Twigs snapping underfoot alerted her to the presence of another visitor. She stayed where she was, not moving her eyes from the head stones before her.
"You're early." He observed.
"You're late."
She inhaled and turned around, smiling at the sight of her dearest brother.
He opened his arms and she walked into them, relishing his familiar shape, scent and heartbeat.
"I've missed you, Sybil."
"You too Remus." They broke apart and smiled at each other. He looked shabbier than ever, and his hair was greying far too early for a man of merely thirty eight, but she was proud of him all the same.
"I wish you'd let me buy you a new pair of robes."
"Put it on your Christmas list, then." They smiled, and turned back to the grave, Sybil crossing around it to face her brother. Rain was dripping insistently from overhead, dropping obnoxiously onto her face, and down her nose, despite the hanging hood of her cloak.
"So, it's been twelve years, then, eh?" He asked, his voice bare of its previous warmth.
"Our numbers have dropped something drastic since."
"The span of two days, and they were all gone." She laughed bitterly in response, and produced a bunch of lilies from the folds of her cloak, arranging them bossily on the damp earth.
"Why is it, that you always bring lilies, yet she hated it when people gave them to her?"
"Because they're still her favourite- James' too." Remus simply nodded.
"Any news on Harry, then?" She asked.
"At his friends' house."
"The Weasley's?"
"They're the ones." He paused for a moment, as though in mental debate. "I've got a job at the school." She whipped her head up.
"When?"
"Last week. Dumbledore wrote to me, asking me specifically."
"But-"
"He'll deal with my time of the month." She grinned.
"That hasn't been funny for years, dear."
"Yet you smile." They chuckled, then drifted their gazes down to the ground again, and returned to solemness. "I'll watch out for him."
"Good. You get Lucius' son, but."
"I'll fail him."
"I hope so."
"What about Severus?" This made Remus pause, thoughtfully.
"I'll deal with it."
They lapsed into companionable, respectful silence once more, listening to the patter of rain on the dirt around them. After some courage building from Remus, he finally asked, "Have you heard?"
"About?"
"Him." Her breathing hitched and became erratic, and then she nodded.
"I suppose you still think him guilty." She asked, after the longest of pauses.
"I suppose you still think him innocent." She snapped her head up look at him. "I think it, because it is true. I loved that man, Remus. I know you find it difficult to believe, but I know within my heart that he would never do what he has be imprisoned for."
"Don't bite my head off, woman! I know that you feel that way, and I respect your opinions, but now is not the time to argue about it, not over them." He said, finishing his sentence in a hiss. She nodded, and stared at her feet. After the longest of pauses, he asked, "But you've never doubted?" She shook her head.
"Never."
After some minutes, he laughed sadly, and she looked up at him.
"What?" She asked.
"Do you remember, when we all became friends?" A smile played over her lips, and she hugged her cloak tighter around her.
"…bloody Remus, with his bloody woman, stupid hag…" Sybil muttered as she pulled her trunk, with effort, down the aisles of the Hogwarts express, attempting to seek an empty carriage in which she could wait for Lily to finish her prefect duties, and read about the exploits of Lizzy and Mr Darcy. Again. "I'm a prefect and I'm so superior, I can skive off early and chew Fiona's face off!" she muttered in a terrible imitation of him. Younger students ducked out of her path as they usually did when she was raging, so it came as quite a surprise, to say the least, when she felt her legs being swept out from under her, headed in the direction of the corridor roof, and her eyes becoming level with James Potter's kneed.
"What in the name of sanity just happened?" She cried, lashing out at him with her fists, but succeeding in only swinging by her feet.
"B-but-" James stuttered in surprise. Sybil rolled her eyes, then shrieked, when she realised that the skirt of her pretty floral summer dress was hanging in the same direction of her wildly untamed brown curls, and she abandoned her task of attacking James to rectify this, earning a few wolf whistles from some particularly rowdy Hufflepuffs.
"OH, BITE ME!" She shouted angrily, and squirmed about.
"But it was only meant to work when Remus went past!" James protested, finally having found his voice.
"Well, you did a very good job then dearie, you only missed by one Lupin!" She snarled. Peter scuttled out behind James.
"Moony's going to kill us!" he asked, in a simpery little voice.
"Yes, Remus will, unless he's to preoccupied with his precious Fiona, and I do not wish to know what happened for him to gain that nickname, not get me down!" She shouted.
"James!" Scolded a deep voice from the compartment which Peter had emerged from. "She's Moony's sister, let her down for god's sake!" James nodded and retrieved his wand, pointing it at her feet-
"ARE YOU MAD, MAN?" She cried. "I DON'T WANT TO LAND ON MY HEAD!" At this point, the deep voice emerged from the compartment, revealing Sirius Black, who reached up to the ceiling for her ankles, while James gripped her shoulders, and the two tall boys flipped her around, setting her roughly back on her feet, causing her to stumble.
"Thank you." She said, once her breathing had aligned.
"Sorry about that, we're working through the technicalities now." Sirius apologised conversationally, leaning against the train window.
"They're planning on using it on-"
"Severus, I figured." Sybil interrupted, rolling her eyes.
"How did you-"
"It wasn't such a difficult leap." She snapped, fixing her hair in an irritated fashion. She was in the same year as these boys, who had been driving her mad for four years. Not only did they insist upon picking on her and Lily's friend Severus, but they enjoyed disrupting classes and dipping twelve year old Sybil's pigtails in ink bottles in Transfiguration. Not to mention that she had been completely in love with Sirius Black in third year, and spent the rest of the fourth completely mortified of being in love with her brother's best friend, and the biggest womanizer in their year. The last thing she needed this morning was these idiots. After a sizable awkward silence, she exhaled loudly. "I'm sorry, that was a bit harsh. Just in a bad mood today, and your antics didn't help it along." She smiled and began re packing her satchel that had burst open when it swung off her shoulder.
"What happened?" James asked, banding down to help her pick up her stuff, while in the background, Sirius began knuckle-rubbing Peter's head.
"Oh, it's just a bit silly. Remus and Lily both ditched me for prefect duties, and Severus is with Mulciber again, who apparently 'isn't that bad', and this morning our father was being really weird and clingy." She unburdened, stuffing a slightly more battered Pride and Prejudice into her bag. "Thank you." She told James, smiling as she stood up.
"Well, I'd better head off, I need to wait for Lily to find me-"
"You can sit with us, if you like." James blurted out, the offer sounding like one big word. She smiled.
"You really are desperate, aren't you?" He inspected his feet with rosy cheeks, and nodded. She laughed slightly at his awkwardness, and sighed dramatically. "Well, I suppose you've been nice enough to me today- I think I can look aside from your prattishness and assist you in seducing my best friend for a while." Before he realized what she'd said, she'd gripped the handle of her trunk and pulled it inside the compartment.
LINE BREAK
"Silly boys…" She muttered, smiling with fond sentiment, as she recalled what happened next.
She pulled her wand out of her bag, and went to send the trunk onto the luggage rack, when a muscular arm reached past her and hoisted it up for her. For an instant, she smelt something… hair product, violets and… frying mushrooms? But then it faded, the moment passed, and she smiled her thanks at Sirius Black. Oddly enough, this was the most attention he'd paid her since their ink bottle days. Sitting in the corner, beside the window, she pulled the battered copy of Pride and Prejudice from her satchel and opened it, while the boys began a torrent of jokes and insults back and forth between each other, and mostly ignoring her. After a few minutes, she heard Lily's name, and her head snapped up, she was nowhere in sight, so she turned to the boys, with a questioning look on her face. On the same side as her, with a seat between them, Sirius was laughing with a cruel twinge- the laugh of a teaser, while Peter rolled around next to James in hysterics, the latter having his eyes directed at his shoes. She smiled and leaned towards him, grasping his hand in consolation.
"If you ask me, you need to stop acting like a prat." Suddenly all eyes were on her in a frozen shock. Was defender of Lily Evans, the annoyed unwanted advance-ee giving James advice, on how to make those advances wanted? "She can't stand you when you act like an arrogant jerk. If you ever want to go out with her, you need her to stop hating you, for a start." She leaned back, and continued to read, and after a moment, realised that they were staring at her.
"What?" She asked innocently. "She tells me things." After another moment's silence, James asked,
"What sort of things?" She glanced up from the exploits of Mr Collins.
"Ah, ah, you don't get to cheat." And with that she went back to her book. After a while the familiar call was, and the lady with the sweet trolley arrived. Sybil stood and made her way to the door and after a moment, she realised that Sirius was a step behind her, she slowed, and they fell into step together. From the side, she couldn't help but admire his muscular arms, curly dark hair and strong profile, and the scent of her favourite things filled her nose again. But she mentally slapped herself and scolded herself to stay out of it- if he wasn't the biggest womaniser she'd ever met, she didn't know what.
"So, where's Remus?" He asked after a moment. "He wasn't with you, and it's not his man period-"
She stopped walking and spun about to face him.
"You know?" She asked shrilly. He looked vaguely mystified at her outburst, but nodded all the same.
"Yes, it wasn't to difficult to figure out. He knows we know, but." After a moment, she nodded.
"I'm sorry, I just get a bit protective sometimes." He smiled and offered her his arm, which she accepted tentatively. After a moment, she responded. "To answer your question, yes, I knew where he is. He's down the other end of the train with Fiona." She said, mocking the name with an animated voice.
"Fiona?" Sirius asked, suddenly alert. "The Ravenclaw girl?" She nodded glumly.
"It's been going on all summer. He's always talking about Fiona, or writing to Fiona, or meeting up with Fiona, and he never thinks about anything else, and gets touchy when you ask him why Fiona's so great anyway." She shuddered. "It's downright irritating, especially when she's a right old cow and he can't see-"
"Language please dear." The trolley lady warned, and she smiled apologetically.
The carriage door was ripped open with a violent rattle, and Sybil shrank slightly under the evil glare of two people who were very cross indeed.
"Sybil." Lily and Remus scolded in unison. She imagined Lily was cross because of her choice of fellow compartment dwellers, and Remus, because… well Sirius was sitting beside her now. Before anything could come of this, Sirius, James and Peter all simultaneously leaped on Remus, sending him stumbling back into the train window on the other side of the corridor. Lily rolled her eyes, and plopped smartly on James' vacated seat.
"What's up with this?" She asked.
"Great to see you too Lily, I love your hair Lily, nice job, prefect!" Sybil cried in mock joy.
"Sybil…"
"They pulled a prank on me intended for my brother, and then they asked if I would sit with them, and I accepted, because the other compartments are full of people gossiping about him." She said, pointing to Sirius, and ignoring the tiniest of pangs in her stomach. Of what it was a pang of she wasn't sure, but it was not a pleasant pang, that was certain. At this Sirius extracted himself from the bundle of testosterone, and leant against the compartment door.
"They just can't help it." He said cockily. Sybil rolled her eyes in a similar fashion to Lily, but Sybil couldn't help but smile once more.
"Something amuse, you, Lupin?" he asked striding towards her playfully.
"Nothing concerning you, Black." She replied in a similar tone. A grin formed on his handsome face.
"Oh, we'll see about that." And in a moment, he'd scooped her up, and thrown her over his shoulder, and began spinning around very quickly indeed.
"Black!" She shouted between bursts of laughter. "Put me down before you hurt somebody!"
"Padfoot, put my sister down, now." Came Remus' most serious tone. Sirius quickly stopped spinning and set her down lightly, both of them stumbling slightly. They fell back into their seats, and erupted into fits of laughter. Remus looked at them with a pained expression, but said nothing, and perched down on the other side of Sirius in silence. From across the cabin, she could hear James talking.
"Hello there, Lily-flower, come to visit me?" Lily shot a glare at Sybil, as if to say, 'You so owe me.'
Sybil's smile slowly faded, but her mood did not. And for some ungodly reason, sitting next to Sirius Black made a newfound tremble go down her spine…
Sybil was tucked away in her corner, while Lily and Remus played chess, and James and Peter talked. After a moment, she realised that Sirius was leaning over her shoulder.
"Something I can help you with?" She asked, in slight annoyance. He blushed slightly and backed up a bit- that was certainly not the infamous Sirius Black- tough guy and badass. Blushing?
"I'm sorry to interrupt, I know it's annoying when people do that…" he muttered. "Just… is that a muggle book?" He asked, somewhat curiously. She smiled a bit, and closed it.
"Yes it is- and one of the greatest, at that." He ogled it for a moment, then mumbled.
"I've never read a muggle book before- never been allowed to." She stared at him in amazement for a moment, the asked,
"How fast do you read?"
"About two a week." She looked at him, then hauled her trunk down and opened it, gaining everybody's attention. From the pocket inside the lid, she pulled out several books, and piled them into his arms.
"There's The Fellowship of the Ring, Sherlock Holmes, a few Georgette Heyer's – they're a bit girlie though, and the Magic Faraway Tree." She pulled her uniform from her trunk while it was open.
"See how you go with those, then come and get some more if you like them."
Lily, having also acquired her robes left the compartment with Sybil, both of them ignoring Remus complaining that Sybil had stolen his books, and made their was to the restrooms.
"Syb, did I just see correctly?" Lily asked in mock amazement. "Were my eyes deceiving me?" Sybil shot her an annoyed look. "Or did you just lend your books? To Sirius Black, or all people?" Sybil sped up her pace. "You never you're your books unless you absolutely trust the person-" she continued, before suddenly bursting out into song "Someone's got a crush, someone's got a crush, someone's got a crush-" She sang.
"Lily!" Sybil cried, gently grasping her best friend's arm. "I just properly met him a few hours ago! Not to mention he's the biggest man whore ever!"
"Except for the great wizard that I did my essay on last year for the history of magic!" Lily protested. "Manfred the Man-whore! The title was The Biggest Man Whore Ever!"
"And what, in that essay, did you get marked down for?" Sybil asked. Lily hung her head.
"The title." She muttered, miserably.
"That's right. If I had a crush on Sirius Black, my life would lose goodness how many marks, not to mention that Remus would hate it- oh!" She cried in dawning comprehension. "I just got that nickname!"
Slight edit of the original! New update tonight Xx