Chapter 14

Sirius shifted to the side, giving Lucy room to breathe and cleared his throat, "Well then."

She couldn't help it. She laughed, "You know that's exactly what you said after our first kiss."

"Is it? Well, at least this time I won't have to sit to dinner with your family thinking about what we just did," he nuzzled her neck.

"Mmmm," she sighed stretching and finding all the newly sore places they'd created, "I'm just glad they weren't here to witness this first of ours. That would have been embarrassing."

"It's just as well. Molly and Arthur probably would have killed me anyway."

Lucy chuckled. It bothered her when he joked like that, but saying something about it would only dampen the mood. They'd been having a good time, she wanted to stay happy. "I doubt it. Besides, I hope I'd have enough presence of mind to stop before we got too far."

Sirius turned to lie on his side, grabbing Lucy and pulling her close. "You know," he said, apparently changing the subject from her family, "I can honestly say this is one thing I'd never thought I'd do."

"What do you mean?" she asked, confused.

"I'm laying naked in bed, at Hogwarts in the bed of an equally naked professor. Though she is the prettiest professor, if you don't mind me saying."

Lucy laughed. It was such a ridiculous statement she couldn't help it. "I don't mind you saying so but really my only other competition is Dinah. Unless you happen to like older women and forgot to tell me."

"No, but who are you to talk? You like older men."

It was so nice to laugh and have fun with him, especially now. "Just one older man.," she said, kissing his neck. The rest of the night was spent between enjoying each other and sleeping.

When he woke he was alone. It wasn't normal for Lucy to leave him alone in the bed. Even if she just lay there reading she usually stayed near by until he woke. Sitting up he could see her through the open bedroom door, leaning over a desk and from the motion of the quill he thought she was probably writing something.

Pulling on his robe before he left the room, he went to stand behind Lucy and look at what she was working on. She was reading a rather thick looking book and writing down, what he assumed were notes every so often. "What are you working on?"

She put down her quill and marked her place in the book, "Well, Dinah's doing a study of Muggle-borns and she's having them fill out a survey that's due tomorrow. It got me thinking. I'm teaching about literature but one of the books we're reading is about Anne Boleyn. I was going through the biography I have on her and writing down notes that might indicate whether or not she was also Muggle-born. I plan on looking at her cousin, Katherine Howard next. Maybe when I'm done Dinah would be interested in going through my notes with me."

"And how is that going to help her study?"

"Well, I'm not really sure, but there's no evidence that anyone else in her family was a witch other than her cousin Katherine. If nothing else it's interesting information. I only have so much to work with and it's really only from a wizard's point of view, but perhaps it will help Dinah with her studies."

"Ah," he said lounging on the couch, "You and she have made fast friends it seems." Sirius watched as Lucy turned to face him in her chair. It struck sometimes, how thoughtful she could be. Like now, gathering information that might not even be useful in Dinah's research.

"Yes, well, she's easy to get along with. Besides she's pretty much the only other professor here that wasn't once my professor, unless you count Slughorn but I don't. She's closer to me in age than any of the other professors, well except Snape. She said she was the same age as him but she didn't start Hogwarts until she was sixteen and still had to go through all seven years…"

"You know that sounds familiar, an older student being a first year that is. Odd business that was. There can't have been many cases of such a thing happening so I assume the one I heard of was Dinah. Heard she was a rather odd kid."

"Hey, now," she said, getting up and coming to sit next to him on the couch, "that's not nice."

"No, it's not. It's what I heard though. I never met the kid so I can't say from personal experience. I just remember other's commenting on the student being kind of a loner, a bit weird, stuff like that."

"Mmm," she said, snuggling closer to him. "It's still not nice. Besides, even if Dinah was that student you heard about, she's not weird now and well, I don't know that I would call her a loner but she's not a social butterfly either. Maybe that's why we get along. I'm probably more of a loner though. The only professor I talk to other than Dinah is Slughorn and that's really more him talking at me than anything."

"Oh, so it's actually you who's the weirdo loner?"

"Mmmhmm."

"Hey," he said, shrugging his shoulder to get her to lift her head, "what are you doing?"

"Trying to nap. I don't know about you, but I didn't get a lot of sleep last night and I, for one, was up early."

"It's still early."

"So? It's Sunday. I don't have any place to be."

With that he laid back and let her wrap herself around him to sleep. He knew the exact moment she was no longer awake because she stopped trying to bury her face in his chest. Rubbing his hand up and down her back he thought about how Voldemort might have been the evil one but Bella's face was the one people seemed to remember most. She'd really done a number on people. Her own family, Draco certainly hadn't been helped by her involvement, Lucy.

But Bella was only part of the problem. Part of it was that she felt guilty for not having come back when Dumbledore had told her to, but the biggest problem was that he'd died. He'd died. Died, and left her alone. She'd been scared, lonely and depressed and apparently hadn't known how to process those feelings well.

He started combing his hand through her hair, gently puling apart any snarls he came across. He knew from the outside their relationship seemed to have moved pretty fast and it might be hard for others to understand just what it was that drew them together but…it'd been the way she'd fussed with his hair, the way she'd bite her lip and turn away when she was trying hard not to laugh at him, even though he always knew and she always laughed anyway. The way she hadn't cared at all about lying next to him on the dirty floors of Grimmauld Place when she hadn't seemed like the type of girl to do that. There'd been a lot of little things like that that had drawn them together and he could only imagine how he'd feel if he'd been in Lucy's place.

Dora hopped up on to Lucy's back snuggling with them. Up until now she'd been ignoring them both, probably upset about being banished from the bedroom last night.

"Well," he said, moving his hand from Lucy's head to Dora's, "what do you think? Can we help Lu through this? You have to be willing to help too. I can't be here all the time," he said when the cat just stared at him.

"Maybe it's time to really talk to Molly about what went on while I was gone. Charlie too, since he's the closest to her and he was the one who was with her when she found out…" he looked down at the cat again, "What do you think? Tonks too? She's Lucy's best friend, but then I heard it she was pretty wrapped up in her own problems with Remus at the time."