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The Nature Of Courage by Vindictus Viridian

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Chapter Notes: Thanks to TyrannoLaurus/Insecurity for a beta-read!

This bunny predates DH by a little, so some of the interactions are my own invention. If you're in the mood for something long, try
James was ready for bed first and watched his new fellow Gryffindors. He’d been Sorted just as he’d expected. It was turning out to be “ well, not what he’d expected. Sure, they’d all got along well enough on the Hogwarts Express, or at least probably instead he should say most of them had, but they hadn’t seemed altogether Gryffindor material by his reckoning. He was used to getting along with people, but that didn’t mean all those people were brave or courageous, or even particularly interesting.

Remus Lupin, for instance, was thoughtfully unpacking his trunk into the tall wardrobe. He seemed such a plodder and in such a hurry to be liked. To James he seemed more like a Hufflepuff.

Sirius, perhaps, seemed a bit more the goods, but he’d gone off now into some vague worry and was standing, just standing, as though he’d forgotten what he was doing. He’d mentioned how his parents would be unhappy with him for not being a Slytherin, but that was hardly his fault. He didn’t seem a Slytherin, but quite possibly a Ravenclaw. Gryffindors shouldn’t look so worried.

And Peter Pettigrew “ perhaps the Sorting Hat had to balance the numbers, or perhaps that bland greyness of self was a little more Gryffindor red than any other colour, but Peter was surely not what James had imagined a Gryffindor to be.

Still, Peter seemed positively a hero out of legend beside -- that. The fifth boy in the room had slipped into his bed and lay curled into a tight ball, looking no bigger than a cat, his black eyes glittering hate at them all. Sure, that little prank on the train had gone horribly wrong, but it had seemed safe enough at the time. James hadn’t meant to hurt the boy, and Snape had seemed entirely purely certainly Slytherin at the time. James had taken the risk of making an enemy.

Now that enemy would be sleeping in the next bed for the next seven years. James thought his mum would probably draw some little moral from that if she knew. He decided he wouldn’t tell her this particular story.

Remus was afraid they wouldn’t like him. Sirius was afraid of his parents. Peter was afraid of a lot of things. Severus, or Snivellus as Sirius had suggested, or Snape if they were in a rush, at least didn’t seem afraid, there in his spider-like lurk. Gryffindors should be bold and heroic and perhaps not quite so fearsomely ugly.

“Should we make a pact?” he asked the other boys, and every one of them jumped. “No cursing sleeping Gryffindors?”

Peter nodded hard, looking relieved. Remus grinned. “Sure.”

Sirius glared at Snape, who scowled right back. “I won’t if he won’t,” Sirius growled.

The black eyes weighed and measured Sirius, then turned on James. “I just suggested the blasted rule,” James pointed out, suddenly recalling every occasion he’d ever gone back on little promises. He didn’t break big ones, but there had been few of those and oh so many ones. “We have to get on for seven years; one big promise to each other seems like a good idea to me. I won’t if nobody else does. No curses, no hexes, no jinxes.”

Peter raised his right hand and echoed, “No curses, no hexes, no jinxes.” The others followed raggedly, Snape almost inaudible.

“Well. Goodnight, then,” James said, and drew the curtains. A gloomy goodnight or two sifted through the fabric. He lay listening to creaking springs and thumps of shoes, the awkward silences, and the subtle rustles of sheets. Once the room had otherwise fallen still, he could hear the boy in the next bed gradually uncoiling into a more natural position for sleep.

Splendid, James thought. Sirius afraid of his family, Remus afraid we won’t like him, Peter afraid of his shadow, and Snape afraid of us.




James had never been quick to wake, and by the time he recognized the unfamiliar sounds of a conflict, the battle was over. He whisked open the bed curtains just in time to see the door slam. Sirius roared, “Good riddance!”

Remus and Peter shuffled their feet in half-dressed uncertainty. “What happened?” James asked through a yawn. “What’d he do this time?”

“Greasy little git needs to learn to mind his own business and stay out of other people’s stuff,” Sirius muttered, and tossed a few rolls of parchment into a satchel.

“Mind your ink,” Remus suggested, and earned another growl. “I don’t know. I came in on ‘Shove off.’” Peter shrugged.

“Said he wanted to borrow a quill,” Sirius told his satchel. “I caught him by my things, looking like he was pinching one, and I said so. He called me a perfectly filthy name, so I called him one, and he sneered at it for a poor effort. So I gave him one on the nose.” He looked up then with a bit of a smile. “Not like I could have missed, really.”

James couldn’t stop a laugh. There really wasn’t much of Snape, but what there was, was nose. The greasy hair, the empty black eyes, the pale unhealthy body, all faded out of notice behind The Nose. “So he left, then?”

“Oiled right out, snivelling all the way.” Sirius looked proud to have vanquished his first Dark wizard.

“He left his things,” Remus said. “Should we take his bag down to breakfast for him?”

“We get our schedules at breakfast,” James pointed out. “We may as well all wait until we know what we need.”

“Unless you’re an evil little creep who knows already,” Sirius remarked, ignoring his own satchel of books.

Remus went to the ragged bag sitting on the tidily made bed. “No, he’s got the lot in here, and “” He lifted the bag, groaned, dropped it, and staggered a bit. “Sirius, my friend, if he really thought he could carry all that, all day, maybe you should be glad he didn’t hit you back.”

“Just means he really is guilty. There’s probably twenty quills in there, too.”

Remus peered inside. “Old books, cheap parchment, plain black ink. No quill in here that I can see.”

“An idiot, then, to bring all that and nothing to write with. And still a thief.” Sirius dropped onto the edge of his own bed and began tying his shoes, the matter settled.

James had to agree that Snape did seem the sort to consider asking nicely to be a last resort “ well behind theft, bullying, and other such acts. Still, he had to wonder about the missing quill. His own mother had made sure he had half a dozen. He dressed, thinking, and spied Remus sneaking a goose feather into the ratty abandoned bag.




Snape sat alone at the very end of the table, staring at his plate and nibbling at a roll. The other four sneaked looks at him from well down the table. “Better table manners than last night,” James said.

“Hard for them to be worse,” Sirius scoffed. “He ate like a starved werewolf.”

Remus neatly dissected a sausage. “I think you owe the werewolves of the world an apology.”

“If one shows up to ask for it, I’ll give it,” Sirius told him, then brightened with surmise. “Hey, you don’t suppose…”

“New moon,” Remus said to his plate. “He’d look healthier. What? I like reading about Dark creatures.”

“So what sort is he?” Peter asked.

Remus shook his head and indicated his mouth was full.

“Vampire?” James offered.

Remus swallowed. “We did meet him in broad daylight beside a window. He just might be a person.”

Sirius shook his head. “Well, at least if he wasn’t a person it would explain what he’d be doing in Gryffindor. You’d have to be pretty brave to stomp in here if you were a werewolf or a vampire or something.”

Remus smiled a little. “Probably.”

Peter looked worried. “Should we add ‘no biting’ to the Gryffindor code?”

James punched him on the arm. “Maybe so. Better than finding out later that we should have.”

Their Head of House, Professor McGonagall, came to hand out schedules. She started with the lone boy at the far end, who bolted the moment he had the parchment. She watched him for a moment, shook her head, and worked her way down to the others. “Transfiguration first. Wicked!” James said. “We get to start with real magic!”

“Which textbook is that?” Peter fretted.

A worrying Gryffindor. James wondered how in the world the Sorting Hat had ever put the five of them in the same House.

They finished breakfast quickly after that, hurrying against little time to get their books and find the classroom. A few wrong turns later, they straggled in last, noting their missing Housemate sitting in a corner carefully barricaded behind girls. One, who’d made herself memorable on the train, had her head bowed to talk with Snape, which was unimaginable to James. After a moment, she giggled and tossed her red hair back. “What could he possibly have said to make her laugh?” James muttered at Sirius. “He’s not funny.”

“Not on purpose. Heaven knows I’d like to laugh at him, though.”

“That can’t be it; he isn’t mad at her.”

“Fine. Go over there and find out, if you think he could be that interesting.” Sirius looked braced to be mad at James.

“Nah. She’s just a girl. What does she know?”

That came out a little too loudly as the rest of the class fell silent. The tabby cat sitting on the teacher’s desk had begun to change. Shifting rapidly in bizarre ways, it became their teacher, and she stared meaningfully at James for a moment through her square glasses. Just his luck, hacking off the teacher he wanted most to impress.

“Transfiguration,” she began, “is a serious and subtle art. It can also be quite dangerous if misapplied or sloppily attempted. Therefore, there will be no ridiculous behaviour in my classroom, or you will leave and not come back.” This last was said with a particular emphasis as she scanned the row of boys. James tried to look entirely sensible while Sirius sat up straighter beside him. She explained her subject a bit more while James woolgathered in his alert pose. He knew about Transfiguration. His father was quite good at it, and he’d hoped to do at least as well.

Soon they were sorted out with a matchstick apiece, all trying to turn the thing into a needle. James managed to get something silver with a hole in one end, which made Professor McGonagall smile at him “ at least she would forget earlier offences when praising an accomplishment. He meant to make her smile more often and glower less. He didn’t want to make his own Head of House take points from Gryffindor.

There was a sharp explosion on the other side of the room. The red-headed girl skipped back a pace, and Snape shrank a little in his seat. Smoke rose from the table before him. Professor McGonagall hurried to check the damage.

Sirius shook his head and poked unwisely at his now-round match. It rolled off the table, and Peter scooped it up for him. “Figures he’d be a stupid git, too,” Sirius muttered. The other boys fidgeted, their matches barely different from when they had begun, but they had not had an explosion either, and looked a little smug.

Nor did they have a second explosion, or a third. This performance in the opposite corner gave them the chance to note that their teacher, though strict, was quite patient. She simply handed Snape another match each time, murmured a few words, and continued her rounds of the classroom, praising good efforts and helping along the poorer ones. The girl with red hair, James noted with amusement, was working a little farther away from her new friend than she had been. Snape’s pale face had grown red with embarrassment.

“Gryffindors are supposed to be good at Transfiguration,” James muttered to the others. “What does it mean that our odd little greaseball isn’t?”

“Look, James, we all know the Sorting Hat made a terrible mistake,” Sirius said bluntly. “He just doesn’t belong at Hogwarts at all, never mind Gryffindor.”

“What was that, Black?” their teacher said, materialising behind them out of nowhere. Sirius jumped. “You’d best come with me for a moment.”

He did, wary and wide-eyed. James noted to himself that he’d best watch his words anywhere this fierce woman might hear him. He tried one more time on his match, and the blunt end obligingly went sharp. “I did it!” he exclaimed, getting envious looks from most of his classmates. On his first day, he’d made a matchstick into Something Else. That, unlike most of the rest, he could tell his parents with pride.




“I can’t believe we already have homework,” Remus groused to nobody in particular. James had already begun it, happy to write about Transfiguration and already certain it was his favourite subject.

Sirius had been assigned a detention and was sitting quietly beside James, writing the same essay. “May as well do that as anything else,” he said. “Unless you have some better idea?” The last sounded hopeful.

“Well, there’s a kitchen around here somewhere,” Peter suggested. “We could steal something for later.”

Snape, excluded, lay curled by the fire with a large book in front of him, ignoring everyone. James had been amused to watch a sixth-year turf him out of a chair some minutes before.

“Mercy, you just ate a gigantic dinner,” the red-haired girl told them, swinging into the seat to the other side of James. He wasn’t sure he wanted a girl and her lurgy there, and certainly not a girl who seemed to like Snivelly “ as the name had become by teatime.

“Sorry, I missed it in all the shouting on the train,” he said to her. “What was your name again?”

She looked only a trifle embarrassed. “Lily Evans. And what do you answer to besides Toerag?”

“I answer to James Potter, if it’s said very nicely.”

She grinned. “You’ve misspelled ‘anomaly.’ I thought you might like to know. And it’s not really the right word anyway.”

“Thanks,” he said, hoping the tone of voice would run her off, but she at least seemed to be exactly as bold as he thought a Gryffindor should be. “How do you like Gryffindor House so far?”

Lily looked around. “Seems all right, I guess.”

“All right?” James, his dreams brushed aside, had had enough of this girl, and his disappointments, and of the whole silly nonsense of the Sorting. “All right? You’ve been Sorted into the best House of the lot, the House for brave, courageous people. You know, what the world always needs more of.”

Lily arched an eyebrow at him. “More than brains? Oh, and that third sentence is really awkward.”

He ignored that. “It’s all about strength, and facing your challenges squarely, and…” Had her pocket just moved? “… getting put in the history books so Binns can drone on about you in a hundred years.”

“Now there’s a prize,” the pesky girl said. “Have you studied semicolons?”

“There's more to life than -- ” Her pocket more than moved. Something small and brown and hairless popped its head out, kicked, and landed in the middle of his essay. Without thinking, James shot out of his chair and dodged behind Remus. Whatever the thing was, it was slimy and warty and James wanted it nowhere near him.

The girl was folded over herself laughing. Sirius stared at him, rubbing his ears. “Trying out for the opera, mate?” James could see Remus’s shoulders shaking. Even Peter was laughing at him. It hadn’t been a scream, he thought, just a bit of a yelp. A chap was entitled to a bit of a yelp when a toad jumped out of a girl’s pocket and landed in front of him with no warning at all. Toads were horrible.

The older students were laughing too. Fleeing up the stairs to the dormitory had a momentary appeal, but “ he was a Gryffindor, and he’d bloody well be a Gryffindor. Even if a toad was sitting on his essay, claiming it, not budging, looking at him with those big bulgy eyes.

“Nice toad,” he tried to say, but he wasn’t that big a liar. The words came out in a thin squeak.

The girl gathered herself up, then cradled the wart-ridden pet in her hands. “This is Esmerelda,” she said. “She’s very friendly and loves to meet new people.” A fit of giggles seized Lily and stopped the next words. “Isn’t… Is… Isn’t she… Isn’t she lovely?” she finally choked out, and then began laughing even harder.

James snatched up his half-finished essay and made a dignified, stiff-backed exit to the dormitories.




James had finished his essay, then hidden behind the bed curtains when the others came up. He couldn’t tell if there were three of them or four, whether his own shame had created a bond with Snape for the other three or not, and right this minute he didn’t care. They had laughed at him. Worst of all he’d deserved it. He lay feeling ashamed of his cowardice. Eventually he remembered that his teeth tasted mossy and he was still dressed, so he crept out to get ready for bed.

There was a small sound from the common room. James had sudden visions of a toad on the loose, hopping up to his dormitory, kicking its way under his covers, and putting its clammy foot on his leg. He knew, for an absolute certain fact, that there was no way he could go to sleep without reassuring himself that there was not a toad on the loose.

He thought he hadn’t made a single noise on the stairs, but Snape, now in an empty chair by the fire, looked up from his book. James gave himself a mental kick for thinking a toad could turn a page. “What are you doing up?” If he felt bad, he could at least make Snape feel worse.

The other boy held up a book and gave him a questioning look, as though even a great toad-spooked coward like James should be able to figure this out.

“Homework takes you this long?”

Snape shrugged. “I did the Transfiguration essay in History of Magic. But we have, if I calculate correctly, roughly three hundred weeks here, and some seven thousand books in the library. Now is the time to make a start on them.”

James stared at him, toads momentarily forgotten until a faint draft against his ankle made him jump. “You’re mental.”

“And you’re a big-headed nuisance. But here we are in the same House, so we may as well leave each other alone.” Snape gave him a rather pointed look, then turned his attention back to the page in front of him.

James felt his business there was unfinished. He had not managed to annoy Snape properly “ ideally into leaving so James could search the room for any loose toads that might be hopping about. “And that’s your idea of a good seven years, is it? We leave each other alone?”

“I’m certainly not going to be your friend.” The last word seemed to drip derision.

“Well, I wouldn’t be yours either!” James snapped, with the sense of being beaten to something important. He’d wanted to dismiss this inferior creature, not be dismissed by him.

“Well, then.” Snape turned another page. “If we fight, we lose points from Gryffindor, and everyone else hates us for it. This much seems obvious enough. So we’re back to the plan of leaving each other alone.”

Still wide-awake, still unable to have the room to himself, and still out of sorts, James sat heavily in the next chair. He glared at the embers of the fire. “Can’t you just give me a good fight now and again, instead of sitting there being a smug little creep?”

Snape shifted, pulled out a smallish book, and threw it at him with alarming accuracy. James caught it with a corner a finger’s width from the bridge of his nose. “Can’t you shut up and learn something?” the other boy suggested.

James glared at him, which did almost as much good as glaring at the fire. “You nearly broke my glasses.”

Silence.

“Of course, if you can throw like that, you might make a decent Chaser.”

Silence, then a mild puzzled look.

“Chaser. Quidditch. You really don’t know about Quidditch?”

A headshake.

“All right, maybe it is a good thing you aren’t in Slytherin. Those purebloods would have eaten you alive. Quidditch is “ oh, never mind. I’m sure you’ll find it in the library eventually.”

Snape nodded, either too disinterested to ask or too determined not to give James the chance to explain.

James gave up on needling. The book he held was bound in red leather and looked fairly old. Examining the spine, he read the title, The Nature of Courage. Curious now, he opened it. The title page expanded on the cover. The Nature of Courage: Profiles of Ten Famous Gryffindors.

“You weren’t expecting Gryffindor, were you?” he asked, and didn’t look up to see an answer. There certainly wasn’t one out loud. James leafed through the pages, disinterested. He’d heard of all of these people before, and history bored him. Then a sentence jumped out. As was Gryffindor himself, Englebert, the Lion of London, was afraid of snakes. And yet he went on to slay… “I’d never heard Gryffindor was afraid of snakes,” James said aloud, startled.

“You’d probably heard he wasn’t afraid of anything,” Snape said from the depths of his chair.

“Well…. No.”

There was a soft sound of derision. “So what is courage, then?”

“Well, it’s…” He thought for a minute. “Not being scared of things, not running away.”

“Which one, most importantly? Is it brave to not run away from the morning porridge?”

“What?” James started up, putting the book down on the chair, then thought better of it and heaved it back. Snape caught it without even seeming to look up. “I take it back. Seeker,” he said, just to be annoying.

“If you’re not afraid in the first place, what’s the merit in not running away, you idiot?” Snape gave him a glare. “A real Gryffindor stands and faces the toad.”

Rage blazed up in James. This “ this little horror dared to sit there and tell James, James Potter, that he was not a real Gryffindor? And yet a deep doubt poked at him. He hadn’t faced the toad. He had stomped up the stairs in what now, afterward, seemed far too much like retreat. His breath caught, strangled him, and fled.

He looked around the room, unable to stand the sight of Snape another moment, and wished for a toad just so he could prove himself. There wasn’t one, of course. If there had been, though, he could have scooped it up and given it to the other boy just to see someone else screech and leap about. Assuming, of course, Snape didn’t just make a pet of it or have it for dinner or something equally icky. Still. James was down here, no longer hiding in the dormitory, and he was actually looking for a thing that frightened him. “I came back,” he snapped. “I came back to make sure it was gone. And that’s just as good. Would you have done any better?”

There was no answer. Impatient, James turned back. Snape gave him a level look and said nothing. James found himself thinking again about small cruelties and broken promises, about the bad joke he’d played as they rode the Hogwarts Express, and about listening last night to his frightened roommate trying to settle in and sleep. He’d thought less of the boy for his fear, but here James was, awake and jumpy, with only imagined toads and a fair helping of embarrassment to keep him nervous. Severus had, apparently, slept, then woken up intending to act as if the previous day had never happened, and perhaps the creepy little twit had some nerve after all.

James sighed. “All right. You wouldn’t have done any worse.”