Disclaimer: Don't own a thing apart from Raisa
Came back from my hols with the entire first chapter written, then started typing and realised that I wanted to take it in a different direction altogether : P, so apologies for the wait...
Sequel to 'Getting Over You': The gang are back for their seventh and final year at Hogwarts... Sirius/Raisa, James/Lily
Getting Through To You: Chapter 1
Sirius Black started the new school year exactly how he had ended the last one – completely and hopelessly in love with Raisa Ramsey.
This was proving to be problematic firstly in that very soon he would have to see her again, and secondly in that his supposed best friend seemed to have taken it upon himself to be the most unsympathetic listener on the planet – a fact magnified tenfold considering the events of the previous year where one James Potter had proceeded to talk the ears off of the world, his uncle, and second cousin too on the subject of Lily Evans.
"Christ, Padfoot!" exclaimed James 'Sympathy Does Not Live Here' Potter, cutting like a knife into Sirius' thoughts and pointing towards his bags.
"Go and get yourself a trolley for those bags. What do you think? That by wrenching your arms out of their sockets you can change the past.
Sirius scowled at the ignominy of being scolded without good reason by unarguably the most reckless and least sensible of all the Marauders.
"Head Boy for ten minutes and you already sound like my mother," Sirius remarked tartly, resenting that James apparently saw him as incapable of even carrying his own bags.
James baulked at the patented insult between the pair. "Oh, you did not just compare me to your mother. That was a definite line crossed there, mate,"
"Eh," Sirius pretended to consider the point for a few moments. "You may be right there – my mother would have dispensed with the trolley and given me Regalus' bags to carry too."
James snorted. "Anyway, I have to go to the Prefects Carriage – Lily will hit the roof if I'm late. Are you...?" he hesitated here sheepishly. "Are you going to be okay here until Remus and Peter come?"
Sirius rolled his eyes. "I don't know James...Without adult supervision I might jump on Raisa as soon as she appears on the platform," he continued, voice thick with sarcasm.
"Nah, I'll be fine mate," he assured, waving away James' concerns more confidently than he actually felt. "Just say hello to the future Mrs Potter for me."
James blushed, and then in the knowledge that Sirius had managed to elicit such a girly emotion from him promptly made to hit him, before checking himself hurriedly and pulling himself and his luggage towards the train and the relative safety of Lily.
Sirius allowed himself a small smile. Watching James grapple with his new responsibilities and naturally violent tendencies was definitely going to be a high point this year. With an amused chuckle he picked his two bags back up and hefted them towards the train.
Raisa Ramsey knew in the back of her mind that there was some Physics law to do with immovable objects and the like, but at that precise moment she couldn't quite think what it was.
People obsessed with science that spent all their time in a darkened room had probably never encountered this group of evil Slytherins who seemed to get an unnatural kick from annoying innocent people.
"Leave me alone," she sighed, repeating words for what seemed like the millionth time in the past fifteen minutes that unfortunately seemed to have no effect whatsoever.
"What are you going to do? You're just a girl," the very sexist Regalus Black scoffed mockingly.
"That may be true, but I know a great little hex which will turn your backside bright green for a whole week," Raisa retorted smartly, all the while wondering how someone as comparatively normal as Sirius was spawned from the same gene pool as this misogynistic idiot.
"I highly doubt that. You strike me as someone who probably couldn't find their way out of a paper bag at a push," he drawled, earning a collective laugh from the rest of the Slytherins for the rather unoriginal insult.
"Why you little - " Raisa lunged at him, well aware in the back of her mind that Lily would kill her for getting into a fight within the first few seconds of returning to school, but not actually caring a whole lot right now.
She did, however, care a great deal about the pinioning arms that were now stopping her fists from connecting with Regalus' face. Violence – despite what some people tried to argue – was very healthy.
"Leave her alone," sounded a sharp and insistent voice coming from the arm now attached to hers.
Regalus looked startled, but hid it well with a quick sneer. "Well hello there, bro," he greeted, enunciating the bro in the manner of something that he had found on the back of his shoe.
"Leave her alone, Reg," Sirius continued, choosing to ignore his brother's words. He kept a firm grip on Raisa's arms, to prevent her from doing something stupid.
Raisa, on the other hand, did not appreciate his intervention and was now doing her absolute best to manoeuvre her foot around to knee him in his jewels.
Sirius winced: "You know, if women had any idea how painful that is then they really wouldn't go for that area so much."
"Oh, I beg to differ," Raisa snarled back.
"Would you really? How does childbirth sound to you?"
"Just peachy thanks,"
Regalus and the rest of the Slytherins watched the interactions with interest.
"Wow – it's like an old married couple," a not too bright member of the group pointed out.
Raisa's head jerked up, her words laced with ice: "Say what?"
To their credit the group had the good grace to look at least a little afraid of the small woman with blazing eyes, their hands automatically reaching for their wands until warned off by a glare from Sirius.
"If you hurt even one hair on her head I swear that I will hunt you down and kill you," he threatened coldly, grey eyes unnervingly resolute.
"You think we don't know who it was who stole the Book a few weeks back," countered Regalus, staring down his brother equally firmly.
Sirius' grip loosened slightly on Raisa's arm:
"You can't prove a thing, Reg," he whispered menacingly.
Regalus Black - in childhood always second best to his older brother in verbal contests – opened and closed his mouth in an effort to dispute Sirius' words, but found that he couldn't.
"Okay Reg, while you do a passable impression of a goldfish me and Rai here are off. It's been fun!" Sirius waved fake cordially at his brother and dragged a protesting Raisa with him down the train, wondering exactly when she had put out a casting call for a knight in shining armour.
"Well hello there, Muffin," James greeted, attempting to swagger his way sexily into the Prefects Carriage.
He hadn't seen his dearly beloved girlfriend in three days and was missing her terribly. Stupid, bitter Sirius may make unfounded jokes about it, but James was happy and that was something to be celebrated instead of mocked.
Without taking note of the compartment around him (because, let's face it, when confronted with his girlfriend his surroundings did tend to become a little blurry round the edges) James turned her
round, bent her at the waist and pulled her in for the kind of steamy, passionate and decidedly private kiss that you absolutely would not want anyone else to witness.
...Or snigger at...
James looked up with a start on hearing some unexpected sniggering and promptly let go of his beloved red-head on finding that the carriage he had previously construed as empty was in fact full to the brim with prefects, Remus Lupin sitting in the corner being the only one kind enough to try and hide his amusement.
He quickly turned his gaze to the floor to see if dropping his girlfriend was also part of the horrible and unfair nightmare that he was evidently now having.
...No such luck.
"Muffin," Lily greeted tartly but a little flustered, giving her boyfriend the kind of very transparent eye message suggesting that he would be dead already were it not for the fact that here there would be a large number of witnesses to the crime. "These are all of the prefects in the entire school."
Sheepishly, James turned to face his peers: "Hi guys."
There was another snicker from the audience, very quickly disguised with a cough on being glared at by Lily.
"You see Black off okay?" she hissed out of the corner of her mouth.
"Yes," James affirmed, marvelling at how skilled his girlfriend was in the art of subterfuge.
"And you're sure that he is nowhere near Raisa?"
James turned to face her, gazing at her affectionately. He would of course have to correct her at some point on her assumption that Sirius was a corrupting influence.
"Padfoot is with Peter, Raisa is presumably with Alice and they are nowhere near each other," he declared confidently. "Trust me."
Raisa sat down in the carriage compartment with huff, doing her best to pointedly ignore the mildly amused Sirius Black who followed her inside.
"Well if you will walk around with your eyes shut then its Sod's Law that you'll bump into Slytherins," Sirius maintained.
Raisa rolled her eyes and proceeded to stick her tongue out at her rescuer while he lugged their trunks into the overhead compartment, his back to her.
Sirius sighed. "Sweetheart, I can see your reflection in the window."
Raisa's face immediately darkened. "I only had my eyes shut because I saw you," she retorted angrily.
Sirius let go of the last trunk abruptly and fell onto his head with a thump.
"I bet James and Remus would have a fit if they knew we were in the same compartment," Raisa murmured, unnerved by the companionable silence that had settled between the two.
"True," Sirius nodded slowly, imagining the slow, painful death that would doubtless befall him if his two best friends found out about his moth-like tendencies. Hell, maybe he should be more worried about Lily's reaction. During her all too frequent visits to the Potter household over the summer break, Lily Evans had made it crystal clear that in terms of her least favourite people in the universe Sirius lay somewhere in between the devil and her sister Petunia.
It was true that Sirius did stupid things sometimes, but no one seemed to understand that he really did love Raisa.
"I'm going to go and find another carriage," muttered Raisa hurriedly, springing up from her seat and tearing her gaze away from his.
Before he knew what he was doing, Sirius grabbed her wrist to pull her back down. Raisa fell back into her seat with a thump. It took her a few moments to get her bearings back, and then she wasted not another moment in laying into Sirius big style.
"What is this?" she yelled. "You save me from angry Slytherins only so you get the opportunity to kill me yourself?"
Sirius winced at hearing Raisa talk so flippantly of her own death.
"You told me what you ...told me...before the summer for a reason, so I really don't understand why you're trying to make this so hard," she continued.
He nodded slowly: "You're right."
"I know I'm right," she spluttered. "We have to get through a whole year together, and in order for that to happen I really think you need to leave me alone."
"What? Leave you alone to be blown to bits by Lucius and his crew?" Sirius asked. "You just can't admit that I saved your bacon back there."
Raisa snorted. "You did not 'save my bacon', I would have been fine without your assistance, and I'm going to find Alice."
Sirius rubbed his very sore head.
Raisa turned at the door, suddenly struck by a remembrance from her encounter with the posse from hell: "Didn't Regalus say you stole a book from home?"
The rubbing ground to a halt, leaving Sirius simply standing with his hand on his head.
"Oh no, tell me you didn't," Raisa shook her head, realisation quickly dawning on her. "You stole the Black Book."
Sirius gulped and did the only thing he could think of in the circumstances, gracefully collapsing to the floor in the manner of a swan.
James walked dazed out of the carriage, wondering what part of his DNA it was that always seemed to make him act like an idiot. He wore glasses, so that went some way to excusing his poor peripheral vision, but the fact still remained that he had a habit of doing really, really stupid things.
"Lily, are you sure you don't have concussion or something?" he inquired, rubbing her shoulder soothingly.
"You know honey, I'm not a doctor or a healer so I don't actually know," remarked Lily Evans, rubbing her aching head.
"I'm sorry," James added, just in case she wasn't quite clear on that part.
"I know," Lily assured. "You couldn't have guessed when you dropped me that I would land on my head. I'm off to find Raisa, and we'll meet up later to discuss plans for the first meeting."
James watched dumbly as his girlfriend kissed him on the cheek and walked back in the other direction. He hopedthat she was being ironic and that her last words were euphemistic.
"Moony, stop sniggering – it really wasn't that funny," he snapped, rounding on the figure of Remus who was following him and diplomatically, if badly, trying to hide his laughter behind his handkerchief.
"Of course not, Prongs."
"No – it was really not funny," James amended. "Injuring Lily before we even reach school is a new record for me, Sirius is being worryingly secretive, I have NO idea why that mad old coot Dumbledore chose me as Head Boy, and what I – Peter!"
He stopped his rant abruptly here on almost bumping into the fourth member of the Marauders.
"Erm, Peter mate – where's Sirius?" James asked tentatively.
The small Gryffindor looked up at his friend with wide, sad eyes. "I can't find him anywhere. I think he's lost."
"What do you mean you can't find him?" James replied, his mind now attempting to do a lot of mental calculations in a very small amount of time.
"I mean I couldn't find him," Peter frowned. ...And people thought he was slow.
"I sent you an owl last night asking you to stay close to him on the train and..." James continued, trailing off slightly on seeing the confused expression on his friend's face.
Slowly, and with a sense of impending dread and doom James turned and Remus turned to face each other. "You don't think he's stupid enough to be somewhere with Raisa?"
Remus weighed up this statement in his head and on the balances of probability had to say: "Yes."
James groaned and began to feel very ill...
"Oh God, Lily's going to kill me."
Bit of a family crisis atm, so this is one edit less than I would have liked... Anywho, please review and hope you enjoy ; )
Next Time...
"We found the two of you on the floor on top of each other, so I kind of have the right to suspect that you were fornicating, Sirius." James ran hand through his hair and sighed. He was now beginning to understand somewhat the problems that came with being a figure of authority.