I'll bet you wish you weren't guilty

Just for a little bit to know what it feels like

Nova held perfectly still as Sirius lit the joint dangling from her lips. She wouldn't call her smoking a habit. She only did it when she was alone with Sirius, something to keep him pliable, to produce the feeling of kinship between them that she always tried so hard to maintain. She took a long, slow drag, holding the smoke in her lungs before passing the joint to Sirius. He took a similar drag.

As he moved the joint from his lips, Nova exhaled through her nose, the smoke billowing from her nostrils in the way she knew was sexy. He leaned just a little bit closer, exhaling mostly through his nose, just a little bit leaking from his barely-parted lips.

"What do you want to do today, starshine?"

She tried not to groan at the nickname she'd found so endearing before she hated him. Nova had asked him a dozen times to stop calling her starshine, but he didn't seem to care. Perhaps he was hoping that reminders of their happy memories would tilt the scales in his favor.

"Why don't we go to the owlery and feed owls?" she offered, desperate for some change of pace and too tired to remind him not to call her starshine.

They lingered in his dormitory for another twenty minutes, smoking the joint to completion together. Nova knew Sirius liked smoking with her because she became more lax with him. She allowed his fingertips to trace the skin on her belly where her shirt would ride up as they stretched out on his bed. She let him smell her hair. She let him get so much closer than he was normally allowed.

When she was sober, she convinced herself that it was a ruse, but when she was high she felt the pull of his closeness in a way she thought trumped all. Perhaps Remus was more right about it than she wanted to give him credit for. Perhaps she was having a harder time than she liked to believe in letting go of Sirius.

"We should change," Nova said, scrunching up her nose as she sat up. "We smell like pot."

"We could shower."

"I'm not showering with you, Sirius," Nova said sharply.

Even in the pleasant haze of the joint, Nova knew she had boundaries, knew there were lines she didn't want to cross with him.

They did change, though, and in front of each other and everything. Sirius stripped down to his boxers first and Nova felt her breath catch as she caught the familiar sight of his well-toned body, the skin she knew every inch of so well. Before she did something stupid, she turned away and pulled off her top. She shimmied out of her skirt and grabbed some of her things that she kept in Remus's trunk for just such occasions. Before she put on the fresh shirt but after she'd zipped up the new skirt, she turned to see Sirius gazing at her with hungry longing.

Nova paused, and she instantly regretted it. The sight of his longing had startled her, aroused her, and she remembered how easy it had been once to let that longing consume her. Sirius took a step toward her in the moment of hesitation, arm slightly outstretched, and she quickly came to herself, pulling on her top, turning away from him again, taking a few deep breaths to steady herself.

She was dancing a dangerously thin line with Sirius, but she saw no other way to do what she had to do.

"Right," Sirius said, clearing his throat a moment after. "Right, let's go to the owlery, then. Do you have treats?"

"They have them there," she reminded him tersely.

This wasn't going well. He could feel the tension, the wall building between them. She knew he would understand that he wasn't winning her over at all soon enough, and then she would be high and dry, trying to accomplish something that would be impossible if he caught on.

But Sirius opened the door for her and followed her down the stairs like that moment of desire hadn't happened.

Walking in the corridors with Sirius was a casual, comfortable thing to do, even after all that had happened between them. They didn't have to speak with each other, didn't have to do anything at all. They walked a little closer together when they were high than Nova would have permitted sober, but no one else would think a thing of it. Everyone thought that Nova and Sirius were incredibly good friends. So they walked fairly close together. So what?

That was the party line. She knew that Sirius's mind was likely still on the curve of her topless body, still imagining placing kisses on her skin.

They had just begun to descend the marble staircase to the entrance hall when Nova saw a girl she'd never spoken much to, a girl who was actually a Slytherin, but easily Nova's favorite Slytherin. Lauren Greene was their year, with long, dark hair and incredibly pale skin that allowed her to be almost pretty for a Slytherin girl in her year. Striking was perhaps a better word. Nova didn't feel pretty most days, but she always thought she was prettier than Lauren Greene.

"What's wrong?" Sirius asked when Nova froze on the staircase. He turned to follow her gaze, and when he saw Lauren Greene approaching the staircase from down the entrance hall he paled slightly. Even high, he knew that this could only put a damper on their short hours together. Nova knew that Lauren and Sirius were sleeping together, and he knew that she knew this. She liked to tease him about it when no one else was around, because she was the only person who knew he'd bedded a Slytherin. He was a bit ashamed of it, but that didn't stop him from it.

"Sirius!" Lauren said, blushing ever-so-slightly (Nova didn't think the girl's cheeks ever got pinker, though) as she glanced between Sirius and Nova. "I was just…."

"Catch me up, Sirius," Nova said, walking quickly down the marble steps. She could see, out of the corner of her eye as she passed Lauren that the girl had been blinking at her with a sort of pleasant surprise.

It certainly kept up the appearance that Nova was Sirius's closest friend other than James, that he told her everything. Nobody knew about Sirius and Lauren, and yet here Nova was giving them space.

"You told her?" she heard Lauren hiss as Nova turned the corner and stood just outside the heavy doors out of the castle.

Nova didn't know exactly what had happened to Lauren Greene, but she was a half-blood bastard child of some pureblooded man who was likely a Death Eater (because so few purebloods weren't anymore). She had to go to family events, but she didn't get treated with the sort of almost-respect pureblooded women did. Sirius had met her at such events, and was the only person who treated her kindly.

Because he knew, it seemed, that Lucius Malfoy had raped her not a week prior and that she would be easy to woo with kindness.

Sirius bought Lauren Greene paint supplies every holiday and birthday. Nova felt a bit bitter about that. He'd never remembered her birthday, never given her a thing on a holiday. Perhaps he took for granted that she loved him, that they had a normal relationship that was stronger than his petty bribes, but Nova had thought they were in love as well and people in love gave gifts.

He did not buy things for all of his girlfriends, so there had to be something about Lauren Greene. Nova had long suspected that it was their shared issues with their psychotic and dark families. Nova hadn't had an easy home life, but it was a different sort of hard from what Sirius and Lauren had grown up with, and perhaps Lauren was a sort of pet project for him.

Whatever affection might exist, if any, however, Nova knew for an absolute fact that Sirius did not love Lauren Greene, and she was almost certain that Lauren was dependent upon him. He'd done a few things to impress her in their early days of sleeping together, including using Dark Magic.

Nova's blood chilled slightly at the thought of that, using Dark Magic to impress a girl. He'd tried it once with Nova, during sex, tried using Dark Magic on her to increase her pleasure right up to the threshold of pain, but the look she had given him after he'd done it – rather successfully, actually – had made him swear up and down he would never try it again, that he didn't know it was Dark.

That he didn't know it was the sort of spell Dark Wizards perfected testing it on Muggles and Muggleborns under the direction of Grindelwald.

She had found out later that he used the spell regularly on Lauren, or had when he cared enough to impress her, and that he knew exactly what it was and how it worked and who invented it.

Sirius was not a Dark person, not in the way Lucius Malfoy so obviously was. He was adamantly not chasing after that part of his heritage. But Sirius was selfish, and enjoyed making use of whatever he had at his disposal to get what he wanted, damn the consequences. Nova thought there was something sinister about that, even if he couldn't see it.

He was taking his time with Lauren now; that was certain. Perhaps they had snuck into a broom cupboard. Nova sighed, taking a cigarette case from her bag and touching one of the carefully rolled joints she kept. Perhaps, to remind Sirius of whose attention he was trying to retain, she would smoke another with him after the owls. The thought actually made her feel a bit sick, but she knew that she would be unlikely to feel the nausea when she had weed in her system. She even toyed with the idea of smoking while waiting for him, but the front wall of the castle was too out in the open, and she didn't like smoking for something to do.

She instead closed her eyes and tried to think of nothing but the sun on her skin. It wasn't an especially warm sun, but it was a sun nonetheless, and that was something to be cherished in Scotland.

"Hey," Sirius's voice said after maybe another twenty minutes of waiting. "Sorry about that. She…. Yeah."

Nova rolled her eyes.

"C'mon," she demanded, leading the way on toward the owlery. Sirius didn't speak for a long time, and Nova preferred him that way. He followed her closely – too closely – up the slippery, narrow steps of the staircase until they could hear the owls and smell them even more keenly. Nova grabbed some treats from the box at the front, watching as Sirius followed suit, and then followed her into the center of the room.

Nova was not especially maternal or caring, but the owls responded well to her for some reason. Perhaps they had a kinship, the knowledge instinctively that they had both been used over and over and over again. Was that how owls felt? She hoped so. It made her feel much less awkward about what had happened earlier with Sirius, made her feel like she was doing this for a reason, a good reason, and a few slips here and there were nothing compared with the good she was doing by using Sirius right back.

"She likes that you know," Sirius said, bemused. "I don't understand why. She always wanted it to be such a secret."

With a chuckle, Nova fed a treat to a barn owl that had come to sit on her shoulder.

"Oh, Sirius," she sighed, feeling the strangeness of a beak nibbling lovingly at her hand. "Girls think that I'm special to you somehow, and that if you've told me about them, somehow I've approved of them and you're very intent on them."

Sirius moved a bit closer to her, and Nova could almost feel the warmth of his body surrounding her. She closed her eyes and remembered the way he'd looked at her in the dormitory. They'd had sex in the owlery before, and Nova kept telling herself that this wouldn't be the time to let herself break down.

"They're right about one thing," he said softly, touching her shoulder. "You're very, very important to me."

Her eyes snapped open again and she could feel the hatred bubbling up inside of her as she took a step away from him, moving to feed another owl. Sirius sighed with disappointment behind her, and she ignored him for a moment, gathering her thoughts. If she fought with him, it would push him away slightly, but if she did it carefully it might make him thing he had a chance…if circumstances were different. Before she could decide exactly how to frame her harsh words, though, Sirius stepped beside her and said, "Will you ever forgive me?"

She hadn't expected a question like that, hadn't expected it ever, actually. It caught her so off guard that she actually looked up at his eyes, is pained gray eyes, and she frowned slightly.

Of course she would never forgive him, not until the revenge was complete and he was too pathetic not to forgive. First he had to be punished. But she couldn't very well say that out loud.

"I don't know," she said softly. "I…. It's hard, Sirius. Sometimes, I can still hear your voice telling me all those things and…."

He nodded sharply, sternly.

"I'm an idiot," he said softly. "I'm an idiot and I know it. And maybe, maybe I could bring myself to say I'd change everything just to be with you again, and maybe I'd make you believe. Maybe I could even make me believe, for a little while, but I know it's not true. I am what I am, starshine, but it doesn't make me love you any less, doesn't make me need you any less. I wish I could just…just…. I wish we could just be together anyway."

Nova's lips twisted in agonizing anger.

"I'm not Amanda Denney."

Sirius cringed at the name, which gave Nova a stinging sense of satisfaction. He didn't really like Amanda Denney that much, either, not in the way he seemed to like Lauren Greene. Nova would never really understand what it was about Sirius, about why he couldn't just give up his philandering because he loved her. Should that be enough, love? Wasn't it enough?

But it wasn't. Sirius was right, he couldn't stop. She knew he'd tried, really and truly tried when they first split, but it hadn't even lasted a month. She could have been pleased, flattered that she meant that much to him.

She didn't have it in her to go easy on him for trying.

Smiling inwardly, desperate not to let him see how satisfied she was with the easiness of this moment, of how simple it was to make him feel whatever she wanted him to feel, Nova turned her head slightly and pressed her lips to his unshaven cheek. Her breath caught a little as he pressed his lips to her cheek in response, and they just stood there. She hoped he didn't notice how she had reacted as he kissed her skin, even in the almost-innocent way they were lingering.

They stood there for a long time, long enough for Sirius's arm to snake around her waist in a sort of hug, a warm and caring sort of hug that almost made Nova want to cry. She closed her eyes as she leaned into their cheek-kisses a little more, the sides of their faces pressed together with an almost-urgency. She could feel the cool of that summer night, of tears rolling down her cheeks as she did as she was told, too afraid to fight back, not sure what would happen if she just…didn't. If she just looked at her attacker with defiance and refused to do what he said.

Sirius had never treated her like that. Sirius had once or twice pushed more than she would have liked, but if she ever told him no, if she ever just stopped, he wouldn't have hurt her. He would never have struck her, never have killed her, and even with all she would do to him for his sins he would never strike back.

Sirius hurt her because he couldn't help himself, in ways that somehow hurt more than hands clasped tightly around her wrist and the pounding of fear for her life in her chest.

"Nova?" Sirius asked, backing away from her. "Nova, are you all right?"

She opened her eyes and looked up at him, feeling the sting of tears she hadn't noticed as they came unleashed from her lashes and began spilling down her cheeks. She didn't want him to see her like this. Not anymore. Not after what he'd done to her. But she didn't want Remus or Lily or anyone else to see her like this, either. She simply stared at him, feeling a strange choking in her throat, like something welling up, trying to get out, except nothing was there.

"I'm so, so sorry," Sirius muttered, kissing the tracks of tears gently, holding her in a hug as she cried. "I'm so sorry, starshine."

And it was all empty words, but the hugging was real. He wasn't apologizing for what really mattered, and what she was choking on wasn't his to apologize for. And anyway, Nova didn't think much of apologies.

They never got back what was lost, never returned what was stolen, and in the end she still could feel her body in that alleyway, between the brick outer walls of the houses, crying silent tears and saying goodbye to her life, just in case.