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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.

He sat up slowly, his neck hurt, badly, and he rubbed it with his fingertips. He wished he had more whiskey. He wanted to go back to being asleep unconscious because for that time he’d been out, Achlys had been blissfully silent.

But now she was billowing there in his chest again, her veils swirling about, ice-cold against his insides, and he lay back down, and stayed there staring up at his canopy.




The next day was Saturday and James and Peter were the only two that got up to go to breakfast. Sirius and Remus both stayed in bed. James saw Maryrose for a few awkward minutes in the entrance hall, though he got away from her as quickly as he could, too. He felt terrible, after all he’d done to rescue her, he couldn’t figure out how to go about breaking up with her for a second time, especially since he really had no reason, other than the fact that he didn’t really understand how they’d gotten together in the first place. He felt sort of trapped because in his other timeline he’d been so damn close to Lily Evans and then torn so far away from her in this timeline and he’d been inching closer and closer to her, but she was still with Jasper so that wasn’t even an option right now… And with the O.W.L.s starting Monday, he had no time at all to do anything but cram knowledge into his brain if he wanted to become an auror someday, which he desperately wanted to do. So that was the excuse he used to get away from Maryrose - revising - and he and Peter returned to find Remus awake, but Sirius still asleep.

Peter had brought food and Remus gratefully ate every morsel Peter had brought for him, thanking Peter eagerly.

Then they’d set to revising.

Sirius woke up awhile into the revising session and he sat, hugging his knees, staring at his feet, listening to the other three quizzing each other on various Defensive theories and Transfiguration spells. He sat, unsmiling as the other three boys talked and debated over whether Divination was even worth studying for, and as they used the flashcards for Potions and Remus rattled off dates and facts from History of Magic…

James pulled him aside on the stairs when they went down for dinner. “You haven’t said a word all day,” he said quietly as they walked. “Are you alright?”

Sirius nodded.

“Have you been put under a langlock curse or something?”

“No,” Sirius said.

James stared at him, “You’re never this quiet, Sirius.”

“Sorry,” Sirius murmured.

“No, I just want to know what’s bothering you that’s got you so quiet,” James answered.

Sirius shrugged.

“Did something happen in the Shack after I left?” James whispered.

Sirius stared into James’s eyes a long moment, and James could see it there, could see something had happened. But Sirius shook his head, “Nothing I shouldn’t have expected,” he said tremulously. “Don’t worry about it James…” he paused, “Do you know what happened to all that firewhiskey I knicked in Hogsmeade, though?”

James flushed. They were on the moving staircase and Remus and Peter’s flight had just rotated off a different direction than James and Sirius’s had… “We dumped it out,” he confessed. “You’ve been drinking too much… and we decided you needed to sober up.” He stared at Sirius, “And you do. You need to stop drinking.”

“It’s what keeps me sane.”

“It’s what’s making you insane, rather,” James said. “Sirius, you’re not happy lately when you’re drunk. You used to get happy and dance and sing and that was alright but recently you get down and you cry and say horrible things about yourself and none of us know what to do with that, none of us want to have you go through all that.”

Sirius sighed heavily. “Sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry, it’s just that we’re worried about you. All of us. Me and Peter and Rey and--”

“He’s going with Ned Veigler to fucking iceland,” Sirius said with a guffaw.

“What?” James looked confused.

“Rey. He’s going with Ned Veigler for the summer. Going to Iceland.”

James stared at Sirius for a long moment. “Well… you’re coming with me and my parents, so. I mean, at least he’s not travelling all over the place like last year. You’ll know how to write him and there’s always the two-way mirrors, and -- what, why are you shaking your head?”

Sirius said, “He doesn’t want me, James. He doesn’t want me writing him and talking to him in the bloody mirrors. He doesn’t want me.”

“I don’t know, I think he might be just --”

“I know it’s not fair to you and Peter,” Sirius interrupted, “You lot being caught in the middle of this. So I’m going to make an effort not to be so fucking depressing.”

“Well that would be good, but I don’t think --”

“I don’t want to talk about Remus and I anymore.”

“Okay,” James said quietly.

The two flights of stairs reconnected and James and Sirius hurried down to the next landing, where Remus and Peter stood waiting for them.




And Sirius did make an effort. He did. He did the very best he could, even though inside he felt all the pieces of himself were cracking, he called them all by their nicknames in a loud voice and he acted okay. He used wildly huge hand gestures and made inappropriate jokes and sang bits of song lyrics. He studied with them and flung his arm about Peter’s shoulders and acted as though Achlys wasn’t squeezing his heart every time that he looked at Remus Lupin.

Sunday blazed by, another day full of revision, of going over facts and flashcards, of debate and discussion, of books and notes and drawings and identifying bits of stuff from their potions kits that they took turns holding up from their cases…

And come Monday morning, the first day of testing, the boys woke with pits in their stomachs as they went down to breakfast. James shook as he ate bacon and Peter buttered his toast as he muttered dates under his breath. Remus ate a his porridge with berries and Sirius excused himself halfway through to sneak out to the courtyard and sit beneath the holly tree and smoke the last two cigarettes in the pack, his fingers shaking around a mug of black coffee.

And when it came time to sit the exam - Charms - Peter handed out blocks of chocolate to make them feel better as they stood in the entrance hall in a long queue of fifth years from every house, anxiously waiting to get into the Great Hall and they went over spells one last time as they waited, eating their chocolate squares, their nerves rattling about inside of them.

“Bloody hell,” James whispered when the doors were opened and people started filing in. Rows and rows of desks filled the hall, each equidistance from each other, each with a little placard with their names upon it, parchment and quill and ink bottle on the desktop so that nobody could bring any self correcting quills or right answer ink, or parchment with answers scribbled in the margins. Wands were collected so no spells could be cast upon the parchments and James handed his over nervously, his stomach turning at the thought of what Professor Minnie would do if he didn’t get the highest marks on Transfiguration when it was time to take it. She’d probably cry, he thought.

“Watch it, mudblood,” he heard a toady voice behind him grunt and he turned around to see Mulciber shoving his way through the line to get to the front quicker, pushing past Lily Evans, who looked at him with an expression of anger and fear.

James seethed and stepped back through the crowd to get to Lily, “You alright, Evans?” he asked, “I heard what that idiot’s just said and --”

“I’m fine,” Lily replied, her tone clipped, angry with Mulciber but taking it out on James, her cheeks flush. “I’m fine.”

But James could tell by the look in her eyes that the term hurt more than she let on and he seethed all the harder as his eyes travelled over the sea of students settling into their assigned desks until he found Mulciber and he glared at the back of the stocky boy’s head, and his mind started working on that revenge plan again absently. He’d need to get Sirius going on that again, he realized, they only had a few days left to plan and implement whatever it was they were going to do to punish Mulciber and his little gang of horrid minions…

He found his seat in the middle of the room, and looked about to see Sirius was just four seats behind him, while Remus and Peter were a couple rows to his right. Lily Evans was a couple rows to the left and up a few seats. Jasper Odair was right in front of him.

James sat down and his stomach turned, his brain torn between reciting Transfiguration facts and imagining transfiguring Mulciber into any of the more terrible things he could think of...

It was Professor Zosma, the astronomy teacher, who would be overseeing Charms and she waved her wand and thick purple testing booklets appeared on the desks, with gold shiny Hogwarts crests. Ordinary Wizarding Level - Charms - 1976 said a shimmering gold text beneath the crest and James felt sick.

This is it, he thought, This is for real. This is the beginning of the rest of our lives, these tests. They’ll determine what we can do, what we can’t. They’ll determine what my future will be.

Way to psych yourself up Potter.

Maybe if I fail I can knick a time turner from Dumbledore’s office and come back and change my answers.

He pictured running in the hall, tapping himself on the shoulder and shouting, “DON’T CIRCLE ANSWER TWO ON QUESTION EIGHT YOU GREAT IDIOT!” and running back out, clutching the spinning golden trinket in his fist… and it brought a smirk and a chuckle.

“You may begin,” called Zosma.

And James flipped open the book and dipped his quill, beginning.