Painted Scars // WOLFSTAR

Year One: Birthday Boy

Every year on Sirius' birthday, he would wake up alone.

His parents never got up early to celebrate with him, never baked him a homemade cake, never bought him any gifts. Even his little brother wouldn't do anything beyond wishing him a happy birthday. That's just the way things happened in the Black household.

So when Sirius woke up all alone for the twelfth year in a row, he was a little glum. Had he maybe expected that his friends would be there for him in the morning with big smiles and presents? Yeah, okay, perhaps he had. But they weren't, and that was fine. Not everyone had to remember Sirius Black's birthday.

Resolutely, he dragged himself out of bed and began to get dressed for the day, trying to forget about his pointless hopefulness. He wasn't even lucky enough to have his birthday land on a weekend. He lifted his head at the sound of their dorm door opening and smiled when he saw Remus.

"Remus, you haven't gone and forgotten your name again, have you?" he teased, referring to the word Sirius scrawled messily across his forehead. Remus jumped as if he hadn't seen him when entering the room.

"Huh?" he asked a little breathlessly.

"Nothing, you just seem to have my name on your forehead, I was worried you mixed them up." At this, Remus' eyes widened, smacking his hands over his head.

"Oh! No, you weren't supposed to see that yet. Here, come here." Remus took his sleeve and dragged him from the dorm into the common room, where James and Peter immediately caught his eye and put something down, hiding the table from view. Sirius smiled, knowing what was coming, and watched as the three boys lined up in a row, their foreheads reading 'Happy Birthday Sirius' in messy black marker. His mouth turned up in a grateful smile, before becoming an outright grin.

"You're all idiots," he said, rolling his eyes and fighting a very stupid urge to cry. Remus then turned to James and Peter, whispering something under his breath, the three of them having a brief hushed conversation.

"We wanted to bring this to you before you woke up," Peter started, stepping up to grab Sirius' arm, "but one of us let you leave the dorm before it was ready," he added throwing a look at Remus. Sirius didn't care about their little rivalry, because in front of him was the table in the common room with breakfast food piled on trays on top of it. There were pastries, potatoes, stacks of pancakes and toast, and a plate of eggs sitting waiting for him.

"We told McGonagall it was your birthday," James said, cutting in through the annoyed looks Peter and Remus were sporting. "She said it would be okay if we brought up food for us to all eat together. Do you like it?" And that question was incredibly bizarre for Sirius to hear because Merlin, of course, he liked it. He'd never had anyone do anything like this for him, and James asking that question made that annoying urge to cry come back.

However, he could never let James know all of that, and instead just said, "Thank you," before sitting down and stuffing his face, which Remus seemed very keen on and joined in. The other two sat down then, and the four boys ate together, giving Sirius his first-ever birthday meal without even realizing it.

"So what did you want to do today?" James asked, fitting a pancake in his mouth and letting syrup drip down his chin. "After classes."

Sirius thought for a moment. What did he want to do today? He didn't exactly know what normal kids did on their birthdays, and he didn't want to accidentally ask for too much. "We could play Exploding Snap?" he asked, and the others nodded their affirmations.

"Oh!" James said, apparently remembering something. He got up from his seat abruptly, pushed his chair back in, and ran up the stairs to the dorm rooms. The other three stared awkwardly at each other for a few moments until James peeked his head out of the door. "Well come on!" A line appeared between Sirius' brows, but he followed his friend up the stairs with Peter and Remus on his tail.