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Black Sheep


Professor Urquart had realized his err as soon as he’d said it. Of course the girl he had meant couldn’t be Sirius Black’s mum - she had been Mia Black in 1947, when she’d first come to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. Sirius’s mum would’ve been some other name then, when he knew her, which meant he had to be a nephew or a cousin or something of that sort. He caught Sirius’s arm two corridors away from the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom and halted him from running off any further, turning him briskly about so that they were face to face.

Sirius struggled to tug away, angry with the nutter of a man - and angry, too, that he couldn’t stop the tears from coming to his eyes. The last bleeding thing in the entire world that he ever wanted to be was like them, like his parents.

“Sirius, listen to me, I’ve made a mistake,” Elphinstone Urquart said, his grasp on Sirius’s arm tightening. “Listen to me just a moment and I swear we’ll get this straightened right up. Listen.” He put his hands on Sirius’s shoulders and held him more forcefully. “I meant you reminded me of a girl I knew in school - Mia Black.”

“My mother’s name is Walburga,” Sirius said.

“It’s a misunderstanding, see?” Elphinstone Urquart said.

Sirius’s lips were puckered with displeasure.

“I shudder to think how horrid a woman your mother must be if you react so violently against being like her.” He paused. “Your father was Orion Black.”

Sirius scowled.

“Well. I can’t blame you for being angry with me.”

Sirius crossed his arms over his chest.

“It was an honest mistake,” Urquart offered. “And you are an awful lot like Mia was.”

“I don’t want to be like any of them,” Sirius hissed. “The Blacks are a horrid lot of purist arseholes without souls.”

“Not Mia,” Urquart answered. “Oh-no-no-no, never Mia. Mia Black was a firecracker. She had a dark family, yes, but she was a light among them, always.” He smiled. Sirius stared at him as his eyes went all goofy and thoughtful. “Wonder where she ended up, Mia Black…”

“If she was a good person and the Blacks had anything to do with it, probably stamped her out. Promise she’s been blasted off our family tree by my dear mumsie if nothing else.”

Professor Urquart raised his eyebrow in question and Sirius hesitated a moment, then sighed and reached into his robes, into the pocket of his trousers and pulled out the bit of the tapestry his mum had sent him by owl post the previous year. He stared at it a moment, then held it up for Professor Urquart to see. “Blasted right off the tree of the Noble House of Black. ‘Tis the fate of the disappointments, you see. The blighters, the bloodtraitors, the bastards.” He stared at Urquart with a defiant sort of expression on his face, daring the crazy-haired old man to make of it what he would.

Urquart stared at the bit of tapestry for a good deal of time, then his eyes travelled up to meet Sirius’s and he said, “It would seem that you must be in good company to be considered a traitor of the so-called Noble House of Black.” He paused, searching Sirius’s eyes with his own. “And yes, Mia would most definitely have been blasted from your Mother’s tree if that is the case as Mia Black was easily one of the biggest bloodtraitors that ever walked the halls of Hogwarts. She was a prominent member of a secret society that we ran back in the day - The Solidarity of Social Equality Among Wizards, we called ourselves.”

“Find it hard to believe anybody with the name Black was involved in something like that,” Sirius muttered.

“Mia was the one who made us our badges.” Professor Urquart smiled fondly. “S.S.E.A.W., they said. She liked acronyms.”

Sirius thought of the P.A.H.W.F.A.H.W.W.N.D.J.P. badges he’d made and he looked down at his toes. Perhaps he had a bit more in common with this person, whoever she was, than he’d thought when Profesor Urquart had said it.

He hesitated. “You… truly don’t know what became of her?”

“I truly do not, I’m afraid,” Professor Urquart answered. “I was in my Fifth Year when she came to Hogwarts, graduated long before she had done, and I lost track of many of the folks that were in S.S.E.A.W. over time… especially as I got involved with the Ministry… I only reconnected with Minerva because she ended up working for me for a time.” He paused. Then, “I shall have to see if Minerva knows what happened to Mia Black.”

“Why would Minnie know?” Sirius asked, curious.

“Ah, because they were best friends for most of their careers at Hogwarts,” Elphinstone replied.

Sirius made a face. It was weird thinking of Minerva McGonagall as anything except exactly the way she was now. Mini-Minnie running about the halls of Hogwarts was something that made his head sore just thinking of it. Even though they’d long ago found the photographs and notes and things pinned about the alcove off the Trophey Room Passageway and recognized one of the smiling girls in the photographs as Minerva McGonagall, he still couldn’t quite wrap his brains about the idea of a young Minnie.

A smile trembled over Professor Urquarts face. “Speaking of best friends,” he murmured, “I do believe we are not alone.” And he turned about, leaning to peer beyond one of the suits of armor that blocked Remus Lupin from sight. He chuckled, “Mr. Lupin, you’re not as well hidden as you may believe yourself to be.”

Sirius looked up as Remus came about the corner and he visibly brightened at the arrival of his Moony. “So sorry,” Remus said as he walked over, his hands in his pockets, looking rather ashamed. He sidled over, chin against his chest. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop. I was just checking on Sirius is all.”

Elphinstone Urquart smiled, “As any good friend would do.”

Sirius looked up, ready to correct Professor Urquart on exactly what sort of friend Remus was to him, but Remus said, “Actually, Sirius is a good deal more than that to me. He’s my - my boyfriend.”

Sirius smiled. “Aw Moony.” Sirius grabbed his hand.

Professor Urquart nodded a moment, then said, “Very well. Come along, back to the classroom. We’ve a good deal to cover for our first day and we haven’t even begun yet…”

So they trooped back to the Defense Against the Dark Arts classroom.

When they pushed open the door it was to find James and Lily sitting at their desks, each breathless and staring stiffly straight ahead. James’s hair stood up funny in the front and James clutched the edge of the desk so tight his knuckles were white and he refused to look at Sirius, even as Sirius leaned forward, trying to force eye contact as Remus sat down in his own desk. The fact that James’s hair was a mess was no news (after all, when wasn’t it a mess?), but Lily’s hair was a mess, too. Sirius studied her a long moment and she was very careful not to look his way.




At lunch, Sirius told the others about Mia Black and the conversation he’d had with Professor Urquart. “Whoever this Mia Black person is, it sounds like I could bloody start a club with her and Andromeda. We could call ourselves The Black Sheep. Get it? ‘Cos we’re Blacks and they call rejected people black sheep?” Sirius grinned at his own funniness and bit into his sandwich with glee.

Remus and Lily were at the opposite end of the table, sitting with the new batch of first years, including Edgar Odair, quite busy at their brand new prefect duties. Sirius had started in on the Mia Black dissertation to distract himself from staring down at his Moony longingly.

Across from him, Peter was squirming, glad he was back with his friends. The time spent alone in the library had been horrible. Most everyone else in there had been first years with a free period first thing and they’d been so tiny and immature, he’d had to listen to Madam Pince remind them to be quiet and to respect the rules more than once before he had finally wandered off back to the dormitories for some peace and quiet before lunch. But the dorm had been too peaceful and too quiet without the other three talking around him and he’d found himself laying in bed comparing Hogwarts to home and discovering he found them both miserable.

Directly beside Peter, James was grinning stupidly at his food more than he was actually eating it. He’d pulled the pickles from his sandwich and left them laying on the side of the plate and added some extra tomatoes and taken maybe three bites so far, even as Sirius was licking his fingers of the crumbs on his second helping. He reached over and took James’s pickles and chomped them down.

“What’s got your knickers in a twist, Prongs?” Sirius asked, “You normally would’ve laughed at my black sheep joke.”

“Huh? What?” James looked up.

“You’re acting funny.”

“Am I?” James flushed, “Sorry.”

“What’ the matter?”

James’s eyes flickered down the table to Lily and back to Sirius. “Evans and I snogged while you and Rey were gone today. In the classroom.”

Sirius yawned, “In your imagination, yeah?”

“No, bloody hell, for real. We heard the door open and broke apart really quickly, but ‘til you lot returned, we’d been going at it.” He stared at her. “Snogging as friends, she calls it.”

Sirius immediately thought of snuggling as friends and stared at James. Was it possible he was telling the truth and not just hallucinating as Remus liked to joke? He rubbed his chin and looked at Evans, too, then back to James. “Friends don’t snog,” Sirius pointed out.

“You snog Remus,” Peter said.

“Yeah but that’s different. Remus and I are together, and I wouldn’t deny that if somebody asked me,” Sirius replied.

“Well maybe Lily won’t deny she’s with Prongs if you asked her,” Peter said.

James started to say she absolutely would too deny it, when Sirius shouted, “Oi! Evans! Are you trying to steal my harem? Do we have to enter into a fierce and almighty battle over the hand of James Potter, love?”

She looked up from where she was looking over Edgar Odair’s class schedule. “Excuse me?” she asked. Everyone at the table was staring at her, and then everyone at the table turned their heads to look at Sirius for a reply.

Sirius answered, “Potter, Evans. Potter. Are you with Potter?”

Her face turned scarlet as the heads all turned back to her and James sank nearly beneath the table.

“No!” Lily answered firmly.

Everyone turned to look at Sirius for a reply, but Sirius just sat back down and turned back to hs sandwich. Soon, interest died off as Lily turned back to Edgar’s schedule.

James’s face was still hot from embarrassment. “You blighter,” he murmured, kicking Sirius.

“It’s too bad, though, I was hoping to have a dance competition for your heart. Sort of like a jousting tourney except we’d lay down that boogie and play that funky music til we died,” Sirius sang the last part.

Peter started humming.

James shook his head.

“Can’t you just picture it, Prongs, Evans and I, facing off on the table in the common room… the beat starts playing… and we both start dancing and it’s a competition… a real competition....” he was dancing in his seat. “When they were dancin’ and singin’ and movin’ to the groovin’... and just when.. It hit me… somebody turned around and saiiiid -- play that funky music white boy! Play that funky music right…. Play that funky music whiiiite boyyyy…. Laaaaaaay dowwwwwn the boooooogieee and play that funky music til you die… til you die… oh oh til you diiiiieee!”

Heads were turning again the louder and higher Sirius’s voice got.

Sirius grinned and Frank Longbottom clapped. “And there it is - it’s never Hogwarts until Sirius Black can be heard singing the latest hits about the Gryffindor house table.”

“Thank yeh very much,” Sirius answered in his best Elvis Presley impression, “I’ll be here all week, try the veal.”

James looked up, his cheeks still bright, and his eyes met Lily Evans, who had looked up to stare at Sirius just as everyone else had, and he could see she was in the middle of saying something to the effect of that’s Sirius Black for you to the first years, but she stared back at him and then flushed, too, and looked away, her hair hanging like a curtain over her face.

Sirius stretched his arms as everyone else at the table went about their lunches again and he pushed his emptied plate away. “Alright, you lot; sorry to do this to you, but I’ll be bidding you adieu until later. I’ve got to go and meet Minnie in her office as she requested of me last night. Try not to let the gaping Sirius-Black-shaped-hole in your lives destroy you. I’ll return. Unless Minnie’s truly turning me into a gnat and squashing me this time. You know one of these days it’s going to happen.”

“If she doesn’t, I just may,” James murmured.

Sirius grinned. “I love you too, Prongs,” he said and he reached across and mussed James’s hair up even worse than it already was. “Don’t go getting yourself any friction burns there while you’re wanking off imagining that you’re snogging Evans,” he teased.

Sirius only laughed harder when he felt James Potter’s sandwich hit his back as he walked away.