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It was so quick that for a moment, Sirius thought there was the slightest chance that James and Peter had missed it. The expression on Remus’ face, however, told him differently. Sirius hadn’t meant to, he really hadn’t. It’s just that when he had looked at the time on the clock that hung in the common room wall and had realised Dorcas must be waiting for him at the pitch to practice the new Quidditch moves she’d discovered and promised to teach him, Sirius had instinctively stood up, given Remus a short kiss on the lips, and had been about to turn around to walk out when it hit him.
He’d kissed Remus. In front of James and Peter, who did not know he had been kissing Remus for a few months already. Well, actually, doing quite a lot more than just kissing him.
In a fraction of a second his mind came up with what was probably the stupidest solution possible.
“And goodbye to you too, mate!” he exclaimed, turning around, bending down and pressing his lips to James’. His friend let out a squeak of surprise, but before he had time to react properly Sirius was already separating from him and walking toward Peter. He bent down and kissed Peter too, counted to three and moved away.
“Love you all, guys, see you later” he said, then quickly escaped through the portrait.
Remus, who despite knowing the reason behind what had just happened was not less stunned from it, was the first to break the silence.
“What the fuck is wrong with him today?” he tried, desperately pleading that the other boys wouldn’t see through his facade.
“Who knows anymore,” answered James, chuckling and shaking his head. Without another word, he returned to his Potions book. Peter stood silent and wide-eyed for a moment, then shook his head as if to get rid of his thoughts and laid back down on the couch, eyes closed.
Remus thanked Merlin that the situation was under control. For now. They would have to be more careful.
The second incident was not really an incident and more of a catastrophe. Sirius was sitting in the common room late one night doing some last hour studying for a Charms exam when Peter walked in through the portrait. He looked tired. He’d spent the afternoon doing detention for McGonagall for a prank. They had all organised it, but Pete had been the only one caught executing it, so he was feeling all the weight of the punishment.
“Hey, Pete”, Sirius called.
Peter turned around, apparently just noticing someone else was there. “Hey! Was just thinking about you. I thought you might already be asleep”
Sirius signalled all the pieces of parchment and books around him on the table. “Sadly, I’m not. Why were you thinking about me?”
“Oh, right.” He walked to where Sirius was and reached inside the pocket of his robes. “McGonagall had me cleaning and organising some broom cupboards and that, and I found this. I think it’s yours, I’ve seen it in our room”. He extended a sock to Sirius. It was blue and had golden snitches all over. It was not Sirius’.
“It’s not…”
“It was in the one near the Transfiguration classroom, you know.” Peter smiled knowingly. “Where you take all those chicks all the time, as you told us, ‘s why I figured this is yours. Who did you take last?”
Sirius panicked, his mind scrambling for a name that wouldn’t get him in trouble. In the end he just settled for the easiest way out. “Oh, some Hufflepuff sixth-year, she asked me not to say anything ‘cause it might make his boyfriend a little mad,” he lied, trying to fake a devious smile. Thank Merlin he’s really good at that. Peter fell right for it.
“Nice,” he said. He dumped the sock on the table in front of Sirius and walked away. “G’night, mate.”
“Good night”
That was close.
It was next morning when the little sock incident exploded in Sirius’ face. Just when he’d forgotten about it, hadn’t even told Remus, thinking the bullet had been expertly avoided. He was wrong. So, so wrong.
They were all changing to go have breakfast when it happened. Remus was down on his knees searching for something underneath the bed. He seemed unable to find whatever it was. Sirius wasn’t even paying attention to him until the boy asked out loud: “Has anyone seen my sock?”
Sirius froze, shirt half-buttoned up.
“It’s blue. It’s got snitches all over, like this one,” he explained, signalling down to the sock on his right foot.
A few things happened in quick succession. James said he hadn’t seen it. Sirius looked desperately at Peter. Peter looked down at Remus’ sock, then up at Remus’ face, then at Sirius, then back at Remus and back at Sirius. His eyes shot wide open, mouth gaping. Then, quick as always, Sirius grabbed his wand from his bed and pointed it at Peter. “Stupefy!” he said, and Peter fell to the ground, unconscious.
James and Peter, who had been ignorant to Peter’s realisation and had continued to change into their clothes, now turned to Sirius with confusion.
“Why you do that for?” James asked, frowning.
“I…I don’t…” Sirius, always a doer never a thinker, looked at Remus with fear, silently asking for help.
“Was it revenge for what he did last night?” tried Remus.
“Yes. Yes! That” answered Sirius, laughing awkwardly.
“What did he do?” James asked.
“Sirius fell asleep studying in the common room and Pete tried to draw a penis in his face”
“Yeah, but I caught him before he could do much damage,” Sirius added.
James let out a loud laugh. “That’s genius. Poor Pete, though.” He cast a glance at the boy on the floor. “Someone’s got to do the counter-spell now, he’ll kill us all if he misses breakfast”
“I’ll do it, you go on” Sirius said.
“Yeah, ok. You coming, Moony?” he asked from the door.
“I’ll be right in, I just want to find my sock.”
“Ok. Try accio. See you down there.” And he closed the door behind him.
Remus sat down at the foot of the bed and looked at Sirius. “I take it this has something to do with my sock being missing, somehow”
“Yeah, well, remember the other night when you took me into that broom cupboard?”
A smug smile curved Remus’ lips. “Oh, I remember”
“Well, apparently you don’t remember walking out with only one sock. Why on earth you insist on taking them off in the first place, I don’t understand”
After Sirius explained what had happened, they decided to cast the counter-spell and try to convince their friend not to freak out over what he’d discovered.
Peter, of course, freaked out as soon as he regained consciousness.
“You,” he yelled, pointing at Sirius, then at Remus, “and you!”
“I know, Pete, but listen…” Sirius tried.
“So all the ‘chicks’ he’s been bragging about taking to that cupboard are…Moony?”
“Well, I don’t know that Sirius is doing the taking…” Remus replied, chuckling.
“Oh my god!” Peter said, covering his eyes, as if not seeing could take him out of the situation. “How long has this been happening?”
Remus and Sirius looked at each other.
“Weeks?” Peter guessed.
“Um…”
“Months?!”
Remus was the first to come clear. “A year, more or less. Since the summer at Prongs’”
“You shagged at Prongs’ house?! But we three were sharing a room! Oh, god, did you do it while I was…”
“Pete, Pete, hold on,” Sirius laughed. “We only kissed for the first time in the summer. The shagging came a bit later”
“Oh, thank Merlin,” Peter sighed.
Remus thought it was funny he was relieved about that, considering they shared a room here at Hogwarts as well, and he and Sirius had most definitely not refrained from shagging because their friend was sleeping nearby. But he wasn’t a bad friend, so he wasn’t going to point that out. He was, however, a little shit, so that’s exactly what he did.
Peter groaned again and covered his ears as Sirius barked a laugh.
“Does James know?” he asked once all of them calmed down.
“No,” Sirius stated, firmly. “And you can’t tell him”
“Why not? You don’t think he’ll take it badly, do you?”
“Oh, he will. He’s not homophobic, but he’s James, you know,” Sirius begins to explain. “He’ll be mad I didn’t come out to him, he’ll be partially offended I never had a crush on him instead, he’ll be angry that we hid it from him all these months, and then when we think he’s got over all of it and we start acting couply around him, he’ll get jealous we’re together and he still hasn’t managed to even get close to Evans without being hexed. Then he’ll be okay with it”
“Wow,” Peter and Remus said at the same time. “You’re kind of right, though, I think,” Peter accepted.
“Yeah, well. Thankfully he’s quite clueless. I don’t think he’d realised Remus and I are more than friends if he found us shagging on this very room”
James would admit to anyone that he was, indeed, quite clueless over some matters, but not when things figuarevely hit him right in the face. Like, say, when he found two of his best friends shagging in the room they all shared.
It was a fine morning, nothing hanging around in the air that could predict the horrible things James Potter would have to live through some minutes in the future. He had already headed down to the dining hall to have breakfast with Peter when he remembered that he’d left his Charms book on his bed, which he needed because he didn’t have time to pick it up before the class started. So, unknowing to the nightmares the next minutes would provide for him for years to come, he skipped down the halls and rushed up the stairs to the common room. Once there, he quickly made his way up to their dorm, and found the door firmly closed when he tried to open it. He put his ear near the door and heard the telltale noises of someone engaged in sexual activity.
Now, one would think that the boy would walk away and ask someone to lend him a Charms book, leaving the people in the dorm unbothered. But James Potter was fed up, yes sir, because it was their dorm and this was about the tenth time he’d almost walked in on Sirius doing it with his girl of the week. He was tired, it was unfair and he was maybe also a little bit jealous because last night Lily had said she would never, under any circumstances, agree to go on a date with him (the fact that he’d just hexed Snape to vomit glitter every time he said a slur perhaps had something to do with it, but still). So yeah, he made a hasty decision which would have horrible, horrible consequences but he thought to himself just before he cast the unlocking spell: really, how bad can it be to see Sirius’ ass for a second? Not like he hadn’t before. Maybe the story of James walking in on them would go around the school and girls would refuse to have sex here.
And so he walked in, and the scene before him hit him like a thousand bludgers.
“Oh, fuck, shit, no, what?!” James yelled, covering his eyes desperately, because it was one thing to see one friend’s bare ass, another to see two friends’ bare asses, and a very, very different things to see those two bare asses engaging in explicit activities with each other .
“James,” Sirius’ voice reached him.
“No,” he said, firmly. “I’m just… shit, sorry” He turned around and left, rushing down the stairs, legs kind of shaking with the shock of it all, and he didn’t even look at Lily splayed on the couch of the common room with her beautiful red hair spilled around her when he passed next to her on his way to the portrait, which is a lot to say.
It took him one walk around the grounds to wrap his mind around what he saw. Well, not exactly what he saw , that was sadly very graphic and very clear, but rather what it implied.
Sirius found him behind Greenhouse 4 a few minutes later, which is to be expected since James wasn’t exactly hiding and that was the spot where the four of them usually went to have a smoke.
“Hey,” said his friend, sitting down on the floor next to James.
“Hey”
James could feel Sirius watching him intensely, so he took a deep breath and let it out. “I’m sorry”
It seemed that was not what his friend had been expecting. “For what? Walking in on us? Because, mate, we kind of had it coming and I don’t think Remus and I are the ones to walk out the most scarred from that experience”
“No, no,” James shook his head. He didn’t know how to explain it without sounding condescending. “I just.. I’m sorry that I wasn’t there before. I guess…” He turned to his friend, and he couldn’t help that his eyes prickled a bit with tears. “You must have felt so alone with those people .” They never called them family. They both knew who Sirius’ real family were.
“You mean when I realised I liked boys too?” Sirius asked, gently, like he was the one consoling James when it should be the other way around.
He just couldn’t stop picturing it.
“They never found out, thankfully,” Sirius continued. “I mean, it was still horrible, you know that. But I don’t what would have happened if…” He shook his head. A sad smile curved his lips slightly. “At least I had Reg”
James looked at him with surprise. “He knew?”
“Yeah. And he wasn’t a dick about it, not about that”
James smiled. “I’m glad you had him, then. Maybe you still do”
Sirius laughed, but it sounded really painful. “Yeah, maybe”
James finally got to the point. “Well, I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you”
Sirius rolled his eyes, smiling. “You’re such a girl, Prongs,” he laughed. Then he got a bit more serious. “You were, mate. I didn’t tell you before because I needed time, and then I fell in love with Remus and that was a whole thing in itself. I was scared, yes, but I wasn’t alone. And it all worked out in the end, didn’t it?”
James smirked. “Oh so you’re in loooooooove… And here I was thinking you were only corrupting our Moony for a bit of mutual satisfaction. Or rather he was corrupting you, not really sure about that, to be honest”
James Potter couldn’t believe what his eyes were seeing. Was Sirius Black actually blushing ?
“Yeah, ok, let’s go,” Sirius said, and helped his friend stand up.
And if on the way there James brought up the issue of why Sirius didn’t fall in love with him instead being that he’s obviously his most handsome and well-endowed friend (though he knew for a fact it was a complete and utter lie), well, then no one but he and his friends had to know.