Chapter 10: Romance Flourishes under the Strangest of Circumstances

Sirius was depressed. He didn't grudge James the relationship he now shared with Lily, but he still missed his best friend. James was still up for a good prank or two, but only on those nights when Lily had decided that she needed to study on her own. When Lily was around, James just simply didn't have eyes for anyone else. Sirius was happy for his best friend, especially considering how long James had waited for this relationship to happen, but that didn't stop him from getting lonely. Remus was too good a kid to share in James and Sirius' usual activities, and Peter was too boring to have fun with them, so when James was with Lily Sirius had no choice but to be bored, very bored. He had taken to wandering around in a morose mood, prowling the corridors and looking for something, anything, to do.

He would even have been grateful for a good old fashioned fight with old Snivellus.

It was during one of these nighttime wanderings that Sirius found himself listening to a conversation he most certainly was not meant to hear. A conversation between Shannyn and the Ravenclaw keeper Jared Dent.

Jared was tall and lanky, with curly blond hair and startlingly blue eyes. He might have had quite a fan base among the female population if he hadn't freaked most of them out by third year. No one had actually accused him of doing anything wrong, but every time he dated a girl it would seem wonderful for a few days until they would all of the sudden break up, and the girl would be extremely quite and depressed for months. It was kind of eerie. Even Sirius, who had dated his fair share of the female population of Hogwarts, had not left so many disgruntled ex-girlfriends in his wake. Sirius was about to find out why this was.

Jared had Shannyn backed into a dark corner, his hands on either side of her, preventing her making any kind of escape.

"Come on, Shannyn. Why won't you go out with me?"

"I'm just not interested in you, Jared, as I told you the last six times you asked me out. It's nothing personal, I just don't really want that in my life right now…"

"Oh, come on baby, you know you would just love to go out with me."

"First of all, don't ever call me that. Second of all, I already told you no, several times, in fact."

Jared's hands grabbed Shannyn's shoulders, pinning her to the wall. Then he tried to forcibly kiss her, but Shannyn had her hands up, blocking her face.

"Jared! Get off of me!" She struggled with him for several more minutes. "Why would you even want to date me anyways, I'm not your usual type."

"Well, let's just say I like them pure. Gives me the thrill of breaking them…"

It was at this point that Sirius stumbled upon the not-so-pleasant conversation. He didn't need to hear more than that last line, followed my Shannyn's continued efforts to push Jared off of her, before he had his wand out. With a terrific bang Jared was blasted off of the brunette to land in a heap on the floor. But it wasn't Sirius who had acted. Even though she didn't have her wand out, Shannyn had repelled the boy on her own. But this didn't stop Sirius from getting angry, really angry.

"Stay away from her, you filthy pervert!" Sirius was in a rage. With every word he was shooting hexes at the crumpled form on the ground until Jared didn't look like a seventeen year old boy so much as a lab rat in the Ministry of Magic's Spell Creation Ward. When Sirius was satisfied that Jared would not be able to move in the near future, he lowered his wand and turned to look at Shannyn. She still stood in her corner, and she looked as if she would not be able to move on her own anytime soon.

"Shannyn?" Sirius walked over slowly. "Are you okay? Did he hurt you?"

She shook her head slightly as a single tear ran down her cheek. Sirius reached up and brushed it off with a finger. He had not even withdrawn his hand when Shannyn started shaking convulsively and then threw herself into Sirius' arms. He stood still for a split second, shocked and confused, and then he wrapped his arms around her. He stroked her hair and whispered,

"Don't worry, he can't hurt you. I'll make sure of that."

He held her there for several minutes, letting her calm down with her head buried deep into his chest, and when she didn't show any signs of calming down quickly, he leaned down, picked her easily up into his arms, and proceeded to carry her up to the seventh floor to a secret room where he knew she wouldn't be bothered. He deposited her on a couch, then retreated to a corner of the room and pulled a small mirror out of his pocket.

"James!" Sirius stood looking at his own reflection in the mirror for several minutes until the image suddenly morphed into that of James, looking slightly angry.

"Sirius! What are you bugging me for? You know I'm with…" James stopped at the look on Sirius' face. "Padfoot, what's wrong?"

"I'm fine, but you need to get Lily here, quick. Room of Requirements. Now."

"Okay, but why?"

"Just hurry."

Sirius put the mirror back into his pocket and began to pace up and down the room, listening to Shannyn sitting quietly on her couch, staring into the fire with a shocked look on her face. In about ten minutes the door was thrown open and James entered leading a thoroughly confused Lily by the hand. But when Lily saw Shannyn on the couch she immediately went to comfort her friend. James went to follow her, but Sirius stopped him.

"We should leave them alone." He said gruffly. James nodded and the two boys quietly left, leaving Lily to comfort her distraught friend. Once outside James turned to his friend.

"What happened, Padfoot? What's wrong with Shannyn?"

"You don't want to know, trust me."

"Is she going to be okay, do you think?"

"Oh, I'll see to that…" James didn't question anymore.

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The following morning, which was thankfully a Sunday, Sirius woke early, something he had never done before. He then grabbed his transfiguration book and headed down to the common room to 'study'. But this was just a pretext. Sirius never studied. What he was really doing was waiting for Shannyn to come down so that he could check on her. And he didn't have long to wait.

Maybe because she couldn't sleep, or maybe to avoid the crowds that would be around later, Shannyn headed down to get some breakfast at a relatively early hour. But when she saw Sirius sitting waiting for her she stopped, then walked up to him and sat down next to him, fidgeting with her hands.

"Sirius…" She fidgeted some more. "I just wanted to say thank you for… for last night…"

"Are you gonna be okay, Shann?"

"Yeah, I'll be alright. He didn't hurt me, just scared me."

"Good, cause I would have killed the jerk if he had hurt you." Shannyn smiled weakly at him. Then she froze. A gaggle of girls was coming down the staircase, chatting animatedly. Sirius could tell that she didn't want to face anyone right now.

"Do you want to head out to the grounds?" He asked gently. She nodded mutely, and he led her out of the castle, one arm wrapped protectively around her waist and the other hand clutching his wand. Shannyn smiled at the protective measures he was taking for her. Whatever his faults, and despite his constant desire to pull pranks and goof off, Sirius could not stand good people being truly hurt. He was a good kid, she thought to herself.

Once they were out of sight of the front doors Shannyn reached down and took his wand out of his tightly clenched fist and placed it back in his pocket. Then she took his hand in her own, causing Sirius to look down at her, a startled look in his eyes.

"You don't have to protect me anymore, but thank you anyways."

"I didn't have to protect you in the first place. In case you failed to notice, you were doing marvelously on your own." She grinned despite herself.

"I told you that you didn't want to see me get angry. But even though I may have repelled him, I'm not the cause of Jared Dent's numerous random appendage growths." Sirius let out a bark of laughter.

"Well, what can I say. I think it drastically improved his appearance. Besides, I was getting restless, needed to hex someone. And it is so much more fun to hex perverts than the random Slytherin." This time Shannyn laughed outright. "Glad to see you're back to your usual self, Shann. Life is so much more thrilling when I know you have to power to blast me half way across the room."

"Not quite my usual self." She gently corrected him. "After all, normally I wouldn't be walking hand in hand with the infamous Sirius Black. But what can a girl do. I guess I just realized that some boys are definitely more worthwhile than… others. And normally I would probably hex you if you tried to kiss me," Sirius head whipped around to stare at her in awe, "but today… who knows. I guess we'll just have to see." Sirius stopped walking and planted himself directly in front of her.

"Was that an invitation, Ms. Jones?" He asked, his voice going slightly husky and lower than normal.

"Well," she took a step towards him, cutting the distance between them down to mere inches, "maybe…" She reached up and fingered the chain that he wore around his neck, the chain had the charm of a sickle moon hanging from it. She knew all the Marauders had an identical charm about their necks. She played with the charm for several minutes, looking into Sirius' dark eyes, then she hooked her finger around the chain and drew Sirius down to her level.

Sirius, meanwhile, was slightly shocked. He was used to girls fawning over him, used to them putting the moves on him and flirting with him, but this was different. For one he didn't usually have this reaction to a girl flirting with him. He felt like his stomach had fallen out of his body. For another, this was Shannyn. It was Shannyn standing inches away from him. It was Shannyn looking into his eyes. It was Shannyn inviting him to kiss her and bringing him down to do so. And she had put her distinctive flavor in the gesture. She had brought him to her, but she would not kiss him herself, that was his job.

And so Sirius, throwing all confusing thoughts out of his head, closed the remaining inches to kiss the girl. And then he began to have an idea of what James was on to. Sure, he had kissed countless girls before, but there was something different about kissing a girl he actually cared for. There was something different about kissing Shannyn. Like maybe the fact that it was Shannyn.

A/N: I know that some of you may not like the way I brought these two together, but I wanted to bring Sirius' protective nature out so that Shannyn could see that he wasn't just a playboy who cared nothing about the people around him.

Thanks to LilyPotterGirl for pointing out the mistake in this chapter. It has been fixed!