We Can Be Heroes

Prequel - Boys Don't Cry Chapter 1

I would tell you
That I loved you
If I thought that you would stay
But I know that it's no use
That you've already
Gone away

Boys Don't Cry (The Cure)

The Summer holidays loomed over him, like a tsunami. Even in his dreams. He had started having horrifically realistic nightmares. Standing barefoot in a sandy cove, screaming at his mother, who suddenly disappeared, replaced by a towering wall of water, drowning him. He'd woken up drenched in sweat. Standing in Orion's study, listening as his father told him "we are not giving you a watch for your seventeenth, we don't love you, you don't deserve it", Regulus stepping forwards, both arms outstretched, as his father placed a vintage, platinum watch on each of his wrists. Oddly, they reminded him of handcuffs. He had woken up crying, for some godforsaken reason. Disgusted at himself. He didn't care about his parents. He didn't care. He refused to care.

He swiped angrily at his eyes and threw the bedclothes over himself in frustration. He had hardly slept in the past few weeks, three hours a night, at most. If he'd known, James would have described it as one fucking thing after another. Remus would have called it "an unfortunate concatenation of events". How did he always have the right word for every single possible scenario? It was incredibly attractive. Well, he presumed girls would think that. If he were a girl. Never mind, that didn't even make sense...

He called it a clusterfuck. And he was right.

His dismay about the Summer. His abortive attempts to talk to Reg. The ever-growing open hostilities between the Marauders and the Pureblood Pricks. Including, but by no means limited to, the recent Peter Pantsing Episode, which had earned him two weeks of detention. Yet somehow, the bastard had only ended up with one week. Fuck him.

"Wow. The level of skill and wit that it must take to cast Levicorpus and then stand underneath him and call him names, not even inventive ones... so impressive, so mentally and technically challenging..." Sirius' voice had oozed contempt as he advanced alone towards the group of tossers, wand out.

A few of them immediately broke eye contact with Peter's figure, hovering near the corridor ceiling, arms flailing about helplessly. Their spells broken, Peter lurched downwards with a fearful yelp. Mulciber didn't, wand still pointing up at his friend, a cruel sneer on his face.

"Hello, Coz," he smiled. "We were just telling him that there are penalties to pay for hanging around with blood traitor scum like you, Black. That it's your fault we picked on him, and will do so again. So much for calling them your friends, Black. If you even knew what a loyal friend was, you'd have distanced yourself from them all months ago."

Sirius' footsteps faltered momentarily.

"Oh yes, because I'm friends with every single muggleborn in the school, such a popular guy."

His laughter sounded harsh. If there was one good thing he had believed about himself, it was that he was a loyal friend. Mulciber's messing with your head, old chap, he tried to reassure himself, sounding exactly like Prongs' Mother Hen ramblings.

"Missed him, did you, your boring, talentless, useless friend? The one you allow to hang out with you, out of pity. What's his name again? Oh yes. Peter Pitiful. Here to check up on your pathetic little half-blood friend? Surprised you noticed him gone, your boring, fat little-"

Peter's face, which was already squirming with embarrassment at the current pantsing, turned puce and shut his eyes. Sirius felt his body jolt from cool and collected to mildly enraged within a split second. His wrist flicked sideways as a lime green spell burst out of his wand, catching Muliber in the stomach.