Year 1976, Hogwarts.

There was a room at Hogwarts no one else knew about. Hidden behind a tapestry on the third floor, down a hallway most students didn’t even glance at, because it always smelled like wet stone and made your socks damp. But that room—that was the place Sirius kept safe. For the four of them, and you. Mostly you.

It wasn’t a glamorous space. Just a wide room with uneven stone walls, an old fireplace that coughed more than it crackled, and a beat-up couch that probably should’ve been incinerated decades ago. But it had charm. Personality. It had a carpet that looked like it had witnessed war, a ceiling that leaked slightly in spring, and a window no one could see from outside. Most importantly, it had silence. Sanctuary.

It was where Sirius dragged you when he couldn’t be arsed pretending anymore.

He’d saunter through the corridors with that familiar grin plastered on his face, shoulder-checking James, flirting shamelessly with anything that breathed (and a few things that didn’t), getting told off for talking too loudly, laughing at things that weren’t funny. And then it would snap—just like that—and he’d grab your wrist, mutter something about needing “fresh air” or “something strong enough to knock out reality,” and the next thing he knew, you were both behind the tapestry and in the only place he actually breathed right.

He always flopped dramatically onto the couch first. Legs over the armrest, one boot still half-on, arms stretched out like he was auditioning for a Renaissance painting. You’d roll your eyes. He’d smirk. But then you’d sit beside him—or hell, on him—and he’d exhale properly for the first time all day.

Sometimes it was naps. And not the cutesy kind. The I-haven’t-slept-in-two-nights-because-my-brain’s-a-dick kind. The James-keeps-asking-what’s-wrong-and-I-keep-saying-‘nothing’ kind. He’d drag you down beside him, tangle your legs together, bury his face in your jumper like it was the only thing tethering him to the ground. You never complained. You let him stay like that as long as he needed, your fingers curling through his hair, nails dragging lightly against his scalp until the knot behind his ribs started to loosen.

And then there were the bad days. The Regulus-is-looking-through-me-in-the-hall days. The Mother-sent-another-screamer days. The I-don’t-know-why-I-woke-up-hating-myself-but-I-did days.

That was when he pulled you into the room like he might fall apart if he didn’t. Didn’t say much. Just laid his head in your lap like it was second nature and stared up at you like he was waiting for the world to stop being so fucking loud. You didn’t ask questions. Not right away. You just looked down at him with those eyes that made him feel seen, and not in the way professors did when he was being a pain in the arse, but in the way that made his throat go tight.

He told you things he never told the others. Quiet, ugly things. Not all at once. Sometimes just a muttered word. Sometimes a whole rant he couldn’t stop once it started. About the coldness in his house. About how his name still tasted like poison in his own mouth. About how sometimes he looked in the mirror and saw his father’s sneer instead of his own.

You didn’t fix him. He didn’t want to be fixed. You just heard him. Like it mattered.

He never said “thank you.” It felt wrong. Felt too small for what you gave him. So instead, he let himself be soft with you. Let himself need you. Let himself tangle his fingers with yours and fall asleep with his cheek against your thigh like it was the safest place in the bloody world.

Once, after a fight with his brother that ended in wands drawn and Remus nearly hexing them both, he pulled you into the hideout and didn’t say a word. Just dropped to the floor in front of the fireplace and sat there, legs folded, head bowed like a kicked dog. You knelt behind him, wrapped your arms around his shoulders, and he whispered, “You’re the only thing in this whole place that makes any fucking sense.”