In Place of Her

A/N: I do not own Harry Potter, nor its characters. I just threw this together because the idea got in my head and wouldn't let go. Now we have an angsty Sirius. Have at thee.

In place of her.

That's all it really was.

That's all it ever really amounted to.

I can't say I didn't mind, can't say it hurt. Now it stings a little, looking back, but with age comes regret, and I can't help it. Lupin knew it was wrong, knew I was being used. He tried to tell me that. I laughed at him. I didn't care, not then. I was sixteen, young stupid and so desperate for anything that would amount to affection. Even now I'm like that...so's Lupin. We're just broken that way. Neither of us have had much love or affection in our lives. It's not very manly to say this, but we've needed love so badly, starved for it until we wound up like this. So broken. In the end it all fell apart, and left us here with nothing. Nothing

I can't remember just when I started gaining a reputation as a womanizer. I do recall that even when I'd first started at Hogwarts, every girl there thought I was the cutest wizard to arrive yet. It grew from there, I think, about the third year. Girls tried so hard to get to me. But I...I never had a real example of how I was supposed to treat them. I was young, stupid, abused and broken. They would give me what I wanted, gave me so much I thought was love. In the end it was almost always nothing. When they found I could not give them what they wanted...that I just did not know how to give them real affection or even commitment...they left. It built like a snowball down a slope–out of my control. It was a cycle I couldn't break. Looking back, I was so awful to all of them, even near the end. It was a wonder any of them stuck around for as long as they did. It was a wonder I had any friends at all.

That was James' fault. It really was. He was a beloved only child, pure-blooded and just that little bit arrogant. But he was so friendly. He'd never been hurt and twisted and poisoned. He had always been loved. He didn't know how to live without being cheerful and generally nice to the people he met. He tried so hard to fix me...and Lupin, and even Peter. He loved us all, and oh how he loved Lily. He did, and it was so easy to see. He crushed on her hard during our...fourth year, I think. It built after that, until it was love, and even she couldn't walk away from it. No-one, I think, could walk away from such open trust and commitment. He taught me what love was by loving her, and showed me how badly I'd been treating everyone around me.

Of course, it wasn't true love to begin with. It started out as a light noticing that the redhead over there had a very nice body, and flew like a comet. Weeks later it was a mild crush. Three months in it was an obsession. He pursued her avidly and relentlessly, like she was the Snitch he was after. She kept turning him down, again and again. People commented what a cool-headed boy he was, never seeming overly upset at her slighting him...but that was only because he had an outlet for those vicious frustrations he was capable of. Not much ruffled James, but when it did...well...you learned to duck. James was a very powerful wizard. He had a mean right hook, too.

I remember my first time. Everyone says you do, and I do. I don't remember her name. She was a thin slip of a girl, Ravenclaw, with blue eyes and curly brown hair. Neither of us knew what to do. It was awkward and anxious and stupid, but we did it anyway. I first had sex in one of Filch's stupid broom closets on the third floor an hour past curfew. She was my first, but she wasn't the last, not by any means. I'm a hedonist, I'll admit it. I love things that make me feel good. And after a little practise, sex was certainly a way to feel good. I never kept a tally of people I slept with. I don't even remember when I started sleeping with guys, too. I just did. I found I liked guys. I never spent time with them like I did girls, but I never said no to the occasional fling. I was never good with restraint. Still aren't.

I remember the first night it happened. We were just in our fifth year, two months into it, I think. James and I were in an unused classroom, getting drunk with a stolen bottle of whiskey. It was a Friday night. James and I were complaining about our women troubles. Lupin and Peter hadn't wanted to hear us whine, so they'd gone on to bed. James was working himself to a fever pitch, complaining about how Lily never even looked at him, how pretty she was, and how he was just going to go stark raving mad wanting to boink her. I don't really remember what we said–time and alcohol for you, don't drink and reminisce, kiddies–but somehow I offered to let him boink me instead. That shut him up. I remember how he stared at me. I was half-laughing, 'cause I didn't know how he was taking it. I figured in a minute he'd laugh it off. But he didn't. He just looked at me. Then he asked if I was serious. Age-old joke that it was, I told him yes. Then he leaned over and kissed me.

He was inexperienced. I was not. I was surprised. He was not. That was how I wound up flat on the floor, James sitting on me and kissing me so awkwardly I hardly knew what to think. And I laughed at him. He cursed at me, but affectionately like he always did. It took a little time and fumbling and a few more sips of whiskey, but before the night was out James was no virgin and I was sore as hell. I'd only bottomed once before, and found I didn't like it as much as I liked topping. But I'd offered to let James boink me, and so I bottomed. Every single time after that, too. It wasn't a one time thing. In fact, it lasted for quite a few years.

James was a little squeamish at first. I didn't blame him. But Lily was still ignoring him and James was a hot-blooded teenager. I was his friend and a willing outlet. Before half the school year was out, we'd gotten a routine. I was good with it. I'd gotten used to it. I slept with him and just about anything else that asked. I was easy, I'm almost ashamed to remember how easy. But near the end of our fifth year, things started changing. Lily started noticing James, allright...noticing him just enough to argue with him. I'd never managed to push James' buttons so well, not even arguing over Quidditch. He'd come away from those arguments steaming mad. It was after one of the early ones that he figured out how to lose that frustration.

It was just after a long day and a wearisome argument at dinner. James was fuming as he and I walked back to out tower. I was trying to get him to talk, get him out of his funk. He startled me when he grabbed me by the arm–it bruised afterwards–dragged me into the broom closet we'd been passing, shut the door behind us, pushed me up against the wall and did his damndest to kiss the hell out of me. After a little bit of well-deserved shock, I let him. I wasn't usually one to be passive, but I let him have his way. Before he'd always been hesitant...that night he was rough. I had bite-marks and bruises to hide for a week afterwards. That was just the first time.

After that, whenever they'd argue, I learned to be prepared to be ambushed, slung against the nearest hard surface and shagged senseless. Just after those arguments, he'd be rough, he'd bite and claw and hold me down tight enough to bruise. Every other time, however, he was careful enough, almost gentle, and sometimes it seemed he was trying to make up for what he'd done before. I didn't care. Sometimes it was close enough to abuse to scare me spitless, but I thought it away with knowing it was James and he would never seriously hurt me. He never did, not even when he was at his most furious. He never forced me. If I said no, which I did once or twice, it was no and he left me alone. That's more than I can say for others I've bedded in the past.

We were well into our sixth year before Lupin found us out. We were careless, I guess. Neither of us were thinking, James because he'd had a tiff with Lily and I because I never thought if I could help it. It was midday. Everyone else was down to lunch. I remember it clearly...remember it every time I hear that song. Peter's little radio had been left on, and even though it was a magic radio they were playing "Vertigo" by U2. The song brings back midday sunshine across the bed, hot across my bare skin and burning in my hair. My hair was long then–I cut it short after I left school during the war–but then it was past my shoulder-blades.

I don't remember when Lupin walked in. I was caught up in the rhythm and build of tension. The only thing I heard was the song, overlaid by my own noises and James hissing Lily's name over and over again. He did that every time. Always her name. I never said any names, though I was noisy enough. James always said I sounded like I was crying, sobbing, every time I got laid. Other people have said that, too, over the years. I never notice, though. I suppose that was what alarmed Lupin so much...or it could have been the bruises blooming on my back and hips. It wasn't until we were flat on the bed, sated and breathing hard in the sunshine, that I looked up through my hair and saw him.

"I can feel your love teaching me how...your love is teaching me how...how to kneel, kneel!" Those lines always bring back those shocked golden-brown eyes, staring at the two of use from a thin, white face. While Lupin was always pale, at that point the school ghosts had more colour than he did. I could tell when James looked up and saw him. Nothing phased James. While I was frozen in shock and dread, James merely flicked the sheets up over us both and asked Lupin what he wanted. Lupin stammered out something–I can't remember if it made any sense–and fled.

Later, he was quietly furious. He scolded both me and James, though separately. My lecture was about being loose and too easy and why didn't I ever say no, couldn't I see how I was being used and "oh Sirius I don't want to see you hurt by this please aren't you listening to me?" I wasn't, but I assured him I was and let him think we never did it again. James and I laughed about it, guiltily, half-knowing he was right but too young and stupid to really care. And we kept on. We kept doing it even after James started dating Lily. I think we stopped for two whole weeks–the length of time they went until their first quarrel as a couple. That night James snuck me out to the prefect's bathroom and gave me bruises that stayed blue for a solid week.

As far as I know, James never did sleep with Lily until their wedding night, as romantically old-fashioned as it was. He never slept with me again after that. Not even when they fought. It sank in, then, what Lupin had been trying to tell me. James had been using me, using me in place of her until he could get her. After that, I was no longer needed. We were still friends, of course, but the bond was weaker than it had been. I was more bitter than I had been. No-one really noticed, actually, because we were in the middle of a war and all rather preoccupied with staying alive. I pushed it away, stayed friends as best I could...then lost James and Lily both, got betrayed and sent to Azkaban all in one nice neat little month. I swear I hate Halloween. I hate Halloween nights with a perfect scythe-crescent waning moon. That's what the moon was like the night he–they were murdered.

That's what it's like tonight.

Damn.

I'm out of whiskey.