All the Young Dudes ( Sirius' Perspective )

First Year : Potions

Friday 10th September 1971

By the end of his first week of lessons, Sirius had broken a window, lost his owl, and learned a new jinx, courtesy of his cousin, Narcissa.

The lessons themselves were, for the most part, boring—they were all introductory, and most of the professors only covered information that was already found in the set texts. A few assigned homework, but it was all, for the most part, simple stuff that could be copied almost directly from their books.

History of magic was the worst—Professor Binns spent the entire time droning on, practically reciting the introduction from A History of Magic. Sirius felt like he was about to crawl up the walls by the time it ended; he’d already read the entire book over the summer.

Transfiguration was slightly better, but still a let-down. It was the class Sirius had most been looking forward to, but Professor McGonagall said they wouldn’t be doing any spell work for the first week, only reading, with homework assigned to gauge their ability level. Sirius liked reading, but he’d thought he’d come to Hogwarts to learn magic.

In Charms, they finally got to pick up their wands, but they were only levitating pinecones. Sirius was a bit surprised that one of the muggle-born students, Lily, was the first to master the spell, lifting her pinecone three feet off the table. He followed soon after, though, adding a flourish to his wand work to set his spinning like a top—just to ensure he wasn’t outdone. This backfired slightly when the pinecone spun so quickly that it sailed through the air and smashed a window, but James whooped with laughter, and Sirius just smirked and shrugged as if he’d meant to do it. Neither Peter nor James—nor Remus—managed to levitate their pinecones, and Sirius was privately quite proud.

The only other class that was even slightly hands-on was Potions, which Sirius was dismayed to find they shared with the Slytherins. He’d been purposely avoiding any Slytherin students—including his cousins—and his heartbeat sped up a bit every time he saw a flash of green in the halls. It was stupid, but he wasn’t sure how to make it stop.

To make matters worse, Professor Slughorn was an irritatingly jovial man who insisted on adding a running commentary to his role call. Of course, he had something to say when he saw Sirius’s name.

“Black, Sirius – aha, there you are! Quite surprised at the sorting my boy, quite surprised! I’ve had every one of the Blacks in my house since I started teaching! Shan’t take it personally, young Sirius, but I shall be expecting great things!”

Sirius could feel the eyes of his classmates on him as Slughorn announced how he had shamed his family to the entire room. If there had been any hope that some of the students might not know about how he’d broken the Black tradition, it was gone now. 500 years, and you’re the one to ruin it. Even Andromeda had been in Slytherin.

Slughorn continued to call out names as if he hadn’t just said the most mortifying thing possible to all of Sirius’s classmates.

“A Potter and a Pettigrew, eh? Well, well, along with Mr. Black here this class has quite the pedigree, eh?”

Slimy old git, Sirius thought, talking about everyone’s “pedigree.” He was reminding Sirius uncomfortably of his parents at parties.

 “Let me see… Lupin! I knew your father; not one of mine, but a damn good duellist. Nasty business…”

At this, Sirius blinked and turned to look at Remus—along with the rest of the class. Most of their year knew by now that his dad had been a wizard, but he was raised with muggles in a children’s home (Sirius still wasn’t exactly sure about what that meant, precisely). But Remus hadn’t seemed inclined to share anything else about his past.