A/N: This story needs A LOT of work, but I think it has a good enough core for me to be able to work it into something really good. I just need some time to really focus on it, and a huge amount of it needs to be cut. For that reason I've taken it down temporarily to rearrange it, and get it in order. I'm sorry if you're in the middle of reading it. If you're very invested in finishing what's been written so far then firstly, thank you, and secondly just contact me and I'll email you the 42 chapters I've taken down. Thank you for understanding, you're all a delight.

I'm leaving this sample up to try and draw beta interest ;)

Love,

Rose

Chapter 1

The Cause

He sat to dinner with her mother, and Anne felt the backs of her hands burn.

"My Father was in business Mrs. Chalk," Sirius explained. He sat at Elena's side. Elena preened the man, dusting off his sleeve and pouring him wine as he charmed their Mother. "Shares and antiques," he added. Anne's Mother was attempting to assess the goods. He was one of Elena's few serious boyfriends.

"Was, dear?" Mrs. Chalk feigned concern and Anne tried to look away from Sirius's troubled expression. It did little good as she met the eye of her finer featured, sensually built twin sister. Elena and her looked nothing alike, they were nothing alike. They spent months at odds, followed by months of obsessive oversharing. It all really depended on whether Elena was seeing someone at the time. Anne would kindly call Elena a romantic. When their eyes met Elena smiled politely like Anne was a stranger. It stung.

"My parents are dead. I spent my late teens with a friend's family, they were kind enough to take me in." No one dared ask what had happened to them and Sirius did not supply them with any more information. Elena crooned. Kissing the man on his stubbled cheek. Mrs. Chalk nodded understandingly. Sirius would have been turned out the door that moment if it wasn't for his nine hundred pound suit. Anne rolled her eyes at her Mother but upon completing the gestures her eyes met his gaze across the table. She must have seemed awful to him, there he was talking about the death of his family and she was acting like he was wasting her time. She flushed, his grey eyes were sharp, he was paying attention. She stared down at her plate, wondering why she had ever resented feeling invisible. In that moment she wanted nothing more than to disappear.

"You know it's the strangest thing," Sirius began and she wished to God there was someway to convincingly pretend she did not know this was directed at her. "Annie and I have been in University together since September and we've never had a chance to really speak."

Anne gulped, she wondered if shrugging would suffice. "It's just Anne."

"I wouldn't speak to a woman who was studying in The Castle either, if she wasn't my own flesh and blood. I don't know why you insisted on doing such a dreadful thing," Anne's Mother spoke up and it was much easier to find her voice to respond to this.

"I wanted to learn. I actually care about my future."

Elena frowned. "Anne..." She let her sister's name hang in the air reproachfully. Anne waited for everyone to rush to Elena's aid but her Father interrupted the conversation as he entered the room. Late to dinner as usual.

Mrs. Chalk still managed to hiss: "You'll be twenty-six by the time you've carried through with this little stunt of yours and there will be no hope for a future then." Anne knew what her Mother meant by this, there will be no marrying you off after that. She watched her sister greet their Father jovially. He kissed Elena on each cheek and gave Sirius a hearty hand shake. He did that bullshit thing businessmen do where he gripped Sirius's elbow. He must like him. Her Father than simply nodded in her direction as he took a seat by his wife. Just a nod. No word of greeting.

"It's not surprising that Sirius and I haven't spoken." Elena was clearly miffed at Anne returning to the undesirable topic. Anne kept her eyes on Sirius as she shrugged. "I'm a quiet, odd sort of bird. Kind of ridiculous but at least out of the way." He didn't look barbed by this at all, Instead he just barked out a laugh. Too loud, like Elena's. Anne had been throwing his own words back at him. She had heard him say those things about her when she was standing behind him in a queue for student identification.

"Your sister's funny," Sirius told Elena like Anne wasn't sitting there and she bristled. She loosened her tie and asked to be excused. She wasn't sure when it happened. Maybe it was that night or one of the countless hours they spent together in tear-drop lecture theaters. Sirius would sit surrounded by cronies and come, unnecessarily, to her defense when they began to dare each other to approach her. Maybe it was during one of their English seminars where they would be careful not to speak over each other. Both of them competing to see who could appear the least competitive while still showing up the other.

Maybe it was the first time she saw him away from anyone they both knew, with friends he seemed to know better. He seemed eight times as animated, he had a toddler on his shoulder. He bounded around. He was far enough away, but she was sure he had been singing. Was it the way he ignored her and then paid too much attention? Was it just that he was the most beautiful thing she could think of? It didn't matter. She had fallen in love with him. It could have been anything about him. His cleverness, his charisma.

She told herself often that it was a foolish adolescent thing. That she didn't really know him. That the reason it was so hard for her was because usually she didn't have crushed or heartache. This was first love. She was just swept up in it.

She forced herself to watch whenever he mooned over Elena. Anne obsessed over how wrong it was to want him but it didn't help. Her eyes always found him, his words always got under her skin. She hated it.

Her sister was radiant around Sirius. He filled her up with the light Anne felt he drained from her. When they stood together they were striking and infuriating. Anne knew her sister was more than happy to be married off to a graduate of the Castle. Even is he was arrogant, intelligent, sexist and oblivious.

Anne blushed when he walked by and went off her food every time he came round for dinner. Her nature fought her principles every step of the way, she was the romantic, not Elena. She was discovering that she was a completely hopeless romantic and thank the stars, somehow, Sirius Black still didn't know it. Didn't know that his gorgeous girlfriend's dowdy sister whom he so loved to pester dreamt of him often. Anne even wrote the occasional poem about him, prose that she intermittently rewrote before binning them hopelessly.

Sirius being so besotted with Elena was a blessing in a way. It helped her and her shameful behavior turn invisible. Sirius was infatuated with the petite, voluptuous and well-dressed Elena. His girlfriend was comfortably uneducated in anything beyond basic academics and piano. She occupied her days with charity balls where she listened to other higher circle ladies express their concern for her dowdy sister.

Anne did want to fall in love, she just wished she had fallen in love with a man who would talk to her for hours about the way of things instead of snubbing conversation as a waste of time off the golf course.

Women talk, men do; is what Sirius had said one evening as Anne sat stubbornly in the study with the other puffed up old men in there smoking coats. The other ladies retired to the conservatory to see her mothers new shag carpet. She was sure Sirius had only said it to annoy her. He had a knack for that. He seemed to revel in the look on her face.

She hated that she always wanted to be around him. Wanted to be seen by him. Sometimes she would convince herself to call him and ask him about an assignment or for a recommendation of a good book. She wasn't sure whether to be pleased or disappointed that she had never followed through on that desire. To just hear him. This Sirius-withdrawal was often followed by a phase of wanting to avoid him at all costs. She would convince herself that space was all she needed, a little breathing room and her love for him would pass like a storm. She was lovesick, and it drove her mad. She could not compromise herself, she was all she had.

A/N: Made ya look.