The Other Side: Thick and Thin (Book 1)

Walburga decided to accompany her son to King's Cross Station on January third. She acted as if it was a perfectly natural occurrence--that she hadn't failed to come to the station to pick him up mere weeks earlier--and Sirius was too afraid to bring up the subject himself and decided that he would also act as if nothing had ever been amiss between them. Thus it was that Sirius's party drew the eye of nearly everybody on platform nine and three quarters as his mother walked gracefully on her husband's arm, donned in her new, glorious nundu fur coat. Her husband was dressed elegantly and she had made sure that her son was well put together (as always, of course), and together she thought they presented the perfect picture of ancient, pure-blood wealth and sophistication.

She walked in the middle, her hand tucked delicately into the fold of her husband's strong arm and with her handsome son on her other side, and she subtly tugged Orion along to where she wanted them to go.

"Ah, Malfoy, Lestrange, and Rosier," he greeted when they approached the group of haughty pure-bloods, all of whom were keeping a disgusted eye on the unwashed masses around them even as they talked amongst themselves.

Rosier was facing them as they approached, and he offered a stiff, polite nod to Orion and Walburga, more out of social obligation than any desire to greet his sister's in-laws when they had never approved of Cygnus Black's marriage to Druella Rosier in the first place. The remaining adults, one tall man and a shorter man and his wife, turned around to see who had joined the group. Abraxas Malfoy offered a small smile as he greeted them, just a brief upturn of the corners of his mouth, but Rastaban Lestrange grinned widely and reached forward to claim Walburga's free hand.

"Mrs. Black!" he exclaimed and kissed her hand. "You look utterly ravishing. For a moment I thought that no time had passed at all, and it was us about to board the Hogwarts Express!"

Internally Walburga was delighted and wanted to beam her pleasure at him, but externally she only allowed a polite smile. She had once considered marrying Lestrange, when she was sixteen and Orion was too young to consider marriage. Orion laughed and offered his hand to the other man for a hearty handshake, and she thought to herself that she had made the right decision, not only because she was still a member of the Noble and Most Ancient House of Black which she had been born into, but also because Orion Black was much handsomer than Rastaban Lestrange. The man's namesake, his son Rabastan, was standing beside his father, and a quick glance assured her that her own darling Sirius had more striking features and would surely be much taller when he was grown.

Adolpha Lestrange looked less than pleased by her husband's assessment, and Sirius noticed how she raised her hand reflexively to smooth her own perfect, obviously magically-created curls while she glared at Walburga's thick, natural curls, which she had pinned back with emerald-encrusted combs and allowed to flow down her back all the way to her dainty waist.

Mr. Malfoy kissed Walburga's gloved hand next, and she smiled pleasantly and made a show of looking around. "Where is Lucius? Since the league final I have though of a few more embarrassing, intrusive questions to ask him."

Abraxas's lips quirked up at the corners, though he mostly maintained his cold public mask. "He told me that Narcissa planned to meet him in the prefects' compartment, and he ran off in that direction as soon as we crossed the barrier."

"I don't believe you have ever met my daughter, Lucilla," Mrs. Lestrange said as Orion kissed her hand, gesturing with her free hand to indicate the prettyish short of girl standing next to her son. "She's in her third year."

Walburga surveyed the girl with a critical eye, taking in her pleasing yet unremarkable features and her straight brown hair before looking down to briefly examine the quality of her coat and shoes. A Lestrange would do quite nicely for Sirius, she thought to herself. She's a bit plain for him, but her blood and her fortune make up for that.

For his part, Sirius didn't think at all about how Lucilla Lestrange looked or how she was dressed. He was much more interested in the girl's older brother, whom he had heard tons about from Bellatrix and her fiancé Rodolphus. He happily separated himself from his parents and moved to join the group of children. The older boy was dressed in the same sort of Muggle-friendly attire as the rest of them, but he was also wearing a snake-shaped cuff that slithered around his wrist and hissed a bit when Sirius shook his hand.

"Don't the Muggles notice that?" he asked.

Rabastan grinned, baring his teeth in a way that edged right up to the border of unfriendly. "Muggles are as stupid as trolls."

His sister giggled and inclined her head. "And only half as attractive. Look."

Sirius looked in the direction she had indicated and saw Mary and her parents standing some distance away, her father's balding scalp catching the light and her mother's ridiculously large hair bobbing in time with her head as she talked. He laughed aloud and offered the Lestrange siblings a smile full of all the cruelty he'd had to restrain while actually in the Mudblood's presence.

"I could barely keep myself from staring whenever I had to talk to them."

"You actually talked to them?" asked the fourth member of their group, incredulity clear in his voice.

Sirius had ignored Evan Rosier rather well up until that point, and he had no intention of changing that now. He spared the other boy a brief glance, taking in the way that his rich brown hair had grown longer and his hazel eyes sparkled with curiosity, then he turned back to the Lestranges and spoke directly to them as if his former friend wasn't standing there and hadn't asked the question.

"The Mudblood is a Gryffindor in my year, so I've been playing nicely with her. I had to levitate her trunk for her when we got off the train at Christmas, because she was planning on dragging it behind her! Can you imagine?"

Brother and sister shared a glance. It seemed that Sirius had passed some sort of test, because Rabastan's laugh spread over the group like a winter frost. "Mudbloods are just as stupid as their parents."

The boarding whistle of the Hogwarts Express sent the children and adults into a sudden flurry of farewells and handshakes, and Sirius found himself embraced in a rare, if brief, one-armed hug from his mother before he was whisked away with the other children. He glanced back over his shoulder for one last look at his parents and caught the angry eye of Severus Snape, who was standing next to a sallow, angry-looking woman dressed in threadbare cotton who was glaring sourly at his mother's fur coat, but then he lost sight of them through the crowd.

They clambered up the steps onto the train, Rabastan laughing even more coldly than before as he stepped around Mr. MacDonald, who was struggling to heft his daughter's trunk onto the train. He knocked the trunk with the side of his boot as he moved past, sending it sliding back off the train and into the Muggle's gut, and then kept walking with his laughter ringing down the narrow corridor. His sister joined his mirth with her own high-pitched giggle, and she clasped Sirius's gloved fingers and pulled him up the steps behind her.

"I don't think Sirius's friend is too happy with him," said Evan once they had all come to a stop in the narrow hallway, but if the Lestrange children heard him they didn't acknowledge it.

"Come on, Sirius," said Lucilla, tugging on his hand. "We always sit in the first compartment of this car."

He was surprised enough that he didn't move immediately. Maybe he should have expected to be included since his family and everyone else he had met over Christmas holidays had seemed to accept him, but his pride was still smarting from the way he had been ostracized during the previous school term, so he didn't entirely expect this acceptance from the Slytherins.

Evan had no such hesitancy and began moving in that direction, until Rabastan's arm shot across the corridor to block his path. "We didn't invite you," he told the younger boy. "You can sit with that Half-blood slime ball you like so much."

The olive tone of Evan's face paled to a sickly yellow, and he stared between the Lestranges and Sirius with his mouth half opened. For some strange reason Sirius wanted to apologize to him, but then he remembered how his friend had been the one to abandon him last September and his heart hardened. This time when Lucilla tugged him by the hand, he allowed himself to be pulled down the narrow corridor.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The train ride to Hogwarts and the carriage ride up to the castle were several hours of bliss for Sirius. Then they entered the Great Hall and he was forced to separate from his cousins, who had joined them halfway through the ride after fulfilling their prefect duties, and his new friends and head in the opposite direction towards the Gryffindor table. There he had received the silent treatment from everybody except Peter, and the same had continued once they returned to Gryffindor Tower.

During their first class he tried to talk with the girls, but Emmeline's first words were, "I thought you were different! I can't believe how you just stood by as your father and your friends treated Mary and her parents so horribly!"

Sirius was at a loss about how to respond. On the one hand, he had spent months fighting his way into some semblance of respectability in Gryffindor, and if he fought with Emmeline and Mary then he would lose significant ground. On the other hand, the Muggles deserved even worse than anything Orion or Rabastan had done, and he certainly didn't understand how a pure-blood like Emmeline Vance could fail to understand the elevated position his family and the Lestranges held over Mary's and even her own.

The Slytherins were listening in on the conversation, though, so he neglected to respond either way, instead raising an arrogant eyebrow in her direction and making his way to his own table just before Professor Slughorn bustled into the classroom.

Peter chose to take Sirius's side in the fight, no doubt because the girls didn't help him with his homework or take him to Quidditch games like the wealthy boy did. Unfortunately, his friend seemed to get just as much enjoyment out of rehashing what had happened at the game the hundredth time as he had the first time. Honestly, Sirius was just as into Quidditch as any other wizarding boy his age, and he understood his friend's excitement at his first real Quidditch game--Really he did!--but it wasn't long before he wanted to hex Peter's mouth closed. By the second week of classes, he was so sick of Peter that he actually sought out Janice Edgecombe just for an excuse to get away from the other boy, who avoided his study sessions with the Ravenclaw girl as if his life depended on it.

He approached the girl at the Ravenclaw table, braving the curious stares and excitable tittering of the gaggle of first and second-year girls sitting around her. He tapped her on the shoulder, his fingers sinking through her thick curls to reach the flesh of her shoulder, and she jumped in surprise and turned around on the bench.

"Sirius!" She smiled and gazed up at him from under light eyelashes.

He looked down at her directly, trying to avoid looking at the other girls, though he would have never actually admitted aloud that he found a group of little girls intimidating. "Do you want to meet up in the library this afternoon?"

"Oh, yes!" she exclaimed quickly, then bit her lip and blushed as her friends giggled. She began again in a more restrained voice, "I mean, that sounds great. Do you want to meet at the usual place at four?"

He agreed with an easy grin, glad to have an excuse to get away from his Quidditch-obsessed friend, and turned to walk back to the Gryffindor table. Emmeline was glaring at him from her place several seats down, although Sirius wasn't sure why she bothered anymore.

"Oi, Black!" cried Potter as Sirius swung his leg over the bench. "When I didn't see you at the table I thought you'd realized you aren't wanted here!"

Sirius turned so that no one else could see and rolled his gray eyes, although that was the only outward sign he gave that he was annoyed. Potter always particularly focused his attention onto Sirius whenever he was alone and bored because his friend Lupin was sick, which seemed to Sirius to be an awful lot of the time. He managed not to retaliate during all of their classes, even as Emmeline and Potter both treated him worse than usual, and was finally able to escape Professor Flitwick's classroom after their last lesson.

He deftly avoided a Tripping Jinx as he went. He wasn't sure who had cast it--after all, it might have been Emmeline or Potter or Evans or even Mary--but his money was on Potter, as he didn't think any of the girls would be brave enough to cast something where a teacher might see.

He beat Janice to the library, as the Ravenclaw girl had to come all the way from the Potions classroom in the dungeons. He made his way to their usual spot in the back of the Muggle Studies section and tossed his book bag carelessly onto a chair as he made his way around to the other side of the table. He didn't really have anything to work on. He just would rather spend a couple of hours doing nothing in the library than spend the same time having Peter chat his ear off in the common room. He plucked a book off of the shelf nearest him and was halfheartedly reading about Muggle motor vehicles when Janice came around the corner of the stacks a few minutes later. He greeted her less enthusiastically than she greeted him as she plopped down gracelessly onto the seat next to him.

"What are you reading that for?" she inquired curiously, leaning over him to look at the page he'd been perusing.

"Oh, no reason." He shrugged and flicked the book closed. "I don't really have any homework to do."

"I don't either, really," Janice told him. He wondered when exactly she had time to do her homework, since in his experience from last term she was always either giggling with her gaggle of girls or distracting him from his own work whenever he saw her. "I was wondering why you invited me to the library, since we don't have any big essays due."

She leaned her head onto her hand, and the light caught the natural blonde highlights in her brownish-blonde curls as they spilled over her arm and the table. Sirius turned a bit in his chair to see her better, and she smiled brilliantly up at him.

He quirked the corner of his mouth up in return. "Honestly? Peter is the only person talking to me at the moment, and I really need a break from talking about Quidditch."

He realized belatedly that she might be insulted that he'd all but admitted he only wanted to spend time with her because he couldn't spend time with anyone else, but she didn't seem to have taken that implication at all. She laughed quietly, sure to keep the noise down so the librarian wouldn't overhear them.

"I heard Pettigrew say at dinner the other night that you had taken him to the league final. And then I heard it again at breakfast the next morning, and at lunch after that!"

Then Janice's expression turned suddenly, and Sirius couldn't tell exactly what she was thinking. She seemed a mix between happy and anxious but not exactly either one. "So..." she began, drawing it out as she twirled a curl around her finger. "You're fighting with Vance, then?"

It wasn't exactly a secret that he was, and he supposed that what she really must be asking was why. He sighed. "She's upset that my family and some of my Slytherin friends weren't nice to Mary's family."

"Oh, that's silly! I don't believe that blood has anything to do with power, of course," she said as if it was self-evident, "but obviously old pure-blood families like yours have such high status that Muggle-borns can't honestly expect to be treated as total equals!"

Sirius didn't really agree with her about power; he had seen the evidence of Peter's lack of wand skills, after all, and he was sure that wouldn't be the case if he'd had two pure-blood parents instead of a Mudblood mother. However, he appreciated the rest of what she had said, so he chose not to argue that relatively minor point. Instead, he gave her the first real smile he could remember giving anyone for quite some time.

"Well, Emmeline doesn't think that way at all."

The Ravenclaw tutted in sympathy and patted his arm. "Well, like I said, she's just being silly."

He thought that Janice seemed a bit too pleased about his fight with Emmeline. Her grin had returned in full force, and for the rest of their time in the library she seemed as bubbly as ever.

However, Sirius could honestly say that their time spent together that afternoon was the most he had ever enjoyed her company, and he actually found himself seeking out her company several more times over the next few weeks. He never did get anymore of his homework done when he was with her than he had during the first term, but that was okay with him because now the purpose of their time together was for the companionship he was missing in Gryffindor, not for a study partner. If Emmeline appeared even more annoyed with him anytime she saw him talking to or walking with the Ravenclaw, that was just a nice bonus.

It was when he was walking with Janice back from the library after one of their many afternoons together that they ran into the group of first-year Slytherin boys, who must have been on their way in the direction Sirius and Janice had just come. Snape was leading the group, with Evan walking slightly behind him and William Avery and Nigel Mulciber next to each other in the back. He reached down to grab Janice's hand and guided her over to the edge of the corridor, hoping to avoid the confrontation. That didn't happen.

"Black!" spat Snape, his thin lip curling in disgust.

Sirius resisted the urge to sigh in frustration, as the other Slytherins were watching and that would be an undignified reaction for a Black.

"Hello, Snivellus," he said with forced pleasantness, purposefully using the nickname that Evan had made up for Snape on their first train ride to Hogwarts. Evan's wide hazel eyes shot over to his housemate nervously as he took a step back from the confrontation.

As expected, Snape's composure slipped even further. "I'm surprised to see you with anyone other than your lapdog," he said cruelly. "I thought everyone else had come to their senses about you."

Janice's hand tensed in his, but he gave hers a squeeze in warning and she kept her silence.

He gave an easy smile that totally hid the annoyance he felt and raised an eyebrow in the direction of Avery and Mulciber. "I'm surprised that any of this lot can stand to be seen in public with a Half-blood, much less one as greasy and poor as you."

Mulciber looked partway between insulted and amused, and his broad face twisted with indecision about whether to scowl or laugh.

Avery laughed. "It's better than the relationship you have with the people you sleep next to."

Snape didn't seem to have heard his housemate. His black eyes were trained on Sirius with a loathing intensity that seemed to take his entire focus. He reached for his wand so quickly that Sirius wouldn't have been able to draw his in time if he kept his wand in his robes. Luckily, however, he had his wand in the holster on his arm, and with a quick flick of his fingers it was in his hand and ready to go.

"Expelliarmus!" he threw out as soon as he felt the square handle in his grip, and Snape's wand flew out of his hand when the boy was only halfway through his own incantation, which Sirius recognized with surprise. "A Blistering Hex? Isn't that a bit much?"

Snape watched, hatred burning in his eyes, as Sirius twirled the two wands carelessly between his fingers. "For you? It wasn't enough."

Sirius surveyed the group of Slytherins as he considered what to use in retaliation. Snape was standing his ground despite not having a wand, still glaring as though he wasn't defenseless. Avery and Mulciber were standing apart from the group and watching the proceedings with rapt attention, as if they were at a Quidditch game. Evan, who was still standing several paces behind Snape, had drawn his own wand, though he was holding it loosely at his side. It was the last that set Sirius's blood boiling for the first time since they'd encountered the other boys. His silver eyes darkened enough to almost match Snape's, and he raised his wand again with purpose.

Snivellus's eyes crossed as he stared at the tip of the wand pointed almost directly at his face, but Sirius's dark green jet of light flew inches past his head. It hit Rosier right between the eyes.

The other three Slytherins spun around to stare as Evan's features distorted and his face swelled to several times its normal size. The pain and shock had caused him to topple over onto his backside on the cold stone floor, and Sirius stepped around Snape and glared down at his former friend.

"There," he told him, "now your outside matches your ugly insides, you traitorous piece of filth." He gave Avery and Mulciber a hard look. "You'd better not trust this one. He's liable to turn on you at any minute."

He tossed Snape's wand carelessly in Avery's direction and then turned on his heel and stalked off down the corridor, pulling Janice along with him. They walked for a while in complete silence, her hand still in his, until they finally had to stop when the staircase they were on began to move. He let go of her and ran the fingers of his free hand through his thick black hair in frustration. His wand was still in his other hand just in case the Slytherins decided to run after him.

"I wish you hadn't had to see that," he finally said, shooting the Ravenclaw a sidelong glance.

She stared at him without responding, and as soon as the stairs stopped moving he started walking again, cursing himself for having managed to turn his only other friend besides Peter against him. Then Janice caught up with him and used both of her hands to grab his arm and halt his retreat.

"Snape's a greasy git," she declared with solemn finality, "and Rosier shouldn't have stopped being your friend just because you didn't get sorted into Slytherin."

He stared down into her blue eyes, and she smiled at him warmly. Finally, he smiled back in relief and started walking again at a slower pace, this time with her next to him. He escorted Janice all the way to Ravenclaw Tower. He told her it was just in case the Slytherins decided to retaliate and came after her. Even though the excuse was flimsy at best since surely they would have come after him first, she didn't call him out on it. The truth was that he was loathe to separate from her for fear that as soon as she was free of his presence she would rethink still being his friend after what she'd seen.

In the end, he had to watch her disappear through the door to her common room and then head back to Gryffindor Tower alone. He spent the rest of his otherwise entirely peaceful evening agonizing over the possibility of losing yet another friend, though he refused to tell Peter what was bothering him. The next morning at breakfast, though, Janice noticed his eyes on her as she entered the Great Hall, and she must have sensed his trepidation because she briefly squeezed his shoulder as she walked past him to sit with her friends at the Ravenclaw table.

That caught the attention of the Gryffindors sitting around him, and one of the older girls had the audacity to coo at him and say, "Oh, is she your girlfriend now? That is so sweet!"

Sirius didn't dignify such a load of hippogriff dung with a response, but all of the girls seemed to take that as a confirmation because they all proceeded to giggle. Except for Emmeline, who glared at him in seemingly renewed anger, and Mary, who looked back and forth between the two of them with an expression that Sirius couldn't read.

"There must be something wrong with her then!" declared Potter, whose glare didn't match the ferocity of Emmeline's no matter how hard he was trying. "All the Gryffindor girls have come to their senses and noticed that Black's a bad seed."

Sirius had to repress the snort that threatened to make its way out of him. "I didn't realize that you cared so much about my love life, Potter. How does your boyfriend feel about that?"

Potter spluttered in indignation while his friend blushed to the roots of his limp hair. Sirius calmly chewed his mouthful of bacon as the students surrounding them waited to see how the other boy would respond.

"Why you--you--" began the messy-headed git, but Sirius cut him off in a voiced laced with just a hint of his underlying scorn.

"Yes, we all know how obsessed you are with me, Potter."

Then, as the owl post had arrived and no letters seemed to be addressed to him, Sirius rose from the bench and made a quick exit before Potter could recover from his shock and start a real fight right in the middle of the Great Hall. He knew from experience that the other Gryffindors would take Potter's side, and the professors would assume that Sirius had been the one to instigate things. He would probably pay for his words to Potter later, but he supposed it wasn't any different than the way he had to constantly watch his back already.

Classes passed for the next few days without any of the professors mentioning the incident with the Slytherins. Sirius had half expected that they would rat him out at the first opportunity, but after he got through Potions with the Deputy Headmaster and Slytherin's Head of House without any mention of the fight, he began to relax just a bit. He still expected that they would try to retaliate somehow, of course, but at least he wasn't worried about getting detention for the rest of this term, too.

When days went by without any hint of retaliation, though, Sirius started to go from comfortable to downright suspicious. He was sure that they must be planning something and that this was just the calm before the storm. He was so on edge that even Peter noticed and began to get a bit jumpy, and things probably would have continued on that way if the older Slytherins hadn't set him straight.

"Black!" came from behind him as he and Peter were making their way from their Astronomy lecture, their last class until their practical at midnight, to an empty classroom that Professor McGonagall had told them they could use to practice casting.

Sirius had spun around with his wand in his hand before he'd really had time to process it, only to see Rabastan Lestrange hurrying down the corridor towards him. Lucius and Narcissa were walking side by side behind him at a much more respectable pace. Sirius sighed with relief and let his wand go back into his arm holster as he relaxed his stance.

"Hello, Lestrange!" he greeted the older boy with a genuine smile.

"Merlin, were you expecting someone to curse you in the back?" Rabastan asked as he came to a halt right in front of the smaller boys. Then he seemed to rethink what he'd asked, and a crooked smile made its way onto his face. "Well, I guess you are at that."

Narcissa and Lucius had reached the others in time to hear his remark, and the blonde girl sniffed disdainfully. "I don't know who those little flobberworms think they are, attacking a Black!"

Rabastan raised a teasing eyebrow in her direction. "Flobberworms, are they? Well, if Cissy Black is using swear words then they must have really crossed a line."

Sirius couldn't repress a smirk, but he knew better than to laugh outright at his cousin. She might be the quietest of the Black sisters, but she could be almost as vicious as her sister Bellatrix if she put her mind to it. She turned a withering look on Rabastan, and Malfoy speared his friend with his own glare.

"Watch it, Lestrange," the tall boy said coolly.

Rabastan held his hands up to signal his defeat.

"Sorry, Narcissa," he said not at all contritely. "Anyway, from what Avery and Mulciber said, Black showed them who's the better wizard."

From Narcissa's expression it was clear that she considered that a foregone conclusion.

Lucius, on the other hand, hitched up the two book bags on his shoulder into a better position as he gave Sirius an assessing look. "You're just lucky that Mulciber has a particular affinity for curse work and knew how to quickly reverse what you'd done well enough to bring Rosier to me. Otherwise a teacher might have found them."

Sirius returned Malfoy's assessing look. "Well, are you going to give me detention then?" he asked challengingly.

"Of course not!" snapped Malfoy, but then his cool mask fell back into place almost immediately when his girlfriend shot him a quelling look. He sighed. "I'm just warning you to be more careful, Black. You don't want to draw attention to yourself by going around using Dark Arts on other students in the middle of the corridors."

He was aware of the gasp that came from Peter, who was standing partially behind him as if he expected his friend to protect him from the frightening older Slytherins, but Sirius ignored it. Instead he shrugged and offered the older students a wry grin.

"I guess that's the Gryffindor brashness coming through."

Rabastan slung his arm around the smaller boy's shoulders, and Sirius stiffened for a moment in surprise at the casual touch.

"I don't think you need much of an excuse, being a Black and all," the Slytherin informed him with a sidelong smile. "I didn't believe that nutter my brother is marrying when she said that you take after her, but now I believe it well enough."

Narcissa looked like she might protest at that characterization of her eldest sister, but then she seemed to think better of it. Even a loyal little sister couldn't deny the fact that Bellatrix's hold on sanity was tenuous at best. Instead, the blonde pointed her dainty nose up in the air as if she was addressing someone far beneath her. "That's rich coming from a Lestrange of all people."

Sirius could feel Rabastan's shrug against his own body.

"They're a perfect match, my psychotic brother and your nutter sister," he said agreeably. "The only person who'd be a better match for her is probably me, so it's a good thing that I prefer her protégé or else I'd be heartbroken that my brother got her first." He gave Sirius's shoulders a squeeze, but at Narcissa's alarmed expression he said more coldly, "Oh, sod off, Black."

He removed his arm from around the younger boy, and Sirius was confused and thought for a moment that Lestrange had been addressing him. But then he looked at the venomous expressions passing between his friend and his cousin, and he realized that Rabastan was angry with Narcissa. He wasn't really sure what had caused the sudden change in the atmosphere around them, but he found it really uncomfortable.

Malfoy apparently shared his discomfort, because he broke in with, "Well, Sirius, you don't have to worry too much about Rosier and Snape. None of us took kindly to that Half-blood upstart attacking one of our own after we'd been kind enough to take him in"--Sirius vaguely remembered through the haze of his own Sorting that Lucius had been the one to greet Snape when he was put into Slytherin, so he thought that maybe that last comment was more personal than the tall boy was making it out to be--"or to Rosier taking his side. We've let them know how disappointed we are, and if they attack you again they'll have Lestrange and me to deal with."

"And I doubt Evan's father would be happy to hear that he'd sided with a nasty piece of Half-blood filth over the Black heir," added his cousin with her haughty brow raised in Sirius's direction to emphasize the seriousness of her threat to tell her Uncle Rosier.

Sirius's first reaction was to inform them that he didn't need their help dealing with the greasy git and the traitor, but immediately after that initial impulse he realized that his older friends were well aware that he could take care of himself. Malfoy had healed Rosier's injuries and had the story from Avery and Mulciber, after all. They were offering him their support not because they thought he was weak but just because they thought he was one of them. More one of them than either Rosier or Snape, despite the fact that he was in Gryffindor, and that thought caused a triumphant smirk to flit over Sirius's face before he could get it under control.

"My father would be proud to hear that I cursed that little traitor," he told them, "but all the same, I promise to try to keep it private in the future."

The fifth years laughed. With that, Narcissa rubbed his shoulder affectionately and watched with a critical eye as Rabastan squeezed his other shoulder, then the three of them continued down the corridor.

Sirius was left alone with Peter again. The shorter boy was staring up at him with an expression of awe that Sirius hadn't seen him wear since the first few days of their friendship, when he had heard that Sirius would be going to the league final. He didn't seem like he was planning on saying anything for the moment, though, so Sirius kept walking towards the classroom. He didn't look to see if his friend was following, but by the time he had reached their destination and hoisted himself on top of a desk, Peter came through the door after him. The other boy tossed his bag onto a chair and struggled to pull himself on top of the desk in front of Sirius's, as was their usual position.

"Have you been practicing?" Sirius asked as he prepared two of the mice that Professor McGonagall had left in the room.

The professor set aside several classrooms where students could practice transfigurations outside of class time, and this room for the first and second years was equipped with mice, bunnies, and birds. Sirius had already mastered all of the transfigurations they had learned in class--some of them before he'd even come to Hogwarts, when his grandfather had tutored him--but Peter was struggling with their recent Transfigurations work. Sirius was still willing to help Peter with these classes as long as Peter did most of the work for him in Potions, which his friend was actually very good at.

Peter, however, was not the least bit focused on homework. He was staring at Sirius like he'd never seen him before. His small eyes were wide as he asked, "Is it true?"

"Is what true?" Sirius responded with his own question, though he knew very well what the other boy meant. He just wasn't going to give anything away until he'd gauged how his only remaining friend in Gryffindor was going to react.

"That you cursed Evan Rosier, of course!" Peter exclaimed in exasperation.

"Keep your voice down!" hissed Sirius, gray eyes darting up to the doorway.

They were sitting in the middle of the Transfigurations Corridor in one of the Deputy Headmistress's classrooms, and it wasn't exactly the best place to discuss this. However, he could tell that his friend wasn't going to be the least bit productive until he got his answers, so he sighed in resignation and leaned forward so that he could whisper and lower their chances of being overheard.

"Snape tried to hex me, but I was quicker and Disarmed him. Rosier had drawn his wand, and it made me so mad that I cursed him."

"You cursed Rosier and not Snape?" his friend asked with evident surprise.

Sirius pushed back the silky hair that had fallen into his eyes with his movement. "I expect Snape to try to hex me. We didn't get off to a good start, and it was mostly my mother's fault, to be honest," he explained to the other boy, though he was loathe to admit it. "But Ev--Rosier used to be my best friend until I wasn't placed into Slytherin, and it burns me up inside that he turned his back on me."

Peter looked somber for a moment at Sirius's admission of his feelings, but then he leaned forward until he was perched precariously on the edge of his desk and Sirius could feel the other boy's breath on his face. "It was a real curse?"

"Yes..." Sirius replied, drawing the word out in his confusion.

Peter's normally dull brown eyes glittered like Sirius hadn't seen since the Quidditch match. "It's true then, what Potter says? You're a Dark wizard?"

Sirius blinked at him. "Well, I--I mean... Would it bother you if I was?"

Peter reared back in surprise, and he had to scramble to grab the edge of the desk as if shifted under the sudden movement and he nearly toppled off it.

Once he'd righted himself, he cried, "No! My father was--Well, I mean, I don't exactly know for sure, but--but he left all of these textbooks about Dark potions, and he'd handwritten notes into the margins and everything, and of course my mother hasn't been able to teach me because she's just a Muggle-born and hasn't ever been taught the Dark Arts, and my father's family doesn't want anything to do with me so they can't answer my questions--"

"Peter!" Sirius interrupted him, afraid that he would keep rambling until he passed out from lack of breath unless he was stopped. "I guess it makes sense.... Your father was a pure-blood, after all. Was he in Gryffindor?"

"No, Hufflepuff," replied his friend.

Sirius raised an eyebrow but otherwise he was able to keep the surprise off his face. "Well," he said finally, "I'm not a Dark wizard. I'm far too young to be one yet; it takes years, you know, to really deserve to be called one. My family are all Dark, though, and I've been taught a thing or two."

Peter grinned. "Enough to curse Rosier from here to Hogsmeade!"

Sirius forced out a laugh, though he still didn't find the situation with his former friend to be funny. Then he pinned his classmate with a stare, his glacial eyes hard with warning. "We can talk about it in private and maybe I can show your father's books to my grandfather, but we can't let anyone overhear us, especially not the other Gryffindors."

Peter nodded, his eyes wide again. Sirius held his gaze for a few more moments, then he leaned back casually onto the desk.

"For now we'd better focus on Transfiguration, though. If you don't master making mice inanimate then you'll be completely lost when we start transfiguring them into other objects next week."

At first Sirius had just thought that his friend didn't concentrate enough on his wand movements and incantations, but he had improved his awareness of those two things so much that Sirius was now sure that Peter's real problem was his mental focus. He had tried to engage the other boy in discussions about magical theory, but Peter had failed to pick up any of it. He had particularly tried to explain to Peter that to cast effective spells he should be mentally focusing on what he wanted to happen and on how it should happen, but he had been unsuccessful thus far.

Sirius blamed the boy's Mudblood mother, because he was sure that no pure-blood child would be unable to understand how magic works. He sternly reminded himself about the Potions essay that he needed Peter to help him with, as he hadn't bothered to actually read the chapters himself. Then he drew his wand and started trying to explain it again.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

The next couple of weeks passed by slowly. Sirius spent most of his free time with his two remaining friends in his own year. Since their talk in the Transfiguration classroom, Peter had been less inclined to talk about the game they had attended and was more willing to get Sirius alone so that they could discuss the Dark Arts. Sirius didn't know a lot, but compared to Peter's complete lack of knowledge he was a veritable expert.

He didn't mind spending as much time as possible away from the Gryffindor common room, especially the angry eyes of Potter, Emmeline, and Mary. Plus Snape had obviously told Lily Evans about the confrontation in the corridor, as the redhead had taken to glaring at him with accusing eyes and muttering under her breath about how certain people shouldn't be able to get away with things. (Sirius was just glad that Snape had obviously taken Malfoy and Lestrange's warning seriously and had passed on the importance of discretion to his annoying little girlfriend.) All in all, Sirius was perfectly willing to let Peter drag him off to abandoned classrooms all over the castle in order to have their discussions as long as it meant leaving the tower.

The Gryffindors all seemed to think that his frequent absences must have something to do with his supposed girlfriend from Ravenclaw, but to Sirius's relief most of them had moved onto a new topic of gossip by now. He was very close to admitting that he genuinely enjoyed Janice's company, now that he wasn't so annoyed by her lack of studying skills, and he would have been a bit disappointed to have to cut back on their time together just to avoid his housemates' teasing.

At breakfast one Friday morning in late March, a wave of murmuring passed through the Great Hall when the owl post arrived. Sirius looked up to see what the reaction was about and saw two enormous owls carrying an even more enormous box between them. They flew carefully towards the Gryffindor table, and Sirius perked up with recognition when they were close enough for him to tell that one of the owls was his own, Aquilina, and the other was his father's eagle owl.

The two owls hovered over the table for a moment, but Sirius stood up in alarm and waved his arms to stop them. "Not on the table, girls!" he cried. "Put it on the floor!"

The package wobbled for a moment in midair as they fought to abort their landing, but luckily they were able to manage the extra few feet. Sirius had to duck to avoid being hit in the head as they passed over him, but the box landed heavily on the stone floor with two exhausted owls finally coming to a rest on top of it. Sirius's plate full of breakfast, and that of the students on either side of him, was saved. He reached down quickly to release the birds from their burden, and he let them hop onto his arms so that he could transfer them to the table, where he prepared them their very own plate of sausages and eggs with a goblet of water.

Nearly everybody in the Great Hall was watching the whole thing, so Sirius was a bit self-conscious as he opened the huge box. He didn't let his discomfort show, of course, and he soon found out that there was no need to have been worried. The box appeared to be filled with all of his favorite desserts and candies, as well as a large stack of books and several assorted items of clothing.

There were three letters placed on top of the goodies, and Sirius plucked them out and studied the handwriting in which his name scrawled across each one. They were from his mother, father, and grandfather. He ripped into his mother's, which was at least three times thicker than either of the other two.

My darling son,

I'm sorry that you haven't written me since you've been back at school. It is my fault, I suppose, for not having instilled good habits in our correspondence last term.

Sirius would have snorted if he hadn't been in public. She might as well have said that she was sorry for not having replied to any of his letters last term, if she had wanted to be honest about it. He scanned several more paragraphs with similar types of statements until he finally got to the good part of the letter.

Your cousin Narcissa has written to me about your altercation with the Muggle's son and that dreadful Rosier boy. I cannot say that I am surprised that either of them would dare to challenge you, and I am so proud that you showed the Rosier boy his place, as I have told you time and again that you ought to have done. A foreign mother who works like a Mudblood pauper, imagine--but you have heard me say this all before. I do wish that you had done the same to the Half-blood. I have no doubt that you are up to the task, my darling, and assume that you must have been distracted before you could complete his punishment. I am sure that you will have plenty of time to devise something for next time--There is always a next time, you know, with these common people. They never learn.

Your father purchased you a lovely pair of loafers when he was in Italy. They will go wonderfully with the sweater woven from black yeti fur that you received for Christmas, or the

Sirius stopped reading as his mother went on for another long paragraph about the clothes he already had and the ones she had included for him in the package. He skimmed again until he found a subject more to his liking.

Last time we were in Diagon Alley, your father insisted on buying enough sweets to undoubtedly last you until this time next year. Although I dislike the idea of you eating unhealthily, I remembered what you said about the Potter boy receiving care packages from home every week. Therefore, I had Kreacher make you all of your favorite homemade desserts, which are under the proper Heating and Stasis Charms to last until next week at least. I wasn't sure what you would like, darling, so I included everything I could think of. You may write to me before next week to request what I should put in your next package.

Love,

Mother

P.S. I remember that Andromeda and Narcissa are particularly fond of Kreacher's Bakewell pudding, and Lucius said at the game that his favorite is carrot cake. I have included smaller packages for them.

Sirius thought that it was just like his mother to disapprove of him eating sweets but then to send him all of the desserts he liked best just because she wanted to out do Dorea Potter. He wouldn't complain, though.

His father and grandfather's letters were much shorter and mostly contained advice about what he should do in the event of another altercation. He finished reading them and stuffed all three into his book bag. When he looked up he saw that most of the other students had gone back to their own friends and letters, except for a few eyes at the Gryffindor table. Peter in particular was staring into the box as if Christmas had come all over again, and Sirius laughed and told him that they could go through the contents of the package after classes.

"Mr. Black," came the strict voice of Professor McGonagall, who was walking briskly up the aisle between the Gryffindor and Ravenclaw tables, "I do hope that you aren't planning on carting that around to all of your classes."

Sirius glanced up at her as he finished digging around for the two smaller packages inside his larger one. "No, Professor. I was just about to take it to the dormitory before class begins."

She nodded her acceptance and kept walking, and Sirius levitated the box in front of him and carefully made his way down the aisle and around the Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff tables until he reached the fifth-year Slytherins sitting near the end of their table. Narcissa smiled at him as he approached, though Malfoy maintained his cool mask so that it was impossible for Sirius to know if the older boy was pleased or displeased to see him. At the others' looks, Lestrange, who was sitting across from Malfoy, turned around to see what the fuss was about. When he saw Sirius he gave a genuine grin.

"These are for you and Malfoy, Cissy," Sirius told her, testing out her nickname for the first time since last summer.

She didn't seem to mind, as she accepted her package with her smile still in place. "Oh, do you know what it is?"

"Mother sent you and Andy a Bakewell pudding," he replied. Then he handed Malfoy his box. "Yours is a carrot cake."

Lucius accepted his with a slightly bewildered look coloring his normally unreadable features. It took Sirius several seconds to remember that the older boy's mother had passed away a couple of years ago, and no doubt this was the first care package that he had received since then.

"Why does Malfoy get something and I don't?" demanded Rabastan in probably as serious a tone as Sirius had ever heard him use, and Sirius turned to see that Lestrange was glaring at him. He would have been sure that the older boy was actually angry if his dark blue eyes hadn't been sparkling in mirth.

Sirius pursed his thin lips together as he had seen his mother do so often and narrowed his eyes at the other boy. "Some of us still have standards, you know."

"Oh, and I don't meet these lofty Black standards?"

Sirius curled his lip in disgust for good measure. "Certainly not."

There were a few beats of complete silence from the Slytherins and Hufflepuffs who could hear the exchange, no doubt because they thought from what they could hear that the two were in earnest and a fight was about to break out. Then Rabastan burst into laughter; his laughter always sounded cold and cruel as a rule, but Sirius could tell that he was actually amused. Sirius followed his example a second later, and even Malfoy chuckled.

Finally, Sirius gained control of his laughter and said, "I might consider letting you have a taste or two of my treats, but you'll owe me."

Lestrange eyed him curiously for a few moments, obviously weighing the pros and cons of owing Sirius a favor, before he replied, "Deal. But I want some choice selections, not just your castoffs."

"Deal," Sirius agreed. "Now I really need to get this box up to Gryffindor Tower or I'll be late for Potions."

He was, in fact, not late for Potions, although he very nearly was. He met Professor Slughorn at the door and entered the classroom along with the man's ruminations for at least the hundredth time about what a disappointment it was to him that he hadn't managed to get the full set of Blacks.

"Well, you still have my brother coming, Professor," Sirius told him. "He's determined to be in Slytherin."

That seemed to please the portly man, and he nodded jovially as he made his way up to the front of the classroom to begin the lesson.

Double Potions was the only class that day for both the Gryffindors and Slytherins, and after lunch Sirius planned to meet Janice in the library as he had nearly every Friday afternoon for the past several weeks. He took his usual route from the Great Hall to the library, and though he was as aware as always of what was going on behind him, he was not prepared to be grabbed suddenly and dragged sideways. He stumbled and felt himself be dragged several feet before he recovered enough to struggle. He began to summon his wand into his hand, but his captor's arms wrapped firmly around him and pinned his arms to his sides so that his wand wouldn't have been useful anyway.

"It's me!" cried his captor. "Calm down, it's me!"

Sirius stopped struggling when he recognized the voice, and the other boy loosened his grip and tentatively took half a step back. Sirius took the opportunity to shove Rosier away from him and watched as the Slytherin stumbled backwards and fell against a desk he'd collided with. He didn't pull his wand immediately only because he was curious about what exactly Rosier thought he was doing. He said as much.

Rosier looked up from underneath his now-shaggy brown locks. "Would you have come if I'd actually asked you to meet me somewhere to talk?"

"No," Sirius replied shortly.

When he didn't offer anything else, the other boy sighed and nodded his head in understanding. "I knew you wouldn't, so I had to get creative."

Sirius snorted inelegantly. "Fine. I'm here. What do you want?"

"I want to fix this," replied Rosier, gesturing between the two of them to illustrate his point. "If your cousins and Malfoy and the Lestranges don't have a problem with you being in Gryffindor, then I shouldn't have a problem with it either."

"I don't hear an apology in there anywhere," Sirius observed coldly. "All I hear is that you're ready to be my friend now that you know people more important than you wouldn't have a problem with it."

Rosier stared at him as if he'd grown another head. "You know that it would have been social suicide for me to choose you over the Slytherins! You would have done the same thing!"

Sirius knew that he probably would have under most circumstances, and he distinctly remembered having that exact thought about all of the people in Gryffindor who had avoided him just so they wouldn't incur Potter's wrath. He would rather die than admit that to Rosier, though. He liked to think that he wouldn't have abandoned someone who was already his best friend, even if he wouldn't have taken it upon himself to make new friends with a perfect stranger if it would be social suicide.

He crossed his arms stubbornly and demanded, "Would you even be here right now if the older Slytherins weren't mad at you about me?"

Rosier flushed in anger. "It isn't fair!" he declared. "I was accepted by the Slytherins because of my blood and my father's alliances, and now suddenly rich little Sirius is the favorite again and it's like I'm nobody! They would have ostracized me if I'd been friends with you last term, but this term they're ostracizing me because I'm not friends with you!"

"How do you know they would have?" cried Sirius, ignoring most of the tirade. "My father and grandfather supported me last term! It isn't as if I was disowned!"

"When you were sorted into Gryffindor, my mother said that your mother would surely--"

"Your mother!" Sirius interrupted him with an indignant shout. "Do you know how many absolutely horrid things my mother has told me about your mother over the years? Do you know how many times my mother has told me that she didn't want me to associate with you because of who your mother is? Did I listen to her, Evan?"

Rosier gaped at him. "What did she say about my moth--?"

But all of the feelings of betrayal and hurt and anger had bubbled to the surface of Sirius's mind and heart, and he plowed ahead single-mindedly. "No! I didn't! Do you know why I disobeyed my own mother?"

Evan didn't seem to have an answer to give, but that was okay because Sirius wasn't really interested in his guesses anyway.

"BECAUSE YOU WERE MY BEST FRIEND!" he bellowed at the Slytherin.

The other boy's hazel eyes were wide and he was breathing heavily, as if he had been the one who was shouting. Sirius, for his part, was panting and flushed with anger, pinning his former friend with a stormy gray glare. They stared at one another for long moments that might have only been seconds or might have been minutes, and then Sirius scowled and straightened his posture with a definitive exhale.

"I won't forget how you turned your back on me," he told the wide-eyed Slytherin. "Don't talk to me again or I'll curse you worse than I did before."

With that, he spun on his heel and stomped out of the room. The letter from his mother was burning a hole right through his book bag and cashmere robes and right into his skin. He had wanted so badly to toss it in Rosier's face and let him read for himself how much Sirius's family disapproved of their friendship. Only the fact that his mother would kill him if her private words were made public had stopped him from yanking the parchment out of his bag and thrusting it into Rosier's hand.

The rest of the day he could barely keep the thunderous expression off of his face, and he soundly failed at keeping the outrageous thoughts out of his head. Janice actually got some of her homework done during their time at the library, because she recognized his need for silence. Peter had given up on taking an inventory of the desserts in Sirius's care package about halfway through, after the second time Sirius nearly hexed him where he stood. Even Rabastan had refrained from teasing him too much when Sirius had stopped at the Slytherin table to give him a piece of pound cake.

Sirius refused to tell any of them what was wrong, instead opting to hole himself up in his dorm room so that he wouldn't have to field the questions. For once he was momentarily glad that he only had a handful of friends, because if he'd had more he would have had to avoid questions from even more people.

At dinner on Monday evening, a trill went down the Gryffindor table, and when Sirius looked up he saw Rabastan coming down the aisle between his table and the Ravenclaw table with quick, confident steps. He stopped in front of Sirius and glared at Peter and a third-year girl, who were on either side of him, until the girl finally got the message and she and her friends shifted down the bench to make room for the Slytherin. He slid down gracefully and landed with his back against the table and his long legs sprawled out across the aisle.

"What are you doing?" Sirius asked, not exactly impolitely but certainly not invitingly.

Rabastan let out a surprised laugh. "What's wrong with you?"

Sirius turned and looked at him with blank silver eyes, only to find that Lestrange's sapphire gaze was full of worry and not teasing. He inhaled deeply and exhaled a breath that might have been called a sigh if he had been anyone other than a noble and most ancient pure-blood.

"I talked to Rosier," he said. At the older boy's dangerous look, he hastened to add, "He was trying to make up with me. It was just for the wrong reasons, and it made me angrier more than anything."

The Slytherin sat up and pulled one of his legs over the bench so that he was facing Sirius directly. "Are you sure that you aren't just covering for him?"

"I wouldn't cover for him!" Sirius insisted, turning an insulted glare on Lestrange. They had drawn some looks from the people sitting nearest them, and Sirius lowered his voice so that only Rabastan and Peter, who was on his other side, could hear him properly. "It just... Well, it hurt, hearing him admit that the only reason he wanted to be friends again is that his social status has taken a beating now that the rest of you have decided to accept me."

It wasn't lost on either of the pure-bloods that he was confiding in someone who had only wanted to be friends with him after it was clear that the Black family had fully accepted him despite his unfortunate Sorting. There was an uncomfortable beat of silence between them, and then Rabastan decided that it was better to bring it out into the open than to pretend that it didn't exist.

"If you don't hold it against me that I didn't speak to you last term, why do you hold it against Rosier?"

Sirius set his fork down on his plate with a clink and turned to fully face the fifth year. "I didn't know you. He was my friend before, but he turned his back on me at the first sign of trouble."

"Ah," replied Lestrange, understanding clouding his gaze. "What about Avery and Mulciber?"

"What about them? I've only briefly met either of them over the years. Merlin knows that Mulciber's family isn't ranked high enough to merit my mother's social attentions."

Rabastan was clearly pleased by that. "So you wouldn't hold last term against them?"

When Sirius nodded his assent to the idea, the other boy smiled briefly and settled his elbow on the table.

"I'm here for some of that cherry tart I see."

It took Sirius a few beats to realize that Rabastan was answering his original question. Then he barked out a laugh, glad that the previous subject was behind them, and slid the aforementioned tart towards the Slytherin.

"You'd better take some and go back to your own table before there's a revolt."

He let his gaze travel over the Gryffindor table, where many of the older years were watching them with expressions mixed with confusion and anger at the sight of a Slytherin at their table. The fifth years seemed particularly bothered, and Sirius supposed that must be down to some personal animosity they had with Rabastan, since they were all year mates. The most furious person, though, was James Potter, although he was glaring daggers at Sirius and not at his Slytherin friend. Sirius had no doubt that if it was possible to cast spells through the eyes that Potter's stare would have him convulsing on the floor in pain.

Rabastan took some dessert for himself and another piece for his sister Lucilla and removed himself to his own side of the Great Hall, and for Sirius the rest of dinner passed by without further incident. He felt much better after finally explaining to someone what was bothering him, and he spoke more freely with Peter than he had for the entire weekend previously. Without apologizing for his behavior--because Blacks don't apologize--he made amends by asking his friend if he'd like to finish going through the contents of the package after dinner, and that was more than enough for Peter to forgive and forget.

It was later that evening when Potter finally confronted him. Sirius and Peter had finished their inventory and were lounging on Sirius's bed playing chess, though Peter wasn't very good. They both looked up when the door slammed heavily against the stone wall and saw Potter stalk in as if he had a herd of hippogriffs on his tail.

"You!" he cried when he saw Sirius. "How could you invite your snake friend to sit at our table?"

Sirius finished moving his knight and watched it viciously behead Peter's queen. Then he graced the fuming boy with his attention.

"I didn't invite him."

"Then why was he sitting with you?"

With a sigh, Sirius swung his legs off the bed and stood to face the other boy. "He happens to be my friend."

Potter clenched his fists at his sides and all but growled out, "You're a Gryffindor. We don't have Slytherin friends."

"So let me make sure I have this right," responded Sirius, ticking off the points on his long fingers. "You refuse to be friends with me because I'm not a 'real' Gryffindor. You accuse me of being a Slytherin no matter where the Sorting Hat placed me. You refuse to accept that I might not be all bad, even though your mother is a Black just like me. You do your best to sabotage my ever being accepted by most of the other Gryffindors. But notwithstanding all of the above, it's my fault that I accept friendships from Slytherins instead of spending time with Gryffindors."

The other boy gaped at him, and Sirius could tell that he hadn't thought of it that way before. However, from the stubborn look that appeared on his face a second later, he wasn't about to accept it as true now that he had heard it either.

Before Potter could form a reply, though, the mousy boy at his side said, "Sirius, I'm sure James didn't mean--"

"I think he's meant everything he's said and done to me," Sirius cut him off sharply, "and I don't need you of all people trying to defend him, you cowardly little worm. You've stood beside the big bully for all of it."

Lupin looked as if Sirius had slapped him, and even Potter looked surprised at how the situation had been turned against him when he had clearly intended for the confrontation to go the other way. Sirius, though, was not in the mood to continue, so he slipped by them and made his way to the showers before either could recover fully.

It turned out that he might have been better off had he stayed to finish the fight, because at breakfast a few mornings later he found that the first bite of one of the wonderful scones his mother had sent him caused him to break out into boils that painfully burst with every slight movement. Even if he hadn't felt them break out all over his body, the disgusted and pitying looks from all around him would have clued him in almost immediately. He snapped his head to give Potter a glare, but he regretted it immediately when several of the abscesses burst at the movement.

A few seconds later, Professor McGonagall was at his side, carefully helping him to gingerly rise from the bench with the least amount of ruptures and pain possible. His book bag was handed off to Peter, as Sirius couldn't very well carry it on his shoulder himself without causing himself serious injury, and he was more than grateful when the professor opted to levitate him to the hospital wing rather than have him walk under his own power. He even had boils on the bottoms of his feet.

"Do you know how this happened?" asked the Deputy Headmistress some time later, after Madam Pomfrey had administered the antidote and tended to all of the wounds.

"It was Potter," Sirius told her immediately. "We had an argument a few days ago, and he tampered with the scones my mother sent me... Probably with some other things in the box too, now that I think about it."

Professor McGonagall's thin eyebrows rose higher on her forehead, accentuated by the tightness of her bun. "You shouldn't make accusations without being sure, Mr. Black. How do you know that it was Mr. Potter?"

Sirius pursed his lips into a thin line. "The box is kept in our dormitory. Peter has been eating out of the box as well, so I doubt he would want to poison any of the contents. Lupin might stand by without saying anything when Potter is a bully, but he's never done anything himself. Only Potter has ever done something like this before."

But the professor insisted that she couldn't punish a student without hard evidence that he had been the one to commit the deed. She left the infirmary with a promise to conduct a thorough investigation, and Sirius couldn't help the biting remark that flowed from his mouth at that.

"Oh, I'm sure it will be an entirely fair, impartial investigation, Professor."

That had earned him a strict glare from the woman, but his tone had been polite, and even though it was pushing right up to the border of sarcasm it didn't quite make it there, so she couldn't berate him.

Sirius remembered Will Avery's words from weeks earlier: It's better than the relationship you have with the people you sleep next to. He knew what Avery had meant now, even if there was nothing he could do about it at this point.

When days passed without Potter or Lupin or any other Gryffindors receiving detention for the incident, Sirius concluded that no one was going to be punished. He had thought on one occasion that Lupin must have received a detention, because he wasn't in either the common room or the dormitory one evening, like he usually was. However, Peter told him that he had heard that the other boy was ill again.

"Sickly little thing, isn't he?" asked Sirius rhetorically.

Peter nodded as if it had been a real question. "Oh, yes. He's been out at least once a month since we got here, almost like clockwork."

Sirius didn't reply, but he did consider the remark at some length afterwards. He wondered if his roommate had some sort of chronic illness to justify the professors allowing him to miss class at least once a month. He wasn't really worried about it being anything contagious, since he assumed that the adults never would have allowed Lupin to come to Hogwarts if he posed a danger to the other students, but he was quite curious about what exactly the problem could be. Something niggled at the corner of his mind, but even after several minutes of thinking it over, he couldn't think of any wizarding illnesses that worked quite like that.

It must be some disgusting Muggle disease, he thought viciously. I hope that the headmaster knows what he's dealing with, because if I get sick my family will have his head.

It was perhaps that line of thinking that made Sirius less receptive to the other boy when he approached the back of the Muggle Studies section when Sirius was there with Janice a few weeks later.

"I wanted to say that I'm sorry," Lupin said, sincerity shining through his moss green eyes. "I've never really had any friends before, and I know that I was willing to let James get away with murder just because he was my first friend."

Although Sirius had claimed before that he didn't hold it against perfect strangers for not going against the crowd and making friends with him, for some reason he was entirely unimpressed by Lupin's apology. He raised one perfectly formed eyebrow and pinned his fellow Gryffindor with an unforgiving stare. "Oh, and where is Prince Potter? He didn't want to witness your heartfelt confession to me?"

Lupin dropped his gaze to his tatty shoes. "He's in the common room. I, ah... Well, I--that is to say, I, ah... snuck out to come find you."

"You snuck out," he repeated in a flat tone. "I see. I'm worth an apology to heal your guilty conscious, but only if it doesn't cost you anything."

"No, it isn't like that!" the gaunt boy denied. "James kno--I mean, I can't just--I mean... Please, you don't understa--"

Sirius cut him off with a cold laugh. "I don't want to understand."

He turned back to the essay in front of him, completely ignoring Lupin. Janice giggled as if she found his rude dismissal amusing, and after a few long seconds and a disappointed sigh, the smaller boy turned and left.

However, Lupin didn't stop his attempts at reconciliation at that. He took to trying to speak to Sirius and Peter whenever James wasn't around, and sometimes when he was if Lupin thought that he could get away with it. Some time later in Transfigurations class, when Sirius had long since managed to turn his mouse into a snuffbox and was dividing the rest of his class time between watching his classmates' attempts and reading ahead in the second-year textbook, Lupin approached his desk. Sirius felt the shadow fall over him and looked up from his chapter on more complex animate to inanimate transfigurations to find Lupin shifting his weight nervously in the aisle.

"Erm..." began the other boy when it was clear that Sirius wasn't going to do anything more than stare at him. "You've done really well with your snuffbox, and I was wondering if you could help me with mine." At Sirius's blank look, he rushed on, "I mean, I've got the basic transfiguration down all right, of course. It's just that your snuffbox is so complex and all I've been able to manage is a simple one...."

Sirius was considering exactly how harsh of a rejection he could risk with Professor McGonagall liable to come within earshot at any moment as she walked around the classroom checking the students' progress, but it turned out that he didn't have to say anything at all.

"I guess I shouldn't be surprised that you'd ask him for help instead of me," said Potter from the desk across the aisle.

Lupin turned to face his friend, and Sirius could just make out the wary expression on the half of the boy's face that he could still see. "It isn't like that, James. You were still working on your transfiguration, and Sirius had already finished his."

"No, no, you don't have to explain it to me," said James in what Sirius assumed was meant to be a sickly sweet voice, though it was so loud and full of animosity that it utterly failed. "It's a perfect match made in heaven, isn't it? A Dark wizard and a--"

"James, please!" cried Lupin loudly.

The desperation in the boy's voice piqued Sirius's curiosity, and he sat up straighter to get a better look at the two friends. Potter was glaring hard at Lupin, but the smaller boy had such a pale, frightened expression on his face that Sirius was sure he might pass out any second. Unfortunately for Sirius, the confrontation ended there, as Professor McGonagall came to a halt right beside Lupin, her robes swishing around her legs as if she had rushed over from the other side of the classroom.

"MR. POTTER!" she shrieked, a bit more loudly than the situation called for, in Sirius's opinion. "DETENTION!"

Of course Sirius was pleased to see Potter getting into trouble, especially from McGonagall of all people, but that didn't help slake his curiosity any. Over the next few weeks he tried to observe his two roommates more closely, but he suddenly found that, where before he had wanted nothing more than to stay away from the two, now that he wanted to spy on them it was nearly impossible. Lupin didn't try to speak to him again, not even when Potter wasn't around, and besides that the entire school was soon revising for exams.

Sirius didn't see very much of his older Slytherin friends towards the end of term, as they had OWLs that year and spent the last month studying furiously for them. He did have a couple of encounters with Lucilla Lestrange, though, as his mother had sent the girl a beautiful Slytherin sweater for her birthday in May and directed Sirius to give it to her.

I heard from Bellatrix that it is dear Lucilla's birthday on the fifteenth, her letter had begun. I do hope that you have been spending some time with her this term, as the two of you seemed to get along so splendidly on the platform in January. Please tell her that the sweater is from you for her special day.

Sirius had modified the message just a bit, as he had no idea what his mother was playing at but he did know that he wasn't about to make himself look like a fool in front of an older Slytherin he hardly knew. However, she had thanked him sincerely for the gift, and since then she had taken to speaking to him for a few minutes in the corridors or in the Great Hall whenever they encountered each other.

His own revisions for exams had gone particularly well, he though, and he was sure that he would be among the top of his class in most subjects. He was a bit iffy about Potions, as he had grown accustomed to reading Peter's notes on specific potions before brewing during regular class time, and it turned out that it was a bit difficult to prepare for the practical portion of the exam when he had no idea what potion they would be expected to brew. However, as far as he could tell his Forgetfulness Potion had turned out only a couple of shades off of the pure white it was meant to be, and the written portion of the examination had gone pretty well.

He knew that he had done much better in Charms and Transfigurations. In Charms they had to navigate a ball through an obstacle course including tight corners and floating hoops, and Sirius had managed to complete the course without bumping his ball into anything and then had made it perform a little spinning flourish to celebrate completing the practical.

In Transfigurations they had to transform a mouse into a snuffbox; they had been working on the transfiguration for the last weeks of class, with Professor McGonagall pushing her students to create increasingly elaborate snuffboxes. Sirius had watched Potter create a lovely box in Gryffindor red and gold with a drawing of a lion on top, and then he had one-upped his rival by modeling his own snuffbox after his new Gryffindor ring, complete with the color and texture of real gold and genuine-looking red gemstones set around a lifelike roaring lion's head which was protruding from the lid. It was much easier to transfigure something when one had a clear picture of the result in mind, and Sirius had spent enough time studying his ring to be able to almost perfectly replicate the lion from memory. Professor McGonagall had said that they would be awarded extra points for the beauty of their snuffboxes, and Sirius was quite sure that he must have managed the highest marks on the practical exam.

Astronomy was a breeze for him, of course, as the stars and constellations were considered quite important to the Black family in particular, and Herbology went well enough even though Sirius found it utterly boring. Janice quite enjoyed the subject, and since they were partners in class and often studied together in the library (with more studying and less chatting getting done the closer it got to exam time), Sirius felt that he had received a leg up without having to put in too much extra effort himself.

All in all, the end of term passed in much the same way as it had begun. He did determine that next term he would do his best to solve the mystery of what was going on between Potter and Lupin, and he was equally as determined to try and make friends with some of the Slytherins closer to his own age since it wouldn't be long before his fifth-year friends finished school. However, the anxiety of their first proper examination period as Hogwarts students had left enemies and potential allies alike just as busy as he had been, and there hadn't been any time for either arguments or introductions. Even Emmeline had seemed too distracted to always remember to glare whenever she saw him, even when he was walking with Janice.

Thus he boarded the Hogwarts express to return home for the summer holiday with a lot more regret than he'd had about going home for Christmas. However, as he was sure of his acceptance from his family this time around and was excited about Bellatrix's wedding later that summer, he was a bit torn between wanting to stay at school a little bit longer and wanting to return to Grimmauld Place.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Author's Note: If anyone is having trouble visualizing Sirius's new ring or the snuffbox he created, this is the kind of lion I'm thinking of when I write about it, except as a ring, not a pendant: www.rubylane.com/item/796984-193oohj/Outstanding-2-1-2-14K