Chapter 47: No Win
His jaw was so tight it ached, his teeth grinding painfully as he paced the common room. Waiting was always the worst part; the anticipation of what was coming, of the shouting and hexes that would inevitably end up being thrown. It had been months since he had this feeling. It didn't pass the moment he grabbed his jacket and ran from his mother's house. Nor had it passed when the Potters threw their door open and offered him a bed, not just for the night but forever. No, the fear of pain and punishment had gone when Charlus Potter refused Walburga Black entrance to his house, denied her claims on Sirius and sent the woman on her way without so much as raising his voice or wand. Sirius thought that had been the last time he would ever shiver with the knowledge that someone was going to rant and scream at him, but clearly he had been wrong.
As he paced and waited for Harry, he knew that the fear would always spike in him before a confrontation; it was ingrained after so many years. This feeling would never leave him.
His stomach crawled up his throat as Harry entered through the portrait hole, confident smile on his face and a swagger to his step. It made Sirius sick to see him looking so pleased with himself. Well, it made Sirius sick to see him at all if he were being completely honest. Still, he pushed himself forward.
"Harry," he called.
The boy turned at his name, his eyebrows disappearing into his fringe when he saw who had summoned him. "You're speaking to me now?"
"Shut up," he all but growled. He gripped his arm and pulled him into a quiet corner. Just a few days ago he would have been eager for this private conference, would have considered leaning in to kiss the boy but now he just wanted information. "What were you doing talking to Alfie fucking Quintain?"
"That's his last name?" Harry muttered with a frown.
"You asked him out and don't even know his name?"
The boy's emerald eyes narrowed as Lily's always did when she was annoyed. "That's what this is about? You're cross because I asked him out?"
"No," Sirius insisted a bit too quickly.
"What then?"
He bit back a string of curse words and the damned lovesick sigh that always tried to come out when he dared look Harry's way. After nearly a fortnight of reminding himself who the boy really was, he still couldn't keep himself wanting to be near him, and, when he spoke in that determined voice that Sirius remembered from the night he found the boy sitting in the moonlight, he was practically lost to that old feeling.
'He's going to be your Godson, you pervert,' he reminded himself sharply. 'You're going to be forced to change his nappies when Prongs and Evans are out.'
"You should stay away from him. He's dangerous." There. He said it. He had given his warning. Now he could go back to avoiding Harry James Potter at all cost.
Harry thought otherwise apparently because he asked, "How is he dangerous?"
"What?"
"How. Is. He. Dangerous?"
Sirius glared at him as his teeth began to grind again. He had no right to take that tone, not when he knew better the whole time. Not when he could have put a stop to Sirius's flirting from day one. The git. "He's a Slytherin."
"So is Regulus," Harry replied without pause.
Sirius scowled. He was sure he had never said anything about his brother around the boy. "He's dated half the school."
"So have you."
"Yeah, but he dumped them after only a couple weeks."
"So have you."
"He only dated them to get ahead, to get information or exam answers."
"So have you," he paused, raising a defiant eyebrow. "Or were you not flirting with me to get more items for your Operation Not-Prongs list?"
"Not the whole time, but that's not the point," he insisted weakly, his confidence faltering. He had no idea his actions would put him in the same light as Alfie fucking Quintain. Sure, some of the things he did were self-serving and slightly malicious, but the majority of the damage he caused was unintentional. Quintain broke hearts for sport; from the start of a relationship, he set out with the sole purpose of hurting people; everything he did was for his own amusement and gain. But, Sirius realised, he had flirted with Harry for his own gain, to find out information; he had dated that Ravenclaw boy second year and any number of others without ever intending to make anything serious of it; he had pranked people in public and humiliating ways just for a laugh.
"He," Sirius paused, searching for something else, something obvious and tangible, something he could prove. "He's too handsome."
Harry breathed a laugh. "So are you."
Harry waited, folding his arms over his chest as the desperate boy before him scoured his brain for anything else he could offer, but he had nothing. There was only one thing left Sirius could present in objection, but he didn't dare say it. How could he live with himself if he did?
"Anything else?" Harry demanded. When Sirius said nothing, he turned and left up the stairs to their room.
"He's not me," he muttered quietly.
Refusing to stand alone in the dark and hear the echo of his own words mocking him, Sirius found his way to the couch by the fire. He fell onto the threadbare cushions, burying his head under a pillow and all but screamed his inability to control his feelings or keep Harry from the boy who was too like himself.
"Cradle robbing not going well?"
His head shot up and he offered his most withering glare. Remus only smiled in reply. It was nearing the full moon; the boy's moods were running wild, and he was clearly at his most suicidal if he was willing to make such comments aloud. Normally, Sirius would let it go or play it off with a smirk, but he couldn't tonight.
"Would that make you the cauldron or the kettle?" he questioned baldly. "It doesn't really matter; they're both black."
"Not me," Remus declared, his smile only growing.
"And how do you figure that? Hermione came here with Harry," he reminded his annoying friend, dropping his voice low so no one could hear. "You're just as old as me where she's from. If I'm robbing the cradle, then so are you."
Sirius didn't truly want to ruin his friend's happiness. Hermione was the first girl to pay honest attention to him; too often girls only went out with him to get closer to his friends, which left the boy bitter and alienated a good deal of the time. He hated that the one girl who properly liked him would be leaving and travelling to a place where Remus was old enough to be her father. Still, as the boy's smile grew so wide it threatened to split his face apart, he couldn't help wanting to cause him at least a small amount of the ache he was feeling.
"Don't think so," Remus said with that lupine smile.
"Do you have some magical time travel dust up your sleeve, Messer Moony? That's the only way I can see the two of you staying together without you being a perverted old bastard."
The boy shook his head. As he did, the grin fell away. "You know what I am, Pads. How many of my kind live to see forty? I'm going to be lucky if I even make it to thirty-five, especially with you lot hanging around me," he added with a wan smile. "Wherever Hermione is going, I doubt there's an older version of me for her to go back to."
"Moony, I–," he stopped, completely at a loss for what to say.
Remus just swatted the words away.
They lapsed into an uncomfortable silence which left Sirius forced to rethink everything he thought he knew. He cursed Harry for coming back and ruining the good life he had made for himself, for making him think about things he didn't want to know or had flatly refused to ever consider. All these years, he had been living a joyous and relatively carefree life at Hogwarts, building a small family of his own, being the person he wasn't permitted to be at home. Then Harry had to show up. Now he had to think about his friend's impending death, another's marriage, and, worst of all, just how similar he was to someone he couldn't stand. It took Harry to make the obvious clear.
"I fucking hate Harry," he groaned and scraped his palms down his face.
"Liar."
Sirius ignored him. He ignored everyone, staring into the fire for hours wishing he could be consumed by the flames instead of his thoughts. When he finally tore his eyes away from the hearth, he saw that Remus had gone. Everyone had. The common room was empty save him. The sconces had long been extinguished and the massive fireplace held little more than glowing coals, hardly capable of lighting the room let alone offering him the fiery cleansing he needed.
"Stupid," he muttered, cursing himself for being so lost to a boy he couldn't possibly have. He stumbled to the stairs, the fire dying completely as he climbed to his room and fell into bed.
The brief, fitful night did nothing to aid his mood the following morning. He snapped at anyone who dared speak to him and glared at everyone else. Any pretence of him being too cool to care was thrown away. He cared. Deeply, painfully, he cared. It was simply too late for it to make a difference.
The offer had been accepted and now Harry sat with their friends, discussing what he might do for his upcoming date with Alfie fucking Quintain. Even as far gone as he was, Sirius knew it wasn't quite right for James to be helping the boy plan a romantic liaison with another bloke after so violently threatening him for flirting. He wanted to know what they were playing at, helping Harry seduce Quintain, but he knew any interjection he made would simply be brushed off as jealousy. And they were probably right for the most part, so he kept his silence as he wore his teeth down to the gums.
At Tildy's cheeky suggestion that Harry snog the boy senseless, Sirius fled the table.
"So fucked up," he groaned.
His feet took him without thought to the library. It was blissfully silent with all the students still breakfasting in the Great Hall, and Sirius welcomed the tranquillity of the books, which sat on their shelves in companionable and non-judgemental stillness. The students free to visit the stacks first period of the day arrived slowly and with equal quietness, selecting their book and leaving with barely a whisper among them. Too often Sirius had an innate fear of silence, resulting in his insistence on filling it by any means necessary be it joke, rude song or quick and dirty prank, but now he was beginning to see what others saw in it; he was loathed to leave it, even for classes. So he didn't. He remained in his chair, ignoring all around him until well into the afternoon.
It was some hours after lunch and Charms when someone arrived to pull him from his trance. He thought it was James judging by the strut, but it was Harry. He entered the gated Restricted Section without offering anyone in the library even a passing glance. Sirius wanted to leave, disgusted by the idea of what – or more accurately who – had put that spring into the boy's step. Stubbornness or some masochistic desire to have his heart gouged out with a dull wooden spoon kept him rooted to his spot even when Quintain slithered into a seat at the table nearest Harry.
'Leave,' he told himself as he watched the two boys acknowledge each other, Harry offering a shy but flirtatious smile. He stayed.
Hiding like a coward behind an upturned book, he watched the glances and smirks, pained that they were being thrown at someone who wasn't him. It galled him, but he refused to look away. Harry leaned against the bars of the gate, gesturing with a hooked finger to the boy who wasn't him; Quintain obeyed the call, just as Sirius would have, leaving his seat to chat with Harry through the barrier.
'All that time pretending not to notice me and now look at him.' Sirius glared his envy at Quintain's back, wishing there was something he could do to revenge his loss upon him.
Something of his old smile flashed across his face as he remembered the three dung bombs in his bag. James might have turned a new leaf in his efforts to make Old Charlie proud and to win Evans, but Sirius was another tree all together; he still kept an emergency stock of pranking supplies on his person at all times should the opportunity arise for spur-of-the-moment mischief.
He dug deep into his bag, pulling out James's invisibility cloak, which he had borrowed without permission after his previous attempts to prank had been derailed by James being glued to the comely Lily Evans. Next, he pulled out one of the bombs, weighing it carefully in his palm as he considered any consequences. There were none. He threw on the cloak and silently closed the distance to Quintain's table. Setting the dung bomb to explode with maximum stench, he deposited the small brown ball into the boy's bag and made for the door as quickly as he could. Much as he wanted to witness the boy's reaction, he knew better than to stay. He had been caught in the blast of a dung bomb only once. Once was enough for anyone.
The bomb itself made no noise outside a hissing as the putrid liquid and stench were released, but the resulting screams were more than satisfying. From his perch on a window ledge, he watched as students fled the library in a panic, eyes watering and hands pinching noses in a vain effort to evade the smell. The smile fell from his face when neither Harry nor Quintain rushed into the corridor. Minutes passed, but neither came.
"Where—" he stopped, heart falling like stone into his stomach.
Quintain and Harry came through the library door, laughing and hanging off one another as if they had been in on the prank. They walked, linked together, bursting into peels of hysterical laughter whenever anyone ran from them and the thick smell of dung that clung to them.
"Should have known better," Sirius muttered numbly as he watched them go.