[A/N] Welcome to the brainchild of duj's lovely prompt for my Choose Dare challenge drabbles. She spawned the lovely idea for a myriad (eventually) of short stories for the rarest of rare pairs. If you have any suggestions for such pairings, please let me know and I may make it in to a short story or a drabble! I would enjoy filling the cracks in the metaphorical pavement.
The original prompt was Scottish. Let me know what you think or what else you'd like to see! The short tales of Rita and Sirius may not be chronological but if you have an interaction you want from them, shoot me a PM or leave it in a review.
"If you believe for one moment, Miss Skeeter, that I will consent to your begging for an apprenticeship this time over all the other times you've barged into my office, then you've another thing coming!"
Sirius swore the door hinges were rattling from the force of his Head of Houses' Scottish brogue. He'd been, quite literally, stuck to the wall outside of Professor McGonagall's office by Madame Pince twenty minutes previously and it was obvious she'd been well into a lecture. After several instances on the receiving end of such vitriol he could tell McGonagall was well on her way to reaching her stride.
As he hung there his feet dangled above the cobblestone floor, the toes of the dirty trainers he'd borrowed from James scuffing just barely. If he'd not been bodily manhandled up there himself he would have laughed at anyone claiming the vulture could pin a fourteen year old boy high enough on the castle walls. Honestly, who could blame him for trying to turning Snivellus's greasy hair pink? The textbook explained the incantation and the wand movements well enough and Snape would grow his hair back in the hospital wing overnight, to be sure, just as greasy as before.
The office door violently opened, luckily for him smacking against the opposite wall from his temporary perch. A flurry of silky black robes attached to long golden curls brushed past him, promptly stopping a few steps from the open doorway to turn back to scream at Professor McGonagall in earnest.
"You're a fool, McGonagall! An old, shriveled up excuse of a witch who can't stand the idea of training someone who would surpass you!"
Miss Skeeter was a vision. Shrill? Yes. Angry? Undoubtedly. Beautiful? Quite.
Sirius crossed his arms and checked his nail beds as he waited for Professor McGonagall to notice him against her wall. Suaveness was difficult if you couldn't properly lean but Sirius was no novice. He relaxed as much as possible and chewed his Muggle stick of bubblegum. A particularly large bubble cracked in the silence when the two witches took a breath between bellows.
"Mister Black!" the Transfiguration Professor shrieked, the full force of her gaze on him in an instant.
"Minnie," Sirius replied cheekily as he cracked another bubble.
What sounded suspiciously like an involuntary chuckle escaped the painted red lips of the shaking apprentice-wannabe next to him. Her lips still trembled with suppressed angry tears but her spine was straight and the look in her eyes was almost grateful at the momentary distraction of the Deputy Head's acerbic attention.
"Detention!" Professor McGonagall's face was an unbecoming shade of red at the informal address and her voice lost none of its previous force. It seemed to be the only word she could manage at that moment towards him, correctly assessing the reason he'd been placed outside of her door. In the next blink her steely gaze returned to the young woman. "And you, Miss Skeeter, leave the Hogwarts premises immediately or I will enlist the assistance of whatever castle enchantments are within my power to toss you out the gates."
Throwing her arms above her head in utter exasperation the woman with sharp green eyes and golden hair all but sprinted down the hallway away from the odd tableau of Sirius pasted to the wall next to Professor McGonagall. The dressing down he received in her office barely registered in his memory among all the others he received before. Bright green eyes, even brighter than Lily's, continued to plague him long after Miss Skeeter's departure.