No One Does It Better

Chapter Thirty Three

They say she's gone too far this time

Don't blame me, love made me crazy

If it doesn't, you ain't doing it right

Before we knew it, January was slipping away from us and we were into the middle of February. I had no idea where the time had gone considering that all I had done was study, do mock NEWT exams and when we could fit it in, Sirius and I often spent time just wandering the castle together. Sometimes we would come across some empty classrooms that allowed us some extra privacy.

The weekend before Valentine's Day was approaching and every girl in the castle was having a meltdown because it wasn't the Hogsmeade weekend – it was Quidditch weekend. Gryffindor were playing Ravenclaw, which meant James had the full Gryffindor team practicing every second night for two weeks straight.

Adaline, Lily and I sat in the library on the Wednesday night. Wednesday's were one of my busiest days. I had Defence Against the Dark Arts, History of Magic and Transfiguration all towards the end of the day. We were sitting working quietly among the three of us when Marlene McKinnon pulled a seat up next to me, dressed in her quidditch robes. I stopped writing my Defence revision notes and looked at her.

'I'm not staying, I need to get to practice,' she said quickly. 'I just thought I'd let you know that love potions are circulating intended for a certain Gryffindor boy. I overheard Ravenclaw's in the second-floor toilets – Moaning Myrtle was encouraging them.'

I cleared my throat. Of all the things I would expect of Marlene, telling me about love potions travelling through the castle was not one of them.

'Thanks,' I said. 'I appreciate it.'

'I just figured that if I had a boyfriend I'd like to know if someone was going to try and poison him.'

I laughed a little as she left the table.

'Some girls are scarily pathetic,' Adaline sucked on the end of her quill, frowning.

'I don't think it's that,' Lily began to defend them. 'Some are just…'

'Pathetic,' I agreed with Adaline.

Lily didn't have a good enough argument to support why certain girls reverted to love potions, so she went back to her parchment and textbooks. We didn't remain as a three for long before Lily had to go and deal with Hufflepuff prefects who were being a little too laid back in their punishments. Adaline then decided it was time for some food.

'Are you coming?' Adaline asked as she filled her bag.

I was still writing everything I could about all of the Unforgiveable Curses, so I shook my head.

'No, I won't be too long, though.'

Adaline left me as I continued scribbling incomprehensive words. Soon enough, I had cramp in my hand, so I called it a night. I flicked my wand to return borrowed books to their places and threw my bag over my shoulder. The library was practically empty with dinner in full swing in the Great Hall. I walked down into the Entrance Hall as the Gryffindor team were returning from practice looking battered and bruised. Sirius tried to smile when he saw me, but even that seemed to exhaust him.

'You look done in,' I walked up to him, grinning.

'We all need a much better effort on Friday's practice, team!' James boomed in front of the doors to the Great Hall. 'If we beat Ravenclaw by a good few hundred, we only need to score an absolute minimum of 150 when we play Slytherin to win the House Cup and stop them winning it!'

'Well, that's not very nice,' I said loud enough for James to hear me. Some of the team let out half-hearted laughs around me and then headed up the stairs to shower.

'I'm watching you, Bruce,' James narrowed his eyes at me and then looked at Sirius. 'You better not be telling her what we are doing in practice.'

'She's not even on the Slytherin team!' Sirius moaned.

'Still,' James furrowed his brows. 'We need to be cautious. Everyone not on our team is an enemy.'

He didn't wait for our reply, but followed the rest of his teammates up to Gryffindor tower. I turned to Sirius and caught a whiff of him.

'Oft,' I bit stood back a bit. 'I think you need to go wash this all off.'

'He's an actual nutter,' Sirius spoke, almost in a trance. 'You have no idea –'

'I know. Look, you seem severely traumatised right now, so please go and take a nice long shower and get a good sleep, and I'll see you in Potions in the morning.'

He just nodded and brushed by me. I couldn't help but laugh at the mess of him as he went. I walked into the Great Hall where Adaline was sitting with the other girls from our dormitory at the Slytherin table. I stopped myself from rolling my eyes at the sight and sat down to join them. My empty plate filled up in front of me with fish and chips.

'Have you heard, Nova?' Marianne Monclear asked me. She was really alright, Marianne. Not as smart as Adaline and me, but definitely not as dim-witted as Cecilia was.

'Heard what?' I asked as I cut into my fish. I caught Adaline trying to hide both her laugh and disgust at the pending news.

'There's been that much of a fuss made over how we aren't getting to Hogsmeade for Valentine's Day that we are getting a ball!'

I looked at Adaline who burst out laughing at my face. I felt my lip curl in both disgust and confusion.

'Merlin's fucking beard,' I muttered.

'It's going to be on the 25th March,' Lucinda Hemmings, Cecilia's right-hand woman, butted in to try make it seem better - it didn't. 'They are calling it the Equinox Ball.'

'Great,' I swallowed part of my fish.

'I thought you'd be ecstatic,' Cecilia finally piped up. 'You could show off your new man.'

I looked at her and a few other girls from the year below us seemed to go quiet at the subject of Sirius being brought up. No one from within Slytherin had dared to say a word to me about him yet, but I knew Cecilia was trying to get me to bite and I couldn't help but take the bait.

'I suppose so,' I shrugged and fired a couple of chips onto my fork. 'I'm definitely lucky that I have someone to show off, at least.'

I placed the food in my mouth and chewed with a smirk as I saw Cecilia get riled up at my comment. It was in no way a dig at Adaline, but I was the only one in the dorm who had a boyfriend and if anyone was going to be making sly comments about it, I wasn't going to let it slide.

'At least we hold higher standards than she does,' I heard her mutter to Lucinda, and I saw Adaline about to open her mouth, but I got there first.

'Sorry, what did you just say?'

Cecilia looked at me as if she was debating whether to repeat her statement and I was practically daring her to do it. I placed my cutlery back on the table.

'You heard me,' she snapped. 'You strut around here acting like you're better than all of us, but you can stoop down to that level and shag a blood traitor.'

'What your mouth, Lustig,' Adaline hissed.

'I'm just telling the truth and you know it too, Zabini. You're just too afraid to stand up to her like I am.'

'Oh, please,' Adaline scoffed. 'You're not even worth wasting breath on.'

Cecilia was loving the attention that she was bringing to herself and sat more upright as some of the boys began to listen into our argument.

'All I'm saying is you should be ashamed of yourself. Sure, Sirius Black may be good looking, but it doesn't hide the fact that he has disgraced his family name. Imagine turning your back on your own parents?'

My anger had taken over my body at this point. I refused to listen to this girl ramble on about things she had no idea about. I grabbed my wand and knocked her back out her seat. I stood up to see her lying on the floor but to my surprise, the bitch got up and fought back. She fired a spell at me, but I managed to block it. I could hear Adaline telling me to stop, but there was a voice in my head telling me I couldn't give in. I started to notice students from the other tables standing to watch what had happened. Before I even had a chance to think of my next move, Cecilia disarmed me.

Well, let's just say that only enraged me more. I'd never been disarmed, and I would be damned that Cecilia Lustig of all people was going to be the one to do it to me when I was distracted. I lunged across the table at her and we were completely engulfed in a mass of our robes. I could feel her clawing away at my arms as I just threw punches at the mass of robes. It didn't take long before I felt and arm around my waist and I was being lifted off Ceilia and carried out of the Great Hall. I began thrashing about trying to escape from their grasp.

'Let me fuckinggo!'

I was dropped and I turned around to see that it was Nathaniel who had removed me from the fight. He looked like he could have spat fire he was that angry, but I could place galleons on it that I was angrier.

'What the hell are you playing at?' he demanded and threw my wand at me.

'She was out of order,' I spat.

'She always has been, Nova! When did that ever bother you? What happened in there was nothing short of embarrassing.'

'Embarrassing?' I repeated with a laugh. 'Sorry, since when does what I do concern you?'

Adaline appeared with my bag which stopped me getting into another fight.

'Slughorn wants both you and Cecilia in his office,' she handed me my things.

Slughorn gave Cecilia and I a right bollocking. I'd never seen the old Professor so angry in my full time at Hogwarts. I wasn't even sure he had been this angry in his entire life. When he asked what we were fighting over, we both stayed silent and therefore, Cecilia got off with a week of detention and sent on her way. I was kept behind, and Horace Slughorn unloaded is complete disappointment in me this year and my punishment, instead of detention, I got a ban on visiting Hogsmeade until the last trip of the year.

I walked into Potions purposely later than usual the next morning so that I didn't have to sit in an awkward silence with Slughorn. Sirius gave me a bemused look as I arrived and took my seat just before the class was about to start.

'How is my psychotic girlfriend today, then?'

'Shut up or you won't have one,' I said quietly and forced a smile at him through gritted teeth.

He couldn't help but laugh but he stopped the second Slughorn shot us both a look of warning. The class was full of more revision and when it was over, Sirius couldn't hurry me up out of the classroom any quicker if he tried. We had Defence Against the Dark Arts next, but he didn't wait for the rest of our friends to catch up with us.

'All joking aside,' Sirius said as we walked out of the dungeons. 'Are you okay?'

'I'm fine,' I told him truthfully. I had some claw marks on my neck but that was about all the damage that was done.

'Why are you starting fights then?'

'She made a comment that I didn't like,' I shrugged.

I did not want to be that girl who started fights, especially over a boy, and despite what happened, that wasn't who I was. Cecilia really just hit a nerve with me. I thought about it after the fact, and whether I would have reacted the same if Sirius and I weren't together - I know I would have out her in her place about the blood traitor nonsense, but it was knowing Sirius and the type of person he is that made me lash out. The way people spoke about 'blood traitors' as if they were the scum of the earth. Nobody was going to talk about anyone I cared about in that way.

'And what was this comment?' Sirius asked.

'She called you a blood traitor,' I muttered, knowing on some level that he would love that I started a fight over him, and he laughed.

'Shit, Nova,' he gave me a kiss on the side of the head. 'You don't need to be starting pointless fights because of what someone called me. I'm used to it.'

'Yeah, well,' I grumbled.

'So, is now the correct time to be asking you about Valentine's Day?'

'Ugh,' I pulled a face. 'No Valentine's Day.'

He nodded. 'No Valentine's Day, got it.'

'Just don't eat or drink any unknown chocolate or drinks,' I told him, remembering McKinnon's chat with me the previous night. 'Apparently, you are the target for love potions.'

'I always am, love,' he stopped and pulled me in for a kiss.

'I hate you sometimes,' I said but pulled back in for another one before we entered the classroom.

Gryffindor just scraped a win from Ravenclaw over the weekend and by no means was James happy about it. Slytherin still had to play Hufflepuff on the weekend before the Equinox Ball and there was no doubt that we would beat them easily enough, putting us in. good position to win the cup.

Valentine's Day fell on a Tuesday and the school was covered in red and pink hearts everywhere you went. As the day went on, no matter where I went, I got glares from almost every girl that past me. With that, I started to get more nervous at the thought of Sirius forgetting that any chocolates given to him could be laced with a love potion. However, when I walked into Defence Against the Dark Arts, our last class of the day, the smile Sirius gave me when I walked in took away all of that worry. It was the first time I had saw him that day.

'There she is,' he declared and walked right up to me. 'The single most beautiful Slytherin that there ever was and has been.'

'Thanks,' I laughed. 'I think.'

He kissed me on the cheek and guided me towards my desk which was covered in Valentine's chocolate, balloons, bubbles and cards. I turned and looked at him with wide eyes.

'I said no Valentine's Day.'

'I know,' he grinned. 'This isn't from me.'

'I – what?'

I looked back at my desk and began picking up all of the cards. They were written in all different handwriting and a few were of some 6th and 5th year boys names that I recognised.

'But – I – But, how did you get these?' I asked. 'I didn't get them this morning.'

'I know, I called in a rat for a favour.'

If it wasn't somewhat funny, I think that I would have killed him. I decided to try and play him at his own game and opened one of the boxes of chocolates. I saw his eyes grow wide as I placed one in my mouth. Boys were different than girls. There was about an 80% chance that the chocolates didn't have a love potion in them, but I wasn't going to chew into it though, just in case. This was purely to get Sirius back.

'No, no, no, no,' he said and began to panic and placed us hand open under my mouth. 'Please, spit it out. I'm sorry, I'm sorry.'

I had to stop myself from actually spitting the chocolate onto his hand while I laughed. I picked up one of the cards and dropped the soaked full chocolate into it.

'Mr Black, please let Mr. Snape take his seat and get back to your own. Miss Bruce, clear away your desk. No one likes a show-off.'

Professor Etive had entered the room and all of a sudden, I could feel that my face was heating up at the idea that I had did this to show off. Sirius didn't move to begin with.

'After class, go get changed and we will go for a fly down at the quidditch pitch, okay?' he whispered.

'Mr. Black! I'll not be telling you again – seat, now.'

I didn't get another chance to speak to Sirius after the start of class. He darted from the classroom the minute we were dismissed, and I had a gut feeling that there was more than flying planned. Despite it being Valentine's Day and, technically a date, I layered on up and went for maximum comfort which was black leggings and a sweatshirt and then the jumper with the hood Sirius gave to me on New Year's Day.

I walked through the tunnel onto the pitch where I saw Sirius casually lying on a blanket.

'I know this may be a fantasy of yours,' I called out to him. 'But I refuse to have sex out in the open air.'

He sat up and chuckled at me, beckoning me over. As I got closer, I noticed there was plates scattered all over the blanket with food on them, but it wasn't just any food. It was biscuits, cakes and chocolate. My eyes darted to a certain plate in particular. There was normal shortbread and caramel shortbread piled hight.

'Where did you get these?' I gasped as I picked one of the caramel ones up and devoured it. It was like biting into heaven and was by far one of my favourite versions of shortbread.

'The kitchens,' he said and picked one up for himself. I watched him; a little bit annoyed he was having some. I wasn't one for sharing food, I wanted to keep it all for myself. 'I politely asked the elves what goods from Scotland they could make - I have tablet here as well.'

It took every part of my being not to contradict what I just said and make love to him right there and then. I couldn't explain Sirius. No one had ever gone out of their way to actively do things for me. No one ever tried to find out what kind of things I liked, and nobody ever took interest in any part of me that wasn't already being shown at face value. It was things like this and all of the other small things he did for me, like at the birthday party when he got Loch Lomond played – he did so much that was purely for my happiness. It was because of all of this; I knew I loved him.

Was I going to tell him that on Valentine's Day, of all days, though? Absolutely fucking not. I sat down next to him and pulled him in for a kiss.

'I did say no Valentine's Day, though,' I said as we parted.

'When have you ever known me to listen to instructions?'

'Fair enough.'

After that, we decided to fly before we ate anything else. I was desperate to fly, I hadn't done it in so long and it gave me the biggest sense of freedom. Sirius summoned the quaffle out and we played some 1 v 1. Sirius' beater qualities also meant he was a decent keeper but good Salazar, he couldn't score a goal if his life depended on it.

'Since when did you become so shit?' I laughed as I ducked by him with the quaffle and chucked it through a hoop.

'At least I'm on a team,' he yelled back as he received the quaffle and then he flew up to me. 'Did you ever try to get on the Slytherin team?'

'No,' I shook my head.

'You would have gotten on it, though,' he told me. 'They could have easily given up the likes of Parkinson, Muir and Avery for you as a chaser.'

I shrugged.

'You're not telling me that you never thought about it,' he continued.

'Of course, I did.'

'But you didn't do anything about it.'

'Why are you pushing this?' I snapped.

I didn't mean to, and it certainly wasn't my intention to get irritated at him, but the subject was touchy for me. Yes, I loved quidditch, yes, I loved flying and yes, I was a good chaser, but it wouldn't change the fact I never once tried to actively do something I loved. It was one of my biggest regrets in my life, but it was out of my control.

'It makes no sense, that's all,' Sirius spoke to me softly, obviously realising there was more to it.

'It's not the done thing, apparently.' I breathed. 'Little perfect girls are not to partake in such an activity – that's what I got told off my parents. I was already trying to dictate what subjects I wanted to take so I got presented with a choice… if I played quidditch then I would have my classes chosen for me. If I didn't play, my subject choices were mine without any input.'

I never told anybody that, not even Adaline. While I loved quidditch, the thought of having no control over my future was terrifying. I knew, at that time, my future was going to be decided for me regardless. Now, with Sirius in front of me, I knew my future was my own for the taking. Sirius didn't say anything but instead, we returned to the pitch and ate the baking that the elves had done for us. After a while he broke the silence.

'That night at the flat,' he sounded unsure. 'You didn't let me say-'

'A certain three words and eight letters? Yes, I know,' I had to cut in before he said it.

'Why? If you don't feel the same, it's fine.'

'No,' I sat up. 'I do. After all of this today, I want to say it more than anything.'

He sat up looking confused and amused. He looked so good I just wanted to kiss him and not stop.

'We aren't going to be the people who profess their love to each other on Valentine's Day though, okay?' I said.

'Okay,' he chuckled and kissed me.

Mother of Merlin, I wanted to say it so bad.

Lyrics are Don't Blame Me by Taylor Swift