A/N: All right, my faithful readers are going to say, "Really, Charlotte? You've started another one when you've got dozens unfinished?" Don't worry, guys, I'll finish them. If you've noticed, I've been quiet this summer. School was a big wake-up call this year, and I'm working on my focusing powers. I've been putting the vast majority of energy into my novella (on its third draft!) and novels, but my work w/ xyellowconverse has been moving forward at its typical pace and your reviews/alerts/messages/etc. are still the best way to give me a kick in the butt on a story you're wanting me to update! If there's no interest, I don't feel as urgent about it. I had this story in a dream the other night and I've spent all day outlining all 31 chapters, so if all goes well it'll be quick and over by the end of the summer! Wish me luck! I've even got plans for a sequel. First chapter is in Amy's POV.

-C

A/N UPDATE: Faithful readers, a lot has happened from when I started this chapter a year ago, including the conclusion of my story with xyellowconverse, which we are working on turning into a novel. My novella has been published, called Those We Trust, and can be found in paperback on Amazon and online anywhere ebooks are sold online. If you have questions, you can PM me. I've also outlined not only the sequel, but the third part as well. Enjoy!

-C

Sirius was glad it was over. It wasn't that Susan hadn't been a nice girl, but there were plenty of nice girls. There wasn't anything special about her. He needed someone special, someone spectacular. He needed…

"Hey, McKinnon!" he called to Marlene McKinnon, Lily Evans's best friend, who was by the window, studying. "Is Amy upstairs?"

"I guess so," she said with a shrug.

He grinned.

"Can you do me a favor and fetch her for me, then?"

Marlene glared at him, but she got up, went up the girls' staircase, and came back down several minutes later with her roommate, Sirius's friend, Amy McAuley.

/-/

I sighed when Sirius grabbed me by the wrist and dragged me upstairs. The jealous glares of many of the girls in the common room were ironic. They didn't really want to be me, but they certainly thought they did. I don't know what they thought I was doing in the Marauder's dormitory, but reality was certainly far less glamorous than whatever they had in mind.

I settled next to Remus on his bed because it was closest to the door and said, "How did you break it to Susan?"

Sirius shrugged and said, "The truth. I told her she's a great girl, but there wasn't any chemistry. She took it pretty well, I guess. It could have gone a lot worse."

Oh, I remembered. I always got dragged into Sirius's sordid love affairs. Usually, he didn't date girls who were half as nice as Susan Snow, and there was some ugly, public fight when it was all said and done and I had to defend him for weeks on end afterward for breaking another heart. Technically, I didn't have to, it wasn't my job, but as his friend I felt obligated to.

How I'd gotten stuck with the Marauders was anyone's guess. I'd made friends with Sirius and James quite early on, but I'd gotten closer to Remus than I was to James over the years, and in our seventh year even though James had cleaned up his act considerably and been appointed the supposed honor of Head Boy, I still went to Remus if I needed actual advice, knowing Sirius and James weren't hardly good for any.

Being friends with the Marauders had defined my life, as such situations often did, but they weren't the full extent of my life. In fact, my best friend and roommate, Sarah Kelly, really had little to do with the Marauders, for as explicable reasons as my own for being friends with them. It was just one of those things. They liked her fine, she liked them fine. It just never clicked as obviously.

There were things that kept the clicking from occurring, like her debilitating crush on Remus, but I didn't think it was the full story, adorable of a story though it was.

Certainly, being friends with Sirius and James had made life difficult in my dormitory. Lily Evans refused to speak to me very early on, and then it just became this ugly division between Lily and her best friend Marlene McKinnon, and Sarah, our friend Vanessa Brown, and me. There was an imaginary line in the midst of our dormitory that we didn't cross or Lily went a bit crazy.

Sarah, like me, had a very large family. Unlike my family, she had some brothers, and they were all equally capable of being their parent's pride and joy. She was pretty enough, although in a plain sort of way, and she was truly one of the sweetest, most tolerant people I'd met, judging by how she'd stood by me so long against Lily Evans, the queen bee of Hogwarts, in spite of her general lack of affection for James and Sirius, or perhaps because of her incredible affinity for Remus. Whatever the reason, I was grateful.

Vanessa was a stunning, pureblooded beauty from a reasonably old family that didn't have the good fortune of being particularly wealthy… anymore. A lot of the old families had lost a lot of gold as the generations went on. She would have been snobby, and honestly she had a bit of a thing for rich heirs to the wealthier family fortunes, but I'd never really thought of her as stuck-up. I did know, however, that one didn't want to be on her bad side, especially when it had to do with a boy. She'd dated Fabian Prewett in third year, when he'd been the best she'd been able to scrounge because he was an older pureblood, even if he was poor, and it would get her noticed, and the drama that surrounded that breakup the likes of Hogwarts had never seen prior or hence.

But the fact of the matter had nothing to do with Sarah, Vanessa, or Lily Evans. What was going on had to do with Sirius Black and his very obvious desire to find a replacement for the less-than ideal Susan Snow. Somehow, it was always my job to help. I hated it, but I did it with a smile.

"I need somebody else," Sirius said. "If I don't find somebody the vultures will get me."

That was a fairly true statement. The girls who obsessed over Sirius since he'd run away from home had decreased in number, but not ferocity. After all, he was still the most attractive bloke in England. Or at least, the most attractive bloke at Hogwarts, since that was all that could be reasonably proven.

"Hope Shapiro," Remus suggested. Sirius gave me a questioning look.

"Hufflepuff," I supplied. "Seventh year. Prefect–"

"Out."

"What about Melissa Benson?" Peter squeaked.

"Gryffindor," I sighed. "Fifth year. Blonde. Captain of the Gobstones team–"

"No thank you," Sirius said, wrinkling up his nose.

"Megan Miller's all right," James suggested.

"Captain of the Ravenclaw Quidditch team?" Sirius hissed. "Yeah, only if I want a Bludger to my head if I ever get in a fight with her. She runs that team like the Italian mafia!"

"Rose Sheppard," I suggested. "Hufflepuff, sixth year, redhead. She's pretty enough, I suppose. Very nice girl."

"She's also got a gap in her teeth," James pointed out.

"And she's failing Charms," Remus offered. "She's always in for tutoring."

"That's because she's got a crush on Gregory Bones," Peter squeaked. "I heard her discussing it with her friend Emma."

"Not her, then," Sirius sighed. He looked through the pictures of our shenanigans in the Gryffindor common room. "What about her?" he asked, circling a pretty young blonde in red and tossing me the photograph. She was certainly his type.

"Mallory McGrath," I sighed. "She's a fourth year."

"Nope, out of range, then," Sirius moaned.

"Lauren Wong," Remus said half-heartedly.

"No!" Sirius groaned. "She's a nerd."

"She's very pretty," I reminded him.

"And her parents will be expecting me to marry her if I date her and I'm not making that sort of a commitment, thank you," Sirius hissed. We laughed.

"Lucy Griffiths."

"I said no Ravenclaw Quidditch players, James!"

"What, they're shapely birds!"

"No!"

"Ashley Carroll is Lucy's friend, she's a lot nicer."

"She's a Prefect, Pete," I sighed. "She's no dice."

"Hannah Galvin," Remus suggested.

I laughed.

"What is it with you and Hufflepuffs, Remus?"

He flushed pink and said something about them being very nice girls and I sighed, "Anyway, she's a sixth year, has a thing for guys who play Quidditch. I reckon she'd date the Ravenclaw team if she ran out of blokes who'd take her. She's a bit fixated on Amos Diggory, if I remember correctly. I mean, they broke up, but…"

"Anyone who's willing to date Amos isn't getting anywhere near me," Sirius groaned. "Next."

"Emma Tibbetts," James said with a grin, sitting up.

"Gryffindor, sixth year," I recited. "You didn't want her last time because she's a gossip."

"You're right," he sighed. "I remember that now. She's out."

"Kara Madison," Peter said.

"Hair's too frizzy," Sirius snapped.

"Elisabeth Johnson," Remus suggested.

"No way," I snapped. "He dated her three years ago, remember?"

We all shuddered at the memory, Sirius breaking up with Elisabeth in the middle of the Great Hall and getting pudding in his hair for his troubles. Not to mention the fact that she was completely in denial about the whole point of the spectacle and literally went around for weeks trying to get him to see that they were perfect for each other and all that.

"Yeah, we're not going down that road again," James sighed. "She was a loony."

There was a collective moan of agreement.

I flopped back on Remus's bed and didn't bother to wrack my brain. The boys would come up with some solution, it was just my job to appear helpful and keep Sirius from making the really worst of mistakes. Remus rolled over and played with the ends of my long, brown hair. I'd been growing it out since fourth year, just for something to do. Remus liked to play with it, especially when the full moon was coming up, said it calmed him to have something to do with his hands, and he liked the way my hair felt in his fingers. It was nice to have someone play with my hair, actually. My older sister, Ashley Elizabeth, hadn't played with my hair since she left for Hogwarts when I was seven.

"I wish he'd stop this," I muttered to Remus, who just shrugged. Trying to change Sirius was like blowing against the wind and expecting it to change directions.

"I can't have dated every eligible girl in Hogwarts," Sirius growled. "There have to be other options."

"Trust me," I said with a sigh, "you haven't."

Either he didn't hear me or he didn't care, because he didn't respond in any way. Remus just chuckled softly.

"Yeah, that sucks," he muttered. Then he raised his voice. "You know, Sirius, you're going to run out of girls at this rate. Maybe you should slow down or something. Anyway, do we have to come up with a name right now? I'm tired and I've got to finish off your Transfiguration essay for tomorrow."

"No, we can finish this now," Sirius said urgently. "We've only got this one year left, Moony, and if I'm going to find somebody to spend at least some of it with or bust!"

"Some of it," I snorted. "You know, Sirius, call me nostalgic, but I remember a time when just hanging out with us was enough. What do those girls have that we don't?"

It was a trick question, of course, because he couldn't say anything about them as females without saying something I could claim was insulting, but it was fun to watch him flounder around a bit before deciding he was better off not giving an answer and moving on to something else. He just looked at me for a moment, trying to decide what to say, and finally he said, "Please don't tease me like that, Amy. Just help me, please?"

As annoying as the whole routine was, he did seem so pathetic that I didn't have much other choice.

"I've got it," James said with a grin. "Vanessa."

"Vanessa?" I asked, sitting up. "What Vanessa are you thinking?"

He frowned over at me.

"We know more than one Vanessa? You know, your buddy, Vanessa Brown."

I groaned.

"No. No way. Absolutely not."

Sirius frowned thoughtfully and said, "Why not? Is she a vampire or something? I thought Vanessa was a perfectly nice girl."

"Oh, she is," I said sweetly. "But I'm not going to appreciate you breaking the heart of and publically humiliating one of my only friends, not to mention a girl I have to live in the same room with for the rest of the year!"

"He doesn't always humiliate them publically," Remus said with a smirk. "The Susan thing was actually well on the considerate side. He might be learning, or it might have been a fluke."

Remus dodged the pillow that Sirius chucked at his head and the boys all laughed, but I didn't find it funny. Apart from other reasons, I thought I had made a perfectly good case for Sirius staying the hell away from Vanessa. It was like he had no idea, the damage he caused. It was maddening.

"Sirius," I sighed. "You know, it's not very fair of you to do this to me. It's not like I've dated any of your best friends."

"Easy," Sirius said with a grin. "James wouldn't have asked in a million years and Peter and Remus sort of let the girls come to them, which you're not going to do. You've not been on a date in your life!"

"Yeah, thanks for reminding me," I hissed, grabbing Remus's pillow and putting it over my face, ignoring Remus as he continued to play with my hair.

It wasn't that I hadn't been asked. Every time a guy asked me out, Sirius and the others (but mostly Sirius) would scare them away, and then they'd go into some big speech about why he wasn't good enough for me. If I didn't get some way to get Sirius to stay out of my love life, I was going to die alone.

"It's for your own protection, Amy," Sirius said confidently, though his voice was muffled through the pillow. "Trust me, I know what those guys want, and they're not taking advantage of my little Amy."

I scrunched my fingers into the pillow, fighting the urge to curse him or punch him in the face. I knew he didn't mean to be overprotective or condescending, the first was in his nature and the second had been beaten into him by his parents since birth. He had been the great Sirius Black, heir to the Black fortune. Condescending was just a part of his birthright.

Remus's fingers made their way up my hair as he played, getting closer to my scalp, which had an odd calming effect.

"I feel like working on James's love life would be a more productive use of our time," I said through the pillow, trying to change the subject.

It was harsh, I knew, but I just didn't like the idea of Vanessa with Sirius, and I was more willing to work on James's hopeless crush on Lily Evans than I was to face the fact that Sirius had decided to go after one of my best friends.

I had known it might happen eventually. After all, Sarah had had a crush on Remus for as long as I could remember. Having one of my closest friends dating a Marauder was something I had more or less come to terms with as an acceptable outcome, but with the Marauder as Sirius, it was a whole different kettle of fish.

"Amy, don't change the subject," Sirius said firmly. "Besides, we all know that's a lost cause."

"I'm not giving up, I told you!" James insisted. "I'm just changing my strategy!"

"You'd be better to give it up, mate," Sirius sighed. "But that's not the point. We're not talking about Prongs and Evans and whatever you want to label that fiasco; we're talking about me deciding that I like Vanessa and you being selfishly not okay with it!"

I sat bolt upright, snarling at him as I dropped the pillow to my lap. Sometimes Sirius had such nerve.

"Sirius, you just decided you would pursue her less than a minute ago after going through a dozen other girls!" I shrieked. "You can hardly call that liking someone! Forgive me, but you ruining my friendships and causing me more unnecessary drama in my life is also not what I would classify as selfish! I'm sick of you making me feel like the unreasonable one so that I let you get your way! I'm putting my foot down, Sirius. This isn't going to happen. I'm not your wingman on this disaster. You can use Peter or Remus or whomever the hell you please, but I want no part in this!"

Sirius just smirked and I wanted to claw those smirking lips off his face, but he didn't even have to say a word. He knew I was going to help him just like I knew I was going to help him and we were only having the fight because it made me feel a little bit better about always giving in to throw a bit of a hissy fit every so often, no matter how justified I was in being upset. The other boys just watched the tense staring match between the two of us and waited for me to say, like they all knew I would, that I would, in fact, be Sirius's wingman once more, in spite of my objections and even in spite of the fact that it would put me in a very awkward position when, not if, it all fell apart.

I was a sucker and we all knew it, but I was the only person in that room who knew why.

I was in love with Sirius Black.