All the Young Dudes ( Sirius' Perspective )

Summer 1975

His mother had tried to take down the Gryffindor banners.

It was the first thing Sirius noticed, arriving back in his room. They were rumpled and very clearly singed, some of them badly burnt-it looked like she'd tried to tear them down and, failing that, had attempted to blast them off. Luckily, he'd had the forethought to cast permanent sticking charms on his spell-o-tape before leaving school, and her attempts had clearly ended in failure. Sirius: 1, Family: 0.

She wasn't pleased with the state of his trunk, either, and roped his father into it-Sirius had to sit, staring at his feet in the parlour, listening as they took turns berating him for his abhorrent behaviour and despicable immaturity. But they didn't do anything worse than shout at him, and he retreated to his room that night feeling oddly relieved. Maybe the summer wouldn't be as bad as he'd expected.

He finally received an invitation to one of the mysterious family meetings, which he wasn't sure how to feel about-on the one hand, he hated being left out; it made him feel small, unimportant, invisible. But the spark of relief Sirius felt at the inclusion quickly turned to a confused mixture of apprehension and guilt; after all, he wasn't sure that the meeting was something he wanted to be included in. Not if it had anything to with this Dark Lord character, or what had been happening with the war...

He thought about setting off some dungbombs, just to spite his parents, but in the end James talked him out of it, insisting that it would be more useful to just keep his head down and make note of who all was there and what they said. Sirius made it through the meeting by reminding himself that he was a spy, and he didn't agree with anything anyone was saying, and he was only pretending to go along with it so that he'd have information to take back to Mr. Potter. Still, it made his skin crawl, listening to his family rattle on about the "infestation of mudbloods" in the wizarding community and the "dire need to cleanse the ministry of muggle apologists." His family had always been prejudiced, but now...they spoke about muggleborn wizards like they were hardly even human. Like they were a particularly nasty virus, or a stubborn infestation of pixies. Sirius didn't think they had always talked that way-or had he just never noticed?

Either way, he couldn't afford to draw any attention to himself by trying to disrupt the hateful speech. Not if he wanted to be a successful spy. And, of course, there was another reason to keep his head down-another reason to tiptoe around his parents, doing his best to avoid their attention: the mandrake leaf.

The first step in becoming an animagus was to carry a mandrake leaf in your mouth for an entire month, without spitting it out or swallowing it. This meant, of course, that Sirius spent the first thirty days at home trying to keep his mouth shut as much as possible. Eating proved to be a bit of a headache, as it had to be done very delicately-Sirius found that the best method was to tuck the leaf into one cheek and chew on the other side of his mouth, swallowing very, very carefully.

He remained on edge throughout the thirty days, anxious that his family might notice something. But his parents simply seemed to assume that their lectures had finally gotten through-and besides, they were so busy going in and out of meetings that he didn't really need to worry about them looking too closely. It was surprisingly easy to fly under the radar; in fact, Sirius found himself frustrated by the perception that he had decided to behave. He wanted desperately to prove to his parents that they hadn't beaten him.

Regulus was a different story. While at Hogwarts, Reggie typically avoided him like the plague-but at home, his brother was always creeping around, coming into whatever room Sirius had picked to hang about in and settling down with a book, or summer homework, or some other excuse to stay. Eventually, when Reggie walked into the library with a chess set one day and began to play against himself, Sirius rolled his eyes.