Holly didn't take Astronomy anymore, so she'd never actually been up in that tower, but Sirius knew where he was going - whether from classes or other nighttime exploits, possibly both, she didn't know. Holding her hand, he pulled her gently up the winding staircase until they emerged at the top of the tower, their faces immediately hit with a freezing wind.

"Aaah!" she cried, retreating back inside and shielding herself from the wind with her cloak as her blonde curls flew around her head. "Why did you bring me up here? It's so cold!" She tried to turn away and go back inside the tower, but Sirius caught her shoulder.

"It's not that bad, Hols. We can always huddle for warmth," Sirius said, wrapping his arms around her and holding her close. She always liked it when he hugged her like this, so his arms almost went all the way around her. It made her feel safe.

Holly tipped her head back and looked up at his smug expression. "You are insufferable," she said, but she didn't mean it. Slowly they left the shelter of the tower and sat down on the floor, leaving the door slightly ajar. Lower down, the battlements shielded them from the worst of the wind, and they sat together comfortably. After a few minutes Holly shifted inside her cloak, turning on her side and lighting her wand so she could look at Sirius, even if he was still half in shadow. "So," she began, "are you going to tell me why you have an Invisibility Cloak at your disposal?"

He stared at her, hesitating for a second before letting out a long breath. "It's not actually mine, it's James's. He inherited it."

"Can I see it?" She put out her free hand and Sirius gave her the bundle of slippery cloth. She passed it between her fingers, marvelling at the texture. "It's beautiful…" She bundled the cloak around her hand, watching it vanish before her eyes.

"Yeah, I suppose it is. James has had it for years, I don't know how long it's been in his family. Don't tell anyone we've got it, will you? I mean, we don't do any harm, we mainly use it for stealing stuff from the kitchens."

"And sneaking up on defenceless women in the corridors?" Holly asked, looking at him with one raised eyebrow and a smirk on her face.

He laughed. "Yeah, okay, you got me there - but you are hardly defenceless." He took the cloak off her and tucked it out of sight, then pulled her close again. His body was warm, and she relaxed against him easily, extinguishing the light of her wand as they looked up at the sky, which was clear of clouds, illuminated by stars but no moon. Sirius lifted his hand and pointed upwards, outlining a constellation with his fingertip. When he spoke, his voice was deeper and more professorial, as if he were lecturing a class. "There we have Orion the hunter, my middle namesake, although he doesn't look anything like a man, in my opinion. And if you go down here -" His fingers moved south west, circling a different, smaller constellation "-you'll find Canis Major, home of my other namesake, Sirius, the Dog Star. The brightest star in the sky."

"So...you are a dog and a hunter?" Holly said, smiling.

"What's wrong with that?" Sirius switched back to his own voice, affronted.

"I didn't say there was anything wrong with it. It could be worse; I'm not named after a star, just a plant. My sister got the pretty spring flower, and I am stuck with something green and prickly."

"Green and prickly means you're tough," Sirius reassured her, twirling one of her curls between his fingers. "Green and prickly doesn't take shit from her soft and delicate sister who doesn't know anything about surviving the winter."

"You're stretching the metaphor a bit thin," Holly commented.

"My point," Sirius said emphatically, "is that I can't believe your bitch of a sister doesn't believe in you. She doesn't know half of what you've done since you came here, how good you are, not really. You're strong, you're smart, you're…" He was cut off when Holly suddenly pressed her finger to his lips. Cross-eyed, he stared down at it. "You know this doesn't stop me from talking, right?"

"No, but you're wasting your breath," Holly said, taking her hand away. She let her finger trail along his jaw, though; she liked the feel of the stubble there. "That's the way it's always been; I've been compared to my sister for almost my whole life, usually weighed and found wanting. Honestly, I don't think Camellia will ever be happy with me, no matter what I do. I could take a desk job at the Ministry with her, I could move back to Italy, I could be a casalinga, stay at home and have lots of little Pureblood babies…"

"You could marry me," Sirius chimed in.

"I could - what?" She stared at him in surprise.

"You could marry me. I'm a Pureblood wizard, the world's going to shit, and we're not getting any younger. What more could you want?"

"Are you ridiculously wealthy?"

"Funny you should ask," he said, shifting position slightly until he was more comfortable. My uncle Alphard died the other day."

Holly's hand flew to her mouth. "Oh! I'm sorry…"

"Thanks, but it's okay." He shrugged, as if he was used to it. Maybe he really was, maybe he was just trying to be nonchalant. "My point is, I was sort-of his favourite, and he left me pretty much everything he had. If you and I got married, we could live in a mansion or a flat above a Muggle shop eating fish and chips every day, whatever you fancy. We'd have freedom."

Slowly, Holly sat up straight, fixing him with an incredulous look. "Are you...are you being serious? You've only just started calling me your girlfriend."

Again, he shrugged - she was beginning to wonder if he could respond in any other way. "I dunno, maybe. I mean, even if we didn't get married, I know that I'd like to have you in my life in some way. I really like you."

"I really like you too." She smiled. "Would you really be okay with me not being around much? Travelling for work?"

"I could come with you, couldn't I?"

"No, you couldn't. You'd miss James and the others too much."

"They could visit us, I'm sure they'd like it." He grinned widely.

"And what if anyone else comes looking for us? What if Cammy wants to visit?"

"We'll change our names, change our faces. No problem."

"You seem to have all this planned out very thoroughly," Holly laughed. "In all seriousness, though, I couldn't cut you off from your friends. They're like your brothers - I wouldn't ask any of you to spend time apart for my sake."

"Maybe I would if I found the right girl…" Sirius's words trailed off. Holly realised slightly too late that he was leaning closer, and then he kissed her, suddenly reminding her how much she'd missed kissing him properly, not just a peck on the lips as they passed each other in the hallway. There was something about it that meant she thought about nothing else, like her brain just switched off all other thoughts and focused only on him. It was lovely.

They both jumped when an animal cried out in the darkness, somewhere towards the Forbidden Forest, and they broke apart. Holly heard rather than saw Sirius move, and then felt him murmuring next to her ear, his warm breath tickling her skin.

"Hey," he said quietly. "What are you doing for Christmas?"

"I...I hadn't thought about it," she said softly, grasping his hand when she felt it groping for hers in the dark. "Why do you ask?"

"Stay here. Stay at Hogwarts, with me." The way he said it made it sound like it was the only idea that made sense, and she found herself agreeing.


November flowed into December before Holly realised it was happening, and suddenly she had been dating Sirius for almost a month. By now she was used to the envious glares she still received sometimes, and she had also come to terms with the idea of what it was like to date Sirius Black.

He was possessive, for one thing. Usually not in an overbearing way - if he ever became overbearing she was quick to tell him off - but more protective, like the alpha in a pack of dogs. He walked to and from their classes with her, invited her to the Gryffindor table at dinner (which quickly lost its unusual quality and simply became something she did, as there was no specific rule against it really), and even met her outside the Ravenclaw Tower entrance on those rare occasions when he was awake before her in the morning.

Whenever they stood or sat next to each other, he kept contact, holding her hand or placing his arm around her, sometimes briefly resting his head on her shoulder. Once, Travers made some snide comment about this at the beginning of one of Professor Astrid's lessons, which Sirius heard the tail end of; the end result had been a bleeding Travers, an enraged Sirius, and detention for both of them. Holly had been furious with him for about ten minutes, then she'd forgiven him and waited for him to finish detention later that night. Her reward for him 'defending her honour', as Sirius had put it, was a big kiss and a piece of apple pie she'd smuggled from the dinner table.

Things were going well in the run-up to the Christmas holidays - aside from the massive amounts of homework - until the morning of December 5th.

The owl post arrived as usual, dropping copies of the Daily Prophet along the house tables, and as people began to register the headlines in front of them the conversation across the hall gradually ceased. Silence fell, and all eyes looked to the front page.

472 killed in attack on Muggle hospital

There was a burst of rustling as people frantically reached to grab the Prophet and see what the hell had happened, clusters of students sharing newspapers, reading as fast as they could, whispering urgently. On the Gryffindor table, where Holly had joined them for breakfast, James, Remus, Sirius, Peter, and Lily were all ashen-faced. Slowly, Remus picked up the paper and began to read aloud.

"Last night, Northshore Hospital in Oxfordshire was the victim of a ferocious and brutal attack, believed to have been carried out by followers of You-Know-Who." He scanned the article quickly then skipped ahead to find out the details. "The hospital was set alight with fire that Muggle means were unable to extinguish, destroying most of the West Wing and Central sections of the building, which included the-" he stopped, almost choking on his next words as if they were poison. "The...maternity ward."

Around him, they all gasped. Lily looked close to tears, and James put his arm around her shoulders. Holly sat frozen on the bench, her hands clasping the edge of the table tightly.

Remus swallowed hard before continuing, looking weary. He was still recovering from being ill again the week before, and this wasn't helping his recovery. His face was pale, and his hands holding the paper were shaking slightly. "Less than twenty Muggles made it out alive, and survivors that have been questioned are now being Obliviated by Ministry officials." He folded the paper up and threw it away across the table, putting his head in his hands.

Silence reigned over them all, none of them sure what to say. Lily suddenly sobbed, her face a mask of shock.

"That could have been my family," she gasped. "They could have…" Abruptly, she stood up and almost ran from the room, taking very deliberate strides that weren't really fooling anyone. James immediately scrambled to his feet and followed her, leaving the rest of them to stew in the implications of what they'd read and heard. Holly pushed her plate of toast away, feeling sick. Wordlessly, Sirius took her hand, and they spent the rest of breakfast sat in silence.

The class was subdued in Defence Against The Dark Arts that morning, and Professor Astrid looked as though she might have been crying, though she was entirely composed and serious as she addressed the class before the lesson began. Holly hadn't known, but Callista filled her in with an urgent whisper as they sat down: Professor Astrid was Muggle-born.

"You will have all heard the news this morning of the poor souls attacked in Northshore Hospital," she said slowly. "Things are apparently worse than anyone has wanted to believe. Like many before me in this position, I had hoped that you would not have urgent need of the skills I have taught, and will teach, during our classes together. It seems that will not be the case. This is about more than your N.E.W.T.s now; this is about survival, and while I will teach everything I can to anyone who is willing to learn from me, I will not tolerate anybody in my class that sympathises with these horrible events. If you cannot see how wrong they are, and how much they are destroying the fabric of the wizarding world, how those committing such acts of violence and destruction are no longer witches and wizards but heartless demons, then you have no place in this room." Her keen eyes scanned the room, meeting the gazes of every single student. When she reached the back row, she paused, and her eyes narrowed slightly. The challenge was evident: she was daring someone to leave, to reveal themselves. It was clear who she was focusing on, but there was no sound of a chair being pushed back, no footsteps, nothing. Nobody moved. Unable and unwilling to openly accuse one of her students, Astrid took a deep breath, raised her wand, and pointed at the blackboard to begin the lesson properly.

Tuesday was worse.

More bad news arrived on the wings of owls that day; a string of werewolf attacks had taken place, dotted around Great Britain, all the victims unrelated, all the locations seemingly at random. A week or so after the full moon, Muggles and wizards alike had reported not seeing their neighbours for days, and the reasons had quickly been discovered.

It was all anyone could talk about - unlike the attack on the hospital, which awful as it was had also been somewhat difficult to imagine, every Hogwarts student above the age of thirteen knew what a werewolf was capable of, and speculation was running high.

That evening, after a day of nobody really speaking to each other and teachers being uncharacteristically lenient, Holly was sat at her favourite desk in the common room attempting to work her way through a complicated arithmantical chart. Unsurprisingly, she was finding it hard to concentrate. The whole room was abuzz with Ravenclaws muttering to each other about recent events; it was as if the veil that somewhat shielded Hogwarts from all the horrible occurrences of the outside world had suddenly been lifted, revealing that things were much worse than they had previously appeared. The safety of the castle had made them complacent, and the war had seemed too far away to really have an impact, like a natural disaster on the other side of the world. Yes, it was awful, but it wasn't happening to them. It was a stupid attitude to have taken, and a lot of the students, particularly the youngest ones, were very close to panicking. Many who had been planning to go home for Christmas were now having second thoughts, while those who had intended to stay now wanted to be with their families...just in case.

Holly was worried too, of course; Camellia worked at the Ministry, and everybody knew that You-Know-Who had its downfall in his sights. She wondered if she should try and patch things up with her sister, at least as much as she could - she still wasn't going to give up on her desire to become a cursebreaker. She resolved to send an owl as soon as she was able, perhaps with the Christmas present she'd bought in Scrivenshaft's as a peace offering.

From the nearest sofa behind her, she could hear a group of third-years chattering loudly about the werewolf attacks. While she hadn't had a chance to properly read the story in the Prophet, she knew most of the details from gossip during the day, and it had made her morbidly curious; the full moon had occurred just over a week ago, and she had wondered why it had taken…

With a clatter, Holly's pencil fell from her hand onto the desk and rolled onto the floor. She sat frozen for a few seconds before quickly getting to her feet and making her way over to the globe on the other side of the room. Her mind was whirring as she manoeuvred the moon attachment around the globe and calculated dates.

He'd been quiet and moody all day; she'd thought it was just because of all the bad news, like everyone else, but what if there was another reason? He'd been ill the week before, and again back in October, around the same time. She supposed it must have happened in September too, and she'd simply been too overwhelmed and distracted by everything new to notice…

She really needed to talk to Remus.