The Story of Regulus Black - Years 1-4

XXVIII. Excuse Me, Mr. James, Sir?

Sirius Black, James Potter, Peter Pettigrew, and Remus Lupin all sat in the Gryffindor common room. Remus and Peter were both sitting on the floor, backs pressed against the couch, while James and Sirius were lounging across the couch itself.

The common room was quite busy, and there were several groups of people strewn throughout.

Sirius, though, had something on his mind.

"Just let it go, Sirius," James muttered, discreetly going over the notes that they had taken for how exactly to make the Animagus potion - he kept glancing at Remus through his wire-frame glasses to be sure he wasn't catching on.

"I can't!" Sirius exclaimed, and he sprawled his limbs out even further. His right leg was now on James's lap, left leg between Peter and Remus, left arm draped next to Remus's left shoulder, and right arm bent across his face. "Who the bloody hell is the little blighter writing to!"

"Dunno, do we Sirius?" Remus mumbled, scrawling out another sentence of his Care of Magical Creatures essay (they had to write an essay on how to differentiate a Kneazle from an everyday cat).

Sirius let out a very dramatic groan. "He has to be doing something suspicious!"

"He could just be writing to his parents," Peter added, making up a fake dream and scribbling it down on his dream journal for Divination.

"BUT HE'S NOT!" several other heads in the common room turned to the four boys, but Sirius didn't seem to notice. "You expect me to believe that he just so happened to be in the restricted section of the library for innocent reasons? They keep all the dark magic books in there! He was probably looking up how to cast the bloody Unforgivables!"

"You were in there for an innocent reason, weren't you?" Remus asked, turning away from his essay and craning his neck to look at Sirius. In truth, the other three wouldn't tell Remus exactly what they had been doing there - if Sirius hadn't been complaining so much about seeing Regulus in there, Remus suspected that they never would have told him at all.

"Well, yeah, but we aren't a bunch of Slytherin's!"

"There can be good Slytherin's," Remus said, and he turned back to his essay.

Sirius scoffed. "Like who?"

"Didn't Francesco say that Professor Bell was in Slytherin?" James inquired.

Sirius waved a dismissive hand at his best mate. "Come on, he wasn't a real Slytherin. He's just... he's one of the good ones! Like Andromeda!"

"Andromeda? Your cousin?" Remus asked, shifting his gaze from his essay to the textbook.

"Yes, who else? She was always one of the good ones. Haven't heard from her in a while... I should write to her."

"Yeah, you should, then you can bore her with all of your stupid theories about your brother," James mocked.

Sirius kicked him. "They aren't stupid, they're valid ruddy concerns! Who is he writing to, why was he in the restricted section, why was he trying on my stupid tie at the end of the summer, and why is he so bloody insufferable? All logical questions, if you ask me."

"We didn't ask you," piped up Peter, and Remus let out a choking laughter.

Sirius kicked Peter in the back of the head. "You guys are a bunch of ruddy bullies! I don't even know why I'm friends with you lot!"

The other three began to laugh, and Sirius couldn't help but join in.

"Um, excuse me, Mr. James, sir?" a small voice broke the boys out of their laughter, and they all looked up to see a rather awkward looking Deacon Ackland standing in front of them.