All the Young Dudes ( Sirius' Perspective )

Summer 1973

Sirius had never liked the portraits adorning the walls of his ancestral home. They were all of stuffy old relatives, always frowning, and the whole lot were notorious snitches. But usually they wouldn't deign to speak with him, instead turning up their noses and shooting him dirty looks-which was easy to ignore, once you got used to it.

That was no longer the case in the summer of 1973. When Sirius arrived home, he was horrified to find that in addition to his mother's usual vicious lecture, the portraits of his ancestors had decided to take it upon themselves to remind him what a disgrace he was. He could barely leave his room without hearing a snide remark about how he was bringing shame to his family-Sirius wished he could use magic; he and James had been cooking up a spell to temporarily change the appearance of paintings. He would've quite liked to turn his great-aunt Muriel into a selkie, or perhaps a troll.

Regardless, the vocal disapproval of his family only made Sirius more determined to prove that he didn't care about a single word any of them said. The day he arrived home, he immediately unpacked the Gryffindor banners and flags that he had stuffed into his trunk, hanging them all on his walls with spell-o-tape. He felt a bit better once his bedroom was draped in red and gold-he could almost pretend he was back in the Gryffindor common room.

The respite didn't last long; Kreacher must have seen the paraphernalia when he came in to clean and told Sirius's mother, because within twenty-four hours she was tearing everything down and shredding it with magic. She forced Sirius to carry the scraps out to the backyard, then handed him a box of matches and told him to burn it.

He refused.

Once his legs had healed and he was able to make the trek to the family owlery again, Sirius began writing regular letters to his friends. This was a much needed distraction, especially because Remus was actually writing back this summer-apparently Lily Evans, of all people, had enchanted some sort of clear paper so that he could use it to read. This bothered Sirius (he was supposed to be the only one who knew Remus's secret, so he didn't understand why he'd gone and told Lily) but he tried not to think about it too much, because it was nice to be able to communicate with his friend.

The letters made the next few weeks of summer bearable; James complained constantly of boredom, Remus reported that he was spending all his time doing homework, and Peter announced that his family was going to visit France. Sirius would smuggle the missives covertly to his room, where he would clutch the pages and imagine he could hear his friend's voices, and that they were all back together once more.

Halfway through July, his mother intercepted a letter from James; she was predictably furious that Sirius was still in contact with "that Potter whelp." His father got involved this time, lecturing in a low, dangerous voice that made Sirius feel as if ants were crawling up and down his spine.

"The Potters are not your friends, son," he said coldly, "They may want you to think that they care about you, but I can assure you that they do not. People like them are determined to stamp out the way of life that our family has spent hundreds of years protecting-they would see you cower before muggles, suppress your magic for what they consider 'the greater good.' They would see our communities polluted; our children's minds poisoned..."

And just like that, Sirius was no longer allowed the privilege of using the owlery.

There was still the muggle post-the large black mailbox at the outskirts of the Black Estate's grounds was mostly just for show, and nobody ever checked it except Sirius. He had already perfected his system for sneaking out and knew exactly which times no one would miss him. Still, it made things more difficult; he didn't know Remus's address, so he had to stop sending letters-and Remus stopped writing to him, as well. Luckily, he'd learned James's address after visiting, but the other boy was horribly confused by the muggle post and only managed to get one more letter through during the entire month of July.