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Sybil ran full pelt to the dungeons, and burst in through the door, panting from her efforts. To her delight, she had not missed any of the lesson, but to her great dismay, her usual seat, one over from the wall, with Lily beside her, was taken up by James Potter, trapping Lily between him and the cold grey bricks. Remus and Peter looked on at James' attempted seduction in amusement, while Sirius looked rather annoyed at having been flung aside so suddenly. Sybil dropped into the seat beside him, causing him to start.
"What's with that?" She asked in annoyance, pointing to the scene beside them. "Does he have no boundaries?"
"He's in love," Sirius defended, "Love has no boundaries!" surprised at this sudden speech from a boy, who had a lipstick marks on his collar, and a piece of male anatomy drawn on his parchment, captioned 'Snivellus'.
"Of course love has boundaries." Sybil, replied after a moment. "Love doesn't care whether you're with somebody else or not, love doesn't care about how you feel, love doesn't care about your family situation, love happens, and sometimes, if it's kind, it'll leave you be." Sirius turned on her, a strange kind of expression in his eyes.
"Being on the wrong end of love sucks royal hippogriff, yeah. But being in love in the best thing in the world. The pain is the only kind of pain that people will go back for time and time again. Being in love… it makes it all worthwhile."
"How would you know, mister hickey?" She snapped. He looked at her for a long moment, interrupted by Professor Slughorn's usual belly first routine into the classroom. She turned away from him, and after a minute, she realised he was still looking at her. When she looked back, he was facing the other way.
"Alright, let's do this thing!" She cried happily, moving her finger down the long list of ingredients necessary to create the potion commonly used to cure untamed hiccupping syndrome.
"Right, I'll grab these ones, and you get those, and we can get going!" She grinned at him and skipped over to the store cupboard and began rooting through it.
A few minutes later, she was chopping up aged mandrake root into precariously sized pieces, while Sirius was skinning a flobberworm with all the elegance and grace of a German jazz band.
"What are you doing to that poor thing?" she asked, horrified as the tail went flying and landed in Gilderoy's hair, causing him to shriek and squeal in terror.
"Skinning it!" Sirius snapped grumpily, relinquishing his grip and tossing his knife down on the board. "But if you'd rather do it-"
"Why are you having a go at me? What did I do?" She asked, leaping to her feet. He stared at her again, with that funny look in his eyes, and she frowned. "You're annoyed that James ditched you for a girl, aren't you?" she asked. The intensity of his gaze did not falter for a moment, until it softened visibly.
"Yeah," he muttered, "Yeah, that must be it." She smiled kindly and poked him in the stomach (with her finger, not the root-chopping knife).
"Well, we'll just have to be even more awesome to make up for it then, ey? Friends shouldn't ditch." He smiled briefly and nodded. "Now, you'd best go and get another flobberworm." She turned back to her roots and continued to work at them, humming 'Ave Maria' under breath, until she became aware that both Lily and James had ceased their work and were looking at her.
"What?" She asked, frowning.
"That was pitiful." James stated.
"Hey, Ave Maria is infamous for its high vocal range, and for an amateur, I though I did a pretty good job!"
"Not that, you dingbat, Sirius!" Lily interjected.
"Oh."
"Don't you see what just happened?"
"Yes!" She turned to James, "You shouldn't just up and ditch him because you rather be-"
"That's not what he was cross about!"
"Well than what?"
"What you said about him not knowing what it was like to be in love." She thought for a moment, taking this in.
"Really, I guess that might have been a bit harsh…"
At this point Sirius returned holding a recent flobberworm, in faint disgust.
"It looks like a muggle squishy toy. Only… slimy. And worm shaped."
"And it flobbers." Sybil put in, with a grin.
"…and three stirs counter-clockwise." Sirius read out of the book. Sybil followed his instructions, then set stirring rod down on the bench, and set about decanting the greeny-bluey metallic liquid into a small vial.
"Sirius," she began after a moment.
"Yeah?"
"We're friends, aren't we?" she asked, albeit a bit nervously. He frowned a little bit, his eyebrows crinkling cutely- shut up, Sybil!
"Course! Why?"
"I just, don't want you to think that I think that you're a total git, because of what I said before about you not knowing what love was like-"
"It's fine." He assured her quickly, waving it away. "It doesn't matter, honestly." She smiled, and felt a surge of relief.
"Oh, good." She felt a feeling of sincere relief spreading through her, and she nodded vigorously. Apparently sensing her nervousness, he pushed himself off the desk, and swept her into a bear hug. She giggled a bit, and after a quick moment, hugged him back timidly. Something in her stomach began tugging, and she felt weaker and more vulnerable than she had before, but in a good way. They broke apart, and grinned awkwardly at each other, before she continued sealing the vile holding their Hiccuping-serum.
"I'll take it." Sirius offered, gently grasping it, and wandering up to the front of the classroom.
"Psst!" Sybil turned to face Lily, who pointed to James, who made a slow motion demonstration of slapping his hand to his forehead. She frowned in confusion, and turned away, spotting Remus staring at her in a pained sort of way. She snapped her fingers at him.
"You, shut up."
"I didn't say anything!"
"You were thinking really loudly."
Sirius wasn't at dinner. He stomped forcefully up the stairs in a sweep of black Hogwarts robe, the second they reached the entrance hall. For some reason, this made Sybil feel quite odd, though she couldn't quite put her finger on why that was. Lunch was no better. She endured a rather long time of scolding, shrieking, agreeing on a topic from James and Lily ("You two actually agreed on something! You make a good team." "Do not!") and jesting from the aforementioned, not to mention her brother, Peter, Frank, Alice and Emelinne, all of which came to an abrupt halt when she was cornered by Gilderoy Lockheart.
"Well hello there, Miss Lupin." He drawled in a charming fashion. "That was quite a show, you put on in there!"
She looked at him as though he had grown two heads- which, with the amount of product he put in his hair would not be at all surprising, nor any stranger for him.
"What in the name of all things hol-"
"With Black!" He cried, giving her a cheeky wink. "Trying to make me jealous, were we?"
She spluttered in indignation.
"Have you gone completely and utterly barmy?"
"Oh, in denial then? Don't worry, my sweet, it'll all fall into place soon." And with that he walked away.
"He said-"
"Yes."
"He called you-"
"Yes."
"He thought that-"
"Yes."
"Is he completely-"
"Yes."
"You poor thing! That must have been awful!"
"Yes."
"Are you alright?"
"Y-no! I haven't stopped shuddering since! I'm in an eternal state of shudder! I think I involuntarily gagged! It's weird, it's creepy, it's just plain rude!"
"Syb-"
"It's presumptuous, it's insulting, it's discriminative, it's sexist-"
"Sybil-"
"It's patronising, it's condescending, it's awkward, it's disgusting-"
"Sybil-"
"I think I need to shower and get this day off me!"
"What's wrong, for the love of Merlin?!" James cried, taking a seat beside her in front of the common room fire.
"Uh-" Sybil choked out, before burying her face in her friend's shoulder.
"What?" He cried, clearly worried.
"She got hit on by Lockheart, today." Lily explained, causing Sybil to make a retching noise and shudder.
"Ew." James muttered, scrunching up his nose. "That's creepy."
"You reckon?" Lily cried sarcastically, "It's not just creepy, it's a complete disaster!" She threw her arms into the air and waved them around manically while she was speaking, then fell back into the chair dramatically.
"What's a disaster?" Asked Sirius, approaching their spot from behind, followed closely by Remus and Peter, while Alice and Emmeline trailed behind them after a moment, having noticed the gathering.
"Lockheart hit on Sybil."
A small wave of shock passed through the group, broken only by Alice and Emelinne bursting into a fit of giggles. The rest of the group swivelled around to stare at them.
"It's not funny!" Sybil cried, throwing her hands up in the air in aggravation. This however, only succeeded in making the duo laugh even harder. While the males cast mystified looks at each other, the decibel level of Alice and Emmeline laughs rose to pure shrieking.
"And, and, and, and, and, you can have his babies!" Alice burst out randomly, causing Emmeline to slide down onto the carpet, curling up into a ball of shaking mirth. "And one will be a boy, Gilderoy, of course, after his father." James piped up, "and the other will be Ginevera, also after her father-"
"And they'll both have blonde hair that they fuss over between classes, and flip all the time-"
"And you can floo them to junior Quidditch practice-"
"And they'll bawl every time the broom goes a metre off the ground-"
"And your house will pictures of him everywhere-"
"Signed by his legion of devoted fans-"
"And every night you'll brush his hair for him-"
"One hundred strokes before bed-"
"With his special dwarf beard hair brush-"
"While he puts on his face mask-"
This proved to be too much for- well- everybody, save she and Sirius, who watched in bemusement as everybody around them fell around in hysterics.
"Walk?" Sirius asked her, after a moment.
"God, yes."
The two of them bolted for the portrait hole.
The two of them strolled leisurely through the darkening grounds, exercising their later fifth year curfew.
"Would you like me to punch him?"
Sirius suddenly offered out of the blue. Sybil turned her head so fast her neck cracked, and it took a moment to realise whom he was speaking of.
"What? No! Thank you for the offer, but no violence!"
"Suit yourself."
After some silence, she threaded her arm through his, in a friendly gesture to ease the tension that had been brewing all day.
"Besides, his screams would probably bring the castle down." They both chuckled slightly, and continued their walk in companionable silence.
"So," Sirius began, "apart form Lockhart, anybody on your lurve list?"
"He's not on my-"
"Joking!"
"Oh."
There was a slightly awkward pause.
"Well?"
"Oh, erm, well, nobody really, at the moment."
"Really?" He asked, brow raised. "Nobody?"
"Well, not since that thing with Derek last year."
"Oh, the Hufflepuff kid?" Sirius asked, mildly interested.
"Yeah, we dated for a little while."
"That's interesting." He muttered, more to himself than her.
"Why?"
"I'd been wondering for a while why we sneaked into his room and stuffed his bed with firecrackers."
"That was you?!"
The two of them laughed and joked as they slowly made their way across the grounds. Unbeknownst to them, a lone figure was watching them from the Gryffindor common room window. He sighed heavily and moved away.
Now two of the people he cared most about had to be hurt.
Apologies for the wait! Thank you to all who have shown support and given me feedback, it means a lot :)
I hope you have enjoyed this one!
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