It was Christmas Eve, and Sirius wanted to give James and Lily sometime together before Christmas dinner. Lily just found out that she was pregnant at the beginning of the month, and contrary to what Peter and Remus thought, he didn't need to always be connected the hip with James. So it's Christmas Eve, and he decides to head to Muggle London for a pint. The ale and beers they had over there were so much more interesting than on his side of the border.
She was dancing with some girlfriends. He'd learn later, after their night in bed together when the went to tea store around the corner from his flat for a cuppa, that she was finally celebrating her graduation, which came a semester early. He was confused why she was in school at 22, but remembered that Lily had explained University to him and her wish to attend it one day. But right then, all he could do was watch the swing of hips and the way the lights made her dark brown skin glow, and how when she looked up at him, her lips curved into the naughtiest, sexiest smirk he'd ever seen.
They gravitated towards each other, and spent the night dancing, and later, siting down on the terrace of the bar and chit-chatting through the night, until the bartender told them to go, and he asked her to his place. Really, it was a formality because they both knew they would be sleeping together that night. Not that there was much sleeping. And they were good together, so damn good.
They kept seeing each other for another month and half, but by then work and other obligations (the Order, the War, the Riots, the Law) made staying together an impossibility. The last night they were together, he held her close and kissed her sweetly and made love to her. It was the first, and only night they didn't use contraception. The morning after, he told her that he thought that she was wonderful, and that if they'd been able to work out, that he might have come to love her. She replied in agreement. Then he looked her in the eye and told her to take that job out of the country she'd been dithering about. England wasn't going to be safe for the foreseeable future. She didn't ask him how he knew that, simply kissed his cheeks and told him to be safe.
He thought about reaching out to her sometimes, but as the War ramped up, the thought of her coming back to England made his stomach knot up. Anything, even Italy, had to be better than the terror in here. Instead he wrote letters, and kept a journal that he wanted to give her. Maybe one day they would see each other again. If he lived out of all of this. Maybe he could tell her the truth.