for thomasina.

Sirius pushed past some chinless moron on his way upstairs. He was in a foul mood. The first reason for his foul mood was a letter from his mother that had had the usual effect of shattering any lingering satisfaction from beating Slytherin College at Rugby the previous day. Sirius needed a drink and his friends and to be away from the boring little people that occupied most of the college.

He caught a flash of irritation on a group of tweeded and corduroyed young men earnestly gesturing with their pints as he pushed through the door at the back of The Fat Lady, a door marked Strictly Private. A door that lead to what the Marauders affectionately called The Shack, but was in reality a set of private rooms built with the purpose of keeping the debauched fun of young men who had enough money to enjoy whatever they wanted behind closed doors.

The shift in decor was immediate; the smoke filled, hoppy medieval tavern vanishing behind him as the door closed. In front lay a small foyer, carpeted in red with panelling of some far more beautiful wood than had been used in the tavern itself. Then through the next door. Sirius had a key for it, as they all did, but it was rarely locked.

The Shack usually had some party entering or leaving, whether they were trying to soak up a hangover with one of The Fat Lady's greasy and delicious breakfasts or doing some last-minute reading or exchanging their fortunes over poker. Before Collections, the start of term exams there was a three-day ban on guests and revels and the twelve young men who made up the group locked themselves away to what might be termed 'revise' but was more accurately 'learn for the first time'.

James was already there, holding court and running through this term's nominations for membership. He was sat in the main sitting room, the walls lined with books bound in red leather and organised by size; a legacy from the founding member of the Club, one of James's great-great-great-great-great grandfathers, Ignotus Peverell; the original Marauder who, legend had it, had tricked Death himself.

Only two new members would be allowed in, bringing their number to fourteen. Remus and Peter were nowhere to be seen, probably in the Bodleian cramming the reading for this week's essays. (Sirius had given a boy from St Ravenclaw's Hall he'd met in the only lecture he'd attended this year fifty quid to write his for him). He had Dr Slughorn from Slytherin College this term and the man wouldn't give a shit as long as Sirius handed something in; he was almost as impressed by the Black surname as Sirius's mother was.

"Alright Prongs?" he asked, dropping into the chair no one else would dare sit in, cracked brown leather studded with bronze tacks, positioned on James's right just across the roaring fire.

In reply, James handed him a mean-smelling concoction. Felix Felicis was the Marauders' signature cocktail, the recipe jealously guarded.

"I will be soon," James said, eyeing the clock hopefully.

Evans's shift must start soon, Sirius realised with a half-grimace. The girl was pretty enough, but girls at Oxford were strange, fey creatures and girls like Evans, who worked shifts at The Fat Lady, were stranger still. Still, James liked her and if James liked someone Sirius loyally followed.

She usually avoided bringing anything they ordered into The Shack: serving your peers wasn't ideal, Sirius supposed, although he didn't really give a shit if Evans felt awkward or not, and anyway James always gave up and went down into the pub to talk to her. Sirius had guessed from her simultaneous disdain and blush that his friend still had some way to go before she'd agree to go out with him, but they were tutorial partners this term and James was more likeable to people that weren't Sirius when he was showing how clever he really was.

"Did you hear?" Frank asked, flinging himself down on the sofa opposite.

"Hear what?" Sirius snapped, irritated by Frank's question. How was he supposed to know, until the boy told him? He'd heard any number of things in his life.

"Apparently your brother's gang have been implicated in that girl's death, but the police can't prove anything."

Frank always heard things other people didn't. His unassuming manner and rectangular face that looked so plain in repose and so dynamic in laughter meant that people didn't think to guard their tongues when they were near him. Whether it was in the Stacks in the library or in a bar or just walking across a quad, Frank always heard the most interesting things.

Sirius felt his arms prickle with anger.

"What?"

"The Knights. Slytherin's attempt to be us," James chipped in with a wicked, teasing smile, as if Sirius didn't know the ancient society he'd been supposed to join, in the ancient college he'd been supposed to choose.

Every Black in history, his father had screamed at him when the acceptance letter from Gryffindor College had arrived. Sirius had pointed out that that wasn't strictly true; Slytherin College had only started taking girls in the 1980s - the last college at Oxford University to do so. That had not gone down especially well.

Slytherin had generously offered to make another space in that year's Classics group.

He'd refused. Slughorn had him now, though.

The Fat Lady was tucked in one of the cobbled streets running parallel to Cornmarket and the Bodleian, a short walk from Gryffindor College with its famous tower where the choir sang on May Day, staring down over the Isis, deer freely roaming the park that wrapped around the secluded grandeur of its quads.

Sirius fiddled with the ice in his drained Felix Felicis, sending it sliding and clinking in the bottom of his crystal tumbler.

He'd known they'd target Regulus, of course. Hell, they'd even come and trashed his own room twice in his first year and once last term; the destructive invitation longed-for by some and, more rarely, feared by others. Sirius had ignored these events with with his customary disdain for anything attached to his family, only the trust fund sheltered in Coutts exempt from Sirius's loathing. But Regulus wouldn't ignore them.

And if the Marauders were simply obnoxious… there was something remarkably off about the current group of Knights. Sirius didn't know if they were always so… cold, he'd purposefully tuned out the stories for his entire life, but this group - who left for weekends and came back white faced, with purple rings under their eyes and pupils like caverns - this group unsettled him.

Or at least, their leader did.

Tom Riddle, who had no name and no family money and yet ruled them all.

Tom Riddle, whose dark eyes sent prickles of warning sliding down Sirius's spine, bumping and sliding over each other in their adrenaline-rushed siren. Tom Riddle, who was the second reason for his foul mood that day.

He'd hardly done a thing, truth be told.

Sirius had been buying his morning flat white from The Missing Bean on Turl Street, which everyone knew was the Gryffindor hangout, when Tom fucking Riddle had walked in, the rain clinging to his still perfectly-parted black dark hair, the graceful, sharp lines of his jaw perfectly shaven below the jut of his arrogant cheekbones, dark blue chinos that Sirius would swear on his life had been fucking pressed set off by perfectly polished brown brogues, charcoal coat buttoned and misted with damp, a scowl twisting his beautiful mouth.

He'd made Sirius, who hadn't bothered to shave for three days, whose rumpled t-shirt was the same he'd worn the day before yesterday, whose leather jacket might have cost more than a grand because he'd had it made specially to look like Sid Vicious's (not that he'd ever admit that to a soul and if they guessed he'd punch them) but was supposed to look battered, feel uncouth somehow; clumsy where usually he felt elegant.

Sirius knew he looked cool. He was cool. He was a literal, actual galaxy beyond any of his comrades in how fucking cool he was. James, when he wasn't in some sort of Gryffindor red or Oxford Blue sporting stash, was prone to loud coloured trousers and a wearyingly hideous, battered old Barbour he'd had for ten thousand years. Remus, poorest of all of them, scholarship-to-Eton-Remus, tended to a threadbare elegance that rather suited Oxford, but not Sirius. And Peter was too plump to make anything look cool, even if he hadn't been fond of trying to dress just like James.

So yes, Sirius knew he was the coolest person in the room at even given time, and that his lean, mean vibe fucking killed it on a daily basis with girls and boys.

It was just that next to Tom Riddle's aggressively well-presented self, he'd suddenly very aware of the roughness of his edges, a prickling uncertain feeling he was unaccustomed to; a sort of muscle memory of adrenaline from vicious insults slung across bars and filthy looks and the memory of the boy jumping through his bedroom window and swinging a cricket bat through the glass behind him, devil-sharp grin that could have broken the window without any need for a bat as it shattered.

("It's a compliment," he'd told Sirius once. "We want you even though you're in fucking Gryffindor.").

There had of course, because it had been that sort of morning, only been one table and the drizzle had turned heavy moments after Sirius had ducked into the tiny coffee shop. By the time Tom had pushed through the door it was well on its way to chucking it down.

Sirius had dropped into a chair at that single unoccupied table, his back to the counter but alert and aware even as he forced his posture to slump casually. He insolently put his feet on the chair on the other side of the table.

"Black," Riddle had greeted from behind him moments later and then he'd unceremoniously lifted Sirius's boots off the chair and dropped them onto the floor.

"Prick," Sirius had murmured by way of response.

That was it. The other boy had pulled out a book, opened it to where a metal bookmark neatly indicated the last point (Sirius had wanted to stab him with the stupid thing: what sort of pretentious cunt used a bookmark?) and had read without looking up or showing any interest in his surroundings for fifteen minutes. He'd ignored a smug couple rising from the next table, brandishing a yellow and black golf umbrella. He hadn't even raised his eyes to pick up his drink (a triple fucking espresso, of fucking course, because apparently dairy products were somehow beneath him). Sirius had deliberately not watched the way Tom Riddle's slightly pouting mouth blew on the steaming dark liquid, the way his nostrils had flared and his long, dark eyelashes had fluttered for a moment.

In fact, Sirius had made it very clear that Riddle's presence affected him in absolutely no way at all; so he'd just sat and watched people hurrying past the window in the downpour, a window which was quickly steaming up from the weather, and very very purposefully had not looked once at the catastrophe-shaped boy opposite him.

When the rain had finally eased off, the other boy had lifted his dark eyes from The Will to Power as though he could sense the exact moment it turned to drizzle again. The book had been replaced into the leather satchel with TMR neatly embossed on the front and then he'd put his hands on the table, fingertips interlinking in a quite frankly douchey way, and regarded Sirius. Sirius had continued to be fascinated with the comings and goings of actually very-fucking-boring-looking people on Turl Street for a moment before glowering at Riddle.

"The fuck are you looking at?" he'd snarled eventually.

Tom Riddle had just smirked, a half-tilt of that unfairly generous mouth that turned it from softness to all edges and warning signs, and very slowly had run his eyes up Sirius's chest, his neck, lingering on his mouth, and then meeting his eyes.

"You look like a fucking hobo," he'd said, and then left.

Sirius had swept his mug onto the floor in irritation, and then immediately felt embarrassed for this show of temper in a tiny shop and leapt up to pacify the waitress with his most charming smile and a wad of notes.

"I hate that wanker," James muttered to Frank as he counted the black dots by each name on the list of male Gryffindors. Being blackballed was more common than not being blackballed, but it was still ignominious.

Sirius hated him too. Except for the part of him that didn't.

.

.

The next time he saw Tom Riddle, he was drunk and at a fucking gay night. Babylove Tuesdays were, he'd told James, full of shitters, but James had insisted on being supportive and coming along as he had once a term every term since they'd started at Oxford, even though it was a shit fucking night and he had a lecture he'd vaguely promised his Greek tutor to attend at ten am the following morning.

Babylove was perched ironically less than a stone's throw from Slytherin College, and he didn't know if someone had fucking texted Riddle or if he'd have gone anyway but Sirius had gone outside to have a cigarette and get away from the pair of girls James was unsuccessfully trying to pull, because he was, really, the worst sort of friend; even Sirius knew that behaviour was beyond caddish, but Lily had turned him down again and Prongs was hazy eyed with some pill he'd hadn't thought to share with Sirius and so he'd left him to it.

So he was there, standing outside Babylove half-heartedly flirting with an Italian girl who'd accompanied a friend of hers when Tom Riddle walked up to him, pulled the fag out of his mouth and crushed it underneath his Nikes.

Sirius punched him, catching him on one of those cut-glass cheekbones. It wasn't a very good punch, because Riddle was too fucking fast - he'd been aiming for the stupid straight perfect fucking nose.

"That's for involving my fucking brother in your weird shit," he told the other boy and lunged again but Tom Riddle side-stepped easily this time, and laughed at him.

"That shit'll kill you," Tom Riddle panted, nodding at the cigarette, not even bothering to press at his face which Sirius thought was actually pretty fucking great.

And then he wiped the small trickle of blood away with one hand and said, "Drink?"

"Fuck off," Sirius hissed, and stormed back inside. He could feel the other boy at his back, could feel the electric pulse of the music and the heat of the place shudder through him suddenly, and instead of heading for the corner where James had, against all the odds, found the same pretty Italian girl, Sirius headed for the bar.

"One Flaming Queer and one tequila," he told the boy behind the bar.

"That one's for you," he said and handed the cocktail to Tom Riddle as he knocked back the tequila, biting straight into a wedge of lime, the salt licking at the corners of his mouth.

"I fucking knew it," Tom Riddle said, and unceremoniously grabbed a fistful of Sirius's shirt and then their mouths were angrily clashing together, angry and hateful and like a fucking bonfire or a comet or an exploding star.

This time, it was James who punched Riddle.

This is probably my favourite tumblr fic I ever wrote, so I'm posting it here where no one except me will read it.

PS I christened this ship Death Star. Get it? Get it? You're welcome.