"You think she has brain damage?"
"Dorcas, don't be stupid. She didn't hit her head."
"Well then why isn't she waking up? We've been here forever."
"Just because she's not awake yet doesn't mean something's wrong with her. And it's only been a few hours. Quit your complaining before I put you in a hospital bed."
"We've been here for 5 hours, to be exact."
"Thanks for counting, Pete."
The first thing Guinevere is aware of when she comes to is a pounding headache. Her forehead feels as though it's about to split open and spill her brain matter everywhere. In her foggy state, she wonders if she's hit her head on the ground and this is her last moment of semi-lucidity before she'll fall into a deep sleep, never to wake up again.
She attempts to make some sort of noise to convey that she's coming back to consciousness, but all that comes out of her mouth is a weak groan.
"Did you hear that? She made a noise!"
"James, for Merlin's sake, calm down! You'll startle her."
"Well excuse me for being a concerned captain and wanting to ensure the health of my underlings."
"'Underlings'? Really, James, you make me question our relationship."
"Should we get Madam Pomfrey?"
"She's already dealing with a student who blasted three of his fingers off. I think we'll be fine on our own."
Guinevere's eyes slowly flutter open, squinting to adjust to the light. Seven blurry figures surround her, towering above as she lays down on a cushy surface.
She blinks a few times until the world comes into focus. The fog in her brain is lifted. She looks around her and sees Lily, Dorcas, Marlene, Alice, James, Peter, and Sirius all surrounding her bedside. Their expressions betray a mixture of concern and relief. She looks to her left and sees a nightstand with a chunky looking blue potion bottle sitting on top next to a used glass.
She's in the hospital wing. She's okay. Everything is okay.
Well, besides that damn pain in her head. But at least it's not cracked open.
"Guin?" Alice prods. "Are you alright?"
Guinevere nods vigorously, then lets out a groan. The action makes her head pound even more.
"Fine, fine. Did we win the game?"
James chuckles. Guinevere's eyes flit down to his hand. It's clutching onto Lily's, half-hidden by their robes. Lily looks like she's squeezing his hand tightly, like he's her lifeline.
"O'Laughlin caught the snitch pretty soon after you fell," he informs her. "Everybody was so distracted that he just snatched it right up and no one took any notice until Madam Hooch called the game. We won."
She sighs in relief. Her worst fear would have been causing her team to lose the game. She knows that all the credit goes to their seeker for catching the snitch, but a small bit of pride swells in her for being the distraction he needed. Even while plummeting off her broom to what she thought was sure death, she helped her team in a way.
"I thought you were gonna die!" Marlene blurts out. Her eyes are rimmed red and her face is flushed. She looks like she's been crying for most of the day.
Guilt rolls over in Guinevere's stomach. Sometimes she thinks Marlene's heart is too large for her to handle.
Before she can say something to reassure her sensitive friend that she's going to be okay, Dorcas scoffs at her.
"She just fell from her broom. Plenty of people do that during Quidditch games and they don't die."
Marlene sniffs and rubs at her eyes to get rid of traces of tears. Lily elbows Dorcas.
"Be nice!" she hisses. "Marlene was just worried. We all were."
Dorcas rubs her side and glares at Lily. Guinevere holds back a laugh; Lily is known to have a sharp jab; and a sharp right hook, if you make her angry enough.
"You broke your shoulder blade," Peter informs her. "Madam Pomfrey had to plug your nose to get you to drink the potion to heal it. Even in your sleep, you must have hated it, because you kept spitting it out."
So that explains the blue film around the inside of the glass on the nightstand. Guinevere finds that she's immensely grateful Madam Pomfrey gave it to her while she was sleeping. There's no telling how foul it tastes. If it's anything like the potion she had to take in 4th year to heal her broken wrist, it's worse than dragon dung.
Guinevere glances around at all of her friends and realizes a very important person is missing from the group.
"Where's Remus?"
James, Sirius, and Peter look at each other in what is yet another silent Marauder conversation. Guinevere is immediately suspicious of anything they're about to tell her. If they have to confer with each other over it, it's likely not true.
"He's not feeling well," James says. "He's laying down."
"Looks real bad too," Peter adds.
"He probably won't be in tip top shape until the day after tomorrow at the earliest," Sirius claims.
She nods, but once again it sends shock waves of pain pulsing to her head. She winces and rubs her temples. The pain distracts her from any thoughts of Remus and where he could really be.
"Madam Pomfrey said a headache is a side effect of the potion," Peter supplies. "And also sometimes it can turn your skin blue, but she gave it to you hours ago and your skin isn't blue so I don't think that'll happen."
Guinevere groans. Magic may be able to do many extraordinary things, but sometimes she'd prefer the muggle way. At least Tylenol isn't likely to give her blue skin.
"So if I didn't fall on my head, what did I fall on?"
The three Marauders present all snort with badly concealed laughter. Lily's world famous glare is enough to get James to bite down on his tongue to stop it.
It's Dorcas who eventually answers the question,
"You fell on your arse."
This time the boys can't stop their laughter, even James, and Guinevere feels her cheeks heat up. Nearly all the student body saw her fall on her butt. She's no doubt going to be hearing snarky comments jeered at her in the corridors for weeks to come.
"C'mon guys, leave her alone," Marlene says. "Madam Pomfrey wants to keep her overnight. She needs sleep."
Guinevere is immensely grateful for Marlene's interference. Though she loves her friends, she's beginning to feel crowded.
"Will you be fine on your own, Guin?" Lily asks.
"I'll be fine. If my skin turns blue, I'll just alert Madam Pomfrey."
Lily laughs and bids her friend goodbye, ushering everybody away from her bedside like a fussy mother hen. The group shuffles out together with only mild complaints, mostly from Dorcas, who resents being herded out like cattle.
Guinevere notices Sirius putting distance between himself and the rest of them. He lingers behind them, as if he doesn't want to leave.
Strange, she thinks. Even I wish I could leave.
When they all walk out, Sirius stops at the door.
Then he turns back around and starts walking to Guinevere's bed.
She chokes on air.
"Wh-What are you… You shouldn't… Why…"
Sirius reaches out and grabs a chair, pulling it towards her bed and sitting down, all while maintaining eye contact with Guinevere. She stares back at him.
"You were right, you know," he states simply.
She blinks at him.
"About what exactly…?"
"About what you said about family," he clarifies. "When you told me I should at least try to help Reg. You were right."
The argument comes flooding back to her, making her flush with shame. In the heat of the moment, she was so passionate in her beliefs. Looking back now, she realizes she let her emotions get the better of her. She overstepped her bounds and assumed things about his family and the way he was raised that she had no right to.
How many times has she assumed his life was perfect because he came from a rich, well known pureblood family?
"No, I wasn't," she insists. "I shouldn't have tried to guilt you like that. I had no idea what your family was like. I just thought of my own and what I would do if I thought one of them was in danger. If I were you, I guess I wouldn't be too keen on helping him either."
There's shame written on his face as well, which Guinevere believes to be undeserved. He didn't say anything to her that she didn't have coming.
"It's not his fault we were raised the way we were," he murmurs. "Reg was always a good kid. But after I got sorted into Gryffindor, our parents treated him like he was their only kid."
Once again, Guinevere tries to imagine a much younger Sirius Black, what he must have felt like going from the apple of his parents' eye to the black sheep. Her stomach twists in disgust thinking of any parent alienating their child for something as simple as what house they're sorted into.
She's never wanted to be a pureblood in her life, but now is one of the times where she takes the time to be immensely grateful that she wasn't born into a pureblood family like Sirius's.
"We drifted apart," he admits. "And then when I ran away…"
His fists clench on his lap.
"I should have taken him with me. He's doing this because Mummy dearest wants him to, I know it. He always tried too hard to stay in her good graces after he saw how easy it was for her to blast me right off the family tree. If he does this, it will be my fault for leaving him there."
Guinevere stares at him. Sirius Black has never struck her as an emotional person in the slightest. Even now, as he's revealing more to her about his life than he ever has before, there's a certain amount of emotional distance between them. His fists are clenched to conceal what she thinks is frustration, and his tone remains even.
She can't help but think emotions were frowned upon in the Black family.
"You were so insistent earlier," she says. "What changed your mind?"
His tongue darts out and wets his lips. Guinevere remembers Dorcas saying something about how boys lick their lips around a girl when they want to kiss her.
She still thinks that's ridiculous and that Dorcas knows nothing.
"I thought about my brother when I was watching you fall."
Guinevere raises an eyebrow, not sure whether or not she should feel offended.
"Not that I wasn't worried about you," he hurries to reassure her. "But you know that same Hufflepuff beater broke a Slytherin player's jaw and leg. Poor bloke was still in here sleeping off a healing potion when they brought you in. All I could think about when I saw you fall and when I saw that poor Slytherin bastard was that could have been my brother."
She's not quite sure how to respond. His earlier insistence that "Reg is a stranger" still rings in her head.
"My brother and I aren't close," he says, as if he could read her thoughts. "We haven't been close in years. But I still bloody care about him, for Merlin's sake. I don't want to see him hurt or dead or even worse: making our mother proud."
Guinevere snorts.
"You have your priorities straight," she jokes.
Sirius cracks a small smile.
"You underestimate how much I hate that old hag."
She smiles back at him. The throbbing in her head is starting to go down considerably, which is strange; usually being around Sirius makes her head throb more.
Their light laughter and smiles fall away, leaving them in a stifling silence. Sirius looks down at his lap, twiddling his thumbs. Guinevere lays back in her bed and looks up at the ceiling.
Should she ask him to leave so she can get some rest? They've resolved their issue. They both apologized for their respective roles in the fight. He did what he came here for. Why is he not leaving?
"I, um…" Sirius begins, wringing his hands uncomfortably.
In all their years at Hogwarts together, Guinevere can't remember ever hearing Sirius stumble over his words or say "um". He has never been the type to be prone to nervousness. He's bold and brash, the picture perfect Gryffindor that Guinevere has always wished she could be.
But right now, he seems to be acting more like her than himself.
"I know we, uh, got off on the wrong foot in… uh, first year," he continues.
She narrows his eyes at him, wondering where he's going with this. He doesn't need to tell her that they "got off on the wrong foot". She still remembers quite well the first time he called her "Gwen-Of-Air".
"And every year after that," she adds.
The corners of his lips tug up into a grin.
"And every year after that," he amends. "But I really don't hate you, Guinevere. I never have, and I don't want you to think that I do."
Guinevere.
She's heard him call her Driscoll, and of course, the dreaded "Gwen-Of-Air", but never Guinevere.
It catches her completely off-guard. She would sooner expect Snape to wax lyrical about his love for muggleborns.
When she looks over at him again, it's as if she's seeing an entirely different Sirius from the one she's only barely tolerated for over six years. She doesn't look into his eyes and see a mischievous glint that has her looking around for signs of a prank coming her way. She sees a softness she never knew he was capable of. The curve of his smile doesn't make Guinevere scowl back in response. Instead, she wants to replicate it. It's infectious.
How did she never notice these subtle changes until now?
"I don't hate you either," she whispers.
She's not sure why her words came out in a whisper.
Sirius brightens up considerably at her words.
Did he think she hated him?
She used to dislike him, sure, but she never considered what she felt to be a hatred. Sirius was never a bad person.
"So…"
He sticks his hand out.
"Friends?"
Guinevere smiles and takes his hand, shaking it firmly.
"Friends."
When she met Sirius Black in the third week of her first year, she imagined seven years of teasing and prodding and screaming matches. She never imagined that she would one day consider him to be a friend. Yet here she is, clutching his hand as if they're as close as she is with Lily and Marlene and Alice and Dorcas.
Sirius drops their handshake, as if he just now noticed how long it was going on.
"I should leave," he says. "You need to get some sleep so you'll have the energy to find that beater tomorrow and knock him unconscious with his own stick."
Guinevere smirks at the thought. She's normally a pacifist, but the idea sounds dangerously appealing at the moment.
"Don't worry about me, I can handle it," she assures him. "See ya later, Sirius."
From the toothy grin he gives her, she knows the meaning of her words isn't lost on him. She rarely uses his first name, instead calling him "Black" or "you prat", depending on her mood.
"See ya later, Guinevere."
She decides she quite likes hearing him say her name. It doesn't sound too long or clunky and strange like she's always believed her name to be. It sounds regal, somehow. Like the queen she was named for.
When Sirius is about to cross the threshold into the corridor, Guinevere calls out to him,
"Hey Sirius! Whose turntable was that sitting in your room?"
He turns back to face her briefly, a look of confusion on his face.
"Mine. Why do you ask?"
The confession brings a mental image to Guinevere's brain of Sirius Black, the former heir to one of the oldest and most well known pureblood families in the wizarding world, dancing alone in his room to Ziggy Stardust on a Saturday night.
She smiles to herself.
"No reason. Just curious."