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They don’t meet on the train. James thinks they must have, later, because he had walked the entire length of the train before finding an empty car, so he thinks surely he must have at least glimpsed Sirius, but they don’t meet on the train.
(He is wrong, incidentally, about even glimpsing Sirius on the train. That idea suggests that Sirius was ever on the train in the first place. That is not an assumption that should have been made.)
All of them think, later, that they must have just missed his Sorting - Black is further up in the alphabet than any of the other Marauders’ last names, is further up in the alphabet than all but one of their classmates, actually, so it’s no surprise they missed it. They were far too busy worrying about their own.
(This is another assumption they shouldn’t have made. His friends are brilliant, Sirius knows, but sometimes he wonders how they are still alive.)
(It’s a good thing they are his, and no one else’s.)
The first time James actually meets Sirius is when James wakes up on his first day and realizes that there are actually four beds in their dormitory, not three. The fourth bed is tucked in the corner furthest from the window, still covered with lingering shadows even now that the sun is coming up, so it is not terribly surprising that he missed it in the darkness of the night before. He is far more interested in the bed’s inhabitant, a wild haired boy with a dangerous grin, than he is in any potential mysteries of the furniture.
(The first time Sirius meets James, the other boy has cut his hand on just the right/wrong piece of rough stone on his way up the stairs. The blood wells and drips - )
(And Sirius forms from the shadows and watches the boy who has awoken him ascend up the stairs.)
It is not such an unusual thing. Every inch of wood and stone in Hogwarts is heavy with magic, so heavy that even the coldest of iron soaks it up, and the wards are old and fraying if one knows just the right places to look at them. A wizard might not notice - there are many things wizards don’t notice - but the shadows of the ancient forest, disturbed by the wizards’ long ago intrusion, shadows that have grown fat upon the magic and blood that have been lavished upon their land - well. It is not so unusual for one of them to wake up. There are three already wandering the castle when Sirius wakes up, and another wakes only two years after him.
The others prefer the dungeons where the darkness is thickest, but Sirius prefers the towers where the light streams in and makes ever so many interesting shadows and where the brave and the bold are always so recklessly eager to bleed.
The teachers watch them sometimes, suspicion in their eyes, but blood, however little, has been poured out for each of them, and so they are perfect cuckoo chicks, blending with the shadows, darting through the crowds.
He thinks Dumbledore suspects the others, sometimes, but the old man trusts him.
It is so much easier to be trusted up here in the light.
Remus smells like the forest, like the wolf, and like blood, and Sirius cannot help being drawn to him. Peter has - something. Sirius still isn’t sure what, but there is a little piece of shadow in him, and it draws Sirius in too.
James -
James’s blood was his first, is the heart of what is keeping him alive no matter how much more he takes from elsewhere. It is what beats at the center of him, calling out brother, brother, brother, mine, mine, mine, deep down in what he’d call his soul if he thought he had one. James with his quicksilver mind and his clever plans and his cloak that is woven with a magic as old as the shadows themselves.
James is his, and he’ll kill anyone who tries to claim otherwise.
He doesn’t leave for holidays, not even for the summer. Especially not the summer, when the sun lingers for so long and the shadows grow weak. None of them leave, not yet; they’re not strong enough.
But they’re growing stronger with every spell gone awry and Quidditch game that ends with someone smashing to the ground while a thin trail of their blood seeps into the earth.
Seven is a good number. A strong number.
In seven years, they will be strong enough to leave, as their elders have done, and walk awhile in this world of men.
In the meantime, they fade back to shadows and entertain themselves in the empty, echoing corridors as best they can.
Bellatrix is a twisted, thorny thing from the heart of the old woods, and Sirius respects her, but he doesn’t like her. Even for a hunter, her games wax too sharp, and her gaze turns too frequently to those that James is starting to seek to defend.
Narcissa is a pale shadow from the depths of a pool, and Sirius has almost no interest in her. Andromeda is another matter; she is bright and sure and almost alive, and she runs with him through every passage in their castle they can find.
He tries to look after little Regulus. He feels a certain responsibility for him, and he tries to show him the best secret places and teach him how best to steal little drops of blood.
But Regulus’s eyes trail after Bellatrix, and Sirius doesn’t think he’ll be able to keep this littlest shadow for long.
He mentions Remus’s wolf carelessly, without thinking, because the truth is so obvious to him that he forgets not everyone will know.
Peter shudders, and Sirius thinks prey before he can stop himself but James -
Oh, James’s quicksilver mind is already working, and it seems he has an idea.
Sirius cannot become an animagus.
Sirius cannot do much of what his classmates do, actually, at least not in the ways they do it, but he has his own magic, and he has his own ways.
He is shadow and blood and so, so much more than this one little shape he has forced himself into, and it will not take much effort at all for him to become a different kind of hunter.
He would never, could never, hurt them. They are his, always and forever, and he protects what is his.
But when James leads them on in a glorious hunt against whoever has given them insult - magic is all well and good, but Sirius loves when it comes down to fists and blood spots his hands. It seeps down into the heart of him, and he feels himself grow stronger, bit by bit.
And when their foes have given him insult, him specifically, and still his friends let out a cry and spring forth - every drop of their blood that hits the stone is an offering to him, him, him, and he thinks with this power he could take on the world.
(He doesn’t understand, later, why the others put rules on the hunt. Why they think it is too far when he offers their enemy up as an offering to Remus’s wolf as thanks for all his friend has given him. Why James eventually calls an end to the best and the bloodiest of their mischief. It is all one to him.)
(But James turns their hunt onto a narrower path, and it is a good path, filled with foes and far more blood, so Sirius shrugs his shoulders and tells his lies and follows them off to their war.)
He does not quite like Lily. Not at first. He suspects she is part of the reason James changed the rules to their old games, and she is trying to claim something that is his.
But James still laughs with him and hunts with him, and then Lily joins their hunts against those who think they can eat death itself, and Oh, Sirius thinks, maybe she can be his too.
It doesn’t bother him in the slightest that Bellatrix is on the other side of this great hunt. They chased one another through the shadows for years before they were strong enough to leave them, and this is just one more step in the game.
It does bother him that Regulus is following her hunt, not his, because Regulus could have been, ought to have been, one of his.
But there is nothing to be done about it now.
He loves the little one with all he is, but he worries, a little, because being out here among the light has - changed him, just a little, and it has occurred to him for the first time that perhaps he is not good for the ones he claims as his own.
There is so much darkness in this hunt, and no matter how hard he tries to follow James’s light, sometimes he looks around and finds himself indistinguishable from the shadows the others fear.
He does not want to darken little Harry’s light.
When it is time for wards and secrets, he thinks of this and lets Peter say the words.
He also thinks of his blood and shadow magic and the wards it thinks proper.
He is good at secrets and good at shadows, but he is not sure this ward would accept his words, even if he had chosen to swear them.
But Peter’s darkness is not like his, is not like Remus’s, it is traitor, it is murderer, it is -
Sirius rips Peter into shreds in the street and laughs when the Aurors come to collect them.
He slips like smoke through their hands.
James is gone, gone forever, but there is a bead of his blood still in Sirius’s heart, and though that blood is faltering now, there is still one link left through it.
The wards around Lily’s sister are of the old magic, and they know him far better than Hogwarts’ tattered spells ever did. They will keep him out effortlessly.
But Harry is not left inside the wards. Harry is left on the doorstep, and the blood in Sirius’s soul cries out for the last remnant of James it can find.
It is nothing for him to step out of the shadows and scoop Harry up.
“Hello, little one,” he whispers. “Let’s go find what’s left of our pack.”