Different

The small, pale boy with dark hair ran into the pub and looked around frantically. He was clearly upset and sweating slightly from what had obviously been a mad dash. The dingy interior of the pub seemed, on first glance, to be empty. The shadows concealed their secrets well; but not well enough. Knowing his time was short, the pale boy dived behind the bar. Luck, it seemed, had sided with him: the bartender was elsewhere.

Barely seconds later, a harassed looking woman entered and surveyed the room. She closely resembled the boy, with black hair and grey eyes, which seemed to pierce the furniture. Taller than most, she radiated a sense of confidence and superiority. Her long strides and penetrating glare indicated she would let no one stand in her way.

But she saw what the boy did not: someone else was in the pub.

'Where did he go?' she snapped.

'Who?' replied the voice, quiet and calm. Few dared talk to her like that when she was ranting and raving, most were as cooperative as possible.

'The boy who just ran in here, you stupid child!'

Behind the bar, he curled up into a ball. This was it, he was going to die. Again. Why couldn't his mother just leave him be? He couldn't believe he hadn't noticed someone else was there, someone else who would sell out his location. His mother was too scary to lie to.

'He went out into the street,' came the reply, cool as ever.

The boy's breath caught in his throat. He didn't dare believe it. Had this person lied to his mother? People just didn't do that.

'Into the Muggle world?!'

She was furious, he could easily picture it. Any second now the person would get too scared and tell her.

There was silence, then footsteps, and the swinging of a door. She hadn't found him. Someone had covered for him. The boy didn't dare get up, all the same; it was too good to be true, too impossible to believe.

'You can come out now,' suggested the voice. 'She went outside because she thinks you're out there. She won't be back in a hurry.' Slowly the boy got to his feet and peered over the bar. Sitting in the corner, obscured by shadow was another boy, about his age, possibly younger. He had short black hair that stuck up everywhere, and round glasses. 'I'm James Potter,' he said. 'Who're you?'

The boy stepped out, slightly nervously. He'd heard of the Potters. His family hated them, and vice-versa.

'Sirius Black,' he said slowly and cautiously. He'd learned long ago that nobody was nice for no reason.

The boy called James gestured for him to come sit next to him. 'I saw you running, and then that lady came in, and I thought that you probably didn't want to be found, so I didn't tell her,' he said, in one breath. 'I've heard of your family, daddy says you're all weird, and I thought that lady seemed weird, but you seem normal enough, was she your mother?'

Sirius paused, digesting the horrendously long sentences before muttering 'Yeah,' in reply. He didn't like admitting it, but she was.

'I 'spect you'll get into awful trouble,' said James Potter, relishing in the thought. 'Mummy was really mad last time I ran off, though it might have something to do with the frog I put in her soup.'

Sirius smiled shyly, here was one who knew his mind. There were very few ways he could make his mother pay for all the stuff she said and did. Slimy things were one of them. He suspected that James's mother was probably nicer than his though. There was nothing fun or amusing about getting into trouble with his parents.

'How old are you?' he asked.

'Eight last week,' replied James, proudly. 'I got a new broom, too, it's loads of fun and I've played on it loads, daddy said I should be on the England team. How old are you?'

'Eight as well,' replied Sirius, wondering what it would be like to have a father like that. 'My birthday was four days ago.'

'We have nearly the same birthdays then! Only you're... two days younger then me. I don't know anyone else who has a birthday so close to mine.' The two boys smiled at each other, connected somehow by the closeness of birthdays. 'What did you get?'

Sirius froze in his seat. Compared with a new broom, how was his birthday going to look? Some horrible fancy dress robes with the Black family crest that he would never wear; and a threat that if he didn't stop acting like a Gryffindor he'd not get anything next year.

'Nothing much,' he dismissed the question. A flash of a frown crossed James's face, but he didn't push further, Sirius was glad. Most people he talked to didn't seem to understand that he didn't want to talk about his home life. 'Where are your mother and father?' he asked, trying to steer the conversation away from his own family.

'Shopping in Diagon Alley, they think I'm too annoying to shop with so they told me to stay here. I 'spect they'll be back soon. We'll be going to Hogwarts together, won't we? What house do you think you'll be in?'

'Probably Slytherin,' he muttered, glumly, staring intently at the grain in the wooden table. He'd heard of how Gryffindor the Potters were and he didn't want James's disapproval. 'It's where my family always go, they wouldn't let me go elsewhere,' he added, by way of explanation.

'I don't expect,' said James, slowly. 'That they let you run off into Diagon Alley. But you did, anyway. Daddy says it doesn't matter what your family want, it matters what you want, and what you're good at, 'course, me and my parents want the same thing, so that's OK. Where do you want to be?'

'Anywhere but Slytherin.' Sirius couldn't help but brighten up slightly. James seemed to know all about it. If Sirius was put somewhere else then what could his parents do about it? Nothing, that was what.

'Maybe you could be in Gryffindor with me,' said James. 'And you could help me put toads in other people's soup, or different stuff, if we get bored.'

'Why are you being nice to me?' asked Sirius, suddenly; common sense catching up with him. 'My father's always saying how the Potters don't like us and we don't like them.'

'Daddy says the same,' said James, with a small smile, not at all phased by the question. 'But parents are silly, a lot of the time. What's the point in me being mean to someone because my daddy says I should? You don't want to be in Slytherin, and you seem nice, which is good enough for me.'

Sirius grinned, relaxing a bit. It was the first time in ages someone had been nice to him. The few people in his family who he liked to talk to weren't considered Good For Him. Sirius's experience with things that were Good For Him was that they invariably turned out to feel Bad.

'I bet if we were both in Gryffindor, we could do all sorts of fun things,' he said, envisioning all the trouble they could get into.

'Exactly,' said James.

Two others entered the room, they walked over to the table where the two boys sat. Quite unlike Sirius's mother; with her belief that the world was lucky she graced it with her parents; they strolled slowly, smiling and happy to see James.

'Hello James, you found a friend?' James nodded eagerly.

'This is Sirius,' he said. 'Sirius, this is my parents, they're nice most of the time. We're going to be in the same year at Hogwarts because he's only two days younger than me,' he told his parents.

'Sirius...?' questioned James's father.

'Black,' muttered Sirius. He saw the look the two Potters exchanged and his face fell. James saw it too. He sent Sirius one that said 'Don't worry, they're just stupid sometimes.'

Unfortunately for Sirius, his mother chose that moment to reappear into the Leaky Cauldron. She stared at Sirius, and the Potters, realising that James had lied to her, but also that she could say nothing in front of his parents.

'What did I tell you about running off?' she demanded. 'And hiding? I've been searching for you for ages!' She marched over to Sirius and roughly his arm. 'Come with me! I've got enough to do without you messing around!'

As she practically dragged him back into Diagon Alley, Sirius shot a look over his shoulder at James, whose parents were probably beginning a lecture on Why the Black Family Just Aren't Good to Spend Time With. James grinned and mouthed See you in Hogwarts! before Sirius was pulled through the door and back into Diagon Alley.

'Those were the Potters, weren't they?' snapped his mother. 'You should be avoiding them as much as possible, you stupid boy! As different from us decent people as they could be.' She was apparently unaware that James Potter was receiving the exact same lecture in the Leaky Cauldron.

Maybe they weren't so different, after all. Sirius grinned at the thought, who would have imagined it?