grandilloquism

Title: An Exploration
Author:grandilloquism 
Beta:susan5124 
Rating: PG
Summary:  Long term Hogwarts fic.  All seven years.
Notes: I've been working on this thing so long it feels weird sharing it with the world.  Oh well, here goes.


I.

    “To brave and know the unknown
    Is the high world’s motive and mark,
    Though the way with snares be strewn”
    - from ‘The Unknown‘, John Davidson

    September, 1971

    Sirius Black is eleven.  Sirius is eleven and sitting dejectedly on a bench at King’s Cross blaming his parent’s for being such, such gits, he thinks viciously.  And then, that sneaking uncertainty.  Maybe it’s just his fault, maybe he should know what to do?  Maybe when his father told him that he was a Man now and that Men didn’t need their mothers to baby them along to the school train; and that Men from the Most Noble House of Black certainly didn’t need their governesses anymore, Sirius should have built up all of his eleven year old Man courage and asked if maybe his father, being a Man and a Black and most Capable, could tell him what to do.  But something about the set of his father’s mouth told him it wouldn’t be a good idea.

    So Sirius went along to King’s Cross, by himself, and tugged his trunk to a bench, by himself, and watched enviously as all the other eleven year old witches and wizards were shown about by their parents. He watched as they all disappeared into a wall and wondered what he was supposed to tell the wall so it would let him through.  Because surely, he thought uncertainly, you had to do more than just walk through it.  What kept all the muggles from leaning against it by accident?  Why couldn’t they all see the hordes of people saying some secret password and getting through the wall?  He had the strongest urge to just run at the bloody wall and force it to let him in, but the thought of another broken nose (He’d run into the bedroom door after he had gotten his Hogwarts letter. His father had insisted that he was a Man now and therefore did not need to be coddled and the nose would heal by itself.  It had.  Crooked.) and the general embarrassment he’d cause himself, kept him from trying.

    A shadow passed over his lap, he looked over his shoulder.  A woman with flyaway black hair, just greying at the temples, accompanied by the scrawniest, messiest-haired boy Sirius had ever seen, was giving him a Sympathetic Look.  “You’re for Hogwarts?”

    Sirius jutted out his chin, “Maybe.”  His voice sounded sullen, and not at all like a Man, he noted morosely. 

    The corner of the woman’s eyes crinkled up in amusement, Sirius’ chin managed another few centimeters.  “Having trouble with the platform, dear?”

    Sirius almost crumpled, almost broke down and asked the nice woman with the malnourished son what the password was, but then he remembered his father’s parting words.  And that he was a Man.  “No,” he said too quickly.  “I was just having a sit, wasn’t I?  Could get through the platform anytime now.”  He added, “When I feel like it.”

    The woman did a very good job at stifling her laughter.  She pursed her lips, “Well, when you feel like it, all you have to do is walk through the wall.”  She wondered for a moment if she should stick around until the petulant child built up his nerve, but in the end, decided it would take less time if she just left him to it.  “Have a good term then.”  She gestured behind her, “Come on James.”  James paused, staring wonderingly at the boy who’d mouthed off at his mother, the Most Fearsome Beast, and hadn’t earned a sharp thwack! on the head for his trouble.  “James,” said his mother much more impatiently.  “Come on.”   James went.

    Sirius, however, stayed firmly on the bench, watching the pair closely as they passed through the wall.  With a start, he realized what the mother had said was true.  There was no secret password.  He really did just have to walk through a wall.  Emboldened, he picked up the trolley with his trunk and wheeled it forward.  Mustering all his Manly courage, he picked his way across the crowd and, hesitating only for a second, pushed himself through the wall.  The platform he found himself on was only mostly like the one he had just passed from.  The difference being the amount of squawking and hissing, not all of it from the animals kept closely at hand by many of the students but, mainly, because of the train on the rails.  It was a vivid scarlet.  A nervous sweat broke out as Sirius found himself with a wholly new and unexpected problem.  Where would he sit?

    Sirius was pondering this and feeling not at all Manly when a commotion broke out a few yards away.  James, the painfully thin boy from earlier, had managed to upturn a very blonde fourth year’s trunk.  Narcissa, the blonde whose delicates were currently floating about the terminal, was screaming at the first year, wand brandished.  A sense of Manliness overcame Sirius; he ran to his cousin and planted himself in the line of fire. James‘ sense of respect for the boy deepened.

    “Hullo, Cissy.”

    Her look of disgust was obvious. “Sirius, you brat, stay out of this.”

    Sirius clucked his tongue. “Oh no Cissy, I think it’s you who should stay out of this.”

    Narcissa‘s lip curled.  “Oh really?  What could you possibly say that would stop me from sticking this boy to this side of the train?”

    The first year smirked, it was perhaps the most satisfied smirk a first year ever smirked, and leaned forward, whispering something not at all audible to the rest of the platform.

    Narcissa paled, “You’re bluffing.  You don’t know anything about that.”

    Sirius raised an eyebrow. “You stayed with us for a month.  I know everything.  In fact, maybe I should give a little oral demonstration of just how much I know?” 

    Narcissa screeched, “Okay!  Shut it!”  James was smirking by now, and the spectators gathered in a circle around the heap of books and clothing were full out laughing.  Narcissa was blushing scarlet.  A dark figure cut through the crowd, it parted easily before her.  “Move it, all,” said Bellatrix.  “Come on Cissy. What’d you do this time?”  Her expression was hardly friendly.  She looked exasperated and a bit haughty, as if deigning to help anyone, even her sister, was under her station.  She flicked her wand and the whole mess flew helter-skelter back into the trunk.  “Move it you two!” she added viciously to the two boys still rooted to the spot.  “Sirius, get out of here before I find something more interesting to do with this wand,” she threatened. 

    Sirius grabbed James’ arm and hauled him back towards his own trunk.  Bellatrix’s wrath was far less worth risking.  “Hell,” breathed James.  “I thought I was done for, and then you, you-”  he regarded the boy with amazement.  “You saved me.”

    Sirius grinned, he was feeling much more like a Man.  “Course I did.” 

    James shook his head, still amazed.  He stuck out his hand. “James Potter  Thank you  for saving my life.”

    He grabbed the other boy’s hand. “Sirius Black.  Pleased to, really.”   

    James’ eyebrows shot up, “Black?”  The word came out as more of a splutter. 

    Sirius frowned, “That a problem?”

    “No,” breathed James, even more thoroughly impressed.  “Not at all.”

    They found a compartment at the very end of the train and were debating the amount of dead James would have been had Sirius, in his fit of Manliness, not come to his rescue, when the door opened the barest bit and a head peaked in.  “Oh, I’m terribly sorry,” said the head, withdrawing itself.  “I didn’t know if anyone was in here, but it’s the last compartment, and all the others are so full, you see.”  The door opened more fully to reveal a scrawny, scarred boy with honey-brown hair; he seemed apologetic for taking up any space at all.  

    James and Sirius regarded the boy, each other, and the boy again.  “Well-” said James.

  “  Mmm,” said Sirius.  They regarded the boy once more, taking in the pale scars and battered trunk.  They gave a simultaneous nod.

    The boy grinned. “Remus Lupin.  Pleased to meet you both.  I brought sweets.”  He held up a brown paper bag the size of his head.

-

    “Black, Sirius.” He wasn’t sure, but Sirius thought that Professor McGonagall sounded particularly stern at his name. He took this as a good omen.  He walked forward to the stool and placed the hat on his head.  He was mournful really, that he had to go off to Slytherin when with all certainty James was going to Gryffindor.  “Oh, really?” asked a small voice into his ear.  “Slytherin, you think.” 

    ‘Of course,’ Sirius thought at the hat.  ‘The Black family, the whole lot of them have been Slytherin since the house was started.  Course I’ll be Slytherin.’  

    “Oh, I don’t think so,” said the hat.  “Yes, ambition and cunning, but also bravery, courage and the desire to excel in things other than power and knowledge for it’s own sake.  I think GRYFFINDOR.”

    Sirius very nearly fell off the stool, hands shaking as he took the hat off of his head and looked around the hall.  Furtively, he stood, glancing in the direction of the Slytherin table, at Bellatrix who was smirking. Her distant, cold mask temporarily broken, Narcissa looked pleased.  As he looked at the Gryffindor table, he noticed that while a few students seemed a bit dismayed or shocked, the rest seemed not to know, or care, that a son of one of the most adamantly Slytherin families in the history of Hogwarts had been sorted into Gryffindor.  He made his way to the table as a few groups scooted closer together, making sure there was no room for Sirius to sit.  He found himself at the end of the table feeling not at all like a Man.


    “Lupin, Remus.”

    Remus looked apologetic, wringing his hands together as he approached the stool.  He felt apologetic for taking up space,  these people’s time.  He also felt sick.  Very sick and acutely aware of every pair of eyes trained on him.  He wanted to vomit.  He sat on the stool and placed the hat on his head.  Before this afternoon he would have given anything to be in Ravenclaw,  Nice, safe, Ravenclaw, with his books and his work and a field trip out once a month.  But now, he dreaded trying to make new friends after meeting such nice ones on the train.  He gave an internal sigh, resigned.  “Remus Lupin,” said a voice into his ear.  “A very special case.”  It’s next words sounded amused. “Though not the words you would pick.”

  ‘No,’ he told it, not at all sure how one properly addresses a hat.

   “Still, very smart.  You’d do well in Ravenclaw.”

   ‘Gryffindor?”  he offered up hesitantly, politely.

   “Gryffindor?  Well, perhaps, if you think so.  GRYFFINDOR.” 

   Remus knew he should have been thankful, but all he really wanted was to tell the Sorting Hat not to end a sentence with a conjunction.  He took one of the empty seats beside Sirius. 


   “Pettigrew, Peter,”

   Peter sat nervously down on the stool, jamming the hat on top of his head and hoping with all the hope his eleven year old heart could muster that he wouldn’t be in Hufflepuff.

    “No,” said the hat directly above his ear.  “Not Hufflepuff, I think.”

    ‘No?’ Peter asked the hat hopefully.

    “Better be GRYFFINDOR.”

    Peter jumped up quickly, the hat falling off his head.  He placed it back on the stool and ran more than anything to the end of the Gryffindor table, taking the seat across from Remus.  He smiled hopefully at the boy.  Remus smiled back.

  
    “Potter, James.”

    James was adamant.  He wasn’t sure how to be adamant to a hat.  But he was sure the best step was to tell it.  ‘I’m adamant,’ he told the hat.

    “So I see,” the sorting hat sounded amused.  “No then, there’s really no other choice for it, GRYFFINDOR.”  James grinned and pulled the hat off of his head, placed it on the squat stool and practically skipped to the Gryffindor table, picking the spot across the table from Sirius.  He grinned brilliantly at his friend.

-


"This is brilliant,” breathed James as they entered the first year dormitory, apparently oblivious to all the looks that had been cast their way throughout the evening.

    Sirius beamed, if no one else was going to say anything, he certainly wasn’t going to bring it up.  Instead, he went to the bed closest to the window and across from the bathroom door, his trunk already at it's foot, and fell back on it with a heavy thud.  James' was the one diagonally from Sirius’ and Remus' trunk was set by the bed across from James’, leaving Peter across from Sirius and closest to the bathroom.  They all stared at each other, exhilarated by the sheer brilliance of their own dorm.
 
    “No mothers,” said Sirius ecstatically.

    “No one making us clean,” cried James.

    “No one keeping us from eating in bed,” howled Peter.

    ‘Oh dear,’ thought Remus already carefully refolding his school robes, placing them on the foot of his bed, and taking out his sleep ware.

    Sirius rubbed the bump on his nose, watching Remus curiously, “Whatcha doin’ that for?” His grammar had steadily worsened throughout the evening.

    Remus looked up, expression a bit deer caught in the headlights.  “Oh, I-”  He looked down at the carefully folded creases of his robes, “I don’t know.  I just-”  He shrugged, “Habit?  I guess?”  He pushed some hair off his face and looked around the room furtively.  James was busy changing, nightshirt caught over his head, with only a messy tuft of dark hair visible, and Peter had already crawled into bed, robes discarded in a small heap on the floor. Remus winced and looked back up at Sirius, the boy was nearly a hand-span taller than him.

    Sirius grinned so infectiously that Remus had to smile back.  “Well, stay away from my clothes then. It took a staggering amount of effort to get them that wrinkled and I won’t have you waltzing about folding things.”

    Remus did his best to look sheepish, “Sorry.”

    “As you very well should be.”

Next: September the Second through October the Sixth, 1971