Do you think you could post another little snippet of the weird sad Sirius black fic? it's so comforting to read and so good
COULD I? look at this adorable fucking ask, i love this. i love this adorable ask. i would be honored, adorable anonymous asker, to post as much of my bullshit as you can stand.
here! from the first chapter, a bunch of eleven-year-olds figuring out how to be friends, and James Potter Is Actually Very Good At Making People Feel Slightly Nicer About Themselves.
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It is the following week, on a Tuesday morning, when the Howler finally arrives. It lands face up in the center of the table between the four of them, narrowly missing Remus’s bowl of porridge, with a loud, satisfying thwack. On the front, in what is unmistakably his mother’s spiked, narrow handwriting, are the words: SIRIUS ORION VESPASIAN BLACK.
“Good lord, has she really?” says James, finally, into the long and awkward silence. “Bit middle-class of her, isn’t it?”
Sirius glares at him.
“Of who?” Peter looks back and forth between them quickly, like a startled animal. “Oh no, is that from your mum?”
Sirius continues to glare.
“Aren’t you supposed to open those right away?” asks Remus, frowning warily at the red envelope.
“Uh, yes,” approves Peter, pushing it desperately closer to Sirius with the edge of his knife. “I once left one from my aunt just for just over an hour and I swear it spit acid at me when I finally opened it.”
As if in agreement, the envelope begins to vibrate angrily, a little curl of steam rising from a tear in the flap.
“Go on,” hisses James, and Sirius can’t tell whether he’s terrified or positively pissing himself with excitement.
“You do it, you’re so eager,” Sirius hisses back. He pokes it with the tip of his spoon, and he swears it lets out a little growl. “This is a nightmare.”
“Well, it’s not like she’s here,” says Remus, who despite the relative calm of his voice, looks like he’d rather be literally anywhere else. “It’s not like she can actually hurt you.”
“It spit acid.”
“Not helping, Peter.”
With a noise that he knows sounds similar to a strangled cat, Sirius grabs the envelope and rips it open with both hands.
The paper inside is coal-black, the mouth it forms is tight and razor-thin, and when it whips around and begins to scream at him with the pitch of a banshee, Sirius swears he can feel drops of hot ink splatter against his face.
SIRIUS BLACK AS IF IT WERE NOT ENOUGH TO HEAR YOU HAVE BROUGHT SHAME TO OUR ANCIENT AND NOBLE LINEAGE IN YOUR SORTING WE NOW HEAR YOU DO NOTHING TO REMEDY YOUR UTTERLY DISAPPOINTING PERFORMANCE AND INSTEAD ARE PERFECTLY HAPPY TO WASTE YOUR DAYS LEVELING DEMEANING AND CHILDISH HEXES AT YOUR COUSINS AND THE TRADITIONAL HOUSE OF YOUR FAMILY --
(Sirius wonders bleakly, as the envelope continues to shriek, if it were possible to Obliviate yourself.)
-- AND IF YOUR FATHER AND I AND HEAR OF ANY MORE OF THIS MISCREANT BEHAVIOUR YOU WILL BE BROUGHT HOME AT ONCE TO FACE A VERY DIFFERENT BRAND OF PUNISHMENT --
(Next to him, he feels Remus physically shrink backwards, and Peter drops his teacup.)
-- DO NOT EXPECT OUR SYMPATHY OR LENIENCE AND KNOW THAT YET AGAIN YOU HAVE UTTERLY FAILED TO UPHOLD THE VALUES AND PREEMINENT STATION OF YOUR BLOODLINE.
With that, the envelope lets out an enormous noise, like the bang of a hex, and bursts into bright red flame, writhing and spinning and curling in on itself, before eventually tumbling back to the table in a mess of ash and charred ink.
There are several long and terrifying seconds of silence before James, without preamble, reaches out and stabs it viciously with his fork. “Ugh.”
Despite the fact that his heart is still pounding against his ribs, Sirius tries out for a smile, and finds he is even able to manage a hoarse laugh.
“There,” James wipes his hands on his front with a flourish, and steals Remus’s fork in order to go back in for his sausage. “That’s enough of that nonsense.”
“What, you didn’t find that bracing, being screamed at only twelve minutes into breakfast?” Sirius nudges at the dead, shriveled mass with his spoon again.
“I’d not make a habit out of it, honestly,” says Remus, passing him his napkin and gesturing vaguely in the direction of Sirius’s face. James makes a noise of agreement through a mouthful of breakfast. Peter just looks a little ill.
From across the hall, there is the audible wave of snickering, and Sirius looks up from wiping ink-spittle off his nose to see Avery, Wilkes, and Snape turned toward them, their eyes glittering. Wilkes makes an obscene gesture, and there is a the sharp snap of laughter from some of the older boys down the end of the Slytherin table. Lucius Malfoy’s mouth curves in a nasty smile as he bends to whisper something to Lestrange, and Sirius instantly regrets never shoving Rabastan down the stairs of Grimmauld Place when he had the chance, that one summer evening when he was eight and the two brothers taught him how to torture spiders in the attic.
“Oi, come on. Buck up, mate,” says James, flicking a bit of egg at him to bring his attention back.
Feeling an itchy, uncomfortable heat crawl upwards over his face, he wads the napkin up and tosses it angrily at his own plate. “Tossers,” he mutters, trying for nonchalant, but knowing it comes out petulant and half-hearted.
“Was that really your mum?” Remus says quietly, at his shoulder.
“Look, could we not, Lupin?” he mutters, grabbing a piece of toast and stabbing his knife at the inside of the jam jar. “She’s not your mother, what do you care what she’s like?”
“Merlin’s middle tit,” James cuts in, with a truly infuriating breeziness. “All these heavy brows, what’s that? I, for one, am absolutely thrilled.”
“Come again,” Sirius says flatly, putting far too much jam on his toast in the process of trying to ignore literally everything around him.
“I mean, I’ve just learned your middle name is actually Vespasian,” grins James, glee etched in his face like he can’t believe his luck. “This finally, finally, proves that you, Sirius Black, are truly, and without a doubt, the poshest bloke I’ve ever been friends with.”
Sirius throws his toast at him, jam and all.
(He knows he’s smiling, though, as if he’s not able to help it anymore, and it will only be later that evening, brushing his teeth in the loo to the sound of loud snoring in the next room, that he will realize he has, in fact, been smiling all day. Despite everything, he has been smiling, because James Potter called him a friend, as if it were the easiest and most obvious thing in the world. And he has been smiling, he realizes, because he knows, like how even the rustiest key remembers the lock that it opens, that it’s perfectly true.)
