Sirius landed in Hogsmeade.
The sky hadn't gone fully dark. A streak of orange hung behind the rooftops to the west, and the rest had dimmed.
Sirius stood there a moment, pulled his robes tighter, and started up the gravel road toward the castle.
Two of them had walked it that morning. Regulus beside him, and Sirius going backwards half the way, talking from the Cleansweep Seven all the way to the Comet 260.
That had been this morning.
Now he walked back alone, and the only footsteps on the gravel were his own.
Out past the village, onto the carriage road.
The grass on both sides was still dead. Wind came off the Black Lake, stronger than in the morning, flipping his open collar back against his neck.
He never fastened it. Not once.
He walked slowly, slower than he had coming, feet reluctant to go forward, kicking loose stones one at a time into the dry grass at the roadside.
He wasn't going anywhere in particular. He was walking.
The sun dropped away and the dark came in. The edges of the road blurred together, and only the castle lights remained, clusters of warm glow suspended on a black hillside.
Same road. Forty minutes that morning. Over an hour now.
Dinner had long since ended by the time he reached the castle.
The Great Hall had mostly emptied. Scraps remained on the long tables, a few platters of half-finished roast, half a basket of bread, cold potatoes. The candles had burned down to stubs, and the light with them.
Sirius looked in from the doorway. No appetite.
He still wore the funeral robes.
The outfit was so far from how anyone knew him that the handful of students still in the hall all turned to look.
Some younger Hufflepuffs were chasing each other down the corridor and nearly ran into him. One turned back to apologize, saw his face, and swallowed it.
Two Ravenclaws came down the stairs with books in their arms and traded a glance as they passed.
An older Gryffindor shrugged and kept going.
A cluster in a corner put their heads together, one of them smirking. A death in the Black family probably struck them as nothing to mourn. Closer to good news.
Some Slytherins passing by noticed him too.
Their eyes settled on the black robes, then found each other.
Black family funeral robes, worn back to school by Sirius Black. Everyone read a different signal into it. Nobody approached.
He ignored all of it, crossed the entrance hall, and headed for Gryffindor Tower.
Torches stretched his shadow long against the stone, stretching and shrinking as it followed him.
Up the spiral stairs, the password to the Fat Lady, and the portrait swung open on an empty common room. The fire had nearly gone out.
He went straight up to the dormitory. No fire lit there, no lamps, just dark.
He didn't light anything and didn't change. He crossed to his bed and dropped onto it flat, hangings open, staring up at the canopy.
His eyes weren't focused on it. The fabric hung there and he wasn't seeing it.
The image stayed with him. It wouldn't leave.
Regulus walking off with Lucius under the yew trees, the two of them leaning in close like men with business to discuss.
He'd expected rage. Something, anyway. Breaking things, shouting, hatred.
Lying there staring at the canopy, none of it arrived.
Not grief and not anger. Just a hollow where they should have been.
He'd gotten used to the thaw between them, these past months.
Today had turned all of it over. What had become familiar wasn't familiar anymore.
The image sat far off, out of reach.
And close enough that he couldn't shake it loose.
He knew that where Regulus had been standing was where Regulus had always stood. Sirius had chosen not to look.
He lay there without moving.
Sometime later, footsteps and voices in the corridor.
James's voice carried straight through the door.
"...I'm serious! Is he coming back or not? Takes off without a word. Did he tell anyone? Did he tell me? No!"
The door banged open, his voice already filling the room.
"I'm telling you, if he doesn't turn up he's not copying the Transfiguration essay tomorrow, and I can't stall McGonagall for him again..."
He came in complaining the whole way. "No idea what he even went back for. What's to go back to? A shouting match with his mother?"
Lupin followed with two library books under his arm. "He had a reason. He was excused, it's not like he skipped."
"What reason could there be?" James spread his hands. "In that house, nothing happening is the best news you can get!"
Peter came last with his shoulders hunched and pushed the door shut behind him.
The room was dark. James reached for the lamp cord with one hand while the other lifted his wand toward the fireplace.
The light came on.
He saw the shape on the bed and the words died in his mouth.
His hands kept going on momentum. A flick of the wand and the fire roared up, orange light spilling across the whole dormitory.
He crossed to the bed in a few strides, voice climbing. "Hey! You're here! Why are you sitting in the dark..."
Then he looked down.
Black robes. Flat on his back, motionless, eyes open, not looking at any of them.
James stalled with his mouth still open, the rest of the sentence stuck. He glanced back at Lupin.
Lupin was setting his books on the nightstand. Feeling the look, he came over and stood at the foot of the bed.
Peter hung back by the door, craning to see.
Lupin looked down at Sirius, and his brow drew together.
James's eyes moved as he rewound the morning.
That black envelope. He'd leaned in for a look at breakfast. Full wax seal, that kind of weight to it.
His own family didn't run to such things, but he knew what it was. Formal correspondence from a pure-blood house. Add the robes, and it clicked. A funeral notice.
Both of them stood looking down at him.
James kept working the problem.
Sirius wasn't the sort to fall apart because a Black had died. Not a chance.
If the little snake had died, maybe. Anyone else, not a hope.
So James decided it was the atmosphere of the place. Half a day steeping in all that gloom would sour anyone.
There was worry in the way Lupin was watching him.
Sirius was loud. When something bothered him, it came out. This flat silence made the skin crawl.
Peter didn't dare come closer, hovering by his own bed, peering over.
Lupin and James stood shoulder to shoulder at the bedside, both with their hands folded in front of them, looking down at the motionless figure like mourners at a viewing.
Lupin nudged James with an elbow. James turned. Lupin jerked his chin toward Sirius. James pulled a face.
The job was his. He was the one who led this pack, and when one of them was down, he went in.
He already had the answer. There was a universal solution to this.
Insults.
Insult the Blacks, the whole mouldering lot of them, Grimmauld Place, all those revolting rules. Run through it once and Sirius would laugh and come back as himself.
Never failed.
He flung his jacket at the foot of the bed, dropped down beside Sirius, hooked one leg over the edge and twisted around to face him, arranging his expression into solidarity.
"Why'd you go back to that dump anyway?"
His tone was easy, carrying the promise that he'd turn all of it into a joke. "Just hearing about that house makes me want to throw up. Pitch black, curtains over every window. You ask me, somebody should torch it."
"And the portraits." He was hitting his stride. "A whole wall of dead people hanging there with their eyes rolling around after you. Who nails their ancestors up for decoration? It's disgusting."
Peter snickered and offered, "I heard they've got house-elf heads too..."
"Yes! On the stairs!" James slapped his own thigh. "In a row, chopped off and mounted. What a dignified tradition. Very Black."
He got better at it as he went, from the house to the rules, from the rules to the old pure-blood relics.
"Blood this and blood that all day." His mouth twisted as he put on an affected drawl. "Toujours Pur. Please. A litter out of a family tree that loops back on itself, and it shows in the brains."
"At least you got out." He patted Sirius's leg, then, unsatisfied, patted it again. "The rest of them are all stewing in the same swamp, and it stinks worse every year."
The complaining slid on its own toward Slytherin.
"And that whole nest of snakes, walking around with their noses up, pure-blood this, pure-blood that. Everything Slytherin sells is a con, I'm telling you!"
Sirius didn't react. His eyes didn't even move, fixed on the canopy while James talked himself hoarse.
James didn't mind. He kept going, picking up speed.
Lupin had winced at Toujours Pur. Insults were fine, but there was no need to go at the bloodline itself.
He leaned in from the far side of the bed and tugged lightly at James's sleeve.
James shook him off without breaking stride, well into it now.
"...especially the ones in the black robes." He hunched closer. "Trailing around after Voldemort, cooking up who knows what filth behind closed doors. I'm telling you..."
Black robes.
Sirius's eyes sharpened. His head turned slowly on the pillow, grey eyes finding James, nothing at all on his face.
Reading it as progress, James went harder, practically climbing onto him, face nearly touching face.
"Right! Those Death Eaters! The ones in the black robes! I'm telling you, they're all lunatics and lapdogs, every one of them convinced he's something special when really he's just..."
Lupin saw it turning. Sirius's face had gone darker by the second, and his eyes had changed.
He reached for James to rein him in.
Sirius's voice came low. "Enough."
James stopped. "What?"
Sirius pushed himself upright, bracing on the mattress, and sat with both hands on his knees.
He looked at James, and behind the grey there was something that had been held down a long time. Not out yet. Close.
"I said that's enough. Drop it."
The room went quiet. The fire popped once.
James's mouth was still half open, and everything in his face said he had no idea what to do with this.
He didn't know this reaction.
Sirius either joined in and insulted them worse than he did, or got bored and rolled over to sleep.
Being told to shut up had never happened.
He didn't know the answer. He had nothing to say back.