Chapter Twenty-Nine: It's Not Supposed to Be Complicated

By the weekend before the next full moon, Sirius really, really wishes he could kiss Marlene.

She hasn't asked questions about why he's refusing to kiss any part of her. At first, it was actually kind of hot, or at least Sirius felt like it was. It added an extra layer of intensity, having to figure out how to make her feel good without using the second-most obvious body part. However, after three weeks of this, he misses it. He misses the way she tastes, and he misses the feeling of her pillowy lips in between his, and although he hadn't expected to, he even misses—

And he hates himself for it because he's not supposed to be kissing her—he's not supposed to be doing anything with her. It's not like he's in any condition to give her a real relationship, and in lieu of that, he ought to give her some damn space so she can move on and find somebody who actually deserves her. He doesn't want to—he so doesn't want to that he's even entertained the idea of asking her to be his girlfriend, just so that he wouldn't have to give her up. If he did, though—if Marlene were his girlfriend—he'd know that he still had feelings for somebody else, and he wouldn't be able to live with himself for taking advantage of her like that.

Not that he can live with himself now. Sirius knows he's lying to himself whenever he tells himself that this time will be the last time—knows it because he's spending all his time counting the minutes until the next time he gets her alone—and using her when he can't give her what she wants is almost as bad as it would be to lie to her about his intentions and act like he's trying to give it a real shot.

It wouldn't be a real shot—not really. Not when the very biggest reason Sirius wishes he could kiss Marlene is because today is Emmeline's birthday—because he wants to overwrite the memory in his head of his first kiss with Em.

He's told all the Gryffindors not to bother celebrating his half-birthday on Tuesday: as far as he's concerned, his half-birthday is as bad as his birthday in terms of reminding him of people he's lost. (God, Regulus. You'd think Sirius wouldn't still be so obsessed with him all these months later, now that he has more immediate problems to worry about, but Regulus still crosses Sirius's mind way more often than he would like.)

But today is Em's birthday, and when Sirius tried to acknowledge it, she just kept looking straight ahead as if she couldn't even hear him. How stupid is it that he's hung up on a girl who won't even look at him, but he can't pull his shit together enough to go out properly with the girl who so clearly wants to be with him?

It's not like he doesn't care about Marlene. On the contrary, he's starting to care about Marlene way too much, and all it does is make him hate himself more. He doesn't deserve to care about her: he doesn't deserve to have any emotional intimacy whatsoever with her.

And yet—it is intimate, this thing they're doing, and not just for physical reasons (although that's certainly a big part of it). The moments after it's over are still his favorites: he can almost convince himself that what they're doing is good and right and normal because it feels so good until reality sets back in. He holds her in his arms and rests his cheek on her head and almost, almost convinces himself that this thing they're doing can work.

"It's Em's birthday today," says Marlene, and Sirius feels sick. "Did you know that?"

"Yeah. Yeah, I knew that. We used to celebrate together."

"I asked her last week what she wanted to do for it, and she looked at me like I'd murdered her puppy or something. You two used to be close—do you have any idea what's going on with her?"

"Not that I don't care about Emmeline, because I do, but is talking about other girls really what you want to be doing right now?"

Marlene chuckles and snuggles closer into Sirius's chest. He twists one of her braids around and around his finger, rests his cheek (the one without the Mandrake leaf) on the top of her head. "It's going to be summer soon. I'm going to have to go more than two whole months without seeing you, aren't I? Your parents are going to keep you trapped in the house again?"

"Yeah, well, we shouldn't be making plans anyway. Maybe this summer will be the kick in the teeth we need to…"

"Why do you keep saying things like that?" she asks, and her voice suddenly sounds crisp and businesslike.

"Like what?"

"Like—you know what. Why can't we just be happy? When I'm with you, I'm happy. Aren't you? I mean, aren't I enough that I make you feel…?"

Oh, god, she thinks she's not enough for him? "Hey. I never, ever, ever want you to think you're not good enough—for me or for anybody else. Ever. All right?"

She doesn't answer right away, and when she does, her voice is quiet. "All right. But—"

"But nothing. I'm just… a wreck, Marlene. I sucked you into a hurricane, and I never should have done that, but—nothing about it is your fault. I knew better, and I did it anyway. I know better, and I keep doing…"

"Why does it have to be so hard for you? It would be a lot less painful for both of us if we stopped torturing ourselves trying to stay apart when we already know we can't. If we quit with the emotional breakups and just—"

"I thought you were assuming we were going to get together one of these days," says Sirius, frowning. "James and Peter said—"

"Jay and Pett were talking about me to you?"

"I… no, actually, they just thought I was asleep. Macdonald told them you said something to her? But—"

"I'm going to kill Mary," Marlene mutters. "Look, I used to think that, but that was before…"

"Before what?"

"It's been four months of this, Black. If you really wanted me, you would have done something about it by now. I'm not just your—toy, you know. I have feelings. I—"

"I know, and I respect that, I do, but—"

"Do you? Do you really respect that? Because I think if you did, you'd just make a bloody decision already."

"I'm sorry, okay? I'm sorry. I'm just—I'm not strong enough. Is that really what you want to hear? I don't know what to do. I'm a wreck. You should see inside my head, Marlene; it's… I can't take care of you. I can't even take care of myself."

"It's not supposed to be hard! It's not supposed to be complicated!" snaps Marlene. "All you have to do is not leave. It's like you're putting this insane amount of pressure on yourself that it's so difficult for you to live up to, but all I need you to do is stay. I just need you to—to talk to me and hold my hand in public. I just need you to kiss me again."

In that moment, all Sirius wants to do is kiss her—but he can't. Not properly, anyway. So he does the best he can—presses his lips firmly to the top of her head—and then he gathers his robes around himself and flees.

xx

It's another week before the full moon, and when it finally arrives, Sirius bids Moony goodbye in the Hospital Wing and goes back up to the dormitory to meet James and Peter. "Have you two got the stuff?" he asks them as he closes and locks the dormitory door behind him.

Peter holds up a phial containing one of the Death's Head moth chrysalises. "Here, take this one and add your leaf and one of your hairs to it."

Sirius sticks in one of his hairs first before very carefully reaching into his mouth and removing the Mandrake leaf. "That's bloody disgusting," he comments—the thing has decayed pretty badly, not that he didn't know that already from the way it felt inside his mouth. "Does anybody have any food? I'm bloody starving, and if I don't get the taste of this thing out of my mouth right now—

Peter wordlessly reaches behind himself and passes Sirius some biscuits and a bottle of pumpkin juice. James open his own hands to reveal two more phials, a teaspoon that Sirius assumes is made of silver, and the Muggle coin that's supposed to be Fletcher's Portkey, scheduled to go off at ten o'clock sharp. "So now we just—wait?"

"Yeah. Another half an hour."

He doesn't think half an hour of his life has ever passed so slowly. James and Peter are chatting amicably, but Sirius is too wound up to join in—winds up pacing around and around the dormitory just to give himself something to do, checking his watch every ten seconds as if expecting the hour to suddenly have arrived. When it finally does, Sirius grimaces through it—he's only ever traveled by Portkey a few times in his life, and it's never pleasant.

The ground where they land is exactly what they ordered: they land just outside a mammoth cave on grass that extends all the way inside it. "Dung did good," Sirius remarks as James takes out the spoon.

"Give me your phials. I'll collect the dew and dump it in."

Sirius watches James patter around in the cave and eventually looks skyward. He says to Peter, "It's, like, really cloudy tonight. What did the skies look like at Hogwarts? D'you reckon we should wait here and see if moonlight strikes, or should we take our chances and go back?"

"I dunno. It didn't look great at Hogwarts, either."

"I swear to god, if we have to do another Mandrake month after this—"

"And if this doesn't pan out tonight, we're not going to have time to do another one before summer vacation—we'll have to wait until September," Peter points out.

James stomps out of the cave then, clutching all three phials in one hand. "It's cloudy," he groans. "It's bloody cloudy."

"Maybe if we just wait it out—"

"Those clouds aren't going to clear up anytime soon, even if we wait here all night. The whole sky looks like a giant pillow."

"Back to Hogwarts?" Sirius suggests dully. "It was cloudy there, too, but at least the clouds were a little less dense. There's at least a chance there that we can hit the phials with moonlight tonight if we go back."

Spoiler: the clouds at Hogwarts don't clear up, either, and they never strike their phials with moonlight. Oh, they wait—they conceal themselves from Hagrid in the outskirts of the Forbidden Forest all night, two of them each sleeping as a third holds out the phials and watches the clouds—but it's almost sunup before Peter wakes Sirius and James and tells them it's a no-go. "We have to get out of here before Hagrid or Sprout comes outside—or Madam Pomfrey goes out to the Whomping Willow to collect Moony. James, do you have the Cloak?"

"We told you we should have waited 'til January," scowls James as he obediently reaches into his bag and retrieves the Invisibility Cloak. "We bloody told you—"

"Oh, yeah? Who's to say that the full moon in February wouldn't be a cloudy night, too? It's got nothing to do with the timing, James, and you know it."

It adds insult to the injury when there's an electrical storm three short days later: if only the moon had come out that night on the grounds, Sirius, James, and Peter would all be Animagi by now. They're all so pissed about it that even Evans, sitting two tables over from them in the library, notices. "Oi, will you four quit sulking and slamming about? Some of us are trying to study for exams."

"It's a free—er—library," Peter snaps back, while Sirius just snickers. Pissed as he is about the spell, it feels really, really, really damn good to be able to do it without having to hide his mouth behind his hand.

So life returns to normal—or whatever passes as normal these days for Sirius, anyway. Between going through a Mandrake month for nothing, whatever the hell is going on between him and Moony these days, his brother basically disowning him, losing Em, and thoroughly destroying a perfectly good friendship with Marlene, he can't help feeling like he regrets the entire last year of his life. As a first and second year—not quite as much in third year, but sometimes even still then—he'd savored his days at Hogwarts and the feeling of belonging it gave him, even had dreaded the day he would graduate and have to leave this place behind. Now, Sirius just feels like he's been robbed of a precious ten months out of that time and wasted it feeling miserable and alone.

And what has he got to look forward to? Two and a half months of withdrawal from the Marauders, celibacy, continued regret over Emmeline, and Regulus walking around Grimmauld Place as if Sirius doesn't even exist. Fifth year couldn't come any slower—and the worst part is, when it finally comes, it's probably going to be no better than fourth year has been.

Something has to give. It just has to.

xx

END OF PART FOUR