Minerva McGonagall marched down the corridor from the Transfiguration classroom, quite forgetting that she had three well-behaved students sitting at their desks waiting for her. Her robes swooshed about her feet as she descended the staircase, listening closely to the echoes and sounds in the stairwell, eyes darting about. She caught hold of a fifth year Ravenclaw ascending the stairs, carrying her textbooks. "Miss. Austen, have you seen Sirius Black anywhere?"
"No, Professor," she replied, looking nervous at being stopped and questioned by a teacher.
"Off you go then, off you go," McGonagall released the student and hurried on her way. She reached the landing at the Entrance Hall stairs and peered over the balcony to the flagstones below. Filch was busy cleaning each and every ruby from the Gryffindor hour glass, having finished polishing the sapphires, emeralds, and canary-coloured diamonds in the other three glasses, suspended by a pulley system. Below him, Mrs. Norris lurked, pacing, her tail swishing, but otherwise the pair of them remained undisturbed. McGonagall continued on her way.
Elphinstone Urquart was in the corridor coming up the stairs that led down to the Muggle Artifacts Museum and the Library, and he smiled seeing McGonagall headed his way. "Good afternoon, Minerva," he said happily, eyes twinkling.
McGonagall held up her palm to stop him, "I am on a mission, Elphinstone, not to be interrupted."
He smirked at her sharp tone - amused, as always, by Minerva's ability to go from one end of the spectrum to the other in moments - and turned, falling into step beside her. "And what, pray, is your mission?"
"Locating Sirius Black," she said, voice firm.
"What's he done now?"
"I don't know yet," McGonagall replied.
Urquart raised his eyebrows.
"He's late for class."
"And what else is new?"
McGonagall shook her head. "I'll talk with your later," she said, and she turned, leaving him behind in the corridor as she pushed her way through the doors and into the courtyard at the foot of Ravenclaw tower.
"Poor chap," muttered Urquart, shaking his head, imagining the state that McGonagall would be in once she caught up with Sirius Black. "In for a thrashing, he is."
Outside, McGonagall took pause to ask each and every student she passed whether they had seen hide or hair of Sirius Black at any time that morning, and she received a varied array of answers - many said they'd spotted him at breakfast, one or two sighted him in the corridors. The most helpful answer came from Emmaline Vance, who said that she and Marlene Mackinnon had seen Sirius out on the lawn by the green houses when they'd been on their way out for their class with the Slytherins that morning, though they hadn't spoken with him. McGonagall made at once out the gates at the Bell Towers and down the steps to the grounds, briskly drawing her wand as she looked about the grassy path that led down past Hagrid's Cabin in one direction and out to the Quidditch Pitch in the other. Her eyes squinted and she contemplated, then started toward the Forrest beyond Hagrid's cabin.
At the edge of the woods, Hagrid was standing with Fang, working on digging up a patch of earth, a row of seedling plants in various sized pots and sacks stood beside him as he worked. "Morn'n', Professor," Hagrid said, joyful at seeing McGonagall.
"Good morning, Hagrid," McGonagall replied, "Have you seen Sirius Black?"
"Oh, not in a couple hours now," Hagrid replied. "I was jus' givin' 'im a scoldin' for smokin' one of them muggle cig'rettes - too close to ter the green houses, I said to him. Told him to put that rubbish out and he had a good attitude about it, I said ter him if it was up to me an' I had the power to do it, he'd be servin' a detention right off." Hagrid shook his head. "Went off that way," he pointed vaguely 'round the way toward the lake.
McGonagall bristled, "Thank you, Hagrid," she replied, and she hurried off on her mission.
She found Sirius asleep in the big tree by the lakeside, laying across the branch that hung over the water, his head propped on his folded leather jacket, his boots on the ground below, feet up on the bark, the sunshine blanketing him in gold light, broken apart only by the tiny buds of the newly growing leaves.
"Mr. Black!" McGonagall's voice was sharp and clear, and woke Sirius with a start so great that he tumbled off the branch, only stopped from landing in the water by a quick spell from McGonagall, which caught him and deposited him safely on the banking.
Sirius's hair stuck up all funny 'round his head, and a sour expression was on his face. "Bleedin' hell, waking a guy up like that --"
"You, Mr. Black, are late to class," she said crisply.
"And so are you, Professor," Sirius replied, shrugging.
"Being the teacher, I have that prerogative," she replied, "While you, being a student, do not." She eyed him carefully. "Come."
"No," Sirius replied.
McGonagall, who had started toward the path back up to the castle, stopped, and turned back around to look at him. "Do pardon me, Mr. Black, but I misheard you. I thought that I heard you say no, but I know that you are smart enough to know better than to talk back to me." She tilted her head so that she was peering at him over the glass of her spectacles, her mouth pursed in a very serious, hard line. "Bearing in mind just how foolish it would be to test me, would you like to tell me what it is that you meant to say?"
Sirius hesitated, clearly not intending to repeat the offense.
"That's what I thought," McGonagall said. "Now, come with me."
Sirius trudged along behind McGonagall up to the castle, and they climbed the stairs to the Transfiguration corridor, Sirius's boots thumping as he trailed behind her. The tension was palpable, and Sirius's stubbornness echoing in every clunk of his shoes, and McGonagall's resolve etched into the lines of her face.
When they reached the classroom, it was to find Lily, James, and Remus still sitting in their seats. James was inspecting one of the airholes in the box of live flamingos and Lily was mid-sentence, warning him to leave those birds alone, Potter as Remus lay, asleep, his head on his arms. James jumped back from the box as McGonagall and Sirius entered the room, hurrying to lower his wand - which had been raised up to the hole at eye level - and he blinked in what he hoped was a convincing way. "Sorry, I wasn't doing any --"
"You're all dismissed," McGonagall said.
Remus looked up, awakened by the tone of McGonagall's voice, and he sniffed, looking up at her through his sunken eyes. "But the class hasn't even started yet," he objected.
Lily looked at Sirius, who was staring stone-faced at the floor, avoiding all their eyes. "Professor --" she started, but McGonagall shook her head sharply.
"All of you are dismissed. Please read chapter thirty-one in your textbooks, you'll find a particularly complicated bit of magic described for turning large water fowl into coat racks and we will do the practical portion of the lesson next week. I'd like a foot of parchment on the complexities especially associated with working with pink flamingoes."
James hurried to grab his bookbag as well as Remus's and the pair of them followed after Lily out of the classroom, Lily hissing further admonitions at James for having been messing with the poor birds.
The moment the door closed behind them, McGonagall turned to look at Sirius, who was standing precisely where they'd stopped upon entering. "Sit."
"But you've just dismissed the class, doesn't that include me?"
"No." She pointed at the desk directly in front of her. "Sit."
Sirius stepped 'round the desk, picked up the chair, turned it around so that the back was in the front, and sat, his chin on the back of the chair, his legs sprawled out on either side of him, a sullen look on his face that clearly showed his displeasure at being stuck here before McGonagall.
McGonagall took a deep breath. "How many times do I have to have this conversation with you, Sirius?"
Sirius stared at the desk top.
"Why are you acting out?"
"I'm not acting out," Sirius replied.
"Not since fifth year have you acted like this in my presence," she said sternly.
Sirius's jaw was set.
"I know that you aren't failing your classes, your grades have been most excellent," McGonagall mused, "Well, they were until you've suddenly decided to stop attending classes."
"Just the one," Sirius muttered.
"Two," she replied, "I have already heard from Professor Flitwick about this morning's session."
"Two then," Sirius said.
McGonagall stared at him. "What is going on, Sirius?" Her voice was just a bit more gentle than it had been a moment before, just the tiniest crack of softness.
Sirius closed his eyes.
"I cannot help you if you don't talk to me."
Sirius looked up at her.
"Please, Sirius," she said, and this time her voice was emphatic. "It is not every student that I would go hunting across the grounds of the castle to find - and cancel an entire class just a month before the N.E.W.T. examinations, no less! I am trying to help you."
"Well what good is helping me?" Sirius snapped, "What good is it if you help me if what you do doesn't even actually help?" He sat up, crossing his arms and his jaw setting. "It doesn't matter that you help if nothing changes, if it doesn't have any effect on what happens to me, does it?"
"What do you mean, Mr. Black?"
"All that work I did... All that studying, and working with you on my grades in O.W.L. year. All the time I've spent reading textbooks and memorizing stupid spells that I don't even bloody care about knowing, like how to turn a fucking hedgehog into a pin cushion! Writing hundreds of feet of parchment on the most boring topics, and listening to Binns drone on and on and on in that bloody monotonous tone of his..."
McGonagall was stunned into silence for a long moment.
"It was all bullshit," Sirius said, and he shook his head. "All of it was for nothing."
"Sirius," McGonagall's voice was aghast, sad.
He stared at her, and his grey eyes were glistening. "You said it would be worth it in the end, and you gave me hope that I could bloody be something someday. You said that if I would study that I could be come a good healer, and that I'd be able to help people, and make something of myself, but you lied, Minnie. I can't ever be anything except a rotting pile of dung, just like every other Black there ever was... You lied and I hate you for it."
No words came as McGonagall stared at Sirius, she couldn't form anything. Her throat felt raw and swollen, as though her tongue had become several sizes too big for her. Tears were trickling down Sirius's cheek and she felt quite sure that if she even so much as drew a breath that matching ones would fall over her own face as well.
Sirius stood up abruptly and he turned his chair around and pushed it in. "Is there any point in continuing classes? In trying at getting my N.E.W.T.s? If none of the universities are going to accept me anyway? What's the bloody point?"
"You owe it - to yourself - to know that --"
"That what? That there's no reason for them to reject me, except for what I am?" Sirius asked, "What good is knowing it? It doesn't make a speck of difference, does it? Everyone's always just assumed that I'm like them, like my family. Like my father and mother and brother and all of my dear, sweet cousins. All dark and evil and on his side... that I'm mad."
McGonagall's mouth was a tight line of disapproval. "If you would give me a chance," she said, pleading, "To help you... if we could just try together --"
"I've had enough rejection, Professor," Sirius replied, "I'm finished trying."
Before she could say another word, before he could allow himself to feel guilty for making the mighty Minerva McGonagall look as sad as she did right now, he hurried out the door and rushed along the corridor, his heart racing madly in his chest, as his eyes streamed rivers down his flushed cheeks. The wad of rejection letters from that morning's breakfast were still stuffed in his pocket, and even as he climbed the stairs toward the dormitory, he realized that he couldn't stand going up there. If he did, he'd have to hear all about Peter Pettigrew's acceptance into that ruddy divination school - because yes, even that stupid little loser Peter Pettigrew had been accepted someplace and Sirius had not been. He turned instead, then, and headed downstairs, toward the Entrance Hall, his jaw set with determination.
In her classroom, McGonagall sat, silent and staring at the crate of flamingos, listening as funny little stirring sounds came from within it. Her hands shook. Her back was stiff, and she closed her eyes, feeling the weight of Sirius's words heavy on her heart. McGonagall finally let out the breath she had been holding and, just as she'd suspected, with it came the tears. She covered her face in her hands, and wished that the world were a different sort of place.