Author's Note:This is basically a complete rewrite of 'The Best I Ever Had' which was originally written for the Teachers' Lounge 'Hard, Loud & Fast' Challenge. Now it forms part of what has become a series of Sirius stories and does, in a way, turn the 'series' into a 'cycle'. If for some reason you hold a special place in your heart for the original version, message me and I'll be happy to send it to you.
Taken on its own, parts of this might not make complete sense. Taken in the context of my series of Sirius stories it is a prologue of sorts and does, I admit, fall into one of the worst clichés of romantic novels. But it also makes for symmetry. I apologise for none of that.
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All the characters you recognise belong to J.K. Rowling.
Nowadays the Moddey Dhoo insignia belongs to the Moddey Dhoo MCC, Ellan Vannin.
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Make Much of Time.
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In 1979, Sirius wears colours on his back, painted on to the dark leather of his jacket. With a nod to the old stories and to his own alter-ego, his insignia is a black dog; a Moddey-Dhoo. And like his heart, he shares it with no one.
He sits on a stool at the bar, nursing a Snakebite. The atmosphere is heavy with cigarette smoke and the pungent reek of burnt cannabis resin. In this club, the one they call 'World's End', the customers have forgotten—if they ever knew—that wizards and Muggles should not mix.
The band is loud. The lead singer's face is hidden in the shadow of a deep hood and the dirty bass-line hurts like an irregular heartbeat. It is more of a feeling than a sound. It lies on the floorboards; hangs in the air.
"Feel the darkness/ Comin' like a demon/ Cloaked in shadows falling/ From the sky-y
I can see you/ Devil in the starlight/ Carried on the wind, the question/ Tell me why-y
Well yeah, yeah yeah-
Here it comes,
Here comes the dark,
Here comes the dark,
Oh yeah."
Something about the words of this song unsettle Sirius, and it is a relief when a girl climbs on to the stool at his side, distracting him.
"Sirius Black. I was hoping you'd be here tonight." She is made-up, trying to look older than she is; but she keeps her head turned away from the barman and does not attempt to order a drink.
"Do I know you?" he asks.
"I doubt it. But I know you. It's my sixteenth birthday today."
She is pretty enough, in the way all sixteen year-old girls are. Appealing. She has nice eyes. Large, expressive, luminous. A shapely, determined mouth. She twists a curl of brown hair around her finger.
"Happy birthday." He climbs off his stool, takes her hand, lifts it to his lips and bows like a courtier. He can't help flirting, it is second nature to him. "Sweet sixteen and never been kissed?"
"I wouldn't say I've never been kissed. But as for the other thing"—A pink flush gathers in her cheeks, but she is bold—"I want you to be my first."
Sirius is wrong-footed. No one has ever approached him quite so directly before. He is more used to artifice and displays of blushing reluctance.
"Your first . . . what?" He is wary, fearing ridicule or retribution.
My first . . . time." Now there is a touch of embarrassment in her voice and Sirius feels more self-assured.
He leans in close. "Why me?" he growls into her ear and in the corner of his eye he sees that she licks her lips. He is used to the effect he can have on his lovers when he puts his mind to it, but this, unusually, sends a jolt straight to his cock.
"Because you've had a lot of practise. I don't want an amateur to pop my cherry. I've been told you know how to . . . bring a woman—off. Do you?"
As he shifts, finding his jeans unexpectedly tight, he wonders who in Hades she has been talking to. In the purest sense of the word, Sirius is an amateur for he loves what he does and he falls in love—albeit temporarily—when he does it. How this Muggle girl knows of his reputation is a mystery, but he is not surprised.
He is nineteen years old and has deflowered thirteen girls. Or possibly twelve. Emmeline had claimed to be a virgin but she had giggled more than he thought seemly, and even at the time he had doubted her veracity. In addition, Sirius has deflowered two boys. For himself, he was introduced to the pleasures of the flesh on the female side at the age of sixteen, by the then thirty-eight year old Marianne Pettigrew; and on the male side, one drunken Walpurgis Night a year earlier than that by his uncle Alphard.
Sirius is not one to bear grudges, but Alphard was increasingly consumed by guilt. Having written a will leaving, so he said, a prophecy in the Department of Mysteries, and his considerable estate (apart from the cottage in Staffordshire and the Muggle motor car) to his oldest nephew, he had proceeded to jump off the cliff at Beachy Head.
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Reflectively, Sirius observes the girl and rolls a cigarette. Now that he is rich, he can well afford to buy as many packets of Silk Cut as he wants. But he likes the little skill—the manual dexterity—it takes to roll his own. He lights it with the end of his wand; an affectation his friend James mocks mercilessly, but in which Sirius persists. He brushes his long hair out of his eyes and narrows them against the stinging smoke. The girl meets his gaze without shame.
"All right. Come with me." He takes her hand. Although he is a stranger to physical work the hard calluses that have been on the palms of his hands since Padfoot became a part of him scrape against her fingers.
Sirius slips a Galleon to the barman in return for privacy and leads the girl up a narrow flight of stairs behind the bar to a room where crates of Butterbeer and Ogden's Old Firewhisky are stacked. He closes the door behind them and with her back to it, he puts his hands on each side of the door frame, trapping her in the enclosure of his arms.
"Sure?"
She nods once. "Sure."
He bends his head, brushing her lips with his. She was telling the truth when she told him she has kissed before. She knows how to do it and proves it, holding his face in her hands and bringing him closer. She nips at his lower lip and sucks his tongue into her mouth.
As he undresses her, he is deft, sure, confident. Her breasts are pale hills on the landscape of her body. Small, but swelling with the promise of the woman to come. He kisses the tips and runs a damp line between them with his tongue, while his practised fingers are busy elsewhere. The words of a long-dead poet come to mind and against her delicate skin he breathes, "Behold that circummortal purity."
There, he can feel it. Her hymen.
She lets out a sharp gasp of discomfort.
"Ssh." He kisses the corner of her mouth. "That's it, Done."
"What?" she hisses. "What do you mean, that's it?"
"Well," he says, "technically speaking, you're not a virgin any more."
"Buggering hell, Black! You know that's not what I meant."
"Ah," he teases. "You mean you want to go all the way? You should have said."
Wizards are old fashioned. They have, thinks Sirius, a rather regressive view of premarital sexual activity. Muggles, in his opinion, are more enlightened. He takes a little foil package out of the tiny pocket on the front of his Muggle jeans; designed, he supposes, for exactly that purpose. He pauses and holds it out on the palm of his hand. "Are you still sure?" he asks. "I've only got this one. I don't want to waste it.
"Oh, I'm still sure," she says, and licks her lips again.
"It's a two way street you know," says Sirius. He takes her hand and holds it against the front of his jeans. Her smile is so sweet it takes his breath away. She is not shy, she is curious and does not hesitate. When he gasps, she asks if that is what he likes. And when—unable to speak—he nods, she does it again.
He finds his voice and his words describe his actions. "License my roving hands," he murmurs to her, ". . . and let them go. Before. Behind. Between. Above . . . Below."
She moans and twists her hands into his hair. "Enough poetry!" she rasps. "Do it now!"
So he does, lifting her up before him so she can wrap her legs around his waist. In a few minutes he shouts in pleasure, unable to help himself, knowing that she is close but not quite there. That would have been too much to hope for the first time. But for now she is panting and nearly weeping with frustration.
"I haven't finished yet," he reassures her, and dots light kisses from her breasts, down over the gentle curve of her abdomen and lower still, to the secret hidden place where she smells like honey but tastes of the ocean. He know what he is doing. He was always a fast learner when he wanted to be. She trembles and cries out. "Sirius!"
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Afterwards, he rests his head on her belly, listening as the beating of her heart slows and steadies, then lifts his face to look at her. Her eyes are still glazed and half closed. He runs a thumb down the side of her soft cheek.
She smiles at him in a way that makes his chest contract and strokes his hair away from his face. "Thank you" she whispers.
"Are you sore?"
She shifts thoughtfully. "A bit."
"Get dressed," he says. "I'll take your mind off it."
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"Come with me." He takes her hand, and leads her downstairs and outside into the chilly night. "Let's take a ride."
"On your motorbike? But I haven't got a helmet."
"You won't need one where we're going."
She climbs on behind him. "Put your arms round me," he says.
"I'll throw you off balance," she protests.
"No you won't." He is insistent. "Hold on to me." And she does. Her arms are warm around his waist, her breasts soft on his back.
She shrieks with fear at first but then a ripple of delighted laughter washes over his scalp. The sky overhead is pale and bruised with clouds. He flies above the road, following as it winds like a river of silver towards the city, which sprawls, untidy, like a million toy bricks strewn on to the carpet of the Home Counties.
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When he lands the motorbike and rides it conventionally into the car park at the World's End, someone is waiting for them, arms folded, face dark with anger and relief.
Sirius knows him. A couple of years older and not as tall as Sirius, but more powerfully built, he is a member of the Order to which Sirius himself has only recently been admitted.
"Buggeration!" says the girl, climbing off the bike. "It's my brother."
"You could have mentioned you were his sister!" Sirius says. He is mightily pissed off. Fighting among members of the Order is much disapproved of.
"Leave him to me," she says firmly. "I can handle him."
Sirius has his doubts. The girl's brother is furious and reckless with anxiety. "Where have you been?" he shouts. "What in Merlin's name have you done? His fists are clenched by his sides. Sirius has seen those fists in action and has no desire to feel them turned on his own pretty face.
"If you've hurt her, Black! If you've bloody hurt her, I'll—!"
The girl takes her brother's arm. "I'm fine, Ben." Her voice is clear, musical, soothing. It makes Sirius tingle. Padfoot would like her. "Sirius just took me out on his motorbike. No harm done, I promise." She turns the full power of her smile and ingenuous gaze to her brother and the anger dissipates from his face.
"Hestia's here," says the girl. "She was by the bar earlier, talking to Sue. She asked after you. I said you would be here tonight and she looked pleased. Why don't we go and find her?"
She starts to guide her brother back towards the bar without another word to Sirius who finds himself offended at being ignored and oddly reluctant to see her go.
"Wait!" He follows them. "Will I see you again?"
He sees the casual shrug of her shoulders. "Who knows?" she says without turning round. "One day. Maybe."
He stops walking. She keeps moving.
"Hey!" Sirius calls. "I don't even know your name!"
She turns to face him but keeps walking backwards, away from him. She shouts something but the band is too loud and he must have misheard, because no one is called Jewels.
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'Gather ye rose-buds while ye may, Old Time is still a-flying; And this same flower that smiles today, Tomorrow will be dying.'
(Excerpt from "To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time" by Robert Herrick)
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