Not who we are, but who we will be

[lumenrelegandus]

Who: Albus Dumbledore, Sirius Black, Guess Who, and The Sorting Hat
What: Origins and meditations
When: July-September, 1971
Warnings: HEADCANON ALERT (duh). And Sirius's vocabulary of swear words at age 11.



• 22 July, 1971 •

“I want to make perfectly sure—” Circling the shadow-dancing surface of vast mahogany desk, the Headmaster of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry came to a stop. He looked through his gold-rimmed spectacles, down his lengthy nose, and across amber-lit waves of full-bodied beard at the small visitor he now faced. “—that you fully understand what it is I’m offering, Mr Parks.”

The amber in the boy’s eyes wasn't from the flickering candles. He kept them fixed on the same point a few metres away, even though Dumbledore now stood in front of it.

The shreds of bark and frayed, dead leaves had been brushed out of his hair, the dirt and rusty stains washed from his hands and face; the nearly-shredded Muggle-style clothes replaced with new, slightly oversized, wizarding robes, and the cuts and bruises cleaned and tended. For all that, the ten year-old was even more obviously trying not make like an animal and fight or flee.

“You can live here,” repeated Dumbledore, slower than before, not because the boy had not already, clearly, made the decision but because he should weigh it thoroughly, regardless. “You can train here. You can become literally a new person. But if I extend you the hospitality I’m permitted only to give an orphan, it means you can never go back. You must remain that new person for as long as you’re under my jurisdiction. Or very quickly, you will no longer be. Because even if your parents were able to keep you out of St. Mungo’s, they would not be able to keep you safe.”

Things he had already said and things he hadn’t needed to broke surface briefly in the boy’s face. He didn't say anything and didn't look up. But, with the composure of having nothing else left, he did nod.

Dumbledore rested his hand on the boy’s shoulder, gently prodding him around toward the door and the patiently waiting Minerva. “Then go get some food. Professor McGonagall will give you the tour. Please ask her, as well, to send Mr Filch in to see me. I feel it’s time to make some changes to the grounds.”

The boy went where he was pushed, unquestioning. As he opened the door, and the shadow of McGonagall rose to fill it, Albus called over his shoulder from the desk, “Oh, one more thing, Mr Parks.”

He stopped and turned back to Dumbledore.

Albus removed a sealed envelope from his desk, weighed it languidly for a moment in his hand, then tossed it over to the boy. And caught his eyes. “That is the last time you will ever answer to that name.”

The boy looked down at the envelope in his hands; opened it.

It was an official letter of invitation to the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, addressed to—

• 1 September, 1971 •

“Remus Lupin.”

Sirius fidgeted with a decreasingly-bearable… everything. Impatience. Not nervousness. Not fear. Definitely not fear. Impatience. This roll call made no fol-de-ruddy sense. They were up to “L” already and hadn’t even hit “C.” Or, more precisely to the unimportant point, “B.” Was this Sorting rigged? Were they already sorted and being called in order of predetermined House? Then Gryffindors would go first, wouldn’t they? ‘Cause they always blighting did. And green-collar stiff-dickednosed sons-of-snakes went last.

Get on with it. Get the sodding bloody unalphabetical fuck in hell on with it.

And this kid was taking his sweet-arsed time, wasn’t he? Like he was actually savouring the moment. Like he’d never expected to be here or some such tripe. Or maybe he was scared. Sirius snorted under his breath to relieve the strain. Poncy-looking slow-bummed—

Oh, okay, Hat on. The whole room held their collective breath as if they hadn’t seen the damn thing work twice already. Both times Gryffindor. As if teasing Sirius deliberately, the Hat began its motherless mudblooded muttering with, “Ah! Quite the clever one, aren’t you? Yes, very brainy, I see… an easy Ravenclaw if I ever saw one—but what’s this…?”

Sirius rolled his eyes; like he hadn’t seen that coming. Cut the crap and get the sodding Gryffindors done already so the rest of us can get on with our unconsulted inescapable fates, if you don’t kindly mind.

The kid on the stand finally did something original: he gripped the sides of the stool. What? Nobody was talking. But the Hat said unfathomably, “You don’t think so, now, but trust me, you will. Gryffindor!”

The rightmost red-draped table burst into cheers for the third time in a row, showing no signs of having been through the thing for the last three years either, and whateverhisnamethatdidn'tstartwithBwas descended, shakily incredulous, from the stand.

Sirius didn’t expect to be called next—and he wasn’t.

He settled back in his seat, silently fuming, plotting furiously to cover from himself the growing gnaw of unthinkable pain. Also wondering what happened to wizards who dropped out of Hogwarts and whether they were ever allowed to use magic at all or if one had to bow down and submit to this close-minded dictatorship in order to—

“Hufflepuff!”

What?

Sirius sat so quickly up in his seat that he nearly knocked over the kid next to him. Her dirty look and sound of protest were easily ignored.

There couldn’t possibly be only three new Gryffindors added to that insufferable line of parading prats. So…

He actually paid attention to the next bloke who walked down the aisle—well, girl, actually—and tried to guess what she would be on sight alone.

Actually, she was damnably easy. She could have balanced two stacks of books and his Aunt Araminta’s cat on the top of her head as she liquidly insinuated herself onto the stool. He didn’t need to watch the perfect maintenance of ramrod posturing to predict the ultimate, muttering-delayed call of “Slytherin!”

O-kay. Not alphabetical but not by fixedly forecast House. So how the hell could he figure out how long he would have to sit here before—?

“Sirius Black!”

He very nearly yelled SHIT— aloud. But didn't; just stood.

He made his way down the aisle with perfect Slytherin poise: jaw set, eyes dark, knowing at least that if he ever got executed, which he was positive now he would, he’d be able to face it gracefully, already having had a taste of what it felt like.

He was there. In the chair. (Stool. Whatever.) Facing the Scottish witch. Having the rag of a hat lowered onto his head.

He refused to close his eyes, but he clenched his teeth and waited for the inevitable.

Which wasn’t what came next.

“Such anger,” said the Hat.

Astonished, Sirius said, “Excuse me?”

“Anger and pride and the desire to hurt. But not ambition. That’s odd.”

“You’re supposed to tell me where I go,” said Sirius coldly, “not tell me who I am.”

“You think they’re different?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“As it happens, so do I.”

This did not sound the voice he’d heard from the Hat for the others. Sirius tensed on the stool. —But did not whiten his knuckles. Would not show it. None of the others (except that one) had shown it.

“Maybe I didn’t talk to anyone else like this.”

“Great, I’m special.”

“Everyone’s special. Some need more of a talking to.”

“We both know where you’re going to put me. Get on with it.”

“Do we?”

“Keep this up and I’ll—”

“What does the word ‘mudblood’ mean to you?”

Sirius paused.

Then he said, “It’s just a word.”

A filthy word, maybe a harmful one, but just a word. Just like fuck or cunt or nance or peasant or imperio or crucio or son.

Just words.

“The last one I put in the House you really want was one of them. Are you telling me you’ll choose to sit next to him now?”

“You don’t know anything about me,” said Sirius, the sense of defiance so acute it almost felt like triumph. “I’ll fucking kiss his hand.”

“You do that.”

Sirius had the sense of those being the only three words that anyone else in the room could hear. Then the Hat added a fourth.

It was years before it occurred to Sirius to think the Hat hadn’t determined who he had been, but who he would be. He wondered which it had been: his genuine desire to break away, which meant it was really the person on the stool, not the hat itself, who made the decision; or whether that somehow classified as bravery. Or whether the Hat was in the business of hiding the truth to save a life. There was a self-fulfilling prophesy in there somewhere but he couldn’t tell who had made it: the Hat or himself.

It occurred to Sirius a tad earlier than that that he had gone up to the kid, whose name he finally bothered to remember—“Yaa, welcome to Gryffindor! You’re Looping, right?”—and indeed had kissed his hand.