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chapter sixty-one
another side of the looking glass
Sirius started his day the way he normally would: by looking at Remus. There was something so soothing about the way his nose was pointed slightly down and to the side, and the mismatched nature of his freckles — plus, as long as Sirius was only looking, he wasn't really doing anything wrong.
He went down to breakfast alone for once, not really wanting the company of the other marauders. They hadn't done anything wrong, but Sirius always found himself to be in a funny kind of mood when he got back from Grimmauld Place, often more recluse than he'd like to be.
Plus, he'd recently had another terrible fight with his git of a brother.
When he got down to the Great Hall he wasn't surprised to see that the Gryffindor girls were already down there — according to Beatrice, Lily always woke them up ridiculously early on the first day — but he didn't say anything to them at first.
Instead he just watched, like an animal of prey, observing the selection before him. Sirius had grown up pure-blood, and he knew the way men were supposed to treat women: hunting them down and trapping them before inevitably tearing them apart; but when he saw Beatrice lean into Alice, her hair messy and her cheeks a rosy pink, he knew he'd never want to hurt her. Or any of her stupid friends.
He shook his head, recognizing that he was sinking into another one of his moods, so he plastered a grin across his face instead.
"Hello ladies," he said, sitting down next to Marlene McKinnon and tossing an arm over her shoulder, "how are you doing on this fine morning?"
"Great until you came along," Marlene said, shoving him off, and while he played the part of a wounded man well he noticed the way that Mary Macdonald's eyes lingered on him for a moment longer than the rest.
He offered Mary a wink, and she quickly glanced away. Mary was probably the prettiest of the Gryffindor girls, and while he didn't much want to tear her apart, he supposed taking her to Hogsmeade might be nice. Plus, she was muggle-born, and that was bound to piss off his parents.
The thought excited him, but it also caused his brother's shrill voice to ring around his head once more:"keep your head down, don't speak unless spoken to, stop picking fights". But there was a difference between picking fights and standing up for what you believe in, that was something Regulus would never quite be able to understand.
"Oi, Black!" Alice Fortescue said, snapping Sirius back to attention.
"Yeah?"
Alice snickered, and Beatrice grabbed onto her arm, also giggling. "Beatrice has something she'd like to tell you. Something about your br-"
"Alice, stopp," Beatrice said, turning on Sirius when he raised an eyebrow. "Don't listen to her, she's being stupid. You haven't seen Frank Longbottom anywhere, have you?"
Sirius hadn't seen Frank yet, and wasn't quite sure what the connection was, but the older boy's name only caused the pair to descend into even more laughter.
He raised an eyebrow just as Lily rolled her eyes.
"Ignore them," she said in her usual smooth voice that made Sirius almost able to understand why James was so crazy about her, "they stayed up almost all night so are majorly sleep deprived."
He grinned. "That would explain it. Good summer, Evans?"
Lily smiled. While he certainly didn't get along with her as well as Remus did, Sirius reckoned that Lily was warming up to him. (When he wasn't helping James woo her, that is.) "Yeah, it was alright. Tuney was a pain in the butt, but Marlene and Mary came around a few times which was still nice."
"That's good," Sirius said, running a hand through his hair, but he was now distracted by the thought of Petunia Evans. He knew what she looked like: thin, about seventeen, and pretty in a sort of odd way; but that wasn't what he was thinking about. No, in his mind, Petunia was just another Regulus, a hurdle to overcome and a pain in the ass, but also vaguely beloved.
Strangely, he had the urge to talk to Lily about it, and found himself reaching out and taking her hand. "I'm sorry, Evans. I know family can be a pain."
Lily looked him in the eyes, scanning his face for sarcasm and reluctantly nodding when she realized there was none. "I hate her, but she's still..."
"Your sister, I get it. If I had a galleon for every time I swore I hated Regulus—" he cut himself off when he realized that Beatrice was watching the pair of them, a resentful look on her face.
"That isn't a very nice thing to say," she said, and Sirius had to actually suppress a groan. Why did girls always want to be so nice all the time?!
"Stay out of it, Beatrice," he snapped, annoyed at how she always seemed to catch him out of context. "I wasn't talking to you."
Hurt flashed across her face, but she was raised pure-blood too, and quickly hid it with a cool stare. "I'm just thinking that you might try treating him better. You are family after all."
"Oh, because you get on so well with your family," Sirius replied. "Nobody likes it when you get all huffy like this, it's no wonder you and Remus broke up so quickly—"
Beatrice stood up from the table quickly, and the bench made a horrible scraping noise against the floor as she did so. She cast him a nasty look, and for a moment Sirius thought she was going to have a go at him, but then she just turned and stormed off, Alice hot on her heels.
"Shove off," he told Lily when he realized she was still staring at him, and the young red-head just sighed.
"You were being a right prat there," she commented (again with girls wanting to be nice!) "Her and Remus may not have been serious by any stretch of the imagination, but I think getting dumped was a huge blow to her ego. You should apologize to her — I thought you two were supposed to be close!"
Sirius shrugged. Beatrice was supposed to be his best girl friend, but she didn't really act like it. It wasn't fair: he was the one who comforted her when she was crying over some daft thing Marlene had said in the common room all those years ago, but for some reason he was never the one she was fascinated with. It wasn't that he particularly longed for her attention, but if anything she was supposed to be his friend, not Remus's and certainly not his brother's.
Sirius had hated it when she had gone out with Remus, and when he caught them snogging at the back of the Gryffindor common room it had taken everything in him not to race over and tear them apart. The funny thing, though, was that he wasn't quite sure who he was more jealous of.
"S'pose," he said after a bit, and Lily rolled her eyes again.
"God, you marauders are ridiculous."
A faint smile traced Sirius's lips. "Yeah."
"Well go on then," she said with a resolved smile, "it looks like the rest of your boy band is here. Just promise me you'll make it up to Beatrice sooner rather than later — we all know she's been through enough."
Part of Sirius wanted to argue that he'd gone through a fair amount too, but the thought instantly left his mind when he followed Lily's gaze to the doors, and spotted James, Peter and Remus walking in.
His eyes met Remus's own, chocolate brown ones, and he couldn't help it when his false smile started to become real.
