The Marauders Year Five Part 2 #Wattys2017

Cramming

Cramming

Sirius got back to the dormitory, tearing through the common room like a madman, hot tears streaking his face, though he told himself he was not crying. There were a few students in the common room - the first years, who had a free morning on Fridays, and a couple other stragglers - and their eyes followed Sirius Black as he raced up the stairs, muttering to himself in a low, mental sounding tone. They exchanged uncomfortable glances... glances that only got more nervous when Sirius's shouting came down the stairs...

He'd run into the dormitory, ripped open the bottom drawer of his desk, bits of poetry snowing about the room... to find his firewhiskey gone. He yanked the entire drawer out and upended it - hundreds of bits of note scraps of things he'd written fluttering about like broken butterflies in the rush as he shook the drawer. He threw the empty drawer down. "WHERE IS IT?" he yelled, "WHERE IS IT?" Desperation poured through him and he checked James's bottom drawer and his trunk and James's trunk and he threw himself onto his stomach and looked under Peter's be and James's bed and finally, finally, mercifully, he found a bottle beneath his own bed - a half finished bottle from Merlin knew when. He prayed it would be one with a refilling charm upon it from some party and he uncorked the top and gulped the red-gold liquid down in great swallows, desperate for it to hit his bloodstream and his brain as fast as possible.

The fates were kind, it was a refilling bottle - though it was old and tasted it, he didn't care. He drank what was left and when he refilled, he drank it down again and he sat on the bed, dizzy and clutching the bottle and leaning against the headboard.

"Stupid, stupid for even thinking of asking... stupid idiot... of course he was going to say no... tent in the fucking woods, holiday on a beach... fucking idiot...." Sirius murmured to himself and he rocked, biting his lower li, shaking his head in disbelief at himself. "Idiot."

It took an hour before Remus caught up. He'd gone after Sirius as soon as he left - but Sirius had run from the Shack, so much faster than Remus Lupin, with his sore after-moon knees and weak body had been able to go. Remus had stopped periodically to catch his breath because his sides were aching and his lungs burning. When he finally got there, he pulled himself up the dorm stairs, wincing at each step, at the effort it took to drag himself up... and he pushed open the dormitory door to find Sirius passed out on the bed, the bottle of firewhiskey still balacing in his fist, but only barely.

Remus felt sick and angry. Where had he gotten that? He went over and tore the bottle out of Sirius's hand and he chucked it across the room. He'd expected it to break, he'd wanted it to, even, for the satisfaction of the sound ,but it hit the carpet with a thump and a bit of a splash. He turned back 'round and found the drawers of the desks all open, the drunks Sirius had dug through lifted, things spilling out of them onto the floor. Remus nearly tripped over Sirius's ridiculously long Gryffindor scarf and a pair of robes that he'd tossed about trying to find the firewhiskey, and there were loads of little folded up poems all over the place and Remus tried to neaten up for a few minutes, but he was still shaky and weak from the moon and he tired quickly and ended up sitting on the bed, clutching a handful of those bits of paper, his hands shaking from anger and the effects of that blasted moon, and he lay back, dizzy and suddenly very, very cold, and he crawled under his duvet and curled into a ball in the darkness beneath the blankets, feeling further away from Sirius Black than he ever had.

Sirius had drank too much. It was the first time that he had drank so much that he literally blacked out. He woke up much, much later - the middle of the night, actually - to find that someone - probably James - had laid him down and covered him up with blankets better than he'd done when he'd passed out. The whiskey was gone, the room was dark and silent and all three of the others were asleep in their beds.