A/N: Can't believe how quickly this story has gone! Every time I go back and read all your lovely reviews I feel a rush of excitement. You guys are the best! Thanks for sticking by us through this story!

-J

"When it all starts coming undone, baby, you're the only one I run to…. And our love's the only truth." – I Run To You, Lady Antebellum

I wasn't sure if Sirius was the most oblivious person or if he didn't want to rock the boat for some reason, but his clueless behavior toward all the changes in Cherry's life were beyond worrisome, least of all being her calling Lily 'Lily', even when Lily wasn't in the room. She just looked so… unhappy and dead all the time, like whatever game Lily was playing had sucked out Cherry's soul.

Somewhere in Lily's mind, I knew, she thought she was doing the right thing, beyond being vindictive and childish about finally having the upper hand in their ridiculous feud.

But it had gotten to the point where Remus, Ashley, and even Marlene had begun asking me what was wrong with Cherry.

As much as I tried to get through to Lily, it seemed to be the impossible task.

"I've made Clark into a model citizen," she sniffed.

"You've made her into an Inferius!" I hissed. One never knew when Madam Pince would poke her vulture-nose out from behind a shelf and expel you from the library for breathing too loud. Remus and I had been kicked out earlier that week because I was 'giggling too loud'.

"Hang on," Marlene said, furrowing her brow, "how is it that she's got to call you by her first name, but you don't have to use hers?"

"I'm perfectly happy to call her Clara," Lily began stiffly.

"Except even you are worried about pushing her past her breaking point," I sighed. "Lily, she's a human being, not some evil cyborg." Marlene blinked and made to ask what a cyborg was. Her mother didn't let her go to see Muggle films with us. I spoke over her question, "The point is that you need to back off, Lily. Sirius will never forgive you if you drive her back over the edge."

"Sirius seems perfectly happy," Lily argued.

"Yeah," I muttered, "and that's entirely suspicious enough on its own, but I'll deal with his stupidity later. You know that if he's got to deal with another traumatic event this year and it's your fault, he'll be out for your blood."

Queen of Stubborn, Lily Evans, didn't seem to care that even the most moral of the Black clan might be out for her blood. She just continued to diagram the cross-sections of a mandrake at its various stages.

Giving her up as a more or less lost cause, I figured it might be worth trying to talk to Sirius. From my conversations with Cherry, he was not only not noticing her out-of-character behavior, but had also been displaying plenty of his own.

James and Sirius were playing Exploding Snap in their dormitory, which I was able to get to because Marlene let me into Gryffindor Tower.

"You're cheating!" James roared as I walked in, and I froze, confused, my heart pounding. "There's no way you could win so many times in a row otherwise!"

I let out a relieved breath, realizing they were just talking about their game.

"Sirius?" I said softly, causing them both to jump. "Can we talk?"

James opened his mouth, no doubt getting ready to tell me to bugger off, but Sirius said, "Sure, Ali. Scram, Prongs." James game us both furious looks, but he left, probably to find Lily or Peter to complain, as they were the only people who ever listened anymore.

"What's up?" he said with a smile as I sat down beside him on his bed.

"I, um," I sighed, trying to decide how to best approach the conversation. The words sort of poured out of my mouth before I could think about them. "How do you feel about your current lack of sex?"

Sirius blinked at me, wide-eyed.

"Where is this conversation headed, Ali?" he asked slowly. "Please tell me this isn't another one of those loyalty tests you and my girlfriend are so fond of cooking up?"

"No," I choked out. "No, definitely not. Although, the thought that you might be unfaithful to Cherry has certainly crossed my mind–"

"Well, it shouldn't," Sirius snapped. "I love Cherry. I would never do that to her. I would never do anything to hurt her!" I raised my eyebrows and he sighed and said, "Look, Ali, I care about you too, but it was never the same. You know that. We were a terrible fit, and I really didn't see a way not to hurt you. It was a big mess from the word 'go'."

I held up my hand to cut him off.

"I know," I said firmly, "but this isn't about us. This is about you and my best friend."

I hadn't realized the words had come out of my mouth until Sirius raised his eyebrows in surprise.

In a way, it made a lot of sense. Cherry had come to mean more to me than anyone but Remus. We confided in each other. We supported each other. I even went to her for sex advice. Sure, I hadn't really had anyone else to turn to, but I suppose I could have always gone to Sirius.

Sirius…

But that thought could wait for a moment, important though it was.

"Look, Sirius," I sighed, "I'm concerned. You and Cherry are both behaving odd. I care about both of you immensely and I'm at a loss as to what to do!"

"Please, Ali," he sighed, "I know you're worried. I'm thrilled you care. But I'm begging you to stay out of this, all right? Please."

What was it with the sickening amount of stubborn people I'd surrounded myself with? It was no wonder I'd spent so many years keeping out of the way and minding my own business. They were hardly worth the headache.

"Actually," I whispered once I'd resigned myself to letting go of the Sirius/Cherry/Lily issue for the time being, "There was something else I'd like to talk with you about."

Sirius shifted, nodding a little and saying, "All right. What's on your mind?"

I sighed heavily. I wasn't sure that I entirely wanted to talk with him about it, but as I couldn't talk to Cherry or Remus, he was all I had left…. And he was very good at keeping secrets, I knew.

"You have to promise," I said urgently, "that you'll never mention this conversation to anyone, especially Remus. Promise?"

His eyes widened with surprise and confusion but he nodded and said, "Of course."

There was no turning back at that point.

"When Remus and I spent our first night together," I explained, flushing slightly as he smirked, "he said some things that quite frankly…. Well, honestly , they disturbed me."

He frowned.

"Like what?" he asked slowly.

"Sirius, he said that if I ever got pregnant, I'd have to… that if he got me pregnant I'd need to…"

"He said you'd have to abort it," Sirius sighed eyes sad with understanding. "Oh, Ali. C'mere."

He held out his arms and I scrambled over, allowing him to wrap me in a warm, comforting hug. We just sat there for a while as he obviously struggled with words and I fought off tears.

"That must have been awful," he whispered finally.

"It's not even that," I sighed. "Do you think, if I did get pregnant, that he'd send himself to jail to spare my reputation? You know it would get out, and Remus is so hard on himself about those sorts of things. I don't know if I could handle it."

"No," Sirius said firmly. "I'm going to make sure personally that he never does something so stupid. I don't care if I have to drag Dumbledore into it, he's not throwing away his life and he's not going to hurt you like that. Don't you worry, Ali," he muttered, kissing the top of my head.

"Thank you," I whispered, hugging his torso tightly. Over his shoulder, my eyes caught a glimpse of James's alarm clock and my eyes widened.

"Sirius, is James's clock right?"

He checked his watch and craned around to look at the clock in question.

"Yeah, it seems fine. Why?"

"I'm late," I moaned. "I was meant to meet Remus in the entrance hall ten minute ago! He's going to be so worried!"

Sirius laughed and winked.

"Play safe, now!"

I grabbed a bit of balled-up parchment from Remus's bedside table and tossed it at Sirius's head as I made my way toward the door, but he easily dodged it and barked with laughter.

"You're forgetting, love, that your darling Remus learned everything he knows about how to make you feel good by taking notes on my best advice. You ought to be thanking me, sweetheart, not attacking me!"

But I just waved my hand dismissively as I left the room, rushing to the entrance hall as fast as my feet could carry me.

Remus was pacing the entrance hall, frantically looking around and checking his watch. I sighed with relief that he hadn't panicked and done something crazy like reporting me missing to Professor McGonagall.

"Remus," I said, smiling, "sorry I'm late. I was talking with Sirius and I lost track of time."

He blew out a sigh of relief and wrapped me in a hug, gently pecking my lips.

"You look beautiful," he whispered, kissing my cheek, pulling back to look at me lovingly for a moment before pressing his lips more eagerly to mine.

I smiled against his kiss, wrapping my arms around his neck. One of the best things that had come from our sleeping together was that Remus had more or less stopped caring that someone might see us kissing, and he'd even kissed me in front of Professor McGonagall, which struck me as rather brave.

I suppose he'd been Sorted into Gryffindor for a reason.

We just stood there in the hall for several minutes, kissing, ignoring the world around us, including the giggling that passed us as it made its way toward the stairs. But there had to be something. There was always something.

"Ali? Remus?"

The voice was a small, lifeless version of its former self, but I'd recognized it almost instantly as Cherry's voice.

I pulled away from Remus's lips to find her with my eyes, but his lips landed on my neck for a moment before he realized fully what had happened and he pulled away as well, also looking for the source of the interruption.

There was Cherry, standing on the marble staircase, looking at us as though trying to decide something. I felt a rush of sympathy and affection for her, seeing how lost she looked.

"Hey, Cherry," I said with a smile that I hoped looked encouraging. "What's up?"

"Can I ask you guys for a favor?"

We both nodded, but I felt my stomach tighten as I wondered what madness Lily had legislated most recently.

"Well, I'd really like to go out to the lake for a bit…. Not long, I promise. Anyway, I'm not allowed to go on the grounds unsupervised and I…. Well, I won't be an awkward third wheel or something. You won't even know I'm there. I won't stare at you or anything, I just… I just need some air."

I really couldn't feel anything but sorry for her. Lily had to be reined in, but I couldn't think of any way to make her see reason. All I could do was grant Cherry her quite reasonable wish.

"Of course," I said, lacing my fingers in Remus's, smiling even more happily. "It's no trouble at all!"

The three of us walked silently out to the lake, settling under Remus's favorite tree. Cherry was about twenty feet closer to the water than we were, giving us as much privacy as she could manage. I curled up against Remus, resting my head on his strong chest and playing with the buttons on his shirt as he ran his fingers through my hair.

After about ten minutes of silence, Remus leaned down and whispered, "You know, this would almost be romantic if…"

He didn't need to say any more. If we weren't babysitting Cherry because Lily was being a power-hungry, vindictive pain in the arse. I just sighed, shrugged, and snuggled a little closer, thrilled when I felt him wrap his arms around me, sheltering me with his elevated body heat as the air around us began to cool.

Several minutes later, Cherry stood and Remus said, "Are you ready to go back in?"

She turned to us and nodded, thanking us softly as we walked back to the castle.

"Honestly, it's not a problem," Remus said calmly. "If you ever want to go outside, let me know. I find it's a nice place to do some thinking."

We parted ways in the entrance hall, Cherry going up the marble staircase - probably back to Gryffindor Tower - and Remus pulling me into the closest abandoned classroom. We settled on a desk he transfigured into a loveseat and curled up similar to how we had been outside.

"I wish I could make Lily be reasonable," I sighed. "Poor Cherry seems so miserable. I tried to talk to Sirius about it, but he told me he didn't want me to get involved."

"Mmm," Remus exhaled cryptically.

"I just wish there were something I could do," I said. "I mean, I know we've all poked our noses into each other's business quite enough lately and we've got N.E.W.T.s and our futures to think of and everything, but Cherry went through so much pain and I can't help but feel quite responsible–"

I stopped when Remus placed his finger over my lips, eyes sparkling as they met mine.

"That's quite enough of that," he whispered. "You're ranting, love, and I don't plan to spend the rest of this lovely evening talking about all of that drama."

I raised my eyebrows and had half a mind to ask how he'd like to spend the evening, but he pressed his lips hungrily to mine and answered my unspoken question exactly how I'd hoped he would.

Kissing him back, I began undoing the buttons on his shirt that I'd been playing with earlier, throwing off the fabric with his help, the fabric that had been keeping me from running my hands along the intricate, pale scars that lined his well-muscled flesh. The low moan that came from his mouth and vibrated in the cavern of my own mouth reminded me of the other reason I loved to trace the scars on his skin, connecting them in decorative patterns that I saw as beautiful. Once he'd realized how much I'd loved them, Remus had become much less nervous about taking off his shirt around me.

I shivered as he began placing a trail of hot, open-mouthed kisses down my neck. Even in the brief time we'd been together, the little bit of exploring we'd done with each other's bodies, we'd gotten quite good at finding what made the other feel amazing, and Remus had become especially confident and aggressive, which I was surprised to find that I liked.

Remus and I spent several hours finding new ways to please each other before we collapsed together on the loveseat, completely spent. I was lying on top of him, my face buried in his neck, inhaling the scent of him, enjoying the feel of him gently tracing shapes on my skin.

"I love you," he whispered.

"I love you too," I sighed.

Somehow, that was all we needed to say, but it meant so much more. We were both scared. IT was bad enough to be a couple of seventh year students, with N.E.W.T.s and careers to think about. There also happened to be a war on, people dying every day, and nowhere to hide.

Well, that wasn't completely true. We'd talked a few days earlier about running away to the continent together, but that was the fear talking. We wouldn't go anywhere and we both knew it. Where would we go? Our whole lives were in England.

We probably ought to have been studying for N.E.W.T.s, planning our futures, thinking about flats and the like, but we couldn't bring ourselves to do it, practical as we both usually were. I suspected Dumbledore had given our year and the years around us so many liberties knowing that so many of us would die young.

What if it was me? What if it was Remus?

I wanted to be the one to say it out loud, that I was afraid, but the words just died in my throat. Remus didn't say them either, although I knew he wanted to as well, so we just laid there in that classroom on that loveseat holding each other.

Finally, I managed to say, "I love you."

It didn't matter that we'd just said it twenty minutes prior. Remus whispered back, "I love you too."

And it was truly all we could say, all there was to be said. We weren't supposed to be scared, we were supposed to feel invincible.

And so we were just in love.

For a little while, it could be enough.