Aly was seeing less and less of Lily as January wore on. And when she did see her, Lily was very distant and sharp with her. Aly knew that Lily had taken her break up with Logan hard, but she grew tired of Lily's attitude. She was 15, and, as far as she was concerned, she was entitled to have as many different boyfriends as she wanted.
With class work, they had moved onto to the Impedimenta charm, and she was having a very hard time with it. In transfiguration, she had successfully turned James into a pigeon, but she couldn't master the art of slowing down objects. She promised to show Sirius how she changed James if he spent extra time working on charm with her.
They sat in a corner of the common room as Aly attempted to slow Sirius down. "This isn't working," Aly whined, shaking her wand madly.
Sirius ducked from the sparks her shaking sent out of it. "I don't think I'm motivating you enough."
"Motivating me?"
"You have to want to stop me," Sirius explained, looking around the room.
"You don't think I want to be able to do this stupid charm?" Aly asked incredulously. "I'm trying my hardest here."
"I know. I know," he said trying to calm her down. "I know you want to be able to do the charm, but you have to want to stop me. There's a difference." He was still looking around the room, and suddenly whispered, "Excellent."
Aly looked off where Sirius' eye sight was pointed. Two people had just vacated the couch in front of the fireplace.
"Come'on," he said moving over to it
Aly groaned loudly. It was late, very late, and they had to get up for class the next morning.
"You want to learn or not?" he said jumping onto the couch.
She stomped over and slunk down next to him. He had used the Accio charm to deliver something to himself.
Aly looked at it and realized at once that it belong to her. "What are you doing with that?" she growled making a move for it.
He held it out of her grasp and jumped up. Her flipped open the leather bound book and pulled something out of it. He held it up in the air.
"Want it?"
"Sirius…" she warned in stern tone.
"Then you gotta save it," He threw the square paper into the fire. It curled as the flames licked at it.
Aly let out a very loud gasp of horror and felt tears fill her eyes. Those were the only pictures she had of her mom. They were one of her most prized possessions, and the boy in front of her was throwing them into the fire.
"Come'on, Aly," Sirius said, edging her on. "You can do this. Save the picture." He held one up for her to see. It was one of her favorites. It was the only picture she had of her and her mom, she was still in her stomach at the time.
He pulled his wrist back to flick the photo into the flames, and Aly jumped up. She pointed her wand at it and yelled, "Impedimenta!" The picture froze midair and came whizzing back at her. She cradled it to her chest once she had it and glared at Sirius.
He was laughing. She found nothing funny about this situation and pointed her wand at him, ready to strike. He walked over to her quickly and grabbed her wrist.
"Calm down, Als," he said sitting her down on the couch. "I wasn't about to let it burn. I had my wand ready." She felt slightly better about this, but was still angry at him. "I think you may have woken the whole tower with the charm, but at least you finally got it. I told you, it's all about the motivation.
"Here," he handed her her photo album, and she placed the picture back into it. She stared down at her mom and smiled. "You do look like her," he told her. "I knew you had to."
She nodded and told him, "Everything but the eyes."
"She's beautiful," Sirius told her in a small voice. She realized that he was, by extension, calling her beautiful and closed the book and turned to look at him. Her cheeks were glowing bright red. He was staring at her, and they held their glance. He started to move in towards her. She felt her body stiffen in anticipation. What was going on? she thought, her mind racing.
Instead of feeling his lips upon hers, she felt his hard head hit hers. "AH!" she gasped and grabbed the spot he had hit.
"What are you guys doing?" James asked. He had apparently come downstairs without too much of Aly's notice. He was studying them with great scrutiny.
"Staring contest," Sirius said quickly. "Which I just lost. Thanks." He jumped up and over the couch. "What's up?"
"I heard Aly yell and then it got quiet. I was worried she took you out," he sent a joking smile at her.
She tried to smile back. She hoped it looked convincing. Her mind was still reeling from what was happening a moment before.
"Nope. She challenged me. You know how that goes…"
James laughed. "Ohh yeah."
"I'll be up in a sec," Sirius told him, motioning for him to head upstairs.
"Fine," James said, his mood changing. He seemed reluctant to leave them alone. "Good night, Aly," he said almost meanly.
"Night," she mumbled, her eyes fluttering quickly as she was still thinking.
He left, and Sirius turned to Aly. "Are you okay?" he asked touching her head where he hit it.
"I'm fine," she gulped.
"You sure?" He didn't seem to just be talking about her head.
She nodded, "I'm good." She didn't meet his eyes though.
He reached out, hesitated, and then touched her cheek briefly. He made his way towards to stairs.
Without being able to help herself, Aly blurted out one of things that had been on her mind, "You gave up random girls."
He stopped, one foot on the bottom stair. He didn't move, but asked, "Why do you say that?"
"Remus told me," she said meekly, embarrassed by her outburst.
She saw him nod and then continue up the stairs.
She fell onto the couch and sat there thinking until the fire's flames died out.
XxXxX
Aly's days were fairly normal following that night. Sirius acted as if nothing had happened, and they continued on with her studying like any other day. She had finally managed to master the charm without photos and fire.
She sensed some tension in the Marauder circle, but was hesitant about mentioning anything about it. They were assigned a new charm to work on in extension to the Impedimenta charm. Since they now knew how to pull nonmoving objects to them as well as moving ones, they were now trying to simply freeze moving objects. Aly was looking forward to learning this charm since she only knew how to do the spell that froze things, and it wasn't nearly as affective. Sirius was trying to help her the best he could, but she kept getting frustrated and quitting earlier and earlier.
"Is Remus mad at me?" she asked Sirius one night.
"No. Why?" He looked confused. His locks of hair that always gracefully fell onto his forehead had fallen out of place, and, instinctually, Aly reached up and flicked them out of his eyes. She felt charged by the touch and cleared her throat and said calmly, "He seems distant from me lately."
He shook his head and said nothing more on it. He moved away from her so that they could try the charm again. "Is it cause I told you what he told me?" she ventured.
Sirius merely looked at her.
"I shouldn't've said anything," Aly said to herself out loud. She hit herself on the head and exclaimed, "Stupid, stupid, stupid."
"Hey now," Sirius was next to her quickly, grabbing her wrist. "Stop that," he said sternly. "You're not stupid. He'll get over it. He told you something. You told me. It's not the end of the world. Everything is fine."
Aly puffed out her lips in disbelief.
"None of that," he said pushing them back in with his finger.
Aly's heart skipped a beat at this touch. For all their normalcy around one another, they had been very carefully around one another, careful not to touch. This sent her heart into a flurry once he pulled away. She was suddenly aware of his closeness in proximity.
He cleared his throat and made to move, but Aly grabbed him by the front of his shirt. If she could've looked up, she would've seen how shocked he looked. As it was, she couldn't meet his eyes. She was breathing heavy and staring at her fists, his shirt clenched in them.
He put his finger under her chin and pulled her face up to look at him.
Aly bit down on her lower lip.
"Don't worry," he told her moving his face closer.
She opened her mouth to ask what he meant, but he stopped her. "You bit your lip when you're worried," he explained.
She closed her mouth and smiled. He ran his index finger across her lip. He was so much taller than she remembered. He had to bend his neck to look down at her as their eyes were still locked. As he moved even closer, Aly closed her eyes and breathed in his scent. She felt his loose strands of hair brush her forehead as their noses grazed.
The portrait hole slammed open with a bang. Aly and Sirius jumped apart and laughter filled the room. Lily came stumbling in and tripped over something and fell to the floor.
Aly stood paralyzed. Sirius saw her face and moved to face Amos who had walked into the common room. "Leave, Dickory," he ordered.
Amos looked at him and moved towards Lily. She was still laughing on the floor. "Why'd you fall down, Amos?"
He tried to help her up, but she merely rolled over onto her stomach.
"I said, 'Leave," Sirius growled.
Amos ignored him and knelt down by Lily.
Aly finally moved and came over to Sirius, "Let them be," she whispered, pulling gently on his sleeve.
Sirius didn't move. "Please," Aly urged.
With a heavy sigh, he followed her towards the stairs.
"Good job tonight," he told her in a sad voice.
"Not really," Aly murmured.
She headed up the stairs to her bed and Sirius to his. As she turned the bend in the stairwell, she heard Lily retch.
XxXxX
"Can I talk to you?"
Aly turned to look at a wet Lily. She had just gotten out of the shower and her hair lay wet on her shoulders. Her face looked slacken.
Aly shrugged at her, and Lily whispered, "How bad was I last night?"
Aly put down her book that she was packing for class and turned to look at her. "Bad." she said flatly. "Why would you do something so stupid? Getting drunk and then walking around the school. You're a prefect!" Aly wasn't really upset by her possibly tarnishing her prefect standing, but it was a good excuse.
Lily stared at her hands. When she looked up it was with tortured eyes, "He said it would make it hurt less."
"Make what--" Aly asked then figured it out. "Oh," she took a step back. They had had sex. Amos had given her the alcohol to make it so she wouldn't feel the pain Aly had heard most girls talk about. She looked at Lily. She seemed different to her all of a sudden.
"He lied," Lily continued with a small ironic smile. "It still hurt. It still hurts."
Aly stiffened. "He hurt you?"
Lily shrugged. "It was his first time too."
"That's not an excuse," Aly snapped.
Lily's eyes filled with tears. Aly moved to her and pulled her into a hug. "Go to the nurse, Lils."
Lily shook her head.
"If you still hurt maybe he did some sort of damage," Aly told her.
Lily considered this, and after wiping her face with her sleeve, agreed to go.
She dressed in the baggiest clothes she could find. Aly looked at her oddly, but said nothing. Once they made it to the common room, Lily looked at her and said, "I'm going to go alone."
"Are you sure?" Aly asked, thrown off by this decision.
"This is something I need to do alone," Lily said, squaring her wet shoulders.
Once the portrait door clicked behind her, Aly dropped her bag and slackened her stance.
"What's wrong?" James asked.
Aly sent him a sideways glance and sighed. She couldn't vent about this. She couldn't say a word, to any of them.
"He hurt her, didn't he?" Sirius said in a small voice.
Aly's head shot over to look at him.
"He did," Sirius said to himself. He slammed him fist down on the table, "Dammit."
Aly and the three other boys jumped.
Sirius ran his fingers through his hair and jumped up. He came up to Aly and stared down at her, "I'm sorry," he told, taking hold of her elbows. "I should've punched him in the face when I had the chance."
"You still can," Aly supplied
He smiled slightly and said, "But not without witnesses."
"What is going on?" Remus asked.
"Yeah. Explain." James looked like he had bitten into a lemon.
"You tell them," Aly told Sirius, looking at her feet.
"Amos hurt Lily last night."
James stood up, forcing his chair back, making it topple over. He stood staring at Aly, breathing so loudly that Aly could hear him from where she stood. "How?" he asked through clenched teeth.
Sirius simply looked at him and made popping noise with his mouth.
James turned completely red and shouted, "I'll kill him!"
"NO!" Aly yelled as he started for the door. Remus grabbed ahold of him and Sirius did as well. "As much as I want to as well, we can't just make a commotion about this. You aren't even suppose to know!"
She turned to her eyes to Sirius, "Speaking of which, how does he know? All you did was pop your tongue."
Sirius' ears went red and, after a look at him, Remus answered the question, "Her first time having sex right?"
Aly felt queazy at the question, but nodded.
"He popped her cherry."
"What?! Eww! That is so gross," Aly exclaimed.
Remus shrugged.
"Here's what's going to happen," she announced to them all, "I am going to make sure Lily is okay. I am going to talk to her about this. And no one, and that means no one," she glared at James, "Is gonna talk, act, or even think anything having to do with this til I get everything sorted out. Okay?"
James bit his cheek. "Riiight?" Aly pressed.
"Yes," they all agreed, James a little slower than the other three.
"Good." She picked up her bag and slung it onto her shoulder. "I will give you a full report when I get back."
She headed to the hospital wing only to find it lacking in any sign of Lily. Aly turned and made her way to the Great Hall. There was a good chance she had gone in search of either food or Amos.
She reached the grand staircase and saw Logan standing there talking to Amos.
"Where's Lily?" she asked Amos sharply.
He looked at her like he didn't know her.
"Tell me know," she ordered. He turned to leave, and she smacked him on the arm.
He just kept walking down the stairs.
She felt a hand on her arm and turned quickly to face Logan. "Don't touch me."
"What is wrong with you?" Logan asked, concerned.
"Do you know what he did to Lily?" Aly snapped.
"Yeah," he looked confused.
"He got her drunk so he could have sex with her," Aly whispered harshly.
"So? It was a nice thing to do," Logan said.
Aly's eyes bugged out of her head. "Are you kidding me?"
"Come'on, Aly. It's not that big of a deal. Stop being a prude."
Aly felt her face fill with blood. "I am not a prude. I care about my friend. That does not make me a prude."
"Aly, Really? I know what you do and don't do when it comes to this," he smile slightly at her.
Aly felt like smacking him. Instead, she hit him below the belt by saying, "No. You only know what I will and won't do with you."
Logan's lower lip disappeared. He took hold of Aly's arm and put his face right in hers. "Who?"
"What?" Aly was more confused than scared.
"Who did you --- with?" His grip got tighter.
"Let go of me," Aly ordered.
He shook her. "Tell me. NOW!" He spit on her face as he yelled.
"I'm not your property," Aly said slashing him across the eyes with her nails. He gasped in pain and pushed her away from him with all the force he had.
She tumbled backwards down the stairs, hitting her head, feeling her ribs crack. Her bag smashed into her back, the books splicing her skin.
She heard a commotion as she dizzily stopped. She heard her name being called. And then she felt nothing.
XxXxX
So, there's that one. Just figured I'd let yall know that it's gonna be about a week til I get the next chapter up. I've got finals coming up. So stay tuned . . . =]