Anything but the green.
A/N JKR (who of course owns all these lovely characters (wish she didn'tkill them off though..)) said James'parents both died of a disease.. and I figures they might have suffered from it for a while.. that is why James mother is ill.. she, of course, will not die until after Sirius has lived with them for a while.
Thanks to Niniel for beta-ing.
The small bespectacled boy sat in the train, feeling lonely, staring out of the window without seeing anything of the events happening there. He had come to King Cross station alone; no relatives to help him, as his parents were unable to come: His father was too busy, and his mother was too ill.
It was not how the boy had viewed coming to Hogwarts for the first time, but then again, nothing this past year had happened the way he had imagined it.
Nothing had been anything at all since his mother had come home with an innocent cough that turned out to be a deadly wizarding disease.
From the moment they had found out, the lives of James Potter and his father had been deformed somehow, changed to something colourless, empty of all emotions, as the only place they could feel anything was the small chamber in which the heart of their family lay in bed, waiting for death.
And so the boy stared out of the window, trying to see beyond the platform, beyond the station, beyond London and all the cities in between, to the little room where had left the last of his smiles to guard his mother.
"You truly do look awful."
James heard the voice but he did not feel he would have to react to it. His father had always thought him to ignore the insults.
"Words, young James," His father had told him all his life, "May hurt, but they can't kill you. Unless of course accompanied by a wand pointed in your direction."
"But even though you look awful, you look like you are a pure-blood of some sort. Never seen a muggle wearing clothes like that, so you must be. And that means I am just going to sit here and talk to you, right until you talk back."
James watched the boy in the refection of the window.
He had dark hair, black to a point that was almost blue. The eyes of the boy shone brightly beneath it and a grin played on his lips. The boy enjoyed being annoying it seemed.
He was already wearing school robes and the Slytherin emblem was already embroidered on them, though he didn't look old enough to be a second year.
"Do you have a knife?" the boy asked.
"What?" James was too surprised by the question to pretend he hadn't heard it.
"Do you" The boy pointed at James "have a knife?" He spoke each word very slowly as if James had told him he was both deaf and lacking brains.
"You are not allowed to carry a knife with you on the train." James spoke very sternly, turning his head to face the boy.
"I didn't ask that, did I?" The boy replied smirking. "I asked if you had one."
"I don't."
"A shame. How about a pair of scissors then? You are allowed to carry those, you know."
"No."
"What about you?" The boy turned his attention to a thin almost grey-haired boy James hadn't even noticed was there.
The new one looked up from his book, shook his head and went back to reading.
"Well" said the black-haired boy. "I guess I'll have to start and bite these off then." Without further ado he started to crew on this the Slytherin emblem, while the other two boys stared at him as if he was insane. The boy did not seem to notice or care… "Urgh." he said "Not easy." He turned his head to the grey-haired boy again and smiled. "You look as if you have sharp teeth though. Can't you lend me a hand?"
James could see the look of shame on the thin boy and somehow, his small frail features and the dark rings under his eyes reminded him of his mother, slowly dying in her bed, and he felt a great urge to protect him.
"Why do you want to take those off anyway? "
The boy stopped biting his school robes for a second, staring at James as if he couldn't believe the words he had spoken had actually formed a question.
"Why?" he repeated. "They're Slytherin" the boy spoke the words with a look of utmost revolt "that's why."
"But…" James remembered the boy's remarks on pureblood made just a few minutes ago. "Don't you want to be in Slytherin?"
"OF COURSE NOT!" The boy snapped, "WHO WANTS TO BE IN SLYTHERYN, HUH? DO YOU?" he pointed first at James and then, after repeating himself, at the grey-haired boy, who quickly hid himself behind his book again.
James shook a silent no.
"SO WHY SHOULD I WANT TO BE IN SLYTHERIN? WHY SHOULD I ALWAYS BE THE ONE TO GET STUCK IN SOME DUGEON WITH ALL THOSE…THOSE…" The boy added a few words that James was sure he couldn't have possibly have learned from anyone trying to give him an upbringing of any sort.
"So why did you ask if he was a pureblood then?" The grey-haired boy interrupted him, forcing James to change his opinion of the boy's valour. "Why didn't you sit with us until after you asked?"
"BECAUSE…" and suddenly the tone of the black-haired boy changed dramatically, to some sort if shy whisper James had not thought him capable off. "Because… I need your help…sort of. I need someone from a wizarding family to tell me how it is done…You know… get chosen into Gryffindor, or Hufflepuff… Or anything but the green. How do you people do it?"
"Well…" The thin boy said softly, though he was straightening himself. "My father just got chosen into Gryffindor, I don't know how..."
"My parents too… We are Gryffindors for fourteen generations." James added. "All I know is that you are tested somehow and that you need to be brave."
"Or smart, if it is to be Ravenclaw."
"Or loyal for Hufflepuff."
"But you don't know how?" The dark-haired asked miserable. All the smugness had disappeared from his face, and his shoulders had dropped. The boy looked as if he had been attacked by dementors.
James could not look at him without feeling the same way. The sadness that hung inside the compartment had brought his thoughts back on his dying mother.
He remembered the smile she had given him at their goodbye. The sad, tired and painful smile that somehow had still managed to reach her eyes.
"Now... don't feel down Jamey… And don't worry… You will do fine, after all, I have known it since you were born. And don't be nervous about the sorting either. No matter what the elder boys try to tell you, I don't know a single wizard that was not chosen into the house of his choice."
"Not a single wizard that was not chosen into the house of his choice"
"What?" The dark-haired boy spoke.
"That is what my mom said… She said… 'There has not been a single wizards in Hogwarts that was not chosen into the house he wanted to be in'. You don't need to do anything! You just have to want it!"
"Want it?" The black-haired boy asked as some hope returned to his face.
"Are you sure?" the grey-haired boy asked, as some of the same hope shone on his face.
James shrugged, as he didn't know, not really.
But it the other boys didn't wait for his reaction. They looked at each other, grinning, and the dark-haired one said: "Oh… I am in Gryffindor for sure."
The grey-haired one nodded.
The black-haired boy was chewing on the Slytherin symbol all the way up to Hogwarts castle, which was frowned upon by both the gamekeeper and the stern witch that led the new first-years into the Great Hall at last.
He was the first to be called up the stairs to fit the sorting hat, and it needed just two seconds to place him, Sirius Black, safely into Gryffindor tower.
His sorting was met by a stunned silence of utter disbelieve, and the feeble applause of one headmaster and two boys that had been in the compartment with him, but Sirius did not seem to care.
He walked to the Gryffindor table as if he had just won a war, shining as if he was a Patronus himself.
And James, who had thought he had left all his happiness with his dying mother couldn't help but give his future best friend the broadest of grins.
The End.