Thicker Than Blood

Sirius read the letter slowly and carefully. When he finished, he paused for a moment before starting again from the beginning. Both actions were quite unusual for him, so he was glad that he'd had the forethought to make sure all his roommates were away lest they question him.

When he had finished reading the letter for the second time, a quickly muttered "Incendio" and a tap with the wand made short work of the parchment, leaving as evidence only a few ashes that the House Elves would clean up within the hour.

Or so he thought.

It took him a few more days to realize that everyone might not be as oblivious as he originally planned.

Remus was the first to notice that something was wrong. When Sirius realized he'd forgotten a book in his trunk during breakfast, Remus offered to go with him to pick it up. Sirius didn't think anything of it until they'd left the Great Hall and Remus asked, "Is there anything I can do?"

"Hurry up, maybe," Sirius said, not understanding what Remus was getting at at first. "Honeybun will skin us alive if we're late for his class again."

Although Remus picked up his pace, he also shook his head, which was when Sirius started to suspect that there was another reason his friend had joined him than just being finished with his meal early.

"No, I mean, well, what I'm trying to ask is, err," he hesitated, looking down at the ground long enough to almost trip over one of the suits of armour, currently posed with its leg sticking out and a casual arm behind its head. He caught himself, but his bag fell open, all his books tumbling out.

"I thought we were in a rush," Remus asked after he'd regained his balance and realized Sirius had stopped, not to help Remus gather his books, but to stare at him suspiciously.

"What is this about?" Sirius asked. He always preferred head-on confrontations to pussyfooting around, which it appeared Remus was going to do if Sirius didn't ask directly.

"You're upset," Remus said, almost coming to the point.

"I left my book and Honeybun—" Sirius tried, but Remus cut him off.

"No, forget about the professor. You've been upset for days. This isn't about school. Is there anything I can do?"

Sirius stared at him for a long moment, long enough that Remus turned his head back down to his bag on the floor even though he'd finished packing it with his fallen stuff. "I can get my book myself. Meet you in class."

He rushed down the halls, but wasn't able to get far enough away fast enough to keep from hearing Remus sigh, loudly.

Peter came next, although once again Sirius didn't realize it at the time. A few days later, while James and Remus were off in the library, Peter came stomping into their room looking like he was about to cry.

"What happened to you?" Sirius asked before looking up and doing a double take. Part of the Peter's tie was missing; he could see the white of his shirt through the gaping hole.

"It was the Slytherins!" he shouted. "Snivellus and his friends. They ambushed me after class."

"And?" Sirius asked when it became apparent that Peter wasn't going to continue. He'd gone back to his book in the meantime and didn't look up again.

"And?" Peter stood there, flummoxed. "And what?"

"That's what I was asking you. Why did you tell me? What do you expect me to do about it?

"Aren't you going to go curse them? Get back at them? They attacked me, Sirius! You can't let them get away with it!"

"Honestly, Peter!" Sirius exploded. "Haven't you learned how to fight your own battles yet? Do you always have to come running to me or James?"

Peter froze for a second before taking his wand and mending his tie. Red and gold strands of thread filled in the gap so it was as good as new. He turned away from Sirius. "You usually like taking revenge on the Slytherins."

He seemed more upset now than he had when he first came into the room, and he left without another word. Sirius began to wonder if, in fact, there had been something more to it, some nuance to the conversation that he had missed.

Remus and Peter's quiet conversation over dinner, the only words Sirius was able to make out for sure being "it didn't work", gave further fuel to his suspicions. The hurried glances towards him that they thought went unnoticed just confirmed it.

It had all been a misguided attempt to cheer him up.

That just put Sirius in a worse mood until even James started sending him worried looks, bombarding him with notes of all sorts during class even after McGonagall yelled and gave him detention.

Sirius took to studying in the library, where they'd never suspect him of being, or finding corners of the dungeons to do his work in.

He didn't want to talk about it.

James finally cornered him three days later after dinner. Sirius had chosen a hidden room in the dungeons below the kitchens that he didn't think the others knew about to hole up in that night but within a few minutes of arriving, the door opened again. There was no one there, or at least it seemed that way at first until James pulled back the hood of his Invisibility Cloak.

"You're an idiot," he said without any preamble.

"Why don't you tell me what you really think?" Sirius retorted. He'd been called much worse. James himself had used worse insults, let alone the ways his family referred to him.

"I gave it a week," James continued, startling Sirius, since he'd been sure that James had only picked up on his mood a few days ago after Remus and Peter had pulled their failed stunt. "I even warned off the others. Oh, they didn't listen, but I was sure that if we left you alone, you'd get out of your funk. You always have before."

Sirius hated hearing that he'd been made a fool of, or worse that he'd failed to fool others when he'd meant to. His face was stony when he spoke next.

"I'm not in a 'funk', you didn't have to 'warn' the others off, I don't know what you're talking about, I just want to be alone."

James plopped himself down on the floor beside Sirius instead. "You hate being alone. This is stupid. What did your family do this time?"

Sirius was flabbergast. It was one thing to find out that he hadn't been able to disguise his mood, but this? "How did you know? I mean, what do you mean, my family? I've been at school; there's nothing they could have done."

James just rolled his eyes at the feeble attempts to throw him off track. "It's always your family. Only they can get you this worked up."

"Well, you're wrong. It wasn't them." Then, realizing he was supposed to be denying that anything had been bothering him, he changed his answer to: "I'm not worked up at all."

"Right." James didn't even give him the benefit of pretending to believe him. "So, do we have to beat up Regulus for you? Take on Bellatrix? Narcissa? Andromeda, even, though she's usually the one you get along with."

"No," Sirius said, wishing James would drop it.

Of course, he didn't.

"Your parents? They'll be harder, but I reckon we can come up with something. Maybe a Howler. Do they sell them to people our age? We can sneak off to the post office at Hogsmeade. Do you think they'll believe we're old enough? Maybe if we skip class; if we're not at Hogwarts, we'd have to be of age, right?"

Sirius doubted that James seriously thought they could pass as seventeen year olds, but he'd let James ramble on anyway, mostly because for once in his life he was at a loss for what to say. But now James seemed to be expecting an answer, so Sirius got his mouth to work again.

"You don't have to do anything!"

James frowned in bemusement. "Of course we do."

"They're my family." Which meant that they were his problem and his responsibility.

"And we're your friends," James pointed out, acting as if that was the answer to the whole mess.

"This has nothing to do with you," Sirius said.

"Did you not just hear me?" asked James. "We're your friends. It has everything to do with us."

"It's my family," Sirius repeated.

James spoke slowly and loudly, as if he were trying to explain something to Peter when he was being particularly dense. Sirius didn't like being on the receiving end of that tone. "Get it through your thick skull, Sirius. We're your friends, we aren't going to abandon you. Who cares if it's your family. It's their loss, if they continue to act that way. Literally, because you're daft if you think we're not going to do something about it."

At the end of his speech, James looked so fierce that Sirius almost laughed. While James and the others were great at showing people at Hogwarts who was who, Sirius couldn't imagine him—or worst, Peter or Remus—going up against his family.

"James, this is my family. You shouldn't have to worry about it. I'll take care of it." He always did.

"You still don't get it, do you? It's not a matter of shouldn't—we have to. Because that's what friends are for. If your family doesn't like it, then tough. We'll be all the family you need."

Sirius' breath caught in his throat, but he tried not to let it show. "I don't know," he said slowly. "I kind of hate my family sometimes. The closest I've come to hating you is when you start snoring loud enough to keep the rest of us awake at night. It's just not the same."

A huge grin of relief broke out over James' face. "Good!" he said, nudging Sirius with a shoulder. "Not that crack about me snoring, not when Remus and Peter will agree that you are louder than a stadium full of Stingers. But the rest of it. Here I thought I was going to have to hit you, or something, to get you to listen."

"I'd like to see you try!"

Just to prove his point, Sirius shoved James, making him fall half-over. James scrambled to recover, but in doing so got caught on the corner of a desk, knocking himself further off-balance. He grabbed hold of Sirius' robes, pulling him down with him.

As it turned into a full-blown wrestling match that didn't stop until Sirius lost a shoe and James' left sleeve was ripped almost in half, Sirius couldn't help but think that maybe, just maybe, James was right.

Like it? Hated it? Have no strong feelings either way but still reached the end? Feel free to drop me a line and let me know. I don't bite and am pretty good at keeping the mackled malaclaws at bay, so you have nothing to fear on either account.