Four Girls Sirius Black Could Have Fallen In Love With (And One He Did)
Rating - M (later chapters)
Pairings - SB/OC(s), S/L, J/L, J/OC, RL/OC
Warnings - Semi-Canon, Sex, Het, Language, Oodles of OCs
(Annie)
Before the accidental magic started, before Hogwarts and Marauders and Death Eaters, there was Annie.
Nine years old and possessing far more energy than Walburga Black had any idea how to deal with, Sirius had been sent up the street to the park with the instructions not to return until he could act like a civilized wizard. This was the best punishment ever.
Freedom was intoxicating to Sirius. The October air seemed crisper, the sun seemed to shine a little brighter and he reveled in all of it.
Crossing the street to the park with a grin plastered across his face and a self-sure gait, Sirius immediately spotted the only other person braving the admittedly chilly weather. Dangling upside-down from the monkey bars, her face red from the blood rushing to it and her long brown curls nearly touching the grass, hung a girl about his age with a smile just as wide as his.
"'Lo," she called out. "What's your name? Do you want to play?"
She didn't bother dropping down from the monkey bars or hoisting herself back up as she spoke, but instead swayed slightly as if she were on an upside-down swing.
"Sure," he replied, somewhat mesmerized by the way the girl never seemed to stop moving. "I'm Sirius. What's your name?"
"Sirius?" she laughed heartily, finally flipping down off the bars to face him. "That's a funny kind of a name. I'm Annie. Do you live around here? Want some licorice? I have some in my bag."
Before he had a chance to answer, she darted over to a pink knapsack with a unicorn on it under a nearby oak tree and riffled through it.
"Here we go. Wanna go halvesies on it?" she asked, holding up a licorice strip.
"Uh... yeah, thanks," Sirius replied as she tore the sweet in half and handed him a piece. "What do you wanna play?"
"Well, I was just pretending to be a pirate, battling the Royal Navy to get my loot back to Barbados. You can be my first mate, if you want," she offered.
Sirius blinked at her kind of oddly because... okay, that was kind of cool, but also wholly unexpected.
"I'm nobody's first mate! I'm the Dread Pirate Black, come to plunder your loot!" He declared suddenly.
"ARGH!" She cried, grabbing a stick from amongst the crunchy leaves at their feet and brandishing it like a sword. "No one takes Annie The Great's things! Defend yourself!"
And he did.
Stick-to-stick and nose-to-nose, they battled til sundown. First as pirates (who eventually decided to join forces against the dastardly Royal Navy) and later as a knight and princess (who absolutely did not need anyone else to save her, thank you very much). And, maybe it was just that the only playmate Sirius had on a regular basis was his little brother - who seemed to be entirely too civilized a wizard for a seven-year-old - but the afternoon with Annie was the most fun he could ever remember having.
Breathless from hours of play, the duo had collapsed onto the grass, smiling and exhausted.
"You know," she said. "I think your parents must have a quirky sense of humour if they named you Sirius."
"Nah," he disagreed. "I'm just a massive disappointment."
"That's ridiculous," she scoffed. "You're a pirate and a prince. A pirate prince! That's legendary! How could that disappoint anyone."
Sirius smiled at her but didn't answer because, honestly, he didn't know. He'd never understood his family and was starting to think that he never might.
"I've gotta go before my mum gets worried," Annie said, standing up and dusting herself off. "Can you meet me here again tomorrow after school? I was planning on exploring the ancient pyramids. I could use another explorer to watch my back."
It was unexpectedly pleasing how hopeful she looked, big brown eyes looking eager and nervous all at once.
"Are the pyramids cursed?" Sirius questioned as if it would make a difference.
"Of course," she said, rolling her eyes. "And there are mummies. Cursed mummies, even. I need a best friend to help me fight them off and get the treasure before the whole thing collapses and the mummies get out and start attacking the city!"
He couldn't help but grin in response.
"Yeah, I'll be here," he replied, not caring about how he'd get out of his house, just certain that he'd find a way.
"Brilliant!" she declared, and it was.
For nearly the next two years Sirius would sneak out once or twice a week and meet Annie at the park. She was a muggle, he knew, and he couldn't tell her of Hogwarts or magic. Still, he couldn't help but imagine how much she'd love it. Their adventures were all make-believe, but he could picture her a curse-breaker or the like, exploring tombs for real.
Soon, very soon, he'd be off at school and she'd still be here, at the park up the road from his house. In his mind, that's where she'd always be, hanging upside-down from the monkey bars or halfway up a tree on the lookout for the Royal Navy. At best they'd see each other over summers and Christmas hols, but it wouldn't be the same.
"I don't understand why you have to go to boarding school," she muttered, kicking the dirt as though it had personally offended her.
"It's a whole family legacy thing," he said, offering her as close to the truth as he dared.
"Your family's stupid," she said petulantly and he laughed sharply in response.
"You'll get no argument from me there," he said.
They were quiet for a minute, her toeing the dirt, possibly the stillest he'd ever seen her. There was a wrongness about that. She was the closest thing to a force of nature he'd ever known, the most alive person he'd met at the age of not-quite-twelve.
"I don't want you to go," she said quietly.
"Yeah, I know," he replied, because he couldn't quite agree. He didn't want to leave her, but Hogwarts was Hogwarts and he had been anxious to go and get out of his parents' house for years.
"I'll miss you," he offered up.
"Obviously," she countered, grinning a little bit behind her mane of dark brown hair, still staring at her toes.
There was a weird, awkward silence for a long second and he knew he didn't have long before he had to leave.
Impulses drove a lot of what Sirius did, always had, always would. And suddenly, he wanted to capture some of that liveliness Annie breathed, wanted to bottle it up and take it with him.
He leaned forward and pecked her straight on the lips. It was quick and her hair was in the way and she looked at him with those big brown eyes, totally stunned. But it still made his heart race from his own daring and he knew in that second that he'd always, always remember Annie.
(Lily)
He would forever wonder what would have happened if he'd noticed her before James. But the third sentence out of James' mouth after he met his soon-to-be-best-friend (after "Hi, I'm James Potter. What's your name?" and "Reckon we could slip some everlasting fizz powder into the pumpkin juice on the food trolley") was "See that redheaded girl there? I'm going to marry her." And so, Lily had been off limits before Sirius had even met her.
Still, as years rolled by, Sirius could see what James saw, the way her eyes lit up when she found something interesting, the wicked grin she'd get when she was feeling mischievous, the way curves started to soften her figure as they went into third year. And even if he was intensely loyal to James, never even entertaining romantic notions of Lily behind imperturbed bed-curtains, he couldn't help noticing her. He was only human, after all.
"Did you remember to grab the streamers?" a voice said interrupting his thoughts, and Sirius turned to find impatient green eyes staring back at him.
"Uh... See, I'm kind of more of a supply-the-liquor sort of guy, Lils," Sirius reminded her, making a gesture that would have been a shrug if his arms weren't weighed down with a case of something decidedly not butterbeer.
"Sirius!" she protested, hands on her hips as she looked at him in a way that eeriely reminded him of James' mum.
"What?" he asked somewhat defensively - he had promised to grab some from Zonko's after all.
She shook her head and walked off to the other side of the Gryffindor common room undoubtedly busying herself with balloons or glitter or something.
At fifteen, Sirius really didn't understand girls - something James' dad had laughed at and said would never change (though he would get better at handling the confusion, he was told). He didn't understand them, but he sure did like them. Luckily for him, he'd somehow skipped that awkward gangily teenage boy phase entirely and most girls seemed to like him right back.
"It's just streamers, Lily," he said, unable to let it go when she was obviously unhappy. "I bet you no one will even miss them."
"I'll miss them," she countered, looking sad before a wolfish grin overtook her face. "I was going to charm them to wrap Potter up like a mummy so we could all pelt him with neon coloured self-expanding goo-filled balloons."
And this, this right here, was what James and Sirius hadn't had a clue of when James had first proclaimed his love for Lily four years prior. Smart Lily, kind Lily, always-fair Lily, had a wicked sense of humour and a quietly daring streak a mile wide.
"You're amazing, Evans," he told her, grinning back. "I think there might be some streamers left in the Quidditch supply closet from the last House Cup win."
"Oh, that's a brilliant idea!" Lily said, perking up measurably. "I'll run and check. You stay here and finish setting up the drinks."
Remus was in the infirmary still from the full moon two nights prior and Peter was busy distracting Filch and Mrs. Norris (dangerous job for a rat, really) so their party wouldn't get busted up before it started and James was still in the Quidditch locker rooms cleaning up after a very close game against Slytherin, so Sirius agreed and Lily quickly made her way out of the Gryffindor tower in the direction of the Quidditch supply closet.
Sirius had busied himself with charming the cups (never-empty charms were a beautiful thing) and stuffing a few whoopie cushions into the sofa (because, hey, fifteen-year old boy) when Lily unexpectedly reentered the room rather shortly after she left.
"That was fast, did they have any..." he began until he saw the look on her face.
Always-bright-eyed, fiery Lily looked stricken, and Sirius was instantly ready to confront whoever stole the light from Lily's ever-expressive eyes.
"What happened?" he asked, honestly concerned.
"Nothing," she replied in clipped fashion, pausing to look at him as she shuffled her weight back and forth uneasily.
"You didn't know that... I mean... if you knew you wouldn't have..." she started.
"If I knew what?" he asked honestly perplexed.
"Nothing," she said quickly, apparently no longer interested in whatever she'd been asking. "Look, I'm not feeling much like a party. You guys have fun," she said in a tone that didn't invite debate before turning and hurrying up the stairs.
No sooner had she gone, ignoring Sirius' calls behind her, than the door to the Gryffindor common room opened and James came tumbling through looking as though he'd possibly just stepped off his broom.
"Where's Lily?" he asked with no preamble, looking slightly frantic.
"What the hell, James?" Sirius asked, ignoring the question. "What happened?"
James sighed hugely and ran his hands through his hair, somehow managing to mess it up even further.
"Well... there was... you see..." he started.
"Mate, you're making about as much sense as she did when she came back in here," Sirius told his friend.
James groaned loudly and collapsed onto the sofa, setting off an entirely inappropriately timed whoopie cushion.
"Great," James said dramatically. "My life's complete."
Sirius didn't repeat his earlier question. He just stared at James with obvious impatience. He never had done well with waiting.
"Well who just bursts into a broom closet without knocking first?" James finally asked, red-faced and guilty.
Sirius' eyes must have widened considerably at that, but James sure wasn't making eye-contact enough to notice.
"Are you telling me that Evans - love-of-your-life-Evans - walked in on you snogging some..." Sirius' voice trailed off.
"Some Slytherin Chaser?" James asked meekly.
"Not Arista," Sirius said, wrinkling his nose a bit. "If you're going to start snogging Slytherins at least tell me it wasn't Pritchard."
"Ew, no, give me some credit," James protested. "...It was Clio."
"Harper?" Sirius asked, giving that idea a bit of thought before shrugging. "All right, well... best of the lot I guess. But still... James."
"I know," he moaned thudding his head against the back of the sofa. "What am I gonna do? I love Lily!"
"For a smart bloke, you really are an idiot sometimes," Sirius told him, whole-heartedly meaning it.
"Yeah," sighed James. "I know.
