. "Sometimes. Sometimes he annoys me to no end, though. I mean, he always wanted to do whatever my parents told him to do. But I thought that maybe once he got to Hogwarts, that would change."
"It might still. Change, I mean."
"Yeah, right. Now he's in Slytherin with all the pureblood dark arts fanatics and I'm sure my parents are over the moon about it."
"But why is it so horrible that he's in Slytherin?"
"Because…because it's Slytherin."
This conversation was beginning to give Lily flashbacks to similar conversations she and Severus had had after their divisive sorting the year before. The truth was that the animosity between the two houses had certainly caused a rift in their friendship, but nothing that couldn't be salvaged.
It was of Severus she was thinking when she said, "They're not all bad, you know."
Sirius scoffed. "I've known a lot more Slytherins than you, Evans. My entire bloody family has been in Slytherin."
"And they're all so terrible?"
"Well," Sirius started, his brow lowered in concentration, "maybe not all of them. My Uncle Alphard is okay, but he's not around much…he travels a lot. And I get on with my cousin Andromeda pretty well…She finished Hogwarts last year."
It was worse than Lily had expected. She, at least, only had the one strained familial relationship. Sirius, on the other hand, had no one but a distant uncle and a decent cousin.
"Well there you go," she said with overcompensating cheerfulness. "Maybe Regulus will be the same as them."
Sirius shook his head, but remained quiet for a while. "Doesn't it make you sad, though," he said, "that your sister thinks you're a freak? That she can't be at Hogwarts here with you?"
Lily considered how to answer this. The truth was that at times, the figurative loss of Petunia seemed to consume her. At others, she would go days without thinking of her sister.
"Yes," she told him. "Yes, of course it would be nice if she were here with me. Sometimes it just seems too difficult, being here all alone. And there have been moments when I even…" She felt herself reddening, not sure why she was even telling him this, but knowing instinctively that it was the right thing to say. "…When I even wish that I weren't a witch, because it w-would make things easier, and I'd have my sister back. If I were like the rest of my family, maybe things wouldn't be so…hard."
She did not look at him, and when he remained silent, she continued, her voice stronger. "But here's the thing…I am a witch, and I'm here at Hogwarts, and it's really, really brilliant here, isn't it? And even though I'm not with my family, and even though things with Petunia are hard, I belong here. This is who I really am. I'm surrounded by friends here who I adore and who don't treat me like a freak. So I just try to be happy with what I have, because, on the whole, I think I have quite a lot."
Lily thought that he may have gotten the point. He was now staring into the fire again, but a bit of color had returned to his cheeks and his eyes were no longer dark with rage and sadness, anyhow.
"Look," she said, "maybe it's not my place to say, but it seems to me like you have friends here in Gryffindor who don't care that you don't get on with your family. Regulus is in Slytherin, which is disappointing, but James and Remus and Peter are here with you. Are you closer with Regulus than you are with them?"
Sirius shook his head.
"Do you laugh with Regulus like you laugh with them?"
"No."
"Do you and Regulus annoy the living daylights out of everyone who is near you like you do with them?"
Sirius actually cracked a smile. "No."
"So maybe you and Regulus will be fine, even though he's in Slytherin. But for now, it seems like you've got quite a lot right here in Gryffindor."
"You're right," he said, genuinely smiling at her. "Thanks Evans."
Feeling as if prolonging the moment would make it more awkward, Lily unfolded her limbs and stood up, stretching her cramped muscles. Through the tall windows she could see a lightening sky, though the grey rain obscured any sight of a sunrise. Shuffling noises from above meant that students would be making their ways toward breakfast before long.
"Do you always get up at the crack of dawn, or what?" asked Sirius lightly.
Lily shrugged. "Usually."
Sirius shook his head and laughed. "Mental."
"Oh? I'm the mental one? Says the boy who punched a wall?"
Sirius flexed his bruised hand and winced. "Right. I guess that was a bit thick of me."
Lily snorted. "Only thing thicker would've been slamming your head against it. You should go see Madam Pomfrey, though. It looks like it might be broken."
"Yeah, I reckon you're right," said Sirius, standing up.
"I'll walk with you down to the hospital wing. I was planning on going to the Owlery before breakfast, but I think I'll wait until break and hope the weather clears up."
The two made their way out of the portrait hole and through the empty corridors.
"I'd like to see the look on Pomfrey's face when you show her that hand," Lily said as they passed the Charms classroom. "She'll think you've been fighting like a Muggle."
"In my experience," said Sirius, "Pomfrey never asks too many questions, bless her."
Lily gave him a look and fought back a smile. "So you're not going to tell her that you decided to have a boxing match with one of the thousand-year-old stone walls in the castle?"
"Nah, because then I'd have to admit that the stone wall won." Sirius was smiling broadly, but it faltered as they stopped outside of the hospital wing.
"Look," he said seriously, "you're right. I hadn't ever thought about it the way you said it up there…about…I mean, if I weren't in Gryffindor, I wouldn't have James and Remus and Peter, right? So, if nothing else, I can just…hold onto that, yeah?"
Lily surveyed him for a moment, smiling slightly. "I'm glad you're a Gryffindor, Sirius."
"And I'm glad you're a witch, Evans. Though I'd be gladder if you'd let me copy your Potions homework from time to time…"
She laughed and turned to leave him there, but his voice stopped her.
"Will you do me a favor?"
She looked back at him over her shoulder. "Haven't I done enough for you today?"
"Just don't mention this to anyone, all right?" He shrugged. "You know, about me being…upset about my brother. I have a reputation to uphold, after all."
She could not contain her derisive snort. "If you say so. Your secret's safe with me."
"Thanks, Evans."
"See you later, Black."
And with that, Lily walked toward the Great Hall, hungry for breakfast and thinking that if this morning were any indication, it was going to be a very long year.
It was with great worry that James, Remus, and Peter entered the Great Hall a while later, eyes darting around for any sign of Sirius. James had waited up in the dormitory for hours the previous night, but Sirius hadn't returned and his bed looked as if it hadn't been slept in. None of them had spoken about the night before – quite honestly, none of them knew what to say. They had never seen Sirius's temper in full swing before. It was concerning, to say the least. And, aside from that, James felt guilty for not having given Regulus Black's sorting a second thought before it happened. He, like most everyone, had simply assumed that Regulus would be made a Slytherin. Why Sirius had thought differently – and why it had upset him so thoroughly – was a bit of a mystery to James.
"There he is," said Peter, pointing to the end of the Gryffindor table, where Sirius sat, talking animatedly to Davey Gudgeon, a third year. "I told you he probably just came down early to get breakfast."
James didn't think this was the case, since Sirius had never gotten up early and descended to the Great Hall for breakfast by himself before. They made their way over to him and Sirius grinned when he spotted them.
"Morning," he said brightly. "Davey was just telling me about a new tournament bracket he's drafted up, to see who can get closest to the Whomping Willow. I told him to put us down to play."
Taken aback, James surveyed his friend. He had expected Sirius to be angry, brooding, and perhaps a bit embarrassed about his outburst from the night before, but the Sirius he was looking at now seemed happier than ever, albeit a tad tired.
"The Willow?" Remus repeated, his voice cracking a bit.
"Yeah, you know that old flailing tree down near the edge of the forest?"
"N-no…I mean, yeah, of course I know where it is," Remus stuttered. "Only, I don't think people should be trying to get near it. It's r-really dangerous…"
"Oh it's not too bad," said Davey. "We used to play all the time last year. Phillip Maloney won last year's tournament, but I think I can beat him now. I've a good idea where the tree's weak spots are…"
"James and I will play," affirmed Sirius.
"Great," said Davey, jotting down their names on his parchment. "That's thirteen names. I'm going to try to make it an even twenty. Oh, there's Maloney, I'd better go talk to him. See you lot later."
James watched Davey walk over to the Ravenclaw table before turning to Sirius, who was munching casually on some bacon.
"Are you –"
Sirius cut him off. "Listen. Sorry about last night. I lost it a bit. But I'm better now."
They all stared at him. It was clear to James that Sirius wanted the subject dropped.
"Your hand looks better," Remus said after a moment.
"Yeah." Sirius flexed his fingers. "I went to Pomfrey this morning. Felt like a bit of an idiot, but there you go. She fixed it in about five seconds, no sweat."
"Are you sure you're all right?" Remus asked.
Sirius rolled his eyes. "Yes. I'm fine. What do I need Regulus for, anyway, when I've got the three of you?"
James remained skeptical, but shrugged and offered Sirius the serving bowl of strawberries. Sirius scoffed.
"Don't offer me any of that rubbish, I'm happy with my bacon, thank-you-very-much."
This was the affirmation James had been looking for. "Good thing."
"What's a good thing?"
"Just checking that your body wasn't invaded by some peppy, cheerful spirit last night when you didn't come up to the dorm. It's a good thing you didn't accept the fruit, or I'd know you weren't really you."
"Don't be a prat," Sirius laughed, cuffing James on the shoulder. "Oh, and I've an idea for a good way to mess with Snivelly…"
As the boys leaned their heads together conspiratorially, Sirius's voice shaking with mischievous excitement, James breathed a sigh of relief.
His best friend was back.