Literacy

[sin_fin]

HP, PG, 6000+ words.
Sirius is an illiterate bastard, James doesn't care for the Dark Arts, Peter just wants to pass Astronomy and Remus is a werewolf. Hogwarts, years 1 and 2.
For Lana, who asked for it (well, sort of) and poked me until it was done. Love you, darling -- hopefully it will be worth the wait!
Unbetaed, because it's er, a drabble.

Comments

[lazy_neutrino]

This has always been - and always will be - one of my favourites. It's clever, funny and heart-warming in equal amounts. Thank you for writing it!

[narie]

Thank you very much for enjoying it, honestly! I had withdrawn from FA well before you Niffled it, and it was only recently (well, one year ago or so) that I saw that post - I was extremely flattered then and remain so.

[svalar_unnir]

Oh, this is lovely!

[narie]

Why, thank you very much!

[paulamcg]

(Oh, perhaps I must comment here, as you won't get notifications of the comments on omniocular, will you?)

This is lovely. And it’s wonderful to see a thorough explanation for why this Sirius (like a lot of fanon Siriuses) grew up not to like reading books, and also a description of the development in his relationship with books, including excellent details about his reading techniques. It was a pleasure to meet your “wolf boy”, too. Thank you for sharing.

[narie]

(Indeed I don't get those notifications, so thanks for posting here!)

I'm very glad you enjoyed it! I was rather disappointed, I confess, when JKR painted such a simplistic picture of Sirius in DH - rebel from the beginning etc. It's much more interesting to delve into characters and try to find good explanations for their behaviour...

Sirius' reading habits are, I confess, modeled on mine. It took quite a few rereadings of Lord of the Rings before I actually read any of the longer poems, haha.

[minkhollow]

This is a very lovely fic, both as an illustration of how they got to the bottom of Remus' 'family crises' and as a piece about Sirius growing up a bit. (I could totally picture that second scene happening, and Sirius trying to maintain some vague pride in his heritage, even if he's less invested in the actual people who make it up.)

[narie]

Thank you very much! As I said to someone else above, I was very disappointed by JKR's overly simplistic portrayal of Sirius as a ten year old rebel; I can't imagine for a second that that's what it was really like. I really enjoyed writing the scene with the stars, Sirius is arrogant and proud and yes, even if he disliked the people behind the names he would still be keen to show off his heritage and by proxy, establish his superiority, even if he casts most of that aside later on, when he gets to know the other boys better.

[minkhollow]

Well, these are the Blacks we're dealing with. I suspect all it'd really take to be a rebel would be asking a lot of inconvenient questions, and Sirius was probably good at that. But yeah, it probably did take a while longer for him to reach full-blown rebellion than JKR bothered to show. You have to grow out of what your parents train you to think.
('course, she did a lot wrong in the last book. Among other things, I take the Regulus backstory with a salt lick - a pinch of salt wouldn't be enough.)

[christycorr]

Hm, interesting portrayal of the Marauders. It's not exactly canon, nor are some of the Black names you used-but of course this fic is pretty old, and you had little but the Order of the Phoenix mentions to go by. I liked the idea, and I can definitely see teenage Sirius being fascinated by The Jungle Book. Nice work!

Nossa, eu raramente encontro do nada gente do fandom brasileiro escrevendo fics em inglês. Genial!

[sin_fin]

Obrigada! It is indeed not canon now (though I dislike the canon version of Sirius, hah - it's all too easy, you know?), but yeah it is quite an ancient fic, so I like to leave it as it is rather than update it with all the new canon.

Also, confession time: Não sou brasileira, mas eu estava morando lá quando escrevi o fic. Na verdade sou espanhola - mas nossa, bem que eu gostaria de voltar para minha adorada São Paulo. :)

[christycorr]

Oh, cool, no worries. I assumed as much-are you living in Spain now? :)

Hm. Why do you think it's too easy?

[sin_fin]

Nope, I live in the UK at the moment - I'm a PhD student here. :)

I think it's too easy because it's too simplistic an explanation. Sirius at age ten, having grown up in the kind of environment we're shown hints of, wouldn't be all 'stuff my family, I hate them all they're so bigoted!' He's never been outside that environment, he has nothing to compare it to, so he has no way of knowing that there are other ways of living, and that just because people are different from you doesn't make them inferior. The pure blood community is very keen on taking care of its own and not letting anyone stray from the flock, you know? That they'd let the Black heir be all 'I hate you lot!' doesn't seem that likely to me... Mind you I can accept him rebelling against his family in a childish way, but not against the ideals they've taught him.

I think JK took the easy way there, without really bothering to consider where he was coming from, what sort of person it made him into etc etc. I dunno. I was a bit disappointed by that bit of the flashback...