Aly woke up feeling like she had been hit by a truck. She rubbed her face as she tried to get her bearings. She looked around feeling completely dazed. The room she was in looked just like her room, but she was in the wrong bed. She rolled over to get a better scope of things and rolled into something that let out a "ohf."
She gasped and sat up quickly. She had to catch her head and laid back down, slowly, whimpering. Sirius pulled the pillow that was over his head down and looked at her.
"Ohmygod, ohmygod, ohmygod," Aly began to mutter under her breathe. She turned her head to see Sirius' sleepily staring at her. "What am I doing here?"
"You fell asleep here," he told her, stretching.
He sat up and Aly realized that he was shirtless.
"Oh my god," she moaned.
He disappeared from the bed. Aly tried to remember what had happened the night before that would have caused her night to end in bed with a shirtless Sirius.
He pulled the curtain on her side of the bed that was open only half way back the full extent. She looked at him and forced herself to not look down and see if he was more than half naked. He held out his hand.
"Sit up," he said roughly. He was obviously not feeling much better than Aly did. "Come'on. Sit up."
She pulled herself up but had to lean her head forward to rest on her knees.
"Take this," he ordered.
She ignored him, trying to wish the throbbing in her head away.
He nudged her head with his knuckle. "Come'on."
When she didn't move, he took her by the neck and forced her head back. She sat there looking up at him confused and dizzy. "Open your mouth." When she didn't, he told her, "I can't do everything. Open your mouth up now."
She did and he dropped something into it and poured the water from the glass he was holding down her throat after it. She gagged and coughed as he let too much go down.
He put the half empty glass next to her and gently hit her back to help her breath. Then he started to make his way around the bed to lay down on his side.
Aly continued to cough quietly. "God, act more like Logan, why don't'cha."
He stopped before getting the bed and glared. "If I was Logan, you'd have more to complain about than just your head."
He got in the bed and roughly tore the blanket from her and wrapped himself up.
She laid back down, trying to think. They laid silently for a while, and Aly could literally feel the anger radiating off of her bed mate. No, off of the guy in bed with her. No, no, no. Nothing about the situation sounded right in her head.
"What do you mean?" she finally asked. "What else would hurt me?"
He said nothing.
"Sirius, tell me." She pushed his back with her elbow. "Please."
He still remained silent. She pushed him onto his back with some struggle and straddled his cocooned body. "Please. Purty please."
"No," he said harshly.
With that, everything hit her. Parts of the night replayed vividly in her mind.
They had stolen 2 bottles of champagne to begin with. Then two more showed up somehow. One way or another, Sirius had gotten them back to school. He had tried to take her up to her bed but one of the old spells made it so that the stairs wouldn't allow it. So, they had collapsed onto his bed instead. She remembered giggling. Lots and lots of giggling. Someone had boughten up their first kiss. Which lead to her asking him if it was still the same. He told her he didn't know and that they could try it out. But what had happened after that? She could only guess.
She closed her eyes in shame. She got off of him slowly and realized that she was wearing one of his t-shirts. How had she ended up in his clothes? More importantly, how did she end up out of her own? She began to search for her clothes. She couldn't stand up completely straight due to the hang over and her eyes kept filling with tears and she didn't know why.
She heard the bed springs creak, but kept throwing clothes around in search of one of her shoes. She felt a hand on her elbow and shrugged it off. She found her robes and pulled the shirt off quickly, not caring. What did it matter at this point anyways? She pulled her robes over her head and ran out of the room. Somehow, she would never be able to recall how, she found her own bed and collapsed onto it crying.
XxXxX
"Good evening, Mr. Black," Professor Dumbledore addressed the lone boy in the Gryffindor common room.
"Good evening, sir," he replied lamely.
Dumbledore stood and studied him for a moment. He hadn't seen his daughter since the dance and knew that the last person with her had been the boy reading on the couch. "Where's Aly?" he asked.
Sirius turned to look at the Headmaster. Normally, seeing him the common room would have seemed odd, but today Sirius didn't show any surprise. He blinked a few times and then motioned towards the staircase that led to the girls dormitory with his head.
Dumbledore started towards it and stopped when he saw the tray of food laying at the foot of the stairs.
He looked at Sirius, who was facing the other direction. He shook his head and made his way up the staircase. Aly was sitting on her bed writing. "Alyson," Dumbledore said to announce his presence. She didn't look but gave him a small, "Hey."
The Headmaster looked around the room he stood in. The room had books and papers strewn all over it. It looked like a tornado had moved through the place. In the corner, there was a balled up silver robe. "Why didn't you come down for dinner?"
Aly mumbled something about not being hungry and continued to scribble.
"But it's Christmas."
Her head shot up.
"It is?" her forehead wrinkled in confusion.
"Yes it is," Dumbledore said taking a step forward.
"I'm sorry," Aly said sincerely. She slowly got out of bed. "Your present is under the tree downstairs."
"That's not why I'm here Aly," he said.
"I'll go get it," Aly told him, either not hearing or not caring about what he had to say.
He nodded and followed her as she hurried down the stairs. She simply jumped over the food without paying attention to it and dug through all the gifts that were still sitting under the tree to find his.
Sirius jumped up at the sight of her. "Aly," he said.
Aly brushed past him and handed the gift to her father. "Merry Christmas," she said and kissed him on the cheek.
She made an attempt to return to her room as Sirius called to her, "Don't go back up there. You've been locked away for four days."
Before Aly knew it, her dad had pulled out his wand and had her held in place. Dumbledore looked at Sirius and hesitated before he finally said, "She'll be like that for about a minute. Don't waste her time." With that the Headmaster left, holding his gift tenderly.
Sirius made a mental note to thank him later. "Aly," he came over to stand in front of her. "I'm gonna make this quick. I'm sorry. So, so sorry. I never meant to make you mad at me. I shouldn't have let it go as far as it did. I just want us to go back to being friends. Whatever it is that I need to do to fix this, I will do. Just tell me."
Aly fought against the spell. Once it lifted, she started to fall to the floor, but he caught her. "Tell me what to do," he pleaded.
She merely allowed him to stand her up. "Aly, please."
She took a deep breathe. "You think I'm mad at you?"
"Yes. I'm sorry. I never meant for it to lead to this. Please forgive me."
"Forgive you? This is as much as my fault as yours," she told him.
"How? I got the champagne. I let you keep drinking it after I knew I should stop you. I'm the one who told you to kiss me. I'm the one who stopped it. I'm the---"
"Stopped it?" Aly looked at him, bewildered.
"Yeah," he took hold of her wrist as she started to sway, "Don't you remember?"
"You swear?"
"Yes. I swear. I stopped it. We didn't have se---"
"Don't say that word!" Aly yelped, but turned her eyes up at him and smiled gleefully. "Thank god!" she exclaimed jumping into his arms.
She laughed and started to cry out of relief.
He held her tightly and swung her around.
He put her down and asked her, "Is that what was wrong? You were upset because you thought we… did that?"
She blushed.
"Aly," he vocally edged her to explain.
"Yeah, it was. I didn't want to just be another drunken night for you."
"You would never be that to me," he promised. Aly could tell her meant it and squirmed a little under his stare.
She happily went and sat on the couch where Sirius had been. "Why are there still so many presents? They can't all be for me."
He sat under the tree he had whined about again this year. "I wanted to wait for you," he said holding a gift out to her.
She smiled gratefully at the boy before tearing the gift open.
XxXxX
Lily arrived back at school at the beginning of January with some sad news. Her mom's cancer was back. Aly spent the first night with her as Lily cried on her shoulder. The second night after break, it was Aly's turn to vent her frustration about the situation, this time to Sirius.
"This majorly sucks" was mostly what he got out of her.
Aly was convinced that this year was bound to be better than the last. She was friends with Marauders again, even James seemed to warming up to her; she was doing great in all of her classes even charms, thanks to her tutor; and Logan seemed to be leaving her alone. But she had received a Christmas gift from him. She expected it to be some sort of trick to talk to her. So she took James and Remus with her when she went to return it to him (since she worried what Sirius might do in close proximity to him).
"Umph," Aly cleared her throat.
He turned and greeted her with a smile. It quickly turned to a frown when he saw who accompanied her. "Hey, Aly," he said staring at the boys.
"Here." She held out the small box.
"What's that?" he asked still not looking at her or the gift in her hand.
"It's the gift you gave me for Christmas," she said, annoyed. She didn't want to play his games.
"That's yours. What am I suppose to do with it?" he asked bitterly, finally looking at her.
"Just take it back please."
"No," he said. "It was for you. I don't want it back."
Aly felt her irritation building.
Behind her she heard a crack followed by a sound of pain. She turned in time to see James sending a spell at Snape. Snape had apparently found them and, with James distracted, decided to take advantage of the situation.
"Enough!" Logan snapped. "10 points from Gryffindor!"
"What?!" James yelled as Aly watched Snape make a hasty escape.
"Sending spells at people in corridors is a direct violation of the rules," Logan exclaimed. He puffed out his chest as he said this to make his badge more prominent.
"Just cause you have some stupid badge on you ches—" Thankfully, Remus cut him of by throwing his hand over his mouth.
Aly shoved the gift box into Logan's chest and shook her head at him before following after Remus who was dragging James.
"You're much better off without that guy, Aly. Honestly, what a prick," James said before throwing himself into a chair. Sirius was sitting in the common room, waiting for their return. He asked, "What happened?"
"Snape got me," James murmured. "Then Captain Moron took 10 points off of me for defending myself!" he throw his arms up in the air for an added affect.
"Get the thing back to Logan?" Sirius asked Aly.
"Yea," Aly said, trying to see what Sirius had been reading when they walked in. He noticed her eyes and closed the book and quickly asked, "What did he get you anyways?"
"What?"Aly was still trying to figure out what the book was based on the binding. It wasn't in English.
"What did Logan give you for Christmas?" he asked again.
"Nothing really," Aly said turning to head back out to the library.
"Probably some crappy gift like a book or something," she heard James comment.
"No. Too small for a book," Sirius replied. She could tell he was thinking by the tone of his voice.
"Doesn't really matter though, does it?" James asked. "She gave it back."
"Yeah," Sirius said brusquely.
It bothered Sirius that Logan had given her a gift in the first place. Apparently, it was still bothering him. A smile fluttered across her face as Aly heard the portrait door shut behind her.