Serious Sirius is Seriously unSirius
James and Sirius did not make up that day. Nor the next. Nor the next after that. Remus and Peter were at odds, trying to get them back together but they wouldn't even speak to one another, even in the dormitory at night. "I feel like we're children of a divorce," whispered Peter to Remus during Potions class. Behind them, James and Sirius were sitting at their desk - Slughorn had refused to let them switch partners - and facing away from one another, neither working on the assignment despite Slughorn's warning that they'd receive an incomplete mark if they didn't set to work.
Lily glanced over from her table, where she was working alongside Severus Snape. Since he'd lost his partner when Evan Rosier had been expelled, Slughorn had moved them together at one table. He never failed to marvel at the potions that came from their combined projects, either. "Always perfect!" Slughorn said at every class when he bottled samples of their potions for grading.
James glared across the room at them, hating that Severus Snape was so close to her after all the rubbish he'd done. The entire world seemed bitterly unfair to him and the fact that Severus Snape was laughing and putting his hand on Lily Evans's hand and making her smile was the proof of it.
One day after Potions, Lily had run off to meet up with Jasper Odair and James was dawdling in the hall, waiting for Peter to come out after asking Slughorn a question and Severus Snape smirked at him and asked, "Are we feeling envious, Potter? Didn't think Gryffindors were capable of being so green."
With a flick of his wrist, James cast, "Coridum viridi!"
"Protego," Snape answered before the spell could hit him. It doubled back and hit James quite squarely and his entire body went green, head to toe, including his robes. Severus smirked, "Well. Now your true colours are showing!" and he walked away, laughing with Mulciber and calling James a frog.
"What the bleeding hell happened to you?" Remus asked when James arrived, still green, to Transfiguration.
"Snape," James growled.
Luckily, it took Professor McGonagall only a second to revert the spell, which she did clucking her tongue. But James sat stewing, hating Severus Snape all the more.
In addition to the tension between Sirius and James and James and Snape and Peter's anxiousness feeling like divorced kids, Remus wasn't having any luck at all in finding anything on wizarding mental health in the library and it was positively driving him insane. He knew there had to be something somewhere, but it seemed such a taboo that none of the books in the library contained much information. He was getting frustrated and hated that his beloved library could possibly fail him - especially at something as important as this. He had to fix Sirius because, as much as he loved him, Sirius was starting to annoy even Remus at this point with his sour attitude and on-again-off-again snarkiness.
Nobody else in the castle could stand to be around Sirius more than a few minutes, which meant that Remus was getting cut off, too, and he hated that feeling because he'd spent the greater part of his life cut off - the first eleven years of it, to be exact - and he didn't want to be forced back into that. He missed their friends and he missed being able to go down to the common room at night and do homework with Lily and the first years and all without feeling like a horrible person for abandoning Sirius Black to be alone, worrying what he was doing up there in the dorm without any supervision.
Remus sat in the library one evening, Sirius asleep on the bench beside him, thinking Remus was working on a History of Magic assignment. It was a week after everything had conspired and the state of things had not improved at all - on any level. Remus was tired. He leaned his head on his hands and shook his head, trying not to let the circumstances get him down as well (last thing they needed was for Remus to be depressed too).
"Rey?" It was Lily Evans standing before him, looking down with concern, a stack of Potions books in her hand.
He forced a smile (a small one) and nodded at her, "Hey Lily."
"Oh Remus, honey... You look exhausted." She puckered out her lower lip and her eyebrows sort of came together in that way moms do when they see their babies are ill.
"I am," Remus said.
His voice was so melancholy that Lily instantly sat herself down at the table opposite him, in full helpful mode. She put her books down on the table and tilted her head to see Sirius asleep there on the bench, then looked back at Remus. "I imagine he's been quite a handful for you lately."
"You have no idea," Remus sighed. He looked over and brushed a stray strand of Sirius's hair off his forehead gently. He stared down at him, and smiled ruefully. He hated that Sirius was in such pain, and how many people, seeing how Sirius was acting, just thought he was being a pill or had started avoiding him altogether because of it. Remus knew the funny, sweet Sirius was still there - for him, he was anyway. The Sirius who would go out of his way to make anyone smile, who did things like turn the whole school blue and magic furniture to the ceilings and taught the coats of armor his stupid childish songs...
Everyone else had sort of started seeing a different Sirius, a version that they'd started whispering about... quietly, of course, behind his back... saying things like, he's a Black you know... Dark Wizards, they are.... Death Eaters, I've heard. If Sirius heard had heard the whispers, Remus didn't know, but he hoped not because that would only make it worse...
Remus looked at Lily, searching her face a moment. "Could you help me with something?"
"Of course," Lily answered, "What is it?"
Remus glanced at Sirius's head on the bench beside him, then back to Lily. He didn't want Sirius to know he was talking about him. He put his sweater down on the bench as he stood up. "With this History of Magic assignment... let me show you this one book." He nodded for Lily to follow him.
She pushed her books across the table to his pile so that Madam Pince wouldn't think they were abandoned and the pair of them went off into the shelves, away from where they'd left Sirius laying. Remus glanced over Lily's shoulder to make sure they were far off enough that Sirius wouldn't overhear them talking about him. "Well, see, it's like this... I'm trying to help Sirius but this bloody library is void of any useful information of mental maladies."
"Mental maladies?" Lily asked, "Like what?"
"Depression of some sort," Remus whispered. "He says he has a dementor in his chest."
Lily looked very concerned, "A dementor in his chest? Like a possession?"
"I dunno, I suppose in a way. He's afraid of becoming like his parents... He keeps talking about a darkness. Doesn't that sound like Depression to you?"
"Yes I s'pose," she replied, she thought for a moment. "Well, you've looked for books on wizarding psychology, then?"
"Yeah, the library's bloody useless for it. I reckon because you go on to university to become a Healer and that's probably where the books on that sort of thing is at, but still -- there's nothing here..."
Lily asked, "Did you try in Muggle Studies?"
"Muggle studies?" Remus asked, looking back to her, "Whyever would I look there?"?"
"Well depression isn't particularly a magical malady," she explained. "I know there are happiness potions and antianxiety elixirs and the like, but if it's psychology you're looking for, that's considered a muggle medicine, isn't it?"
"You're brilliant," Remus breathed.
"I do what I can," Lily answered, smiling sweetly.
"You ruddy do brilliant."
Lily patted his shoulder. "Anytime, Rey."
"I swear I was one step away from breaking into Pomfrey's office to find something, I was starting to get desperate."
Lily laughed, "Well, don't get bloody desperate; not yet anyway. Check muggle studies and if not I can write home and ask my mum if she knows of anything, she'd be pleased to send us something if you need it, I'm sure of it. I think my uncle or cousin or somebody might be a psychologist. So maybe she's got something at home. We'll get him back to normal, love."
"Thank Godric," said Remus, giving her a hug. "You're the best, Lil."
Remus ran off to Muggle Studies to find a psychology book and Lily went back to collect her potions texts. When she got to the table, it was to find Sirius had woken up and was sitting up with a sort of sleepily-anxious expression to his face. Last time he'd been to the library with Rey and then left alone his hair had been shorn right off. He looked up at Lily as she approached.
"Hello," she said.
Sirius stared at her a moment, obviously a bit moody. She hesitated, then sat down next to him primly, exactly where Remus had been, so their arms touched, and pulled one of her books over. Sirius stared at her arm touching his, then up to her face. "Careful, you might catch it."
"Catch what?"
"Black cooties," he said dryly, "Apparently I'm infested."
"No such thing," Lily shook her head.
"No? Then explain all the people that's been avoiding me like I'm carrying the plague about."
"I don't think it's Black cooties that're keeping people away, more like your sourpuss attitude." She looked the book over, then tilted her chin up to look at him with a half smirking glance. "So what is this whole bit you're playing, Black? Are you too punk rock for civility now?"
"You wouldn't understand."
"Because you're the oppressed youth, is that it? You're doing marvelously at whining and complaining like one. 'Cept you've gone a bit more homeless chic than I would've imagined you being comfortable with." She sniffed him carefully, "Ugh. Sirius, you'll simly have to shower, you're starting to get a bit dodgy... Wait long enough and your hair won't need any sleekeazy, it'll just stick whatever way you like.. Would you like some of my black eyeliner? To use also? I'd be happy to lend you some, it'll help complete The Look," Lily nudged him. "Might run if you go weepy, though."
Sirius glared at her out of the side of his eyes.
"I know, I know. It really isn't funny, what you're going through. I'm sorry I'm making fun. But that's what we do, you and I and the other Marauders, isn't it?" Lily asked.
Sirius looked down at the table top.
"Sirius... completely seriously... you can talk to me if you like, anytime," she offered, "In case you decide you'd like to give your poor boyfriend a break."
Sirius looked up at her. "Give him a break? Is he breaking up with me?"
"For some reason, Merlin-knows-what, he isn't," Lily said, "But the boy deserves a bleedin' medal for putting up with you. Have you noticed how ragged you've run him? Poor thing's going mad."
"He started mad if you didn't notice."
"Remus Lupin was the sane one of you lot, actually," Lily replied, "Once upon a time."
"A long time ago..."
"Not so long, really."
Sirius sighed, changing tack. He leaned down, his cheek pressed to the wood of the table top and he closed his eyes.
Lily patted his back. "I mean it about talking to me."
Sirius looked opened one eye. "You don't want to hear my rubbish."
"I really do."
Sirius closed his eye again.
"You're one of my brothers, remember?" she asked, leaning low to imitate him with the cheek on the wood tabletop. She stared at him and he opened his eyes and they stared at one another for a long moment and sh smiled, "And don't tell the others, but I think you may be my favorite."
"Oh? Even over Remus?"
"Maybe. You're the Scarecrow to my Dorothy."
"I don't know what that means Evans."
"Bleeding hell," she said, sitting up, "The Wizard of Oz?"
Sirius stared at her.
Lily shook her head. "Merlin's Beard."
"Is this something we learned about in History of Magic?" Sirius asked.
Lily paused a moment, then, very seriously, she replied, "Yes. We learned about it in History of Magic. Binns told the whole tale about a little girl with her bewitched scarecrow and the man made of tin and the animagus who's a lion..." she smirked, "You ought to write your essay about it for him." She stood up, spotting Remus coming back with a stack of books. She slid her Potions books off the table and into her arms. "Try to cheer up... It's odd seeing you so... unSirius."
"Serious Sirius is seriously unSirius," he said.
"Something like that," Lily answered and she turned and walked away.
Remus sat down, dropping the books he'd got onto the table. He looked after Lily's retreating back, then turned to Sirius. "You and Lily have a nice chat, then?" he asked.
"Yeah," he shrugged. "You ever heard of some lass named Dorothy and a bewitched scarecrow?"
Remus stared at Sirius. "The Wizard of Oz?"
"Yeah!"
Remus raised his eyebrow, "Course I've heard of it."
"When did Binns teach that lot?" he asked.