A/N: Hey guys! Sorry this has taken me so long to update - my internship this summer has been kicking my ass daily and I've been too busy/exhausted to write as much as I'd like. But nevertheless, here is the update, a little short and a lot late. Hope you enjoy it! -Christine
That evening in the library, Lucas wouldn't stop laughing at the greenish splotch that had appeared on my face after Potions class.
"I'm sorry, I know it's awful," he told me between soft chuckles, "but Slughorn really should have known better than to pair you with James, of all people."
I groaned, covering my face with a book again, less to hide the green spots and more to hide the bright red blush that was spreading across my cheeks and clashing horribly with said green spots.
"You know, you might actually be decent at Potions if you had a tutor who knew what he was doing," he said, smiling.
"Why, do you know someone? Because Severus would eat his own cauldron before tutoring me."
"I could, if you wanted."
I smiled, bringing the book down from my face.
"Yeah? Could you start by whipping up an antidote for the hideous addition to my complexion?"
"But you look so good in green," he joked. "It really brings out your eyes."
I hit his arm with my book playfully, but he just smiled and said, "We'll start this weekend, yeah?"
The weekend brought with it the first snow — a nice harbinger for the winter holidays quickly arriving — and while for normal people this signaled a Saturday of sitting inside where it was warm, with cups of cocoa and the common room fires, for James it meant Quidditch practice. They had a match against Ravenclaw the week we were to get back from Christmas hols, and so he'd been working the team harder than ever. And, unfortunately for me, it meant he was up and bouncing around the room in excitement at five in the morning, pressing his face against the window to determine if the snow was going to impede their practice or not.
"Might as well practice in the snow in case it snows during the match," he decided before turning on me and making me promise to come down the the field to watch. "You've got a good tactical eye, I want your advice on a few plays," he told me, even when I tried to object and tell him that I really knew very little about Quidditch at all.
So, of course, the solution to being forced down to the Quidditch pitch early on a Saturday morning in the freezing cold was to make my best mate equally miserable in the process.
"I'm not coming with you," Lily argued over breakfast, hiding behind a large book. "I've got to study."
"So bring your work with you. That's what I'm doing."
"It's cold and wet and awful out," she huffed.
I sighed, looking around and lowering my voice to whisper the one thing I knew would persuade her to go along with my awful plan. "But Lil," I said, looking as pitiful as I could possibly manage. "I don't want to have to deal with Sirius on my own..."
She relented almost immediately, as reluctant as it may have been, and before long we were headed down to the pitch, textbooks in hand, and she was complaining the whole way that she should have put on a thicker scarf.
In truth, I hadn't thought too much about Sirius in the past week. Between catching up on my schoolwork and spending most evenings studying with Lucas, I'd only really seen him in classes, and as he was fighting with James he didn't speak much or acknowledge anyone's presence but his own. It had been easy to set everything that had happened at Halloween out of my mind for the time being, focusing instead on the matters at hand. But I hadn't been lying when I told Lily that I was dreading having to spend time near him. Seeing him made me feel sick to my stomach, reminiscent of the bad mix of alcohol and truth-serum that had led to this situation in the first place.
He wasn't on the field yet when Lily and I arrived. Instead, we were met by James screaming bloody murder at the captain of the Ravenclaw team.
"We have the field reserved every Saturday at this time!" He was yelling when we got there. "Go ask McGonagall, she'll tell you. Or Hooch. Go ask anyone!"
"Look, I'm sorry, man," Hal Summers, the captain, answered calmly, holding up his hands defensively. "Hooch told me yesterday we could have it now because she needed it for a class during our normal practice time."
"Bullshit," James spat.
"We'd give you the field, but that's not exactly fair seeing as we've got a match coming up and only one of my players is staying over hols."
"Not fair? It's not fair that you get our field when we've had it reserved since September!"
"Yeah, that's bullshit!" Benjy chimed in from a few steps behind James. The other players — on both sides — looked mostly exhausted, like they were almost wishing the other side would win so they could just go back to sleep already.
"Here's an idea," Lucas said, stepping forward between James and Hal, restraining a bludger in his hands. "Why don't you guys use that half of the field and we'll use this half? It's not ideal, but it's better than wasting our time fighting about it."
Hal looked at Lucas and raised an eyebrow. "Uh, sure," he said, shrugging his shoulders. "I suppose that could work."
James glared between the two of them for a minute, and then looked back at his team. After a long, tense moment, he finally spoke:
"And how do I know that you all aren't going to watch our practice to pick up on our strategies?"
Hal rolled his eyes. "We saw enough of your 'strategies' at the Slytherin match. Well, what little you have of them."
James' face turned bright red at the comment. He looked as if he was about to hex Hal into the hospital wing.
"Our strategies our fine," a voice behind me interrupted, "and James alone is twice the athlete of your entire team put together."
My stomach dropped as I turned around to see Sirius standing behind me, his broom slung over one shoulder, a quaffle in his hand.
"Drop the bullshit, Summers," he continued. "Field is ours, I have a note from McGonagall."
"And we have a note from Hooch," one of the younger Ravenclaw players said, holding up an official-looking piece of paper.
"Then we'll cast a barrier at the midfield line so we can each use half the field," Sirius sighed, pulling his wand out.
Both captains groaned in reluctant agreement, and Sirius wordlessly conjured an opaque barrier between the two halves of the field before putting his wand away and walking over to James.
"Thanks for that, man," James said quietly.
"Anything for my best mate," Sirius responded, looking up at him apologetically. James smiled, shook his head, and pulled Sirius into a quick hug.
"Can you stop staring so we can sit down now?" Lily asked from behind me, grabbing my arm and pulling me towards the stands.
We sat right in the center of the stands, where we could see both the Gryffindor team and the Ravenclaw team on either side of the barrier, and as soon as we were seated, James flew by, hovering a few feet in front of us.
"You gonna spy on them for me, Moony?" He asked, smiling at me and winking. Behind me, I swear I heard Lily squeak as she hid her face in her large Defense Against the Dark Arts textbook.
"That's not fair, is it, Prongs?" I responded, laughing. "I'm just interested to see you guys matched up against the tactical geniuses over here."
He laughed as well and flew back to the pitch, circling his players up to run them through a couple of drills.
I didn't really watch either team's practice. A minute in, Lily tapped my shoulder with a question about werewolves for her essay, and we got started talking about the assignment, and before I knew it half an hour had passed and someone was tapping me on the shoulder from behind.
I turned around to see Lucas on his broom, hovering with his face level to mine.
"Enjoying practice?" He asked, smiling.
"Haven't exactly been paying attention," I answered, pulling my scarf tighter against the wind.
"We just finished up," he said, and then offered me a hand. "Want a ride back up to the castle?"
I shook my head. "I'm kind of terrified of flying. Just ask James, he's been trying to get me on a broom since first year."
He laughed, grabbing my hand anyway. "Come on, it will be fun. I won't let you fall."
Lily looked at me, one eyebrow raised.
"Not that I don't trust you, Lucas, but really, I'm not good with heights..."
From the Gryffindor side of the quidditch pitch, someone yelled, "Fuck!"
I turned to see what was going on. Benjy had fallen to the ground and was hopping on one leg, rubbing the other, yelling, "Why don't you watch where you're flying, Black? You could have killed me!" while Sirius was speeding quickly towards the other end of the field.
I bit my lip and looked up at Lucas.
"Okay," I told him. "But if you drop me, Lily will curse you to pieces."
"I will," she affirmed, turning back to her books.
I stood up, and he grabbed my arm, steadying me to climb onto the broom. I struggled to balance my weight evenly on either side of the broom, the distance from the ground already making me feel dizzy, but he grabbed my hand and wrapped it around his waist.
"Hold on tight," he said, smiling back at me.
The second he started to fly, I almost vomited everywhere.
Flying felt like the ultimate form of not being in control. My stomach dropped as the broom rose and as it fell, as it swerved around the stands and towards the castle, and by the time he lowered it to the ground on the steps to the castle, I could barely keep my balance on my own two feet.
He smiled, watching me, grabbing my arm to make sure I didn't fall over, and opened his mouth to say something, but was cut off as someone snathed my arm out of his grip.
I looked up to see Sirius, glaring, his teeth bared, his hand wrapped tight around my arm.
"What do you think you're doing?" he snarled to Lucas.
Lucas held up his hands in surrender and replied calmly, "I was just giving him a ride to the castle."
"Don't you know he hates flying?" Sirius practically shouted.
Lucas shrugged. "I wouldn't have done it if he'd said no," he said, and then turned to me. "I'll see you later tonight to study for Potions?"
I nodded as he flew off, still trying to comprehend the situation, but before I could manage to gather my wits, Sirius was dragging me into the castle by my arm, heading up the stairs to the seventh floor.
I tried to shake him off.
"What are you doing?"
He didn't answer, just let go of my arm and began to pace in front of the wall until a door appeared. He grabbed me again and dragged me through the door into the Room of Requirement which, to my shock, was completely empty.
No, I realized after a few seconds. Completely empty except for a sprig of mistletoe hanging from the ceiling in the center of the room.
I started to ask what was going on, but he cut me off, pressing his lips to mine roughly, his hand tangling in my hair.
Now, there is a peculiar, yet distinctive type of self-loathing that only comes from kissing someone who is only kissing you to be kissing, not because he wants to see the small smile in the corner of your lips every time he pulls away or because he likes the way you blush all the way from your collar to your earlobes when he touches you. It's a sick-to-your-stomach feelings that tastes of bile and bitter retribution worse than you can imagine, mingled with the knowledge that you will keep kissing him in the hopes that someday enough kissing will make him realize that it is you, and not the kissing, that is the best part.
That was how Sirius Black made me feel, there under the mistletoe.
I kissed him back — of course I did — but I could barely feel the weight of his lips pressing against mine behind the anger throbbing in my mind. It was an anger I couldn't place: anger at him for doing this to me, anger at myself for reciprocating. But an anger that wasn't quite enough to make me pull away, wasn't quite enough to make me stop kissing him until he pulled away, his eyes dark and predatory, and turned and walked away.
I stood there under the mistletoe for a long time, I'm not sure how long, watching the door where he'd left and feeling nothing but the need to vomit. Or the need to kiss him again.
