What if they all lived?

Chapter 10

Some memories of chilhood trauma here

First Year- Secrets

Friday, 17th September, 1971

Sirius Black

James's owl returned empty-handed (empty-taloned?), not even a scrap of paper tied to her leg. Sirius tried not to show how much this upset him, no, infuriated him.

 Surely Reg wasn't ignoring him-probably, their parents had forbidden Sirius from writing, further punishment for his failed Sorting. He would ask Thena if he answered her but he doubted that would be the situation, given that their brother wasn't an idiot and would not ignore one and write to the other. But this line of thought didn't make Sirius feel any better, as it only set him wondering how Reg was doing, and whether he was alright all by himself.

 Sirius had tried, all his life, to make sure Regulus felt included, like he wasn't missing on anything the twins were up to and that there would be no inside jokes between them that Reg wouldn't be a part of, because he knew how he felt, he'd told Athena once. "Twins have stronger bonds, its not the same" which Athena found utterly idiotic so he told him so and he only ignored her.

It was the first time in either of their lives that the siblings had been apart, and even at Hogwarts, surrounded by many other people to distract him, Sirius missed his brother. He would find himself thinking about a joke he'd heard that Reg would particularly enjoy, or about some time Athena made fun of some git and made some intelligent remarks and how the face of the person insulted would twitch trying to understand the punch line.

A great distraction had been Remus Lupin. Sirius was sure the boy could not read.

He couldn't stop thinking about what Snape had said—the comment about brains, that was what had really upset Remus. He was clearly sensitive about it. And the fight in potions had been because Snape suggested he couldn't read...he never opened his books, and he hardly ever wrote anything down, he didn't even jot notes in class. He badly wanted to discuss it with James, but decided not to—it didn't feel right, talking behind Remus's back about something like that. Especially not when it was clearly a sore subject for the boy. So Sirius continued his careful observation, waiting to see if he'd be able to figure it out. 

He felt the flooding needed to tell Athena more than anyone else. She needed to know because the twins always gossiped about things like that, but he felt so wrong, he didn't want Remus to become gossip. He decided against it at least for the time being.

As luck would have it, the opportunity came on that Thursday. They were all working on homework in the common room—James was working on Remus's. It had been a battle to get the sullen boy to agree to the help, but after James asked to learn obfuscate in return, Remus finally acquiesced,stubborn, Sirius thought to himself, And proud. 

He clearly liked to do everything alone—even, in the case of homework, when that meant not doing anything at all. Sirius didn't understand why he continued to hold himself at such a distance, and got distracted musing over it, though he was supposed to be finishing his own essay. Had they done something to offend Remus? Because it couldn't have been that the boy simply didn't talk because that just wasn't true, the boy talked, when he wanted to. It wasn't that he didn't want friends either because he had gotten close to Thena and Evans. And he didn't hate them because they were the Marauders.

Next to them, Peter was attempting to levitate an apple into the wastepaper basket a few feet away. They had been working on levitation in Charms, and it was so ridiculously simple that Sirius wasn't sure why Peter still seemed unable to grasp it. His apple kept wobbling and falling back down to the ground with a thump. It was starting to get on Sirius's nerves.